Design Your Desired Life

Design

Your Desired Life

A New Paradigm for Architecting Your Life

by Bob Ivkovic

©2022 Bob Ivkovic

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, including photocopying or digital reproduction, without permission in writing from the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a magazine or newspaper or on radio or television.

Email: info@ArchitectingYourLife.com

Website: www.ArchitectingYourLife.com

ISBN 978-1-7782289-3-3 Hardcover

ISBN 978-1-7782289-2-6 Softcover

ISBN 978-1-7782289-0-2 Electronic

Cover Photo: “Desperation” © Josh Sommers 2009. All rights reserved.

to all those who plod under the weight of a burden.

We have a future that deserves better.

Introduction

“Life

Architecture is a way of reaching the life we want and making the world a better place for ourselves.”

Design Your Desired Life could be the most intriguing and illuminating self-help book that you’ve read. I’d like to think of it as a game changer or, more selfishly, a life changer. After all, I’m talking about radically changing our life. As a whole, we’re all obsessed with having a better life. The challenge is changing without sacrificing our uniqueness. Everyone is unique and no one else like you exists on the planet. We all have distinct interests and aspirations in life. We wear different hats, do different jobs, hang out with different people, and live in different real estate. Some of us finally get a chance to build that dream home. We hire an architect to design a dwelling that conforms to our personality, lifestyle, and situation. When it’s all done, we move into that special place that meets our needs and desires.

What if you could hire an architect to design the life that you want? Better yet, what if you could architect your own life and actually live it? That’s why we all need a Life Architecture to catapult us into our dream life. The word “architect” may not be a verb in today’s vernacular, but that’s probably because Life Architecture hasn’t yet found its way into the mainstream. I’m counting on that changing one day as the discipline takes off and everyone jumps on the Life Architecture bandwagon. The world is rapidly changing as are the things that we need to do to keep up. I’m sure that the modern dictionary won’t be far behind. I suspect that Life Architecture will become a popular movement in the 21st century, and we’re going to need a good verb to make it happen.

I’m sure at some point during this Life Architecture journey we will all reach a very tricky crossroad. We won’t be completely sure whether we’ll succeed and why we started this. However, once we get started, we’ll be in a mindset to learn about ourselves and our life. I hope it becomes contagious and we see it all the way through. And even if we don’t, we will have architected some part of our life, and created an understanding and vision of what we want. That’s got to be worth something.

Life Architecture takes our life from a faded present to a colorful future. It’s a simple concept, more or less like building a custom home. We meet an architect at a midway coffeehouse to create a blueprint of our lives today, conceive what we desire, transform our life blueprint into a future state, and then develop a roadmap to get us from where we are today to where we want to go in the future. It may seem rather instinctive, but experience dictates that we all need some guidance to understand where we are going and how to get there. There’s also a bit of luck involved, like stumbling onto this book. Some effort and a reliable roadmap may be just what the doctor ordered to reach our desired and long-awaited destiny.

Life Architecture is a new paradigm to help us discover a future that we never knew existed but could be ours. It’s not every day a newfangled paradigm is born that appeals to both an infantry battalion and the little old lady next door. My hope is to empower us to identify the possibilities and realize the benefits of a new reality. Of course, we have to get out of those tattered old clothes and into our favorite jeans. We will ultimately change into a new wardrobe that fits our true persona. Change is a normal part of life, but radical change is a normal part of a great life. Life Architecture is a methodology geared to define a new future and implement an action plan to get us there. Think of it as a personal journey that prioritizes our lives and takes us from a mundane, uninspiring,

resistance-proof lifestyle to one where we dream to be. Life Architecture may be the only chance we get to make our dreams come true.

Life Architecture is a way of reaching the life we want and making the world a better place for ourselves. Everything that we see or touch or even eat has some architectural quality. I’m sure most of us weren’t around when bread was invented, but I imagine bakers and homemakers alike got excited when it became a household staple. Then an architect sliced it, bagged it, and popularized the loaf which led to more inventions, including sandwiches and toasters. As much as I would like to slice it and bag it for you, I have written Design Your Desired Life for your convenience and personal betterment. Life Architecture is my gift to humanity as it summons us to take ownership of our lives and live life to the fullest. I hope you reinvent yourself and others around you.

CHAPTER 1

What Makes a Good Company Tick?

I must have changed this paragraph a hundred times. My editor advised me that it was my job to grab your attention in the opening paragraph. Sometimes I wonder what he would have written. I’m sure he’d cut to the chase and ask some of the same questions: Why are we here, what purpose do we have, why are we stuck in this life? These are deep meaningful questions that impact our sense of self and have haunted us our entire lives, yet don’t have easy answers. We’ve been asking questions about our existence for so long that we forgot we were even asking them. Hence, I wrote this book to make the most of our existence.

I’m sure we have all wished at one time or another that we could live a different life, or even realize someone else’s glamorous lifestyle. It turns out you have a life of your own and need to focus on yourself. And what better place to start than asking yourself a couple of fundamental questions: Do I want a better life and how do I go about getting it? Some will argue that such questions are perplexing but the answers can be simple when we find purpose and meaning. Purpose and meaning are foundational to any life.

The meaning of life is still one of the greatest mysteries of the modern day world, not to mention how we should live our lives. The subject has probably aroused curiosity in each and every one of us. A Berkeley anthropology professor in a movie about finding Genesis said, “Man has no limit on nor control over his curiosity.” Maybe we’re destined to forever be searching for answers to life’s questions. We’d have to get all the great minds throughout history in the same room to make some sense of our existence. What I would give to be a fly on a wall for such a rendezvous.

I have since come to realize that I didn’t know who I was because I had never taken the time to find out. I felt like I was fumbling along in a haze grasping for bits of happiness and clarity along the way. The great philosophers of the ancient and modern worlds – The Buddha, Socrates, Confucius, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, among others – devoted themselves to making sense of our lives but had inconsistent arguments and philosophies as they sought knowledge and meaning. I felt lost but yet unwilling to make a life-long sacrifice as the great philosophers in their search for life’s meaning. Deep inside, I was afraid there may not be a meaning should I decide to embark on a search. Life has a funny way of surprising us, and ultimately getting away if we’re not careful.

Although we all have our own reasons for being where we are, we seem to be asking the same questions. Do I feel like I’m not quite living the life I planned, that it’s all just slipping away, and there’s nothing I can do about it? Does it seem like nothing’s new, and there’s more behind me than in front of me? The two most provocative questions are the following: How did I get here and how do I get out? These are questions that don’t provide immediate answers. There was a time I was convinced that the answers didn’t even exist. But they do. Whether they fit in our experience is another matter. I believe we can transform our existence in order to attain a better life.

The purpose of this book is to rationalize our existence by exploring questions about ourselves and our lives. Although I don’t have the literary aptitude of William Shakespeare or Ernest Hemingway, I have a life revelation to share with you. Furthermore, I have engaged a very capable and

trusted editor to make my words compelling. This book has the intent and wherewithal to take you to where you want to be. After all, the only way to move on is to try something new. I’m tired of waiting for life to happen. I’d hate for life to get away on any of us. And frankly, there’s no need to read on if you’re not in the market for a better life.

I was hoping to avoid this chapter altogether and spare you the propaganda. A crook once advised me that everything happens for a reason – probably the same reason he had for emptying my pockets. “Become good at cheating and you never need to become good at anything else” were the philosophical words of a shady art dealer. Being a crook, who the hell does he think he is giving me honest advice? He’s obviously the guy I couldn’t count on. I’ve since learned to invest with people who have a track record rather than those who tell a good story. Someone once said, “Life is what tricks us. It misleads us. It paints one man a hero when he may well be a villain.” It’s not always easy to find the guy whom you can count on. I hate to break the news, but that guy is you.

Let me start by saying something right off the bat. I have a way of looking at life that is both unconventional and life-changing. Why else would I bother to write about life when I could be reading the perspectives of philosophers and modern-day authorities on life? I admit that my perspective on life is incidental in the grand scheme of things. It rather happened by chance as a result of many factors in my life, not to mention the widening gap between my reality and dreams. Like the great philosophers, I’m an observer of life and see things that others seem to ignore. Maybe we need to see the world beyond what it seems to be. While we’re busy living life, some of us try to make sense of it.

I am just one of several billion people on this planet with a perspective. And like most people, I believe my dreams will come true one day. Everything in my life has led to this moment, and it was just a matter of time before I found a purpose and shared an inspirational idea. If all goes well, maybe I’ll be inducted into the fine company of those who have successfully launched an idea whose time has come. Not to sound arrogant, I think it should have come a long time ago. It’s like the guy who invented the wheel but no one cared until it was time to take home the groceries.

Like most guys who sell an idea, I have to offer some proof that we can all relate to. “You don’t need proof when you have instinct” was a response from someone who had no proof, but I’m not sure you’ll trust my instinct. If I didn’t have proof, I wouldn’t be here. This isn’t some aggrandized detergent commercial or a Billy Graham evangelical crusade. I thought about this for some time. Here I am with an exciting invention, hot off the press and packaged for one’s use and convenience, but my challenge is getting customers to take it home without a money-back guarantee. Every sales strategy starts with a need and ends with customer satisfaction, or at least a good sales proposition.

A seasoned businessman once advised me that in order to successfully reach others, we must help them get rid of what they don’t want in their lives and get what they want. I’m not sure that I can or even want to zero in on such a target market, but rather entice those lost souls who believe in changing their lives for the better. And for the record, I’m not selling anti-aging products or any other products that will make me a millionaire. You’ve already bought the goods if you’re reading this book. Unlike Harry Houdini, I’m not a master of self-promotion or illusion, and the last thing I want is for you to enter this thing with false illusions.

I now want you to open the box and start taking everything out. Just pretend that you bought a brand new computer and you’re taking out all the hardware, cables, digital media, user manuals, and those little bags of goodies that you know you’ll need but not quite sure when and why. It’s going to take a little work and time to put this puzzle together. However, I believe it will come naturally to you just like your personality.

I’d like to be clear about my invention and my intention and what I am selling. I might be what you call a dream seller. I sell what money can’t buy, mainly the courage to make a better life, confidence in your ability to succeed, and the common sense to get to your desired future. I almost feel like a respectable member of the community who is about to jeopardize his reputation for telling the newspaper a story about seeing aliens. I already told you that “I have a way of looking at life that is both unconventional and inspiring.” It’s the unconventional part that I’m bent on selling. This is why I refer to it as a new paradigm for architecting your life. The inspirational part should sell itself.

u Galileo’s Defiance of the Church

Galileo Galilei faced a similar ordeal when he told all the flat world believers that the earth, like the moon, was round. His troubles began when he was charged with heresy for defending Copernican theory, which held that the sun was at the center of the universe and the earth revolved around the sun. He had pieced together some damning evidence that contradicted Aristotle and Church doctrine. The Catholic Church held a great deal of power and influence since the Middle Ages, and anyone who diverged from doctrinal thought and behavior was punished. Rather than put to rot in a church dungeon, Galileo had been condemned by the Church for “vehement suspicion of heresy” and lived his remaining years under house arrest. Although he was forbidden to have visitors or any of his works published, he ignored the injunctions just to prove to the world that he was right. I’m amazed at the journeys we are forced to make to prove ourselves. This Renaissance scientist had more guts than a championship bull rider. Besides, he was having too much fun being right by using his head. I’m hopeful I won’t be tainted with the same brush and jailed for some modern form of heresy.

Sometimes it’s just best to leave things alone unless we’re prepared to pay the price. Someone once said that the universe doesn’t kid around while it takes whatever it wants and never gives it back. Although the world eventually learned the truth, Galileo was punished by losing his freedom, while his opponents were staring with unseeing eyes into the very abyss of ignorance. Even today, we see people being punished for upholding a truth that contradicts bureaucracies, dictatorships, or some other form of authority blinded by its own ignorance or selfishness.

This may explain my suspicion and skepticism in humanity, and the realization that others can get in the way of living the life we want to live. I’m no Galileo by any means, nor am I here to teach you about the galaxy. And I’ve never sold a used car to a philanthropist or a convertible to an Alaskan. Nor has my photo been in the real estate section of top performers, or any section of a newspaper for that matter. You can also be rest assured that I won’t be selling you a telescope. In a way, I will be showing you how to look through one.

Incidentally, Galileo made telescopes and was the first to study the heavens with one. As a result of his work to improve the telescope and consequent astronomical observations, Galileo is often called the father of modern observational astronomy. Today, astronomers continue to look through a telescope and observe things that the rest of us cannot, and study things we don’t even have a clue exist. The great paradox of all this is that the better our instruments get, the further we can see, but not only into the galaxy, but also into the future. History has proven that humanity is at the mercy of visionaries like Galileo who have revealed the secrets of the universe.

There are a lot of things that we don’t see in our lives or things around us while we’re preoccupied with a routine from the time we wake up until we go back to bed. It’s almost like buying a telescope but never taking it out of the box, probably because there’s no time for star gazing or we’re just too tired. Our hobbies have since made way for family, work, vocation, and other priorities.

Let’s face it, we’re just too busy with life while our lives continue to fill up with clutter. Sometimes I feel like the day after begins before the prior day ends. The only time we’re at peace is when we’re asleep having nice dreams. I pity insomniacs. It is our ineluctable fate to be strangers trapped inside our own lives. I find it incomprehensible that we can go through life not being able to see ourselves. Patrick Swayze left his body in the movie Ghost and saw himself from the outside looking in where he came to understand his fears and self-doubts. The great Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung said, “Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”

Most of us are logical beings by nature and lead logical lives. That is why it won’t be too difficult to teach you something that is very logical and methodical. I hate to use the word “logical” because I don’t want to imply that we’re illogical. When I say logical, I don’t mean Mr. Spock type of logic that only Vulcans can relate to. Many of us would rather stay away from the physics of how the universe works. The logic I’m talking about is the common sense that runs parallel to our lives but yet we’re unable to tap into it. Sometimes we have to put logic aside and do what feels right.

u What is Common Sense?

Common sense is sound practical knowledge inside us, independent of specialized knowledge, training, or a university degree. It was the English mathematician John Littlewood who pointed out that great knowledge often comes from the humblest of origins. Common sense is sometimes a hard thing to live with, especially when others defy it. I once read that common sense is not a gift, it’s a punishment because we have to deal with everyone else who doesn’t have it. I couldn’t but laugh at a T-shirt with the caption: “Common sense is like deodorant, the people who need it most never use it.” It’s definitely a missing attribute in many individuals. Hopefully, these aren’t the people that we count on.

How is it that we’re unable to tap into our common sense and change our life where it needs changing. We are too busy to do what seems to be the obvious and right things. We subconsciously add more complexity to our lives in a world that promotes continuous and irrational change. Believe me, it’s not our fault. At the end, everything we do in life has a reason, or does it? In War and Peace, the literary Russian genius Leo Tolstoy wrote, “If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, the possibility of life is destroyed.”

After becoming disenchanted with modern society, Christopher McCandless donates his savings to Oxfam and sets out for the Alaskan wilderness. There’s even a movie about his expedition. At first, McCandless is content with the isolation, the beauty of nature around him, and the thrill of living off the land. He soon learns that true happiness can be found when shared with others, and the reason he tries to return from the wild to family and friends. Happiness is only real when shared. I think McCandless would have agreed with Tolstoy:

“I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them. And work which one hopes may be of some use. Then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor. Such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children perhaps. What more can the heart of a man desire?”

We feel compelled to explain our actions and motives with reasoning that comes after the fact. It’s almost as though reasoning is an afterthought. Why can’t reasoning and consciousness be at the forefront of everything that we do? I don’t want to sell you but rather teach you how to get to know your life and take it to a higher level of inspiration. I’ve learned to equate the quality of our

lives to the purpose and inspiration inside us. I can’t wait to share my bag of goodies and help you reach your life of purpose and inspiration.

Do you remember the Logical Song by the famous British band Supertramp from the ‘70s and ‘80s, and the part where they send a young lad away into the twilight to teach him “how to be sensible, logical, responsible, practical”? I’m not sure where this young lad goes and what he has learned, but at the end of the day he does not know who he is or where he is going. I can still remember the composed rhythmic words of Roger Hodgson, as he gracefully struck the piano keys, about his experience as a lad being sent away to boarding school.

There are times when all the world’s asleep, the questions run too deep for such a simple man. Won’t you please, please tell me what we’ve learned. I know it sounds absurd but please tell me who I am.

These are legitimate thoughts not only for a young lad but for the rest of us grown-ups. We all experience good and bad things while unforeseen events breach the continuum of our life journeys where there is no defined beginning, middle, or end. We have preconceived notions about what we need to do in life and how to enjoy our lives. And it seems to be different for everybody as we try to figure out our own purpose and aspirations. Maybe it just so happens that a young person is more inclined to be a Dreamer – another Supertramp hit.

We are all individuals with unique aspirations, as well as debilitations. Some aspire to enjoy the most out of life while they wreak havoc on everything around them. Others are just too scared to change, hampered by circumstances that prevent them from chasing their dreams, or feel they lack the ability to achieve the life that they so much desire. They don’t have the slightest clue of what that desired life is or needs to be. The professional boxer Ray “Boom-Boom” Mancini recognized that “desire is a talent,” which was evident in the boxing ring.

u The Logic of Life

A chemistry teacher once said, “The universe is random. It’s not inevitable. It’s simple chaos. It’s subatomic particles in endless aimless collision. That’s what science teaches us.” Life can also be random and isn’t all that logical, rational or desirable at times. Someone described life as a bunch of molecules bouncing off each other at random, and there’s no point in trying to find a reason or pattern for why we were born at a certain time and why our life has unfolded the way it has. Some would say life just happens. These are probably the same people who tell us that life is unfair. Our plans and priorities don’t always live up to our expectations. We blame life for things being the way they are. “Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans.” I think John Lennon was telling his Beatlemania fans that life has its own agenda amidst all of our plans.

How many times have I seen a business, regardless of their planning and strategic efforts, on the verge of bankruptcy while the owners lacked vision and the means to make it profitable and successful? What seemed to be a logical road to take at the beginning had reached an impasse. The business owners no longer knew what to do or where to go. They never had the “right” plan or business experience to make it successful, and at the end, blamed it on an economic recession, political influence, or natural disaster.

I can only imagine what it’s like for a young person to get a grasp on life where choices and chances are often confused. Youth is a time when we experiment and learn from our mistakes. The only problem is that we can’t always go back and fix them. As Michael Landon Jr. reflected on his childhood as the son of a famous actor, he realized his father was just an ordinary man with human frailties and limitations like the rest of us. “The choices we make in life often twist our paths beyond our control. They cause us to be and do things we’d never accept if we could step outside of ourselves and see clearly.” The reality is that opportunities are often wasted and rarely recognized when we’re young. I don’t like to broadcast old news, but our lives are shaped by opportunities from a young age. It’s only much later that we reflect on the opportunities we’ve missed.

Our youth can be a reckless period of our lives when we don’t understand or care much about the future, while we ignore opportunities. When we’re kids, we don’t think about consequences and it’s very hard to back off our decisions. It was a high school dropout who admitted to a friend that he didn’t make much money with his dead-end job and life had lost its meaning. His friend unsympathetically responded, “Nobody told you to drop out of high school. You could have done anything you wanted, but you didn’t want to work for it. Your life is exactly what you made it.” In his friend’s mind, a dead-end job was equated with being useless, and being useless was equated with having a meaningless life.

u Decisions Have Consequences

Reckless decisions can have grave consequences at any age. We’re free to do whatever we want. There’s nothing worse than blaming fate or someone else for our situation. An alcoholic screenwriter blames the world for his dire state of affairs in the movie Black Butterfly. A drifter he invites to stay at his house apprises him that we create our own reality. “We’re all free men. We choose what we want. You did this to yourself.” Reality can be a tough pill to swallow when we realize that we can’t blame anyone but ourselves for a life gone sour. It just hits us harder when we’re older.

It’s rather ironic that we want to live a long life but yet we can hardly wait to grow up and move on. We behave as if our childhood prevents us from living our life. “Childhood is what you spend the rest of your life trying to overcome” was an adolescent truth shared by a working single mother trying to find her way after a divorce. She was in fact trying to find her own independence. She eventually realized that although we’re old enough to drive, we don’t always know where we’re going, or worse, we can’t afford a car to get there. There’s nothing worse in life than being lost or dependent on others.

It was the criminally-insane Elijah Price who admitted to something that is saner than what we might give him credit for. “Do you know what the scariest thing is? To not know your place in this world. To not know why you’re here. That’s just an awful feeling.” Maybe he found solace in being a madman in the thriller Unbreakable. However, I do remember being scared as a young man not knowing my place in the world and in search of my future.

Youth can be a scary place. It can also be a safe place when we’re dependant on the right people. Sometimes we’re afraid to trade it all in for adulthood. Youth is the perfect time in our lives to ask questions about the future. It reminds me of a teenage girl in a crime novel that I was reading. She asks her boyfriend if he thinks this is as good as it gets. He responds, “Yeah, for now. Eventually, we grow up, we get jobs, we have affairs, and we become alcoholics.” As a perceptive teenager, he was probably being sympathetic to the complicated lives of adults around him. I have been putting a lot of thought into it and sometimes wonder if being an adult is going to work for me.

When I was a child, life was indeed much simpler and wonderful just like in the song. Life seemed to be logical while we followed innocent rules to fulfill our parents’ wishes. I didn’t care to think about my life in a conscious and contrived manner. I always felt that life would be great and things would fall into place perfectly and automatically. Sure, I had to do a few things to help them fall in such a way, but never did I feel that they would fall any other way. I felt like the logical young lad in the Logical Song. The words will forever be etched in my memory.

When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful, a miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical. And all the birds in the trees, well they’d be singing so happily, oh joyfully, oh playfully watching me.

My young mind was oblivious to everything but the perfect life unfolding before my eyes as I was growing up. Even when I got discouraged and the world wasn’t perfect, I’d shut my eyes, crawl into my mind, and dream of the world that I wanted to be in. I remember as a child pulling the bed covers over my head and pretending I was in that world. I would convince myself until I fell asleep that I was. “It was a world with dew still on it, more touched by wonder and possibility than any I have since known,” as eloquently expressed by the narrator of A River Runs Through It. Life back then had a sense of utopian certainty that seemed would last forever.

Growing up, I remember an adventurous and carefree existence where my parents protected me and took care of everything. They made my childhood seem like fiction. It has been a while since I saw life this way, much like the retired rock star played by Sean Penn in a B-rated movie on Netflix who acknowledged, “Without realizing it, we go from an age where we say, ‘My life will be that,’ to an age where we say, ‘That’s life.’” When we’re young, we believe we are special. But then we grow up and realize we’re like everyone else. We all have expectations and make certain demands of ourselves until we eventually stop dreaming and accept our fate without ever reaching our potential in a changing world that demands we succumb to its rules and obstacles.

u Adapting to a Changing World

We don’t have to be retired rock stars to remember our childhood expectations and aspirations. There was a time our youthful resilience made us invincible and we believed we knew everything about the world, but then life taught us otherwise. Before we knew it, we lost our youth and the world changed. Some of us ended up on another planet inhabited by Generation Ys & Zs, digital marketing magnates, and transgender and gender-fluid protagonists who are reshaping society and changing our perspective on humanity. It’s a different world from the one we studied in school where we are presently experiencing the implications of mass immigration, multiculturalism, multiracialism, and a multitude of sexual orientations. We somehow miss the innocence and immortality of our childhood, and the world we thought we’d live in one day. Society is forever changing and something to be reinvented for the times, and all we can do is adapt and make the most of our lives.

Much time has passed and childhood dreams forgotten since I have contemplated life as being logical and certain. There are people I don’t remember forgetting. I now want to remember more than I want to forget. I often think about the glory days of my childhood. There was a magic to being young and life felt eternal. I’ve realized that I’m no longer a child where innocence makes all dreams possible. My youth has faded into the twilight while I ask myself if my dreams are still possible. I miss that lad who had dreams. I miss who I once was.

I have forgotten how to dream just as my father had and his father before him. The cherry tree my father planted in front of his house as a little boy is symbolic of childhood dreams gone by. It is a reminder that once we were all children with dreams. That big old cherry tree has lost its beauty over the years as its branches have since withered and leaves fallen forever. It is no longer the seedling a little boy with dreams put into the ground many years ago. Our dreams have withered away along with our childhood. The English poet John Betjeman said, “Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells and sights, before the dark hour of reason grows.”

“I have lost something. I’m not exactly sure what it is, but I know I didn’t always feel this sedated.” I thought I was in Lester Burnham’s body when he described his life in the movie American Beauty. I feel the magic is gone and I can no longer look at things as I did when I was a young man with dreams. Although there was a time that I was excited and keen to change the world, I have since settled to understand it first. The beauty that I once saw in life resembles the beauty that I have begun to appreciate again.

u It’s Never Too Late to Change Our Lives

“But you know what, it’s never too late to get it back,” according to Lester Burnham. Lester has given me hope and faith in a new beginning. Although we can’t get our childhood back again, we can definitely get our life back. “Remember those posters that said, ‘Today is the first day of the rest of your life?’ Well, that’s true of every day but one – the day you die.” We have a chance to change our lives this very moment, and I refuse to wait for the last day. We need to go from wanting to change our lives to deciding to change our lives. “It’s a great thing when you realize you still have the ability to surprise yourself. Makes you wonder what else you can do that you’ve forgotten about.” If Lester Burnham can change and create a new life, why can’t we?

The great jazz musician Miles Davis said, “If anybody wants to keep creating, they have to be about change.” This is a guy who adopted many musical styles to lead the jazz world during a five-decade career.

I have decided to return to my childhood and embrace those cherished memories, and enjoy the beauty of life again. I want to reflect on life’s beauty as I once knew it through the eyes of an innocent child. For in every adult there dwells the child that once was. It was Jerry Lewis acting the part of a retired Jazz musician who said, “You know how you think back to when you were younger and you had wonderful dreams. Everything was so beautiful, and pretty, and nice and loving. Those things just don’t go away. We’re guilty of pushing them away.” I don’t want to push them away but get them back again.

I’m just glad that I finally woke up. I’d hate to miss out on all the fun. “It’s the weirdest thing. I feel like I’ve been in a coma for about twenty years and I’m just now waking up.” Lester, I too feel like I have awakened after all these years and want to make my dreams come true. You’re never too young to start dreaming, and you’re never too old for your dreams to come true. Didn’t the billionaire Warren Buffett make 99% of his current wealth after his 50th birthday? It’s time to start dreaming again. Maybe the struggling salesman turned broker in the movie The Pursuit of Happyness was right: “You got a dream, you got to protect it.”

u The Happiness of Pursuit

Everybody seems to be in the pursuit of happiness, even Hector seemed to be preoccupied with this pursuit in the movie Hector and the Search for Happiness. It’s Professor Coreman, a world-renowned authority on happiness, at the end of the movie who enlightens us about

our misconceptions regarding happiness and says, “We should concern ourselves not so much with the pursuit of happiness, but with the happiness of pursuit.” Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. We must have a reason to be happy, and once that reason is found, we have achieved a lasting state of desire. Thus, we shouldn’t be in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to be happy. This is when we can actualize the potential meaning that is inherent and dormant in our lives. We seem to have outgrown our happiness as adults according to the good professor. “How many of us, I wonder, can recall a childhood moment when we experienced happiness as a state of being? That single moment of untarnished joy – that moment when everything in our world inside and out was all right. Everything was all right. We have since become a colony of adults and everything is all wrong all the time. It’s as if we’re on a quest to get it back, and yet the more we focus on our own personal happiness, the more it eludes us. In fact, it’s only when we are otherwise engaged, you know, focused, absorbed, inspired, communicating, discovering, learning, dancing, for heaven’s sake, that we experience happiness as a by-product, a side effect.” It may be that happiness is rooted in simplicity, just as when we were children. I think the tendency to excessiveness in thought and action diminishes happiness. I never had to think about happiness as a kid.

This leads me to believe that people are happiest when they live in the moment, that one fabulous moment that becomes an eternal memory. I’ll never forget the scene in a movie where a couple rides out on a scooter to an isolated spot overlooking the city. As they’re sitting next to each other, she turns to him and asks, “What was it you wanted to show me?” He replies, “This. This moment.” It wasn’t the beauty of the city skyline at night that he had brought her to see, but to share that special moment together. This seemed to be the turning point in their budding relationship.

We all reach a turning point when we realize that we want something better for ourselves, especially when we get older and have been around the same block a few times. It’s a little game in life where we seek answers that seem to have evaded us. Sometimes the answer we’re looking for may come from some place we’re not looking, even our dreams. This may very well be the reason that Hector embarked on a journey in search of happiness. Did Hector ever find true happiness at the end? I’m sure that we’re all curious, so let me start from the beginning.

Once upon a time there was a successful psychiatrist named Hector. Hector thought that he had the perfect, happy, sedated, uncomplicated life and took great comfort in its predictable patterns until one day he wasn’t so sure, thanks to a palm-reading patient who insinuated that Hector’s life was sterile. That’s when Hector realized he was going through the motions of living a lukewarm life with only occasional flare-ups of happiness. He was sleepwalking through life and blindly trusted life to work out until he no longer felt that way anymore. In essence, he felt like a fraud and was done pretending. So, what did Hector do? He dropped everything and decided to go on a search for happiness.

Although the movie does a fairly good job of solving the mystery and entertaining us with the inspirational details of Hector’s search for happiness, I’ll get to the point and just say that Hector found his answer. Actually, Hector’s search for happiness had revealed many presumptions, most of which would certainly make me happy. I’ve taken the liberty of removing a few things from Hector’s list that don’t belong or necessarily make me happy, although you may think differently.

Hector’s Happy List

1. Making comparisons can spoil your happiness.

2. A lot of people think happiness means being richer or more important.

3. Many people only see happiness in their future.

4. Happiness could be the freedom to love more than one woman at the same time.

5. Sometimes happiness is not knowing the whole story.

6. Avoiding unhappiness... is not the road to happiness.

7. Does this person bring you predominantly A) Up or B) Down?

8. Happiness is answering your calling.

9. Happiness is being loved for who you are.

10. Sweet potato stew!

11. Fear is an impediment to happiness.

12. Happiness is feeling completely alive.

13. Happiness is knowing how to celebrate.

14. Listening is loving.

15. Nostalgia is not what is used to be.

It should be evident from this list that different things make us happy. Hector learned that true happiness isn’t just one emotion; it’s all of them as we recall the times that we are happy, sad, and even scared. We go through a rollercoaster of emotions before we find happiness. It was an artist describing the change in moods in his paintings who said, “You gotta have a little sadness once in a while, so you know when the good times come.”

Hector found the thing that made him most unhappy was the thought he might lose the girl he loved. And the thing that made him happiest was the thought he could become the man that she would want to spend the rest of her life with. Hector’s girlfriend admitted, “No one wants to live with a person who’ll never be happy.” As for Hector’s happy list, happiness is being loved for who you are, and when your happiness is her happiness, that is love. I’m sure they’ll work it out together in their own happy way.

Hector may have overthought this happiness thing. Maybe he just needed a break from his humdrum life. I don’t think that we have to make happiness a goal and embark on a journey across three continents to find it. Rather, happiness is the result, and we cannot dwell too much on avoiding unhappiness to be happy. Furthermore, we can’t always make other people happy. They have to do that for themselves. It’s up to you to make yourself happy. If other people can make you happy then they can also make you unhappy. Sometimes we sabotage our own happiness. In the end, Hector had to search inside himself to make himself happy.

Sometimes, we can achieve happiness by just coming out of a remorseful situation and allowing ourselves to become happy. A counselor at a rehabilitation center trying to get through to his morose group of addicts said, “Are you good enough to deserve your share of basic human happiness? Are you good enough to be okay with who and what you are? Self-hatred, guilt, it accomplishes nothing. It just stands in the way.” He was trying to tell people that they had to overcome their feelings of inadequacy to make true change and achieve happiness. Sometimes the happiest man is the one who gets through life with the minimum of pain. It was the best-selling motivational author Louise Hay who said, “If we really love ourselves, everything in our life works.”

u Happiness is Being in Health, Out of Debt, and Having a Clear Conscience

I’ve learned that everybody wants to be happy. But we have all had experiences in our lives that have caused us pain. We must decide what parts of our lives we’re going to keep alive and what we’re going to release. Everything that has happened to us in the past that cannot be changed will be a lesson for the future. I don’t think we can ever be truly happy, although health, money, and a clear conscience are a bonus. Everyone has a conscience that makes us who we are, and we have to live with it. The 18th century Scottish economist Adam Smith, famed for his magnum opus, The Wealth of Nations, rhetorically asked the question: “What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?” I think that would make most of us happy even in this century. What right do we have not to be happy? We have everything. We should feel ungrateful not to be happy.

Our search for happiness starts with one question: What is it that gives my life the purpose and happiness I deserve? Religious people tell us that happiness comes from filling one’s heart with love, having faith and hope, and devoting ourselves to charity and offering kindness. Religion is an outward sign of an inward commitment. When it comes down to it, it’s the religious teachings of immortality that attracts many believers. Life seems so simple when we believe in immortality.

Maybe the novelist Gene Stratton-Porter had it right – “The way to be happy is to be good.” Many people are good but not truly happy. We have to closely examine our life before we can determine its intrinsic value. We’re in a never-ending search of answers without considering the things that are stopping us. It just may be that we’re stopping ourselves. “You are confined only by the walls you build yourself” was an enlightening message on a poster at my health club, which still resonates with me to this day.

We all share an unpredictable fate as we plod through this lifetime in search of a better life. Many of us are obsessed with the material things that we collect along the way and believe money is the road to happiness. The greedy and legendary Wall Street trader Gordon Gekko said, “Money is not the prime asset in life.” As a manipulative personality thirsty for power, I’m not so sure Gekko believed his own words. For guys like Gekko, the true value of money is not measured in worth, but rather in power. Capitalist societies have been relentless in their struggle for power while they justify the materialistic lifestyles portrayed in magazines and television commercials.

Honda is the first to offer us “The Power of Dreams.” I don’t’ believe an automobile is capable of making my dreams come true – or at least dreams beyond having a reliable car. I’m constantly reminded by car commercials that their cars can change my life for the better. Even Toyota seems to know how to make us happy by posing questions like “Can you design pleasure?” and “Can you build happiness?” while rhetorically answering with visual effects of satisfied customers driving Toyotas in their commercials. Everybody wants to make a buck and claims to have this magical ability to design our pleasure. Next, they’ll be claiming that they can architect our lives.

Have we lost our sense of purpose to understand that we don’t necessarily need material things to enhance our lives? All those material things that we once sought to improve our lives have depreciated in value over time and lost their glitz. They have reached the end of their usefulness and have become things to dispose of at a garage sale, eBay, or the local dump. I prefer to give them away to the Salvation Army or my wife’s entrepreneurial uncle who indulges in old treasures. We fall out of love with the material things in our lives while we will always love the people who have meaning in our lives and make us happy.

u “What’s Love Got to Do With It?”

Those were the melodic words in Tina Turner’s most successful hit single. Some of us have had our hearts broken in more ways than one and never healed. Sometimes we’re just too afraid of being hurt again and resolve not to love quite as much. Love is analogous to a space heater: It’s good for a drafty corner but hardly the solution for an entire room. Love works the same way. Not all love is mutual and eternal, and at times, it is temporary, limited, and one-sided. I’ll argue that love is not some “second-hand emotion” as Tina claims but rather an everlasting passionate affection for the people and things that we care for. We have to love fully to love, regardless of what happened in the past. We cannot be in an enduring relationship without true love attracting us. We cannot be personally attached to that old Corvette unless dad rebuilt it himself before passing it on to his children. We cannot stay in a job for long if we don’t love what we do. “If we don’t do what we love, then we wouldn’t exist” were the contemplative words of a friend who dedicates himself to volunteering. In the long haul, our happiness is an outcome of the things that we love and live for, while they hold meaning for us. We can love completely without complete understanding. On the contrary, love’s got everything to do with it! When we’re in love, we want the whole world to know it. In the words of Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, “Love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire.” From the day we are born, we look for love because it is love that nourishes our soul. And when we are lucky enough to find love, our lives are changed forever.

It just may be that Tina has had her heart broken one too many times and never found true love. We have all experienced love withering away much like a happy marriage ending in divorce. Maybe love doesn’t last because we’ve loved the wrong person, or never shared our love and affection with the right one. And once we lose that person to someone else, it’s too late to get him or her back. There’s something to be said about finding someone compatible, especially when compatibility nurtures love.

I have learned that love is fragile and we’re not always its best caretakers. We don’t take the necessary precautions to maintain what we believe to be enduring love. We just hope it survives against all odds. Maybe this is why Tina has given up on the notion of love and never quite understood that love has several dimensions. Fortunately for us, Tina has been graced with a love and passion for music, which has graced us and our lust for life. And when we lose that “lovin’ feeling,” we feel stress, anxiety, and depression. We have a propensity to bail out when the going gets tough, while those with love in their hearts keep going. It’s better to love than not to love. I truly believe the sentimental words of a love song I once heard: “Every worry in life, love can heal.”

The vitality and passion for life is correlated with our ability to love. When we love, we create our own happiness as we find purpose in our lives. We find love by developing our personal wellbeing, nurturing our relationships, and chasing the passions that give our life purpose and make us happy. We’ve become preoccupied with finding meaning and purpose in our lives as we explore our existence. Sometimes we feel there is no reason to go on. But as an old man who had lost his wife and soulmate put it, “There’s nothing to do but wait. Wait and it’ll get clear to you. You’ll get on with your life and gifts will come into it.” And when we are ready to move on, we adapt to changes in our lives and find happiness elsewhere.

u Self-Actualization as a Means to Happiness

Purpose and happiness are inseparable. Happiness cannot exist without purpose to satisfy our self-fulfillment needs, or what the American psychologist Abraham Maslow referred to as selfactualization. “A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be.” Maslow believed in our inherent ability to become actualized based on our natural potential and everything that we are capable of achieving. It’s only when we reach this level of self-actualization that we can be truly happy.

We all have the opportunity to satisfy our self-fulfillment needs, also known as self-actualization, and find true happiness, assuming we discover what truly makes us happy. Our present state of happiness and ability to self-actualize is based on our values and beliefs. This all became apparent as I discovered myself through my own life processes – personal, family, and career – and the fact that I didn’t know what awaited me in the future. All the things that I do are influenced by my values and beliefs. I have come to appreciate what makes me happy – my own happy road, so to speak. An anonymous source cited, “There is no road to happiness. Happiness is the road.” I had to think about that one. We all take the road that we believe will make us happy, but we’re not always assured that we’re on the right road.

So, how do we go about finding meaning and happiness in our lives? This should naturally be a question of anyone whose goal is to get into the life he or she desires, which is the underlying theme of Design Your Desired Life as we embark on rebuilding our lives. I continue to discover the desires and motivation that reward me with meaning and happiness. Although I wish it would have come easier and faster at times, I’m excited to share the knowledge in this book so that you may tap into your own potential and architect your life, accordingly.

It sounds like a logical and straightforward proposition, doesn’t it? It would be a piece of cake if life didn’t constantly nag us with uncertainty and offer choices. Worried about his brother’s fragile condition, Theo van Gogh wrote to Vincent: “For nothing is as distressing as uncertainty.” Worry implies uncertainty. We become disoriented when our future is uncertain, and we tend to worry and imagine the worst. Poor Vincent was the “tortured artist” who was in constant torment due to uncertainty and frustration before committing suicide. He was seen as a madman and a failure whose genius was acknowledged only after his death. There’s no fair in life, especially when there’s uncertainty.

u Finding Certainty in an Uncertain World

Most of us spend a lifetime contemplating how to find certainty in an uncertain world – one that has plunged us into the deepest waters of uncertainty. Maybe uncertainty is fate for most of us. “After all, how can you be certain about anything when you’re uncertain about the most basic question: ‘Am I going to live or die?’” It sometimes takes a motivational celebrity to put things in perspective for us. The motivational guru Tony Robbins found certainty in himself at a time of distress, only after he realized that uncertainty isn’t an excuse for inaction. I think we can all attest to the fact that inaction puts us in a state of uncertainty. If we don’t do something with our lives, we can pretty well be assured that we’ll be dealing with some kind of uncertainty.

A young woman on a mission to find herself decided to take action by venturing out into the woods. Her lack of survival skills were overcome by her determination to survive. It was only after she quelled her vulnerability and gained the confidence to survive that she realized it was the wilderness that gave her strength. But it was also her past depressed life that sent her into the woods. “What if what made me do all those things everyone thought I shouldn’t have done was what also had got me here?” It was the uncertainty of her uncivilized surroundings that forced her to take action and conquer her demons.

We’re all consumed with doubt and have misgivings during times of uncertainty, while we try to overcome and keep these emotions in perspective. It was Gordon Livingston in his book, And Never Stop Dancing, who said, “Happiness requires an ability to tolerate uncertainty.” Happy and successful companies have learned to tolerate uncertainty in a world of economic, environmental, and geopolitical instability.

The reality is that life can be complicated and too busy for something not to fall through the cracks. Things hardly go as expected, at least not in the long term. It is only a matter of time before we get a crack in the windshield. I’m sure we’ve all heard of Murphy’s Law: “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” It’s rather difficult to remain optimistic, especially when the unexpected can slap us smack in the face when we least expect it.

The comedian Marc Maron must have been well-acquainted with Murphy’s Law when he expressed life’s realities on stage:

“Sometimes things don’t work out, most things. The people that you want to love you, may stop loving you. The job you wanted might not pan out or you don’t love it. Friendships fade or go away. It happens. It’s sad but you can count on it. Now, if you think you’re causing these things to happen because of unreasonable expectations or just by being a dick, you’re gonna have to answer to that. You’re gonna have to answer to yourself.”

It’s not that we don’t try, but sometimes things just don’t work out the way we want them to. I’m sure that the thought of giving up has crossed many people’s minds. What stops me is realizing what my life’s become and what it’s going to continue to be if I let it. When you’re ready to make a profound change in your life, you have to accept your situation and face your fears. You have to keep pushing yourself and imagine how different your life can be if only you try. It’s never too late to be who you might have been. For the first time in my life, I know I can be that person.

Sometimes it’s best to keep things in perspective, develop a sense of humor, and stop being irrational. A man with a tragic past once said that humor is another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self-preservation. At the end, we must preserve and answer to ourselves. He said, “Humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation.”

u The Art of Living

I envy the guy who can make a bad situation good with an unpredictably impetuous sense of humour. He’s either mastered the fine art of keeping things in perspective, or he’s finally realized that uncertainty in life is not worth the anguish. I wish I were that guy – I mean the guy who sees things in a positive light and doesn’t lose sleep over a cracked windshield. A crack in the windshield may distort my view for a short time, but it’s only a matter of time until it gets replaced. I now laugh it off and say, “The glass fairy will fix it next week.” Humor is the differ-

ence between getting upset and remaining cool when a nasty rock with trajectory issues hits you square in the face. We accept our bad luck knowing that a new windshield will soon take care of the problem. “The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of trick learned while mastering the art of living,” according to the man who had lived through his own tragic events. Yet it is possible to practice the art of living even in the worst of situations.

A windshield pales in comparison to a life-altering event which has turned our world upside down. A WWII vet imprisoned by the Communists for sixteen years explained that his only crime was fighting for the losing side. His father tried to console him on the day he was sentenced. “Son, take care of yourself. Everything that comes also passes.” His father’s words, and the fact that he fought for the right side, gave him the strength to endure the misery of all those years in prison. WWII was now behind him, and he convinced himself that this part of his life would one day be in the past. He would later write an autobiography in his mother tongue entitled Everything that Comes Also Passes. The soldier, now a very old man, said that “life is not a toy” but a miracle we must cherish.

An eighth grader, at her tender young age, advised a friend, “Just because things are happening right now doesn’t mean they’re always gonna happen.” We don’t always know what’s going to happen or whether something else will happen again. We just hope that whatever happens is a good thing. All we can do is cherish our garden before the hailstorm, and hope we get luckier next year. It’s important that we maintain a positive outlook as we pursue our happiness irrespective of life’s weather forecasts.

I think of life as a Swarovski crystal figurine to be cherished for its beauty and creativity. From time to time, I’ll dust my glistening, crystal polar bear to allow the sunlight to penetrate the crystals and reverberate its beauty as it sits on my desk. Life can also get sprinkled with dust. We all deal with issues, concerns, and problems no matter where we turn. We have problems within our own circle of friends and family, let alone the organizations we work for. Our circle is the most important organization in the world, and all we can do is deal with problems as they knock on our door.

u Life’s Problems are Ridiculous

Most problems are so ridiculous that we wonder why people waste their time worrying about them. After all, worrying changes nothing and depletes our energy. As much as we’d like to ignore our problems, some problems are real and deserve consideration to better our lives. Can you distinguish between a delusional and real problem? A delusional problem is when a person cannot tell what is real from what is imagined, or lives with a problem that can easily be resolved but doesn’t make the effort to do so. Delusional problems are ridiculous because we let them be problems. If they are real problems, this may take appropriate action manifested by careful thought, but cannot be readily resolved. Let me clarify with an example. If you work for a horrible boss and work life is miserable, this is a delusional problem. No one is putting a gun to your head to work there. You can change bosses and companies. You may also try to resolve a misunderstanding with your boss in order to reach a mutual understanding, especially if you like the company. If you’re diagnosed with cancer, this is a real problem that will disrupt your life and take time and effort to overcome. So, when I say problems are ridiculous, I mean we’re being ridiculous for putting up with them when we don’t have to.

A famous pirate by the name of Captain Jack Sparrow seemed to be impervious to problems. “The problem is not the problem; the problem is your attitude about the problem.” Sometimes we need to take the attitude that our problems are minor coincidences. Sparrow just happened to be blessed with an exceptional wit and tact for negotiation, which allowed him to flee danger and fight only when necessary. This may explain why he became a pirate and ventured out into the Caribbean. Although a pirate, he ignored the delusional problems that come with rescuing a damsel in distress. Sparrow’s philosophy was simple: “Change your life by changing your attitude.” It just comes down to changing our perspective about our problems. However, we need to acknowledge our problems before we can deal with them objectively and curtail their impact. Life is too precious to allow problems to interfere with our lives.

My Scottish friend Davie has done his own research on problems and shared some insightful results that may help us put our problems into perspective: “99% of things you worry about never happen. The other 1% you cannot do anything about anyway.” Some would say that life is a gift from a higher source – nature, God, or whatever it is that put us here – while many of our problems are self-inflicted. Davie believes in turning problems into opportunities, irrespective of the odds. He reminds me a little of Tony Robbins when it comes to understanding and dealing with our problems.

u Our Problems Sculpt the Soul

Tony Robbins bluntly points out that our biggest problem is the fact that we think that we shouldn’t have problems. He makes the poignant argument that our problems make us grow and become more. “Problems are what sculpt our soul.” This means that our problems need to be put in the right perspective. He tells us once we understand that “life is always happening for us, not to us,” we take control of our lives. Robbins admits that he is who he is because of his problems. Without his problems, who knows where he would have ended up, let alone help us turn our problems into opportunities. I’m convinced that if it wasn’t for my problems, I wouldn’t be who I am and where I am today. Everyone who has encouraged, helped, and forgiven me has brought me to today. And how I make my life moving forward is on account of everything that has happened to me. We are all responsible for what happens to us in life.

It has been many years since my soldier friend has forgotten his problems and contemplated life from a jail cell. Now that he has hurdled his 90th birthday, he points to the sky and explains the fact that he still drives is God’s wish. He assures me that he no longer has problems, at least not with the Communists. He believes that his problems are insignificant while he has a roof over his head and doesn’t need a nurse. He no longer sweats the small things. He indulges in every waking moment of his life knowing it isn’t forever. Any problems he has are not worth his time and will be gone when he’s gone.

This may sound like wisdom shared by an old man nearing the end of his life, but I declare it a modern-day truth. We revel in the good times while we struggle during the bad. We don’t always know how to deal with problems or tolerate uncertainty in a world that throws us a lot of curve balls – you know, stuff like finding a lump under the skin, losing a loved one, or getting dumped by a girlfriend. We realize how precious life is and how important every second we have on this earth is, and how important the people we care about are to us. Our happiness is constantly being interrupted by curve balls. And if we’re lucky, we may hit a few out of the park. It’s been a while since I’ve hit a curve ball out of the Bankview community baseball field as a kid. I just never thought I’d be swinging at them for the rest of my life. There’s no promise of a life without curve balls.

“In life’s long journey, we face more bad things in life than good” was a lopsided observation shared by an old family friend, but who’s counting. Whatever the odds, we all fall on hard times. It was the fashionable fellow in a Keith Richards documentary wearing a blue shirt with white polka-dots who said, “The bottom line, it’s about the good and the bad times, and if you haven’t had a bad time in life, just keep living.” As we age, deteriorate, and witness the loss of loved ones, we become burdened with sorrow. “Sadness never ends” were Vincent van Gogh’s dying words. An art critic, probably a pessimist, once said, “No art worth a damn was ever created out of happiness.”

The optimist inside us dwells on the good things and ignores the bad. But sometimes our optimism fades and we believe that something bad must happen before something good comes along. I like to think of myself as a rational optimist who’s been to one too many funerals.

u Life is Like a Box of Chocolates

It was Forest Gump’s mother who had a memorable smile and simile about life: “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” You won’t know if you’ll like the chocolate until you taste it. Friendship is the same way. You don’t know who your friends are until you get to know them. I wish I had fewer friends with negative outlooks and more people in my life who make me laugh. I tell friends we should focus on those moments of happiness to carry us through times of sadness and hardship. Life and all its offerings are passing us by. It’s our choice to celebrate the good times as we weather the bad.

Sometimes I feel life is like licking honey from a thorn. We all face unexpected challenges that disrupt our lives. A teacher once told me that obstacles and challenges are the agents of growth. It’s our ability to deal with them that determines our future. Some of us are dealt better cards than others in life. But it’s the cards we play and chances we take that dictate how the game ends. “The strongest cards you have are the cards you haven’t played.” I think someone was trying to tell us that we all have the cards to change our lives, we just have to know which ones to play. Many of us take chances, planned and spontaneous, in life, while others give up and choose to be beaten.

Magic Johnson refused to be beaten and took his magic act elsewhere. “For me, it always goes back to something I learned in basketball. There’s winning and there’s losing. And in life you have to know they both will happen. But what has never been acceptable to me is quitting.” Johnson never quit on the court nor when he contracted HIV. His All-Star MVP status took a backseat when he became the national advocate for HIV/AIDS and created his own foundation.

Winning is about standing up for ourselves and what we believe in. It means never giving up. I’ll never forget Jackie Chan’s encouraging words in The Karate Kid movie sequel when he tells his student, “Life will knock us down, but we can choose whether or not to stand back up.” The karate kid stands up to bullies and beats them at their own game at a karate tournament just like in the original movie. He also wins their respect and his own.

What’s holding the rest of us back from standing up and taking action? My eccentric Irish friend Eugene will argue that most people won’t take action because they’re afraid of change, or worse, failing. They won’t take the chance that something unanticipated will happen. He’ll say, “So, let it happen. If it happens, forget it.” Fortunate for him, his adversaries don’t practice karate although they do work hard to make his life miserable. We have nothing to lose for trying, but everything to gain.

Eugene is paid to make change and take chances. That’s what makes him an effective project manager, and the fact that he’s unconventional and oblivious to outmoded practices and standard convention. We don’t need the luck of the Irish to make things happen, we just need to do the things that get the job done without looking back. Eugene teaches project management where his students learn to buck the system while they figure out what they want. He derives pleasure from all the attention and making his students believe in themselves.

Have you ever asked yourself the question: What do I want from life? The curator in the movie I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing asks the question and then articulates what embodies happiness. Ironically, mermaids are associated with perilous events – such as floods, storms, shipwrecks, and drownings – rather than happiness.

What Do I Want From Life?

Universal respect Eternal youth

Passion that never fades

Never to get neurotic about getting old

Make something breathtakingly beautiful that lasts forever

Ahhhhhhh, this is a rather refreshing wish list from a loner with whimsical fantasies. I would be so bold as to call it youthful enthusiasm. When we are young, we possess an uninhibited exuberance of youth and the aspirations that go with it. But as we get older, reality starts creeping toward us like the tide, and that’s the first time we ask ourselves “What do I do now?” Our youth and enthusiasm fade as reality sets in. It seems as though everything changes overnight. All of a sudden, everyone around us is taking interest in our lives. And expectations to make a buck and earn a living finally kick in. Dreams stop before we know what happened, and our youthful passion slowly turns into memories.

“Is this what you expected life to be like? You know, as a grown-up,” asks a friend after returning to a small town from the big city. The truth is that our childhood ends without formal notice and all of a sudden we look at life a little differently, especially when we leave home and have to pay rent. We can no longer do the things that we did when we were young without raising suspicion. I somehow think my wife had something to do with that. My God, what would the neighbors think if I joined their kids for a pool party next door. I can only reminisce about being a kid again as I watch them splashing around in the fountain of youth.

We eventually grow up and put our youth and youthful enthusiasm in the past. Some of us miss the glory days of being young and the life we thought we’d live forever. A retired military officer dressed up in uniform questioned his self-worth after a long service in the army. He felt that he had lost the respect and status he once had in life. “There’s one thing about getting older, it’s easier remembering things the way you wished they were.” Maybe it’s true, people are what they choose to remember, although sometimes they wish something was forgotten. It’s unfortunate there’s no replay or edit button in life.

Life is a continuum as each stage of our lives is enriched with experiences that we cherish along the way. I learned that the core of a man’s spirit comes from new experiences. We’re nothing more than the experiences that made us. As a friend once told me, “Experience tells you what to do; confidence allows you to do it.” Now that we’re in the present, with a little confidence, it should be easier to take charge of the upcoming future that awaits us. Have you given any thought to your future? Do you have dreams or ambitions? Do you have a plan or will you just take it as it comes? You don’t have to worry about answering these questions for the moment. After all, you have a lifetime to think about it. But the sooner you think about it, the sooner you can get on with your life.

The way I look at the future has a lot to do with the fact that I break things apart and put them back together in a much better, discerning, and coherent manner. I think of that ‘67 Pontiac Firebird my buddy entered at the World of Wheels car show and won a prize for best restoration. If we could only rebuild our lives and win first place for best restored life. I’d be happy with second or third place. Actually, any place would do as long as I had a better life.

u Rebuilding Your Life

It can be done. The Six Million Dollar Man did it. When astronaut Steve Austin is severely injured in the crash of an experimental lifting body aircraft, he is rebuilt in an operation that costs six million dollars – this is in 1973 dollars of course and I’m sure inflation has driven that price tag up astronomically. Steve’s right arm, both legs, and left eye are replaced with bionic implants which enhance his strength, speed, and vision far above human norms. You’ll just have to watch the TV series from the ‘70s. I still recall the opening sequence where Oscar Goldman, Steve’s boss at the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI), intones off-camera, “Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world’s first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better...stronger...faster.” Unfortunately, technology isn’t there just yet to make us superhuman in the reality we live in today. We do, however, have the wherewithal to rebuild our lives. By architecting our lives, we can definitely be better than we were before.

Rebuilding can have many purposes. It can mean going from a comatose life to a life of consciousness. As odd as it sounds, not everyone has an awareness of one’s own existence. You’re not comatose, you say? Then how about a life of sadness to one of happiness? If you’re happy, let’s go from a happy to a happier life, or a comfortable to an exciting life. And, if everything is good with the way things are, then let’s just go from a good life to a better life. My point is that it can always get better. There is no perfect life just like there’s no perfect pineapple. That’s a discussion for later.

I’m rather discouraged that there’s a part of humanity that seems to be fastened upright like the life-size cardboard cutouts we see at the entrance of a car dealership. I pity their cardboard existence. It was an unemployed family man who said, “Pity is worse than a fist in the face.” We all have pockets of inertness in our life, which can use some improvement or maybe a complete overhaul. These are the parts of our life that we have an opportunity to rebuild. Just think about the possibility of transforming this inertness to an exciting life.

A focused commitment and a proven technique can target various parts of our lives – work life, family life, life with friends, life alone, recreational life, sports life, fitness life, investment life – that reward us with happiness. Life can seem like an eternity, although we’re never quite ready to pull the plug. No one knows when their time is up, although we have presumed we’d be a little braver in chasing our dreams. Sometimes I wish we had the nine lives of a cat. It was one of those Jumanji characters who said, “It’s a lot easier to be brave when you have lives to spare; it’s a lot harder when you only have one life.” We only get one crack at it. That’s how it works. How are you going to live your life? What kind of person will you decide to be?

u Who Am I and Why Does It Matter?

Who I am, or who any of us are, doesn’t matter as much as what we do with our lives. This brings me back to who I am and what it is that I do that makes my perspective somewhat unequivocal and insightful. Often I’m asked by others what I do for a living. I’m sure we all get this question at a spouse’s Christmas party. I tell people that I’m like a marriage counsellor. I explain that I build relationships, and only later reveal that they’re business relationships. I dare not admit that I’m an architect of sort, especially one who designs business processes, at least without qualifying it in some way that makes it interesting and provocative. The last thing I want is some house architect accusing me of being a con artist and threatening to report me to an architecture accreditation council because I don’t design something with a roof on it.

It’s not like I’m some Hollywood lawyer with intriguing gossip about famous movie stars. Nor am I a well-established investment guru whom everyone wants to corner for a stock tip that’s going to make them millionaires a year from now. I don’t even own a yacht. It was a guy with no money who told me, “When you don’t have money, you’re not interesting. No one wants to be your friend.” This may be part of my problem and why I am self-conscious at times about my profession, especially when surrounded by guys with personal wealth managers.

Money seems to be a focal point for people in general. Just go to the Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting in Omaha, Nebraska. The chaos of 40,000 people trying to get into an arena with a capacity of 20,000 to observe Warren Buffett and his sidekick, Charlie Munger, answer investment questions for six hours doesn’t quite appeal to me. Maybe they go for the free pair of yellow boxer shorts with Buffett’s and Munger’s faces stamped on them. I wish I had the answers to be a sidekick with a face worthy of adorning a Berkshire undergarment.

u Can You Handle the Truth?

Maybe investors go to Nebraska to find the truth, and pick up a few good stock tips along the way. However, many people can’t handle the truth, and the fact that making money in the stock market takes discipline and hard work. This may be the reason their stock portfolios are in a deficit. I think Jack Nicholson, a US colonel in the movie A Few Good Men, puts it in perspective when he tries to cover up his involvement in the murder of a young marine. Under heavy pressure from the lawyer cross-examining him and unnerved by being caught in a lie, the colonel finally snaps and shouts, “You can’t handle the truth!” Unfortunately, without truth, there can be no trust. The good colonel tries to spare the naïve American public the military misdeeds for the sake of American interests. Maybe it would have been in the colonel’s best interest to tell the truth and avoid jail time. In this world, there are three things that cannot be hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth. Although my lawyer begs to differ, the truth somehow always comes out, even when it’s too late.

I’m afraid it’s not titles that honor men; it’s men that honor titles we respect. Sometimes US colonels are better off to keep quiet and save themselves the public embarrassment. There are times I feel it’s best to spare my audience a topic they could care less about, especially at Christmas parties. And even if I do tell those yuletide punch drinkers the truth about what I actually do, they give up listening with a glazed look on their faces and find an excuse to go back to the punch bowl. Nobody seems to care about my noble efforts to defend management and corporate interests. And although they can’t always handle the truth, it’s always the truth that we have to deal with at the end to make things right.

Enough with the suspense. I’ll just come out and tell you what my future bosses are looking for when they hire me. They’re looking for a miracle or a fall guy, whichever is required at the time of emergency. Eventually, the management team is on the hook for failing to fix their long overdue business problems while trying to save their sorry asses – maybe “salvaging their reputations” is the appropriate business jargon. However, when business problems are so great that they can’t be fixed, someone has to take the blame. This is where consultants are gladly befriended to help companies fix their business processes.

u Fixing Your Processes

A business process is in fact a people process because it’s performed by people. This means that we fix the way people do things in organizations by clearly defining what and how they need to do them. We have to ensure that their processes are well-defined so that everybody can do them consistently and effectively. Sometimes we recommend that companies leverage computers to help them carry out well-designed and repeatable processes, which have minimal potential for human error. I wish I had such processes to curtail my mistakes and failures in life. It was obvious that I had to do for myself what I preach to companies, and architect my own life processes.

I’m relieved that the job description thing is off my chest. It took me most of an evening trying to explain to my wife what I did for a living after we started dating. Even the word “architect” seemed to be a difficult and abstract concept to explain to her, particularly since I didn’t design buildings and houses. She’s since learned that I am an enterprise architect and occupy an office downtown where I architect the business processes and systems that support a company. The fact that I design something and then build it, by definition, makes me an architect. I design what people do and how they do it.

A decade later, my son would ask me what I do for work. Every kid wants to share dad stories with his friends. The word “architect” together with “computers” was probably more than my son could comprehend, and rather a revolutionary concept that was not what a kid would be interested in hearing unless a computer game was involved. I think he just tells his friends that his dad is an architect. I’ll never forget that yawn just before he changed the subject. I had one chance, and I blew it. I sometimes regret not having a job that’s as interesting as being a fireman. Like someone said, “That’s what I do and I don’t know how not to do it.”

Nowadays, when I talk about my work, I just give people the elevator pitch. I’ve realized that giving people unnecessary details paints me as an arrogant and boring socialite with a career to match. Although I don’t have ambition to be the life of the party, those days of being brushed off at Christmas parties are over. Regardless, a well-crafted elevator pitch allows me to tell people the truth in a concise and interesting manner.

u THE ELEVATOR PITCH

When someone asks me what I do for a living, I simply give them the elevator pitch: “I’m like a marriage counsellor. I build relationships. I figure out WHAT people need to do to make positive change and WHY, followed by a game plan to determine HOW to optimize their business processes and computer systems. In a nutshell, I help people understand how they need to work together to effect positive change in their organizations.” I don’t mention that the changes can be developmental, transitional, or transformational unless they ask. The purpose of an elevator pitch is to grab someone’s attention the first time you meet them. And first impressions last. The elevator pitch is meant to be a recital, not a solicitation for a cross-examination. Thus, if we can simplify something, people understand it. They may even buy it on the elevator trip up.

The work that people need to do to effect positive change is captured in what’s called an architectural blueprint of the organization’s future direction. Only then can we effectively communicate the value of business change to those waiting for their budgets and bonuses. And if they’re prepared to trust me and move forward with my prognosis, we bring in the resources, methods, and tools to make positive, even ground-breaking, business change happen. That’s pretty well my pitch. It really comes down to people making positive changes.

I’ve mastered the art of getting people’s attention by drawing a diagram good enough to explain everything on one page. How good is good enough? It must be easy to follow and at a high level of abstraction in order for management to fully comprehend the business value of what we’re about to do. It was a seasoned consultant, known for translating complexity into simple terms, who said, “I can’t understand anything that doesn’t fit in my mind.” If the executives can’t understand it, how do they expect their shareholders to buy into it? The only thing on shareholders’ minds is stock value and getting the stock price up.

My reputation as a consultant is a reflection of the great pains that I take to carefully understand the business problems of companies – an understanding that has allowed me to be effective and establish trust and credibility. My reputation hinges on results that can be measured. What gets measured gets accomplished. Nobody likes drama and hyperbole, especially management. Integrity and knowledge go a long way, but reputation is key. I’m expected to have the answers for highly-polished executives looking for a reason to hire me. All the while, my brain is rehashing the questions that I need to consider in the first meeting and only chance I have to win them over. My success depends on knowing my audience.

Know Your Audience

Do they understand the problem?Arethey credible? Havetheythoughtthisthrough? Dotheyhavethefacts?

Does this make sense?

What haven’t they thought about?

What do they know about?

Who else should listen to this - andgivemetheirthoughts?

This is like knowing my neighbor, which can be important when we build a fence together that meets both of our needs. I like white so I paint my side white. The neighbor aims to please his wife, so paints his brown to match the kitchen cabinets. The point of contention is what color to use to paint the top edges, gaps, and corner posts. Furthermore, he likes fence boards with a jagged top while I like them flat, just in case my kid wants to climb the fence and retrieve his ball. We both have to understand each other’s requirements to come up with mutually acceptable specifications.

My neighbor is one of those guys who’d gladly be your enemy and never move just to make your life miserable. It’s OK if he disagrees with me; I can’t force him to see things from my standpoint. This is where a man of negotiation and compromise comes in and transforms a delicate situation into a good experience and everlasting friendship. All that stands in the way of compromise is a bit of goodwill. After being a consultant, I’ve become rather masterful in accommodating grumpy neighbors and negotiating agreements. It just takes a few beers at the fence and a little psychology.

“I don’t believe in psychology; I believe in good moves” was a precept expressed by the celebrated chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer. “People think there are always options but there’s usually one right move. Of course, in the end, there’s no place to go.” The comedian Chris Rock said that a man is only as faithful as his options. This means that someone who has more opportunities in terms of attracting the opposite sex is more likely to cheat. Maybe we should stick to one option and hope it’s the right move. In my line of work, good moves keep me in business while I build the right relationships. The “I’m like a marriage counsellor and build relationships” elevator pitch comes in quite handy and is a good icebreaker to start a conversation.

The relationships that I build have more to do with organizations, although people are involved. Organizations are constantly in pursuit of efficiency and effectiveness. This has caused both small companies and large to become more progressive in better managing their work. Work can mean a lot of different things, but for our purposes let’s just say that work means getting a job well done, usually to the best of our abilities in a given work setting.

u Building Strong Relationships & Relevant Capabilities

So, what relationships do I build that enable people to do their jobs more efficiently and effectively? These are simply the relationships that empower people to work together as a team. I also assess people’s capabilities to understand if they are capable of doing the work, specifically their jobs. Maybe that’s why they tag on the words “junior” or “senior” to an individual’s job title. If an individual is a junior clerk, this means it will take some time to develop the skills and acquire the experience to become a senior clerk. Many senior clerks have become proficient by leveraging well-defined processes and computer technologies. I take great care to build strong relationships and the relevant capabilities that make people in organizations more efficient and effective in the business processes they conduct. And my advice to you? Get out of your own way and get on the team.

Now, this is where I put on the hat of an architect. I promise that there is a point to all of this. I’m not here to teach you business or computer science, but to lay the foundation to help you evaluate your life. Please bear with me for just a while longer as we go through the ABCs before we put together the sentences and paragraphs. It all starts with capabilities. In other words, you either can or you can’t do something. This also goes for organizations. There are five capabilities that an organization endeavors to develop in order to be efficient, effective, and competitive. Both organizational efficiency and effectiveness depend on the maturity of these capabilities.

5 Capabilites of an Organization

1 PROCESS

2 WORK ACTIVITIES

3 PEOPLE

4 SYSTEMS

5 DATA

We also call this a business process. This is WHAT the organization does.

This is HOW an organization does the process. Think of it as a procedure or all the steps to get a process done.

This is WHO conducts the work activities. This could be a person or an organizational entity like a department.

These are the computer systems and applications that help automate processes and reduce human effort. Think of these as the tools that people use and HOW they use them to do their jobs.

These are facts, such as numbers, words, measurements, observations, or just descriptions of things that, when combined in a meaningful way, for the information we share with others in and outside the organization.

All these capabilities together determine how well an organization performs and competes with others. An understanding of current capabilities helps management gauge where they are today and where they need to go to meet specific corporate goals and objectives. This is where I come in and work with organizations to improve their capabilities.

The trick is to bring together the five capabilities in a way that optimizes an organization’s business processes to meet corporate goals and objectives. The cohesion of capabilities promotes successful organizational outcomes and personal achievements. If I were to paraphrase the connectedness of these capabilities and how they relate to each other, it would be something like the following:

This may not mean much to you, but it means everything to the success of an organization and its people. You probably need to read it a few times to realize that all these things – PROCESS, WORK ACTIVITIES, PEOPLE, SYSTEMS, and DATA – have a relationship and work together. A PROCESS is a systematic series of work activities directed to some end. WORK ACTIVITIES are the individual tasks composing a process and performed as a unit to create or use data. PEOPLE and organizational entities perform work activities. SYSTEMS automate processes enabling people to share data across the organization in order to conduct their business.

u The Genetic Makeup of an Organization

Every organization is made up of PROCESS, WORK ACTIVITIES, PEOPLE, SYSTEMS, and DATA. All five capabilities, as a collective unit, are the foundation of an organization’s ability to operate efficiently and effectively. These are the “building blocks” of all organizations. An organization’s overall competency relies on the maturity and cohesiveness of these capabilities. Organizational capabilities are continuously being improved and relationships strengthened between them in order to streamline operations and gain competitive advantage.

A competent management team has a sense of maturity and integration of its five capabilities. They understand the impact that these capabilities have on their organization’s performance and bottom line. The following model illustrates the multifaceted relationships among the five capabilities.

Relating the 5 Capabilities

1 Process

2 Work Activities

5 Data/ Information

4 Systems Goals, Objectives, Policies, Critical Success Factors, Business Drivers

3 People

DATA, also referred to as information, is at the core of an organization’s capabilities. A PROCESS requires data inputs and outputs to support WORK ACTIVITIES, which in turn are the tasks that PEOPLE perform to create or use data. SYSTEMS store and provide data within the organization. In other words, PROCESSES, WORK ACTIVITIES, PEOPLE, and SYSTEMS all need DATA to function.

As you can see, data connects all the capabilities and is the glue that holds it all together. Data is a capability in itself while it is also used and created by other capabilities. The people in organizations require data to communicate, make decisions, and do their work. Their customers and business partners also share data through systems and technology. Data and information are the foundation for everything we do.

When companies don’t have data or the ability to create and share information, they may as well slap a “For Lease” sign on the door. I’m sure that we’ve all heard the modern-day adage “Information is Power.” If a company doesn’t have the information it needs to run its business and make decisions, then it will lack the staying power to function and cease to exist. Companies rely on informed decisions to survive.

u The Oval

By the way, I’ve crowned the 5 capabilities model we saw earlier with an oval labelled “Goals, Objectives, Policies, Critical Success Factors, Business Drivers” to humor management and point out the fact that there are goals and other determinants driving organizational capabilities. The management and employees in organizations develop the required capabilities to overcome obstacles and leverage opportunities. In their quest to develop these capabilities and relationships, an organization requires a set of well-defined goals and objectives and reliable information to achieve their corporate mandate.

Before an organization can begin to understand where it is today and where it needs to go, its management needs to articulate clear goals and objectives with regard to what they want to achieve. Do they want to increase profits, reduce costs, innovate products, provide more jobs for the community, or just survive during tough economic times? These are hard-line questions that any organization ready to reinvent itself should ask before it ventures off into a harsh and competitive business world.

What is the magic that transforms companies into effective and adaptable organizational entities? An experienced enterprise architect will argue that it’s a corporate-wide initiative to effectively deploy their capabilities in the context of their business goals and objectives. These are professionals who help organizations understand their capabilities and build the relationships between PROCESS, WORK ACTIVITIES, PEOPLE, SYSTEMS, and DATA. I have since figured out how to make my magic wand work to transform companies.

Most business leaders would agree that putting these building blocks together to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of an organization is an architectural feat. Enterprise Architecture has become a formal discipline embraced by management to improve an organization’s capabilities across the enterprise. It is aimed at developing and relating an organization’s five capabilities by defining what an organization does, how it does it, who within the organization does it, and how information is used and shared across the organization and with its external stakeholders. Enterprise Architecture has put organizations on a trajectory they had not been on before.

How Successful is an Organization?

How well an organization manages itself and competes in the economy is based directly on:

1 PROCESS How well it defines its business PROCESSES

2 WORK ACTIVITIES How well it carries out the WORK ACTIVITIES to successfully accomplish these processes.

3 PEOPLE

4 SYSTEMS

5 DATA

The abilities and skills of its PEOPLE to carry out these work activities.

The functional capabilities of its SYSTEMS or computers and how they support their business processes.

The quality and availability of the DATA or information that is created and shared throughout the organization.

After several years of architecting organizations, it has become apparent that an organization’s capabilities have the potential to be greater than the sum of its parts. How is this possible? There is a relationship between all these parts, or capabilities, and when they work together in alignment, a synergy is created which catapults an organization beyond its profit potential and resource limitations.

Organizations are constantly trying to do more with less as they compete to be the best. As a finance professor in graduate school used to preach, “Companies in the new market economy must get ‘lean & mean’ to compete globally.” “Lean & mean” is corporate slang to describe greatperforming companies. Come to think of it, Mr. M taught us how financial institutions remained lean & mean in order to gain competitive advantage in the banking industry.

u Getting “Lean & Mean”

“Lean & mean” has become a popular business term used to this day in business schools and companies striving to excel. When a company gets “lean,” it becomes “more efficient with less resources.” Resources can be people, know-how, property, equipment, and technology, including systems, required to do the work. Efficient processes are what the business does with the resources it has to accomplish the work as efficiently as possible. On the flip side, when a company gets “mean,” it strives to be “more effective by being more aggressive.” An effective company becomes more discerning in its decision-making, and how it prioritizes and optimizes its resources. Some business leaders and management consultants claim that good business is a matter of finding the right balance among three business variables – resources, processes, and priorities – in order to determine what an effective company can and cannot do. In simple terms, resources are what a company uses to do the work, processes are how it does the work, and priorities are why it does the work and if it should be doing something more important. The “lean & mean” corporate philosophy is what has made Corporate America great and a major player in world markets. This is a defining principle of capitalism with the ultimate goal of making a profit. I’m sure some of the leanest and meanest companies in America are listed in Fortune 500.

The words “lean & mean” are always in the back of my mind when I’m working with a corporate client. I’m always thinking, “How do I help these guys become more efficient and effective?” When companies get lean, they get rid of the excess fat – people who do not add value, obsolete machinery at end of life, or extra office and warehouse space that would better be subleased. And when they get mean, they have this urge to be more proactive and aggressive in their quintessential quest to sell more goods and services than their competitors. I’ve learned that aggression, correctly channeled, overcomes a lot of flaws, including ineffective results.

Do you remember the business re-engineering craze back in the ‘90s when big corporations were hiring $3000 per day consultants to re-engineer their business processes? I’m willing to bet that Michael Hammer’s re-engineering books got him some lucrative consulting gigs, and he’s still drinking a limited edition of Dom Perignon champagne on his yacht toasting his good fortune. Hammer was the world-renowned expert who wrote about organizations that had reinvented themselves to become successful. His books described companies that identified with the customer and customer satisfaction. Their business model typically shifted from operational optimization to customer service. I’m sure this model included a dab of lean & mean.

Microsoft is one of the most successful organizations for the same reason – giving customers what they want. Don’t for a second think that Bill Gates and his executive team weren’t lean & mean. They’ll do anything, legal of course, to sell Windows to more users – anything to sell more operating systems than Apple. I’m not sure if Apple will ever fall off the branch, but they have successfully transitioned to other lines of business such as the iPhone, iPad, and other i-branded products to be world-class players. Microsoft and Apple are continuously reinventing themselves to stay ahead of each other and the competition.

u Transitioning from Willie to Bill

You don’t have to be a Microsoft to do well in this world. Soon after high school, in the early ‘80s, it was Willie who started one of the first personal computer retail stores in town. Willie dropped out of university with one semester left for his chance to be a revolutionary in the dawn of the Information Age. He seemed to be infatuated with Bill Gates and even demanded to be called Bill. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for this Bill to go bankrupt and shut the doors. Bill learned that enthusiasm alone wasn’t the way to succeed in business.

It was a few years later that Bill got right back up on his horse again. While he attracted customers who were buying home computers, he was also soliciting corporate clients. He quickly established a premier computer store focused on customer service. Phil Jackson, the former head coach of the Chicago Bulls, once said, “You’re only a success for the moment that you complete a successful act.” Once Bill reeled in the customers, he became a big success in record time and later sold out to a national computer retail giant. The caveat, however, was that Bill would run their local national computer superstore for two years. It didn’t take Bill long to quit and start up his own store for the third time. I’m not sure how he got around the non-compete clause.

I remember picking up Bill for lunch one day at his new store. I asked him why he thought he could successfully compete again, especially now that there was an influx of competitors. His curt reply was “Procedure.” He pulled out a big binder and told me that everything his business did from soup to nuts was in that binder. This was the company bible that everyone had to familiarize themselves with in order to operate a lean & mean computer retail business. Bill explained that his staff religiously followed the procedures in this binder from the sales guys on the floor to the service guys below deck.

Bill had it all figured out, at least from an operational perspective. He had detailed processes and procedures for both his sales and service staff. Everyone knew what they had to do with an operations manual at their fingertips in case they had to look something up, including what to do if a customer experienced a computer malfunction while vacationing on some isolated beach. Bill became a big proponent of well-defined, repeatable, and consistent processes required to run an efficient company.

It was Bill who convinced me early on that a business needs quality processes and procedures to succeed. Although it seems simple in principle, it takes much effort and preparation to implement robust and bulletproof processes, especially when you’re just starting out. The kid we all knew as Willie back in high school earned my respect as a successful businessman. Whoever thought that the kid I had competed with for top grades in Ms. Holmes math class would exceed all the test scores in business based on a key business principle? I must have fallen asleep in business school during that lesson.

u Bill’s Business Principle

Bill’s motto was “Define roles & responsibilities, assign tasks, and follow a well-defined process, step by step.” The first time around, Bill thought that selling great products was his ticket. To his surprise, he failed before he had a chance to file his first tax return. The second time around, he became a young millionaire based on one business principle: You have to have great processes. It wasn’t about doing the job, but how to get the job done – and done well. This meant having well-defined, repeatable, and consistent processes in place to support his customers. And let’s not forget, Bill trained his staff to perform these processes to the tee, while he monitored and measured their benefits and value. Ironically, Bill was in love with his processes.

Bill not only reinvented himself but also the personal computer retail business. His retail success was dually based on good products and great customer service. They were a package deal. Although we have succumbed to calling him Bill, he will always be the Willie who would not take second place on a geometry test. If only I had his insight early in my career, I could have been a fierce competitor and no protractor would be required. Bill knew what he wanted and eventually learned how to get it.

It’s rather ironic that I preach well-defined, repeatable, and consistent processes to organizations as a consultant. This all happened as a result of working with organizations to improve their business processes as they struggled to align information technology with their business processes. I’m habitually referring to “Bill’s Business Principle” with management as I attempt to explain that we need to fix broken processes before we bring in computers to integrate their organization’s business processes and data.

Just as organizations have processes and routines, so do people. We all do things and have routines whether we call it work, leisure, or life processes. If we can help people in organizations improve their business or work processes, it’s only natural that people can improve their life processes. A process is a process, right? And, we can fix anyone’s life because life is a process, right? This may all be new to you and I can’t expect you to answer these questions for the moment, but we’ll get there.

u Undoing the Past

The truth is, we can’t change the past. What’s done is done. A psychiatrist apprised us that “nothing can be undone, and nothing can be done away with.” In other words, “having been” was the surest kind of being. We accept and learn from our past. And rather than dwell on possibilities, we savor the realities of our past and move forward. A rehab counselor told his group of recovering addicts, “We’ve gotta own our actions, but putting ourselves on trial, acting as our own judge, jury and executioner, it’s not the answer. Because a lot of the time, all that judging does is just ensure that we’re gonna repeat the cycle.” They had entered rehab as they tried to overcome the past, specifically personal addictions and other demons which continued to haunt them. We all have to own up to our past. A homeless man consumed with regret over the loss of his wife and daughter in a tragic plane crash said, “My past is my tormentor. It doesn’t allow me to go back. In reality, we’re all traitors. We betray our dreams…we betray the time we wasted.” I think of all the weekends I worked, the vacations I skipped, the loved ones I should have spent time with but didn’t. I regret the conversations I didn’t have with the special people in my life who are no longer with us. I used to be someone who valued trivial things and despised essential things. That person has since died inside me. Sure, things have been done in the past that need undoing, but we must prevent bigger “undoings” down the road. I’m afraid I’ve earned my past and I don’t intend to go back, nor does it allow me to go back. Go ahead, undo and earn your own past. I’m ready to move onto my future. I can’t go back in time, but I can start over. This time, I’ll do things right without repeating past mistakes. The future is the one time in our lives that we get a second chance to make the most of it.

I think that we all deserve a second chance by making improvements to the processes that provide benefits and bring joy to our lives, namely our life processes. We just need a little foresight and a plan. I propose that we adopt a structured approach similar to what organizations use to diagnose and treat their unhealthy and substandard processes. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel, just ourselves.

I never imagined that my career would develop into this personal journey of helping individuals develop their life processes with the same rigor as with the business processes we automate. This is, after all, a journey to understand our life processes well enough to transform them into the life processes that define our desired future. We never anticipated that we could change our lives by changing our processes.

u Why is Everything About Process?

Everything we do in life is a process. We do have a life outside the workplace – one with processes not defined by a job description. Let’s assume that you’re like everyone else. This means that you wake up, shower, eat breakfast, go to work, grab lunch, come home, eat dinner, and do something before you go to bed. That “something” could be lying around the house and watching TV, spending time with the kids, mowing the lawn, taking a course, finishing office work at home, going to a club to meet others with the same interests, and so on. All these things are processes. Some are more rigorous like work, while others are more casual like watching a football game on the cable sports channel. We all need our relaxation and down time as we zone out and ignore the world around us. Some processes are even unexpected like hosting a friend who just happened to be in the neighborhood. Although we’re not counting on a visit, we feel obliged to open the door, cancel our plans, offer refreshments, and socialize until our guest is ready to go home. Sometimes we try to expedite things and hope he’ll acknowledge our yawn. This sure sounds like a process to me.

I promise you, it won’t be an arduous task to define our life processes. After all these years working with people to improve their processes in the workplace – three decades to be exact – it’s evident that organizations have been successful by advocating a rigid discipline in defining its processes and establishing formal practices to adapt them for a predicted future. In regard to life processes, such discipline and practices can be applied to architect our desired processes. Thus, it feels quite natural to transition from a business process expert to a life process enthusiast.

We have the potential to radically change the processes in our personal lives. Think of it as taking the work organization out of the equation and replacing it with a house, yard, and the people we like to have over for a BBQ. Naturally, there’s some effort involved but this shouldn’t disrupt our lives since work is already a significant part of it. However, it will be well worth it as we improve and change our life processes, and ultimately our lives.

This brings me back to some fundamental questions that I should have asked at the beginning of this chapter. Why did we need all this talk about organizations and business processes? What does life have to do with the topic of modern management? Why did we even need this chapter?

u Because Life is a Process …and it would have been near impossible to convince you without using the organization as a frame of reference. Organizations have business processes. People have life processes. Everything we do in life is a process – work, school, leisure, and even our daily routine activities like eating, sleeping, and chores. When we want to improve our lives, we change our processes, get rid of faulty ones, and introduce better candidates. Life itself is an evolutionary process as we consciously attempt to avoid past mistakes and improve our circumstances. Just as organizations are determined to redefine themselves by what they do and how they do things in an ever-changing business climate, people can alter their lifestyles based on changing circumstances, beliefs, and desires. When we change WHAT we do and HOW we do it, we are in fact changing our life processes.

Organizations seem to thrive on process. Processes dictate how an organization runs its day-today business operations, and how it sustains itself over the long term. A poor process usually means that people aren’t doing their jobs well, or don’t have the support they need to successfully complete it. The success of a business process depends on how people function and interact in a dynamic work environment. We also function and interact with others in our personal lives, but this time on our own terms.

Back in business school, we used the textbook line “The first step in gaining control over an organization is to understand its processes.” This is not only true of organizations but individuals as well. In order to gain control of our lives, we must decode the processes composing our life. We also need the means to improve our processes. Life is a state of existence that pretty well covers all the processes that give us self-awareness over everything we do. All we can control in life is how we respond to life.

A diligent accountant once told me, “A process is always a bet on the people performing it.” I’d say that we have a big problem if unqualified or inexperienced people are performing a process, and a bigger problem if we have a faulty or poorly designed one. This is why so many processes don’t get off the ground. And when they do, they hiccup or just fall flat on their face. I’ll bet that you’re going to get your processes off the ground and won’t need an accountant to do it. You’ll learn how to do this for yourself without some expert telling you how to live your life. A wine connoisseur once said that an expert is someone who knows how to be wrong with a lot of authority.

It was the idiosyncratic combination of organizational theories and life philosophies that built the foundation for Life Architecture. Maybe I should have told you that this chapter was going to be slightly academic and rather optional. However, I felt obligated to help you get your head around the contemporary discipline referred to as Life Architecture.

u Life Architecture

Life Architecture is a system of thought. It has been formalized into a structured, measured approach geared to improve our lives and afford us the best possible life in a chosen environment, regardless whether it’s at home or at work. A good Life Architecture starts with a conscientious assessment of our life today and transforms it into a life that we have deliberately mapped out for ourselves. In business, we refer to Enterprise Architecture as an approach to improve an organization’s life, or rather the business capabilities, mapped out by its management team and business visionaries. We use the word “enterprise” because we consider all of an organization’s capabilities (processes, work activities, people, systems, and data) across all functional areas (Sales, Production, Accounting, etc.) and optimize these capabilities and their relationships. In terms of our personal life, Life Architecture guides us in improving various life capabilities as we define all the things we do that add value to our lives.

As a life architect, I had become wary of the way things are as opposed to the way they should be. I drew a line in the sand to distinguish how things were and where I wanted to go. A part of me was afraid of what I would find and what I would do when I got there. However, I have learned that we need to balance our lives while we focus on the things that inspire us and give us joy. This means that we have to make some changes in our lives. I suspect life is a great experience for those who take the opportunity to do something about it.

Remember Bill the high school buddy with his own business principle? He had to make some survival changes by forgetting about his failed business experience and moving on. In fact, Bill turned his failure into a multimillion dollar company soon after. He realized that his earlier lack of success was self-imposed, and he was motivated to regain his pride and figure a way to move forward. I think we all understand that things don’t change unless we do something about them. Bill did the right things to make desired changes and is living proof that when you do the right things, good things happen. Like Bill, we all have the ability and potential to make positive changes in our lives; however, motivation and perseverance are the key.

Change can be a very sensitive topic. A lot of people don’t like change. Some even outright refuse it. Just ask a smoker or workaholic. They ignore the fact that there’s a health risk or more to life than a job promotion. It can be difficult to change when we struggle with addictions and bad habits that seem near impossible to beat. We become victims of our own vices. If there was only a way to get these tenacious souls to snap out of it, but it’s not always easy to break old habits and traditions. We have to find a way to break away from victimhood before we can change and realize our own power.

Change ensues when we least expect it, and only after we see the benefits and convince ourselves that we’re ready for something new. I would also add that change has a more positive outcome when we act on foresight rather than wait for hindsight to catch up. I’d hate for the past to dictate our future as we forgo opportunities, or worse, live with regrets. It’s too late to get rid of the cigarettes once we’re afflicted with lung cancer. The past is immutable. We can’t change things or choose differently with hindsight. We all have to learn to accept that. However, with a little prudence and foresight, we can avoid mistakes, and even correct them. If we only had a computer algorithm that could convert hindsight into foresight.

An environmental advocate and scientist, David Suzuki, once said, “The key to our remarkable success as a species is foresight – the ability to look ahead, to see where the dangers and opportunities lie, so that we can then act accordingly.” Ironically, I believe that we all have foresight but sometimes lack the hindsight to realize it. People not only behave a certain way to change their lives, they rely on foresight to guide them.

This is where I have to coach you a little on this concept of foresight. After all, coaching is having the foresight to take others where they can’t take themselves. The rest of us will soon have the foresight to understand where we want to go and the changes we need to make. I would hope that the change is worthwhile enough, or at least warrants our attention, as we endeavor to do all this in the middle of a busy life schedule. I suspect that we all have a life-altering reason for wanting to change. Mr. Spock, the fictional character in the Star Trek television series, said, “Change is the essential process of all existence.”

u Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark

People instinctively fight change and dislike change for different reasons. They are afraid of the change a better world can offer. They see change as a hardship and burden in their lives. Maybe it’s this hardship that contributes to their growth and betterment. We don’t always understand the benefits of change, and the fact that change can improve our lives. After being handed a gun, a hunter’s sister-in-law asks, “Is it hard?” The hunter replies, “The first time, then it’s like everything else.” She understood that she had to change to put food on the table. The anxiety of change can be overwhelming. We have been conditioned to conform according to rules imposed by others. This makes us creatures of habit, while we find it unnatural and awkward to step outside of our comfort zone. We are stuck in a static world we have come to accept. Some people are afraid of the dark and dread nightfall and finding themselves alone. They live in fear because they project the past into the future. There is always a moment when we feel fear. Fear is our worst enemy. It’s only when we confront our fears that we can change our lives. And when we know what we’re doing, we can even get rid of our fears. This reminds me of a timid young man scared of his own shadow who worked hard to overcome his stutter and build the confidence to become a public speaker. “I decided to never again allow fear to stop me.” When you release your fears, it liberates you. It’s time to break out of your shell and discover the potential beyond your comfort. Potential’s a bitch when you don’t do anything with it. Don’t be afraid to venture out in the dark, daylight is just around the corner. Someone once said that the quietness belonging to the dark makes everything seem possible again, and a good reason not to be afraid of the dark.

The kid in the movie Pay It Forward wasn’t afraid to devise a plan for a school assignment with the intent to change the world by helping others. His plan, promoted as “Pay It Forward,” inherently means that a recipient of a favor returns the favor to three other people rather than paying it back. He believes that if he can help those less fortunate achieve a better life, he will contribute to making the world a better place. In theory, those favors grow exponentially as people’s lives are improved and the world is reformed because of it. However, in the movie, it doesn’t quite work out that way. The kid comes to his own realization:

“But I …I guess it’s hard for some people who are so used to things the way they are, even if they’re bad…to change. Cause…I guess they kinda give up. And…when they do, everybody kinda loses.”

The overzealous seventh grader understood his school assignment as an opportunity to help people make positive change in life. “It’s like your big chance to fix something that’s not like your

bike. You can fix a person,” were the inspirational words of this young life architect. Ironically, he was a life architect and didn’t even know it. He had a purpose and a plan to help others. He just never imagined it being this hard. I applaud his architectural insight and efforts. He even made me cry in the movie after such a noble attempt to save mankind.

You see, we really can fix a person. We just have to know what to fix and how. The problem is that we don’t always know what the problem is or don’t realize that the problem stems from another underlying problem. Problems have problems, too. However, the first step in solving a problem is recognizing it. There’s nothing worse than solving a problem that hasn’t been defined yet, let alone knowing where to go for the answers. This explains why we get lost and don’t always know where we’re going. A few years ago, I ended up at the wrong airport. If it wasn’t for a heroic New York cabbie who took the back streets, I would have missed my flight. If anyone ever deserved a good tip, he did.

u Measuring a Person

We all have good reason to change and improve our lives, especially if we’re not going in the right direction – or we end up at the wrong airport. The underlying problem may be that our lives have stagnated, and a change in behavior is required to change our lives around. What behavior is required to make the positive differences that you’re looking for in life? I guess that depends on where you’re going and what you want out of life. Sometimes it depends on how you’re measured. I’ve learned something in consulting a long time ago; if we want to change how a person behaves, change how he or she is measured. In other words, what will change do for us and is it worth the effort? First we have to determine the value of the difference that we want to make and how we’ll be measured in achieving it. This is why companies that are focused on efficiency conduct performance reviews to measure their employees. After all, how can employees improve their performance and capabilities if they don’t know how they’re measured.

I’m sure we’ve all been taken in by some popular weight loss craze over the years. How many times have we heard someone say, “I want to lose weight.” Some have even bragged about losing a record thirty pounds in two months. This stale topic regularly comes up in conversation as a solution is about to be unveiled for the first time. We politely nod our heads in anticipation of a long-awaited miracle weight loss program. I can’t help thinking “How much we lose is entirely up to us.” Or is it? Many people talk about losing weight but every time we see them, not much has changed.

I’m still haunted by this image of a morbidly obese bed-ridden woman on a reality television show called My 600-lb Life and the fact that her life is measured by a scale. We appreciate the seriousness of the situation when we see doctors and nurses in the hospital room scrambling to save her life as they evaluate options and figure out a solution. It’s a grim situation when change is a matter of life and death.

No matter how I look at it, I don’t see a clear way out of her situation. When we get to a certain point in life, we have to ask ourselves a couple of questions: How did I get here and is it too late to change things? Everybody wants closure but it’s not always up to us. However, we can definitely work toward a better outcome.

u Meet the Flintstones

Our unhappiness with our bodies and obsession to lose weight can become a bottomless pit of self-loathing. However, this doesn’t mean that we can’t change things. I joke with my family that I never thought I’d look like Fred Flintstone one day. I’m lucky to have friends to cheer me up and tell me that I’m more like Barney Rubble, Fred’s best friend and a tad smaller. If you’ve never met the Flintstones, this was an animated sitcom from the 1960s about modernized cave people set in the Stone Age. The truth be told, I don’t care much to look like Fred Flintstone or Barney Rubble, but rather like my old self when I could fit into my high school graduation suit. It’s a matter of eating right, exercise, and lifestyle. When we let ourselves go and put on an extra pound or more, we tend to lose our confidence and self-esteem. Even worse, we can develop a self-loathing that seeps into other aspects of our lives. When we feel good about ourselves, it’s easier to feel good about our future.

I’m not going to give you a women’s magazine version of what to do and tell you to eat right, diet, cut out the junk, exercise, and make it your lifestyle. The health-conscious disciplined co-worker who loses a few pounds and gets noticed will give you much simpler advice. Without the personal drama, he or she will sum it all up in a couple of sentences and tell you to cut out the beer and restaurants, stay away from breads and pasta, and drink eight glasses of water a day. They’ll also mention the cardinal rule: no snacking after dinner.

Some weight loss advocates flaunting success feel obligated to share the latest marketing hype as a definitive solution to our personal weight dilemmas. Although this expert advice may be well intended, it’s on the brink of being judgemental or inadvisable for our own situations. If we’re going to sign up for a weight loss program, we had better come up with our own numbers. That’s the measurement part which translates to a desired target that is believable, achievable, and right for each of us. As we change our behavior to lose the caboose, we don’t want to kill ourselves doing it. We want to enjoy the ride and stay around for the party on our own terms. Your life is your party and you get to choose the decorations and people you invite.

It’s more than coincidence that someone always has the answers to our problems. The great baseball legend Yogi Berra once said, “Some things are just too coincidental to be a coincidence.” How many of us believe that it’s our parental obligation to solve our children’s problems, or worse, do everything for them? Some of us go to great lengths to change our children’s behavior. That’s what makes us parents. We take immense pleasure in telling our kids what to do, even when we’re unsure of what we’re doing ourselves. I still believe that the best parental guidance comes from listening to our kids and understanding their dreams. With some guidance, I have faith they’ll come up with the answers on their own.

The sad truth is that we, as parents, don’t always listen to our children. Have you heard of the reticular activating system? This is a set of connected nuclei deep within the brain that controls our mental wakefulness and alertness. I’m pretty sure that this shuts down when we talk to our kids. This is the moment that we think we’re listening to our kids, but we’re not comprehending their words. We’re listening to our interpretation of what are kids are actually telling us. Let’s face it, we’re hearing what we want to hear and ignoring what they’re saying.

This may explain why our kids have moved out and alienated us. We are hurt and complain that our kids no longer need us while they’ve decided that they can’t trust us anymore. Maybe we should become better listeners before we get the whole house to ourselves. It’s our parental

duty to give our children chances in life by accommodating rather than alienating them. Sometimes the best way to get close to our kids is to stay away from them, or at least give them some space.

u Believing You Have a Chance

Coach Al said it best, “You have to have a dream, but to attain that dream you need to do two things: Set goals with a strategy and believe you have a chance at it.” This was a rude awakening while I was half asleep in the second row among attentive soccer parents. It was the “believe you have a chance at it” part that caught my undivided attention. It was like the lights in the Maracanã soccer stadium had all gone on at once. This was a life lesson that I never expected and only consciously considered after Coach Al shared his insights. He put the concept of achievement in perspective for us that evening. As a parent actively involved in the life of my child, it’s my job to know my son’s limitations. I had this idea to take it to the next level and coach my son to live his dream. Our achievements are insufficient if they don’t fulfill our dreams. It’s no wonder all great achievements arise from dissatisfaction.

I still remember the day my son announced to the world that he wanted to be a professional soccer goalie. This was before we met Coach Al. I advised him that if he wanted to be the best soccer goalie in the league and play for his beloved England Arsenal one day, he had better start doing the right things. This included attending all his soccer practices and technical training sessions, registering for goalie camps, working on his conditioning, and staying off the McDonald’s Quarter Pounder diet. I would constantly remind him that it takes a strong work ethic, a winning attitude, and an unstoppable determination to be the best. Talent was only a part of the equation. And as a business consultant, I suggested that he have a backup plan just in case things didn’t work out. This may have been rather presumptuous and hypocritical on my part.

The relentlessly strict, ruthless and abusive bandleader of a prestigious music conservatory in the movie Whiplash said, “There are no two words in the English language more harmful than ‘good job.’” Good was no longer enough. My son had to strive for excellence to become a vigilant, resilient, and top-notch soccer player. I believed the price of excellence was eternal vigilance. But the foundation of accomplishing anything was to believe that he could do it. It was Bob Ross, The Joy of Painting television host, who said, “All you have to do is create a vision in your mind and believe that you can do it because we can do anything in this life that we believe we can do. If you believe strong enough, anything is possible.” It’s too bad that Bob Ross didn’t host a show about playing soccer.

Only once my son believed in himself and started doing the right things on a routine basis could he be evaluated against better players who were also set on breaking into professional soccer. Unless he changed his behavior to become a great player, he would never be measured as a great player. He had to accept how he would be measured before he could change his behavior. This change in behavior required hard work, the will and drive to get there, and the belief that he had a chance at it according to Coach Al – and, not to mention, a bit of luck. I don’t like to dwell on the luck part.

Behavior is a vital component of any achievement. This raises the questions: How vital are the results that you want to achieve, and what kind of change will it take? Vital behaviors may very well be what we need to make the change that we’re seeking. Are you looking to “just get the job done” or “achieve vital results?” A vital behavior for winning dragon boat races is simply paddling. I’m sure that we’ve all seen these canoe-like vessels decorated to resemble a Chinese dragon

and propelled by a large crew of paddlers. While nearing the finish line, a team of racers debated about technique and strategy. A fellow paddler shouted, “Shut up and paddle!” This got the team into a paddle frenzy and they won. Many vital behaviors are sometimes obvious clearing a direct path to the results we want to achieve.

u Higher Order of Thinking

We need to take this concept of change in behavior to a higher order of thinking, even a vital one. We must develop our Higher Order Thinking Skills or what they call HOTS, a term originating from the work of the American educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom. The idea is that some types of learning require more cognitive processing. In Bloom’s skill classification, skills involving analysis, evaluation, and synthesis are thought to be of a higher order – higher order as in creating new knowledge and developing our vital behaviors. HOTS is a prerequisite for developing our Life Architectures.

I would like to think that we all have the hots for new knowledge, especially when it gives us the opportunity to become better human beings. Higher order thinking sharpens our complex judgmental skills such as critical thinking and problem solving. It’s a known fact – our problem is poor problem solving. This requires different learning and teaching methods, as opposed to just the learning of facts and concepts. Higher order thinking is a mindset that we adopt to develop our higher-level skills and vital behaviors. Higher order thinking doesn’t get much higher than changing our lives.

Organizations have become higher order thinkers in order to transform themselves for the future. The same rules of organizational change apply to us as people. We figure out how much we want to change our lives and change our behavior to get there. Higher order thinking definitely helps us do that. A woman who had endured the indignity and trauma of losing her hair only to turn her life around said, “Life, as a whole, is about growth and learning to adapt.” And if we truly believe that we have a chance at realizing the future we want, we just may be successful.

Some of us may be content and decide that everything in our life is perfect. And that’s fine. Hopefully, we will have learned something and can pass this book on to someone who may need a better future. In the words of a recent high school graduate, “I need to figure out my next move and do it.” There’s no “woulda, coulda, shoulda,” just do it! “The most effective way to do it, is to do it.” This is probably why Amelia Earhart was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. We only get one shot at life, so we might as well take it and live a Fortune 500 life.

CHAPTER 2

What is Life Architecture?

It never fails. Whenever I start a new consulting assignment, there is always someone who comments on my typing finesse. People find it fascinating that an oversold and over-the-hill consultant brought in to fix world hunger can type as fast as the executive assistant sitting outside the VP’s office. All this unanticipated speed and notoriety is the result of one measly typing class in high school.

That was the era of typewriters when Windows and Microsoft Word inventors were still in diapers. Most people who took typing courses in those days took them for easy credits, or the fact that they might offer some career opportunities later. A few guys in school figured it was a great way to meet girls. My friends and I took typing to boost our grades, although most of these slackers later wished they had taken a cooking class.

Typing was no cakewalk unless you were naturally talented as I was. I’ll drop the teenage ego. It didn’t take long to dawn on me as to why I had the best typing times and least mistakes out of anyone in the class. I was a great typist because a keyboard was no stranger to me. I would never admit it back then, but I played the accordion. I’d type out a beautiful melody on what resembled piano keys with my right hand, accompanied by the left hand playing rhythmic bass notes on small round buttons.

After strapping this typewriter-like instrument on my shoulders, I would type while polka music filled the room and most likely attract old German couples to the dance floor. I was a typewriter Liberace as a result of my musical abilities, and not because I had ever typed before. For those of you too young to remember the flamboyant Liberace, he was quite a showman who wore these crazy glitzy outfits and played a grand piano. I admit I wore bell-bottoms, which were very fashionable pants in the ‘70s, but I was definitely no Liberace. I’m sure in today’s world, we both committed fashion crimes.

I’m glad those days are over. You have no idea how often I’d hide in Scotty’s backyard before being discovered and taken hostage to the Dominion Conservatory of Music for my weekly music lesson. To this day, that building reminds me of a prison. And we all know what people want to do in prison – get out. Mrs. Thompson was more of a prison warden than she was a music teacher. It’s hard to believe that anyone would marry a warden with a noxious accordion. She could play Beer Barrel Polka and cause a slow death to the inmates. If it wasn’t for two clowns in my class, also victims of polka parents, I swear I would have been left with scars. They allowed me to see the absurdity of playing the accordion when everybody else our age was listening to rock & roll.

I am grateful that my accordion lessons somehow added value to my life later. In hindsight, this was definitely my blind side and not something that I anticipated or planned for. After all, I had no ambition to become an accordionist and attain the fame of other “squeeze box” greats like Lawrence Welk, Weird Al Yankovic, and Dexy Midnight Runners to name a few. Who? No one seems to remember the accordion players.

Although I haven’t picked up my accordion in years, I have a skill that is as important to me as any other that I use to do my job. I was able to adapt my musical talent to the workplace allowing me to be better and faster. The fact that I can type and create documents at supersonic speed has freed up my schedule to do other important things that demand my time. I can get my ideas on paper before they have a chance to get lost in my short-term memory. I’ve learned that ideas come but they kill themselves as soon as they appear.

I cannot imagine living without these skills. Even my kids solicit my free typing services for school assignments. And now, thanks to tablet technology, I can type anytime, anywhere. I no longer need an office or secretary, and can take on several clients at a time while I do my work on the soccer field waiting for my son to finish his practice. My typing skills and technology have made me a superstar in my job and at home.

I got to thinking. We don’t need an accordion to make it all happen. Besides, there aren’t enough accordion manufacturers in the world to fulfill everyone’s musical ambitions. Accordions aside, life is one big opportunity to make it better. And the unthinkable miracles and opportunities to improve our lives are endless – if we take them. We have a plethora of life processes that need improvement. All we need is the right approach to guide us.

u A Life Architecture Methodology

“What is a methodology?” you ask. A psychologist once remarked that a “methodology is the last refuge of a sterile mind.” This was a sarcastic way of saying that we’re too smart to follow a methodology. In fact, the name speaks for itself. A methodology is a method or approach with a set of principles and rules for achieving a desired outcome in many different disciplines, including psychology. When it comes to the discipline of life and improving our lives, we need a Life Architecture methodology to achieve a desired life. Life Architecture must be governed by a set of guidelines, practices, principles, concepts, conventions, assumptions, and rules – similar to an Enterprise Architecture methodology used by organizations – as we architect our lives. These constructs have evolved over many years as organization’s have strived for prestige and dominance. And we have borrowed and transformed them to provide a framework for Life Architecture. In simple English, a Life Architecture methodology is an approach to architect and enhance our lives.

A methodology provides organizations a structured approach to figure out where they’re at, where they need to go, what obstacles limit their potential, and how to remove those obstacles. This seems just like the thing that we can all use in our personal lives as we assess our own situations and potential. What if we repackage the Enterprise Architecture methodology used in the workplace into a Life Architecture methodology to help us as individuals figure out where we are, what problems afflict us, and how to overcome our problems, fears, and personal dilemmas? We just need a manual or such to redefine ourselves and our lives.

There’s a long-running joke that a gay person coming out of the closet should receive a membership and instruction manual. I’d say that’s true of anyone wanting to architect a life. A confused young woman who has yet to learn how to navigate adulthood shares her sentiments in the comedy-drama The Giant Mechanical Man: “I feel like those people you were talking about…like I was just born into this life and I’m supposed to know what I’m doing…like I’m supposed to have it all figured out but I don’t have it all figured out. I just feel lost.” A Life Architecture methodology opens the closet doors and provides the instructions to figure out a desired future and architect a life to get there.

I hope that I have not incited a state of confusion by introducing business terms like methodology, instructions, approach, discipline, et cetera. These terms all mean a way of doing something in a proper and formal way, similar to being given instructions or a procedure to fill out an income tax return. However, there is an element of complexity that can only be unraveled by engaging a formal methodology geared to deal with all of life’s complications and nuances. Complexity is the enemy of execution; a methodology is the liberator and the way to get there.

We are all in search of life’s meaning as we try to unravel life’s complexities. I’m sure that many of us, myself included, have explored life’s meaning through conventional methods like books about religion, philosophy, and psychology. I admit that I have also extracted some very clever life-meaning messages from movies, documentaries, and even TV. Someone once told me that I look more like a Robert. Robert reads books while Bob watches TV. This may very well explain why I quote all kinds of characters and personalities on the tube. Even with books, TV, and the internet, it’s not enough to connect all the dots and correlate a galaxy of incoherent ideas, theories, and experiences.

u What is the Meaning of Life?

Once a wise man asked God, “What is the meaning of Life?” God replied, “Life itself has no meaning; life is an opportunity to create meaning.” Religion attempts to answer questions that can’t be answered scientifically: What’s the meaning of life, why are we here, what happens next? Life is a matter of perspective. Otherwise, we would all be of the same religion, share the same philosophies, and have the same viewpoints. I’ve been thinking long and hard about how all this applies to my own life. Although religion and spirituality have provided a foundation for the meaning of life since 4000 years ago, religious teachings rely on faith and our interpretive abilities to evaluate our own personal situations. “Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking,” according to the political humorist Bill Maher. I would hope that we’re all using our analytic minds and giving it some serious thought. As faithful followers, we’re more apt to abide by moral principles and religious guidelines. However, I have yet to find a religion that directs us on a personal level in defining our individual goals, “personal” being the operative word. It’s no surprise that there isn’t a reference to my name in the Bible or any other scriptures. While God has given us the inner strength to have faith, the scriptures don’t come with a foldout insert of a personal roadmap to our future. Yes, I know this is up for discussion.

Joseph Campbell, an American mythologist, believed that life has no meaning. He believed that each of us has meaning and we bring it to life on our own. I wish I knew how to bring it to life, or even knew what it was – or wasn’t. Campbell claimed, “It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.” If we’re the answer, there’s definitely no point asking more questions. Maybe this means that life is a myth and we just don’t know it. And if that’s the case, we may need more mythologists like Campbell to unravel the meaning of life for us to better understand its myth.

Life is not a quest for pleasure as Sigmund Freud believed, or a quest for power as Alfred Adler theorized, but a quest for meaning. In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl believed that the primary human drive was the pursuit of what we find meaningful in our lives, otherwise known as logotherapy. According to Frankl, meaning can be derived from doing something significant (work), caring for someone (love), and being courageous in difficult times (survival). Frankl said, “The meaning of your life is to help others find the meaning of theirs.”

We must learn to see life as meaningful despite its difficulties and challenges. No one can be absolutely sure that the human world is a terminal point in the evolution of the cosmos. Some

people believe there is another dimension – a world beyond man’s world. Such a world could be one in which the question of an ultimate meaning of life would find an answer. An ultimate meaning seems to exceed the finite intellectual capacities of man. All we can do is try to bear the incapacity to grasp the unconditional meaningfulness of our lives in rational terms.

It would be a form of sacrilege, not to mention a disappointment to my parents, that there was a time I questioned the practical value of religion and spiritual teachings as the fundamental basis for the meaning of life. I banged my head against the wall long enough to reach a dead end. I felt like Billy Graham debating Charles Darwin on a topic that had two diverging perspectives. Perspectives are risky propositions, especially when everybody is theoretically and conceivably right. I’m not sure we’ll ever find the truth, unless we agree there is one truth. For now, all we have is our perspectives.

u Creation Versus Evolution

Charles Darwin must have been in some precarious predicament declaring that man and apes had a common ancestor, branching because of mutations and subsequent evolution, at a time when such talk was considered blasphemy. He was in the same boat as Galileo and Copernicus, that is, announcing to the world something that people didn’t want to hear. Just as Copernicus proved that the Earth was not the center of the solar system, Darwin argued that mankind was not the center of creation. The religious side hardly wants to hear that human beings evolved out of millions of years out of the swamp, stood up, made fire, built shelter, and then invented the wheel... and for what, so that we can drive to a university lecture hall and debate the existence of God? We have yet to see a better explanation, provided we are willing to abandon the idea of God’s presence in nature. If there is a God, what role does he play in evolution? There must be an answer that appeases both sides. Darwin avoided religious controversy and would have felt betrayed by the creation versus evolution argument that has transpired in his name. Although his contribution to science remains one of the greatest ever, it wasn’t meant to oppose religion. Maybe it’s time to let Darwin rest in peace.

The discovery of the structure of DNA was perceived as a game-changer by evolutionists, and something creationists would rather ignore. James D. Watson, the Nobel Prize laureate for this discovery, said that there is no controversy about evolution, and not to accept evolution is to deny common sense. It may be common sense for scientists, but regular people don’t have the same scientific insights nor aptitude to comprehend its evidence. And sometimes, it’s just plain old religion which disregards science altogether. We have to get used to the fact that science comes up with facts which sometimes society finds hard to adjust to. According to Watson, the real problem is how to have a just society when genetics is unjust.

Even today, with all the modern advancements in science, how many of us are ready to admit that we and apes have evolved from a common ancestor? My friend Al will argue that this debate isn’t without flaws. His rebuttal is simple: “If man evolved from a common ancestor, how come we co-exist with monkeys?” Evolution would imply that we share the same evolutionary family tree. I’m sure my kids would be thrilled to visit family at the zoo.

The debates between creationists and evolutionists are meaningless in the face of the only eternal question that matters: Where do we come from? Our humanity seems to be divided along religious, philosophical, and scientific lines. This poses many other questions: If I have a creator who created my creator, how come I don’t know who I am, what is my purpose in life? My mind is incapable of understanding that mankind is a random by-product of molecular circumstance or a result of mere biological chance or a divine coincidence. The idea that man is nothing but

the result of biological, psychological and sociological conditions, or the product of heredity and environment, suggests that our lives lack purpose and meaning. Such a view implies that man is a victim of outside circumstances and influences unbeknownst to us.

Creationists aren’t prepared to accept the notion that nature just happens randomly, and believe there must be an intelligent designer behind a divine plan. The great physicist Albert Einstein once said, “Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.” Maybe science goes only so far and then comes God. “Coincidence is the crack in human affairs that lets God in” were a preacher’s words at a Sunday sermon. It just may be that God and evolution coincide with each other. I believe that something has to be created before it can evolve. How can something evolve from nothing?

John Glenn, an astronaut and ordained elder of the Presbyterian Church, said that his faith was reinforced after he traveled in space. “To look out at this kind of creation and not believe in God is to me impossible.” Glenn saw no contradiction between his belief in God and the knowledge that evolution is “a fact.” “I don’t see that I’m any less religious that I can appreciate the fact that science just records that we change with evolution and time, and that’s a fact. It doesn’t mean it’s less wondrous and it doesn’t mean that there can’t be some power greater than any of us that has been behind and is behind whatever is going on.”

Unlike John Glenn, the revered theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking takes the stance that the existence of God is not necessary to explain the origin of the universe in his book A Brief History of Time. It’s evident that both sides make their own assumptions. I think we’re all getting a little tired of the creation versus evolution dilemma. We’re all after the truth, regardless of whether we’re creationists or evolutionists. It was a tenacious criminal lawyer known for winning her cases based on forensic science who said, “When you find out what the truth is, it all fits.” The problem is that the truth is not always easy to come by, and in some cases, an impossible endeavor. Thus, we rely on opinions offering contemporary ideas about ourselves and life.

u Life Architecture is a New Paradigm

We’re not here to evaluate Darwin’s theory of evolution, which is now over 150 years old and hasn’t yet been disproved. The fascinating aspect of a theory is that it lives on as a result of the findings of the researchers trying to invalidate it, and is confirmed by all the studies carried out by them. Theories aside, we’re here to introduce mankind, both creationists and evolutionists, to something more modern and applicable to our lives. I may not be as radical as Darwin, but architecting our lives is a radically new paradigm that has been “naturally selected” – or should I say naturally accepted. But once we get our heads around it, it will make a whole lot of sense. Life Architecture is a new paradigm for self-discovery and the realization of our potential. It was only a matter of time before someone got creative and began to think outside the box about something as creative as life itself. I believe in the superiority of human creativity over logic and the natural world, although the right balance has far-reaching benefits. In this book, we will learn to apply Life Architecture to our own lives from both logical and creative perspectives.

Who am I to challenge the life philosophies of Aristotle, Sigmund Freud, or even Robin Sharma. I remember picking up Sharma’s book, Family Wisdom from The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, after getting two thumbs up from a friend. She said it was one of those books that changed her life, wishing she had read it earlier when her son was still young. She was inspired and had no doubt that the book would have made a difference in her son’s upbringing. Being a father, her wish rang like a bell of duty.

The monk, who apparently sells his red Ferrari for a more wholesome life in the Himalayan mountainside, shares a story about a successful business woman who survives a plane crash. She realizes her luck, thus motivating her to live a meaningful life through the philosophical teachings of her brother, a famous trial lawyer, who becomes a monk after experiencing his own life tragedy. Sharma’s book is a must read. If anything, you’ll latch on to some key life messages, or what Sharma calls the “five masteries of life.” How do we take all these life messages and masteries, inspiring stories, spiritual teachings, advice from contemporary experts and so on, and construct our own desired reality?

u Creating Your Desired Reality

It takes more than dedication to master life’s lessons. It takes the courage to apply them. Not everyone can apply life’s lessons and just start turning his or her life around without a reason, purpose, and the know-how to do it. We don’t change for the sake of change. There must be a basis for change – something in our present life that gives us purpose and needs changing. We need some kind of reference point, which comes with an understanding of our life as it exists today. The key to change is knowing where we are today and having a vision of where we want to go. We create a vision of a future life and get a sense of what it looks like in reference to the life that we’re living today. We make conscious life changes in order to create our desired reality and live a conscious life. If you choose to get over all the reasons why you can’t do something, you can literally create or manifest any reality you want.

We can only achieve a conscious reality through awareness of where things are and why. I rather think of it as our conscious state of mind. We become more objective than subjective in our thinking and the individual life choices we make. We acquire a sense of objectivity that defines our reality. This makes it our reality and nobody else’s. Nobody really knows when you’re hungry and tired except you, and possibly your wife or mother if they’re around.

When we’re hungry and sitting in front of the television, what do we do? I go to the fridge or pantry, evaluate the choices, and usually pick something that is ready to eat or quick to slice up and throw onto a plate. Actually, sometimes I already know what I want and just go get it, especially when there is fresh poppy seed strudel that my wife just hauled in from the bakery. Thus, my motivation for getting up to retrieve a snack is to satisfy my appetite. However, satisfying my life ambitions is not as straightforward as going to the kitchen.

Do you remember Stephen Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People? A successful businessman once said, “The difference between great people and others is largely a habit–a controlled habit of doing every task better, faster and more efficiently.” This was probably the first self-help book that I had ever read. I was convinced that the mastery of Covey’s seven habits could idealistically improve the many facets of our lives, both at home and work. After all, good habits encourage good results that can transform our entire life. Covey’s book assured the reader that these habits enable us to improve our self-advocacy and relationships. However, it falls short of helping us master the seven habits to take us to where we want to go.

If you’re in a real hurry and don’t have time to architect your life, you may want to read The Miracle Morning. The author guarantees to transform your life before 8AM. He also has several versions of the book on Amazon, and I’ll have to get my wife the one for real estate agents and the entrepreneur’s edition for myself. As someone who miraculously cheated death and later turned his adversity into inspiration and empowerment, the author has some credibility, not to mention that he’s a hall-of-famer salesman. “It is our responsibility to choose the most empowering reasons for the challenges, events and circumstances of our lives” is a valid point we can’t refute. This comes back to having a reason or purpose to change our lives around.

u The Need for a Process Improvement Approach

As a professional process improvement guy dedicated to helping companies renew and continuously improve themselves, I am convinced that we need a methodical approach or a formal process to improve our lives. Although Stephen Covey and others have shared some valuable lessons to improve our individual effectiveness, no one has offered a legitimate step-by-step approach to apply these lessons to our own unique personal life situations. These lessons simply have no bearing on architecting our lives. The whole thing seems to be too “touchy-feely” to have any practical value. It feels more like preaching than doing.

I come from a world where everything that we do has a process and requires an engineered approach to execute it, including putting together all the pieces of our life. Who could ever forget Humpty Dumpty’s great fall? As kids, we all believed that Humpty was an anthropomorphic egg – that is, an egg man. We were devastated by this childhood image of a shattered egg man lying there bleeding yolk with countless tiny eggshell pieces scattered all over the place. Who on earth could put back together such a mess? What possible process and approach would they use to revive Humpty?

Contrary to fairy tale belief, Humpty Dumpty was in fact a large cannon used during the English Civil War (1642–1649) in the Siege of Colchester. It was the blast from the Parliamentary cannon that damaged the wall beneath Humpty Dumpty and caused it to tumble to the ground. The Royalists, or “all the King’s men,” tried to raise Humpty Dumpty on to another part of the wall. However, because the cannon was so heavy, “all the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.”

It’s too bad that an architect wasn’t around to help put all the pieces together, or at least help with the process of getting Humpty operational again. Maybe this would have prevented the town of Colchester from falling to the Parliamentarians. So, why should we appeal to a world around us that has neither a clue nor concern about restoring our shattered lives? After all, this is the 21st century and we now have Life Architecture to put the pieces together – almost 400 years since poor old Humpty fell flat on his face.

u The Puzzle of Life

Patsy Cline was heartbroken when she sang I Fall to Pieces. I think we all fall to pieces during our lifetimes. Love fades away, we lose our jobs, we get sick, or we just happen to fall off a wall. Life stops moving forward. It’s not always easy to pick up the pieces and put the puzzle back together again. It’s even more difficult to complete the puzzle of the life we wish for when we have more pieces than we know what to do with. It’s a pity we don’t have the picture that comes on a jigsaw puzzle box to give us a glimpse into what our life should look like. How are we expected to put all the pieces together and build a masterfully exquisite life without ever seeing the masterpiece that we aim to replicate? It becomes a daunting task when the puzzle pieces are scattered, unsorted, and often blank on both sides, not to mention that there is no box.

It was an act of fate when a thunderbolt woke my subconscious but creative mind. I realized that we had to recreate the puzzle box, including the picture on the box, before we could fabricate the pieces inside. Thus, our homework assignment is to design our future life picture on the box cover, shape and sculpt the pieces, and then assemble the pieces necessary to build our future. Pretty soon, we’ll have a clear picture of where we want to go. We can actually start by sketching something out on paper.

Choices can often result in mistakes. We all make mistakes, or rather the wrong choices in life. As human beings, we learn from our mistakes and the choices we make. Our mistakes can teach us more than our successes. After a success, we move on to the next thing without necessarily learning from it. But when we make a mistake, we learn all kinds of new ways to correct it. And through that learning process, we start developing in new ways and leave our mistakes behind.

It was the girlfriend of an ex-con trying to get a grip on his life in some movie who said, “We’re not defined by our pasts. You’ve remade yourself. You’ve chosen to be a good man. It’s a choice. That’s all it is.” He learned from his past mistakes and made a choice to become a good person. We all get second chances and it’s just a matter of making the right choices when we do. “It ain’t over ’til it’s over?” as Yogi Berra would say. Baseball reporters couldn’t wait to write that one down. It basically tells us that we can’t give up until we get what we want, or die trying.

Maybe we need to see our choices in writing and mull them over for a while before making a lifealtering decision. If we put them down on paper, we can weigh and appreciate their consequences. In essence, we negotiate a contract to ensure that we can deliver. Comedians write down their jokes and practice their routines before they go on stage. The animated Jim Carrey wrote himself a check for $10,000,000 and stuck it in his wallet when he started out. The check was for “Acting Services Rendered” and he gave himself five years to cash it. Carrey is now a wealthy comic.

“One must learn to be rich; to be poor, anyone can manage” was a lesson shared by a drug kingpin. Whoever thought Carrey’s mastery of facial expressions and perfection of immaturity would grant him access to the Millionaires Club? Our life ambitions come down to having a good understanding of where we are today and visualizing where we want to go. Carrey made it clear what he had to do to become famous. He had a clear agenda and worked hard, while occasionally peeking into his wallet to remind himself of the bright future he visualized. “You can’t just visualize and then go eat a sandwich.” He may have been a dummy in Dumb and Dumber, but he’s rich and richer than most comic actors in Hollywood.

I’m sure that Jim Carrey didn’t get rich by just listening to rich people. He figured out for himself that he had to listen, learn, and know how to get to where he wanted to go. He already knew how to make people laugh. This eventually gave him the knowledge to leave the stand-up comedy stage for film and television where his slapstick performances became a recognized and soughtafter brand. Carrey admitted, “You don’t know you can do it until you do it.” He wasn’t afraid to fail as he chased his dreams. “You can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.” Besides, you’re not good to anybody if you don’t do what you love.

Listen, Learn, Know

Most effective business meetings have a clearly-defined agenda allowing participants to listen, learn, and know. The meeting room is a place where we all get a chance to gather information, internalize the knowledge, and then do or take action based on the knowledge we have attained. The point of these meetings is to take action together as a group to meet our goals and objectives.

I remember attending a meeting room with several posters on the wall, all outlining rules on how to conduct a meeting. There was one poster with the heading “Clarity” that caught my attention. Apart from maintaining clarity in the boardroom, I thought how clarity pertained to this very topic of Life Architecture and moving our lives in the right direction. The poster outlined three things that give us clarity as we conduct ourselves in the workplace and do our jobs.

3 Steps to Clarity

The concept of clarity also applies to life, specifically the notion of having a clear picture of where we are and where we want to go in life. The poster was meant to guide meeting participants in conducting meetings with a clear purpose in mind. Meetings take place for a reason, and those who attend are expected to agree on an outcome and determine how they will achieve it. As individuals, we also need to decide on a personal outcome and achieve it as we define our own lives. I think the purpose of our lives deserves clarity, too.

u Clarity is Clearly Critical

According to the dean of the business school speaking at our convocation, we must have clarity of purpose as we define our goals and direction in life. “What I really need is to get clear about what I must do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every

act. What matters is to find a purpose.” With purpose, everything becomes clear in time. We hope to gain a clear understanding of our purpose and destination in life. Like organizations, we strive to improve our existence with a sense of purpose. But unlike organizations, we don’t have a fiscal year-end financial bottom line that substantiates our existence. We have many bottom lines, most of which are not financial. We have different purposes and motives as we embrace all of life’s offerings, some of which are driven by family, spirituality, and career aspirations. We have to be crystal clear with regard to where we are now, where we want to go, and how we are going to get there. Otherwise, we’ll never get there. Once we see clearly, knowing what to do is easy. Clarity is about understanding what makes us happy and what makes us feel good about ourselves, and then creating that life instead of pretending that we can’t have it. Clarity about our unique purpose can be the difference between living a happy, fulfilling life of choice, or living a confined life of indecision, excuses, and fear.

Clarity is the single quality required to avoid confusion in a magic illusion. I think the magician Ricky Jay best explained clarity by quoting his grandfather about another famous magician named Francis Carlyle: “It’s not only technique and presentation but listen to the way that he explains an effect with such clarity that people go away knowing exactly what’s happened.” Similarly, clarity helps us decipher the illusions or misunderstandings that we may have in real life.

It was the husband in a family melodrama on TV who asked his wife, “How do you always make everything so easy and practical?” “Well, because it usually is” was her reply. She could explain differential calculus to a man who did not know his twelve-times table, and had a knack for figuring out what people meant to say rather than what they said. Her ability to provide clarity with those around her usually meant that everyone was on the same page.

I admire the way Robin Sharma delivers his messages with clarity. He enforces these messages through the stories and ideas of other people, some very famous. The reader is left in an impressionable state with an understanding of the author’s meaning. As Sharma reveals in his book, “clarity precedes mastery.” Sharma articulated this idea of clarity in words that I understood all too well because of my own work and personal life experiences:

“By clarifying our future, defining our values and reflecting upon our priorities, we began living in a much more intentional and deliberate way. Life no longer acted on us – we took charge of our lives and lived out our days on our own terms. Personally, I felt more peaceful and in control. That sense of being overwhelmed, which dominates the lives of most of us in this wild and woolly world where we juggle full-time jobs with grocery shopping, soccer practices and volunteer work, began to subside. Life became fun again.”

I love that paragraph from Sharma’s book. I especially like the part where he says, “Life no longer acted on us.” It’s awkwardly brilliant. Sharma tells us that we have an opportunity to take control of our lives. However, life cannot be rushed. “Everything comes when it must come” were the philosophical words of someone who believed in patience and timing.

Some of us don’t lie in bed waiting for an alarm clock to send us off to work. We take control of our lives. That’s probably why I became a consultant. I plan my own day and show up to work when it suits me. My working days are focused on delivering something of value rather than punching a time clock. I’ve learned that too much has been left to chance when it comes to discovering a bright future for ourselves. An aspiring actor once said, “Whatever you have to do to get through it, just do it.” Although Nike advocates that we “Just Do It!” we need to “Just Do It Right!” Life Architecture is about doing it right.

u Don’t Leave Life to Chance

We take chances at the poker table or buying a lottery ticket or just trying the new thrill ride at Disney World to get an adrenaline rush. Sometimes we win big and enjoy a thrill of a lifetime, even if it is short-lived. Other times, we lose everything and throw up after the ride. Life is too precious to take chances. Why leave anything to chance if we don’t have to? We’ve all taken chances and I’m sure we’ve learned something each time. If we’re not where we want to be in life, we should be careful about leaving things to chance. It’s a tightrope we walk and it can go spectacularly wrong if we don’t calculate our next move, yet within each of us is this desire to do something spectacular. As human beings, we are in a state of constant desire. We have an opportunity to identify, plan, and live the life we desire.

I believe that nothing happens by chance and that every cause has more than one effect. It wasn’t until David Reichelt churned out 40 games that he finally got the effect he wanted – the most downloaded game app in the App Store. Reichelt learned from his past failures and Color Switch was born on his 41st try. “Every failure or mistake is a learning experience.” Like other video game inventors, Reichelt solved a universal problem for people called boredom by leveraging a technology that puts entertainment in people’s hands. Video games are a multi-billion-dollar industry so I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s relaxing on some beach.

David Reichelt attributes his success to paying attention to detail. Rather than brushing off incidental bits of information as being unimportant, Reichelt developed a habit of being open to what we may consider insignificant details and realized that “the biggest change in life could be in the apparently smallest piece of information or unrelated experience presented to you.” Sometimes it’s important to look around and consider details that are not so obvious. “You don’t catch wolves looking where they might be, you look where they’ve been” were the words of an Indigenous Elder.

Most of us don’t have that sixth sense or the natural instinct to assess our own situation and circumstances without some bias. This makes it rather difficult knowing how to reach our desired life destination. It’s no wonder it takes us a few iterations to get it right, or at least better than it was before. The good news is that we do have a mind and the intelligence to figure it out. Someone once said that your secret weapon is your brain, and it can be your biggest asset or your biggest obstacle. I believe your main obstacle is not having the wherewithal to get started. This is where Life Architecture can guide us and help shatter that obstacle.

u Life Architecture is Moonshot Thinking

“Moonshots” are the incredible, seemingly impossible, ideas that can change our world, and maybe help us architect our lives. I believe we’re a species of moonshots. Even when we don’t know how to do things just yet, we go ahead and do them anyway. Life Architecture is Moonshot thinking and allows us to do things we never imagined possible or that we’ve never done before with our lives. “It always seems impossible until it’s done” were the words of a freedom fighter seeking to release a political prisoner.

We all need a starting point and some direction on how to get to our desired life destination. How many times have we given someone instructions on how to get to our house? There’s a Point A and a Point B. Life is no different. We need a starting or reference point from which we can move forward. This is our current life situation at Point A. Our current lives are a reflection of our

problems, strengths, weaknesses, capabilities, motivations, aspirations, and other characteristics that define how we live. We require a good understanding of our lives today before we can reach Point B as we leverage our strengths while we overcome our weaknesses. We all have a reason to transform our lives in order to fulfill our passions and desires.

Companies are also driven to do business better and faster. They are continually changing to keep up to, or even stay ahead of, economic cycles and market trends. You may be too young to remember the introduction of the credit card and how it changed our lives. It changed how we paid for things. It changed how we collected and distributed funds. We no longer had to pull dollar bills from our wallets or count coins in our pockets. We could also pay for things over the telephone, and later the internet, using a credit card. I use my mobile app to pay for gas at the pump. This was an inevitable revelation where e-commerce became a standard way of doing business.

People have learned to continually adapt to a changing world where they strive for a better life. A befitting bank slogan interrupted my movie: “Let’s make someday happen.” The TV commercial showed a young man give up his office job in order to chase his dreams as an entrepreneur where freedom was cherished and the necktie perished. The message was that we shouldn’t let anything get in the way of our someday. Weeds are like entrepreneurs. They grow anywhere and force their way into human-controlled settings, such as farm fields, gardens, lawns, and parks. And the stubborn and successful ones stick around. We may not be as intrusive as weeds, but we can motivate our own change to change our lives, and let nothing get in the way of our someday.

u Become Your Own Change Manager

The writer in the movie 5 to 7 shared a thought-provoking insight about change: “Thousands of years ago, somebody came up with the notion of impermanence, of the beauty and inevitability of change.” He reckoned this somebody may have been a jilted lover facing the prospect of a lonely life but later found the perfect match for the rest of a lifetime. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus was a little more direct and said, “Change is the only constant in life.” Everything is in flux in the sense that everything is always flowing in some respect, and nothing stands still. We all need to plan for and be ready for change in every aspect of our lives. How do you know when a change, a true and lasting change, is about to overtake your life? When things aren’t going your way and you need to make a big change, that may be your cue. Change is triggered when we’re put in a precarious position or get the opportunity to improve our lives. It’s when we make a commitment and an effort to change our situation that change overtakes our lives. Change makes us see and appreciate the beauty in life. Without change, we can end up with a life unlived. Change may very well make the world go round. It is an inevitable part of our existence, but yet we’ve learned to disregard or underestimate the effects of its impact on our lives. Rather than wear the same clothes, we have a chance to dress for the occasion. Better yet, we have a chance to choose the occasion and dress accordingly. It is our prerogative to make changes in our lives and achieve a better future. In business, we call this person a change manager. A change manager is responsible for managing the changes required to improve an organization. We need to play the role of a change manager when it comes to our own lives. As change managers, we identify what it is that we want in our lives, and then make the appropriate changes to realize it. It was the adventurous balloon pilot in The Aeronauts who said, “You don’t change the world simply by looking at it. You change it through the way you choose to live in it.”

I would like to think that we all assume the role of a change manager as we self-rule our lives. It was Mahatma Gandhi who metaphorically said, “You must be the change you want to see.” Upon visiting Bengal, Gandhi was asked to give a message to the people of India, to which he responded, “My life is my message.” Gandhi dedicated his life to the right of self-rule and self-

government. This would give India the right to govern its own affairs and make changes for the good of its people. The Indian people felt as if they had been released from prison, specifically the shackles of the British Empire.

Bernard Hopkins had a similar experience when he was released from prison. He decided he wanted to be in control of his life. He was described as “a testament to the fact that anyone can reshape their thinking, can reshape their life, and continue to live that reshaped life.” Hopkins became one of the most successful boxers of the past three decades, holding multiple world middleweight and light heavyweight titles. He was a symbol of self-discipline and someone who beat the odds.

There are people who change, and those who hope things change. The choice is ours. Growing up, I always appreciated the versatility of music. David Bowie symbolized versatility in order to beat the odds. His career was marked by reinvention and visual presentation, and his music and stagecraft influenced the music industry. Bowie didn’t just entertain, he intrigued and provoked audiences around the world. When informed by a television host that the England he left two years ago was not the same England that he was coming back to, Bowie replied, “Yeah, well this Thursday is nothing like last Thursday, but it’s just as important. I’d miss it if it wasn’t after Wednesday.” Bowie made positive change playing his music, which will be missed.

Change managers in organizations are mandated to make positive change. After all, that’s what they get paid to do. Their success depends on engaging others to influence change. Ironically, this makes them accessories to any success achieved as a result of change. It was my editor who said, “Change is made by people whose opinion is respected.” These individuals are capable of working with others to achieve corporate goals and objectives. They help companies introduce better products and services by changing business processes, developing market segments, and spreading a whole lot of persuasive communication.

u Changing the Rules

As companies strive to become more competitive and profitable by selling popular products and services, they must change the business rules by which they are governed in a constantly changing business environment. As individuals, we also need to swap the rules by which we live today for the rules that will guide us tomorrow. It’s a mindset that we must foster if we want to survive change.

What needs to change to create change? I’d say something more than getting off the couch or politely asking someone to do it for us. Eugene O’Neill, a famous American playwright, wrote, “There is no present or future – only the past, happening over and over again – now.” That is true if nothing is changing. It may be to our advantage to change now rather than wait for the past to happen over and over again if we’re not willing to change. Change is about taking action before life beats us up. We can change anytime before we take our last breath, but why wait that long?

Life seems to go on in its past tense for those who refuse to embrace change. It ends one day and that’s it. The real tragedy is that we accept the past as the future while we do nothing about it. I believe that O’Neill was very cognizant of time and articulated a common life dilemma in one of his plays:

“None of us can help the things life has done to us. They’re done before you realize it, and once they’re done they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and what you’d like to be, and you’ve lost your true self forever.”

Many of us tend to be complacent and resistant to change on our own initiative. Maybe that’s why we forever regret the time we’ve lost and the life that has passed us by. We establish a subconscious inquisition panel to question ourselves as to how much and how often we need to change. I’m personally tired of this ineffective stodgy establishment, not to mention my own insecurities to change my life. But if we don’t change, nothing around us changes.

u How Much Do You Want to Change?

How much we have to change and how often is a troubling question for many of us. That depends on us and our reason to change. There is a saying: “You can’t change the wind, but you can adjust the sails.” We must determine the value we want from the changes we make to sail in the right direction. A health and weight loss advocate in a juicing documentary said, “The more you change, the better you get.” Maybe it’s time to start juicing, especially if we want to lose some weight and lead a healthier lifestyle. The subject of the documentary, an obese truck driver, had to lose enough weight to fit in his seat again and get his life back on track.

As a proponent of change from an early age, Sir Winston Churchill advocated change and became an influential leader during WWII. “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” He definitely made some drastic changes during the war, most notably when he switched support to his new Communist allies in the Balkans. I’m sure most of us have given up on perfection, including the roly-poly Churchill in his later years. However, we can all use some improvement. A little change hasn’t hurt anyone.

Although we all seek a better life, we’re afraid, or at least not always willing, to disrupt it. Change can be a rigorous process as we continually try to adopt change throughout our lifetimes. Change doesn’t happen overnight, nor without a reason. However, it intuitively becomes a natural part of living as we endeavor to achieve happiness and self-fulfillment. And hopefully, happiness doesn’t become a chore but rather our favorite pastime.

Change should be something we embrace naturally and not something that hinders our happiness. Some of us embrace change in the hope of making a new beginning or getting a second chance. We all have to start somewhere so why not start with change itself. It’s people that take great pains to change, and do whatever it takes to get the job done, who are most familiar with change. They’ve recognized that they don’t like where they are, and they have some inkling of where they want to go. Change is a way to control our destiny.

u A Clear Visual Reference of Where You Are

If there was only a way to illustrate our life today and what we want it to look like in the future. We need a clear visual reference of where we are before we can figure out where we are going. Life Architecture provides us with an abstract understanding of our present and future realities using various illustrations such as drawings, pictures, models, and words. All these things together compose our Life Architecture.

My professional mentor and long-time friend Tony best described architecture during one of his hallmark presentations. It always comes down to a house example. In order to build a house, Tony will tell you that we need the surveyor’s site plans, architect’s drawings and models, electrical and plumbing blueprints, and builder’s plans just to get started. These are all different perspectives of the same thing, namely the house that we want to build.

Tony has refined and advanced his own perspective on architecture over the years. His lesson for the rest of us that day would be to prescribe architecture in a succinct and comprehensible manner. He perked our interest with the fact that architecture had practical application in the design of business processes and systems. Tony’s message was articulate and to the point:

“Architecture is a Model, Plan or Blueprint that represents a simplified form of complex reality.”

How do we represent the complex reality of our lives in a simplified form? Isn’t this what Life Architecture should attempt to achieve? I would like to think of it as more than an attempt, and can assure you that Life Architecture is tailored to achieve a desired future reality.

u A Life Blueprint to Represent Your Life

A Life Blueprint is a model, a plan or, as the name proclaims, a blueprint of our lives. It is composed of pictures, diagrams, charts, text, and whatever else we need to illustrate life’s many facets. As the saying goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” A picture says a thousand words, but which words? Regardless, we will use what best describes our lives with visual representations as well as words. These blueprints will be presented in the following chapters. We will actually need two Life Blueprints – one for our current life and another for our future. The blueprint of our life as it exists today is referred to as our current Life Blueprint. Once we develop our current Life Blueprint, we will translate it into a future version of our life, otherwise known as our future Life Blueprint. This in fact represents the life that we want to realize in the future.

Our future Life Blueprint is a modified version or transformation or some metamorphosis of our current life – a future-tense depiction of our lives. How far in the future? As immediate as the next thing that we do until the day we die. Theoretically, the future is the rest of our lives. Our future Life Blueprint represents all the changes that we aim to make tomorrow, next month, a year from now, five years out, or decades beyond until we reach the end of our mortal journey. In fact, Life Architecture is a journey, not an end date. Our future is what we want it to be. And we won’t know what that is until we create a Life Blueprint defining where we are now and where our lives should take us.

When I’m hired to help an organization prepare for the future, I start with a current state blueprint. This describes the organization as it exists today. It doesn’t take long to get acquainted with the corporate culture, management’s motivation, and shareholder profit targets as I decipher its corporate goals and objectives. I eventually end up with a future state blueprint, which provides the organization with an understanding of their future corporate direction.

I’ve been rambling on about organizations and their management’s ambitions to change. It’s evident that people have personal ambitions as well, and seek some form of structure in their own lives – not much different than the people assigned roles and responsibilities within the organizations they work for. Organizational blueprints have been an effective strategic tool for organizations of all types and sizes. What would you say if blueprints could be tailored and used in life as well? I think it’s time to create our own Life Blueprints and pinpoint what matters to us.

Think of it as a game that requires capabilities and resources we already have. The good news is that we don’t have to roll the dice and go around a game board forcing our opponents to give up. Rather, we each have our own board and play the game on our own terms. We make up our own rules, unlike the game of Monopoly where we eventually end up broke by following their rules. Even in Monopoly, some experienced players know how to monopolize the game and break the rules. They never go bankrupt while they are more than happy to pay their way out of jail.

u The House Example

A Life Blueprint is much like an architectural blueprint of a house such as the house example that Tony introduced earlier. For those of us who are considering some home renovations, we’re required to modify our house blueprints to illustrate where to extend the living area, reposition the front door, and build a wrap-around deck. This would be impossible without blueprints or drawings to illustrate the dimensions, structural impacts, use of outdoor spaces, and aesthetic charm of a wrap-around deck. Don’t underestimate the importance of a blueprint. There are a lot more details in a blueprint than we may appreciate. With regard to a house renovation, blueprints help us locate and reconfigure the support structures, electrical wiring, heating ducts, and plumbing when it comes time to do the job. I would regret taking out a support beam or post, and have the entire house crash to the ground. All these blueprints overlay each other and collectively represent the complete architecture of a house. They become even more important when we’re building a house from scratch.

What do you think would happen if we decided to make all these renovations without blueprints? I’m not a betting man but I’d bet that we’d get it wrong. How can a renovation succeed without considering design details, land elevations, underground utility tie-ins, heating-electrical-plumbing grids, structural supports, and so on? Even more fundamental, how can we start renovations without dimensions for the extended living area and new wrap-around deck relative to the existing house and lot? Blueprints not only help us envision modifications to the house, but also assess the design impacts on the neighborhood and its natural surroundings.

The last thing that we need is some patronizing city official with an attitude knocking on our door to tell us the extended living area is too close to the sidewalk and that we’re in breach of a building code. Indeed, this sounds far-fetched considering that municipalities require blueprints to approve specific types of renovations, mainly structural. It’s too bad my wife’s uncle didn’t get his plans approved before he was forced to tear down his foundation and start all over – this time in accordance with city building bylaws.

In a historic district of a city, a blueprint can help us integrate the new with the old. It seems like every Victorian house left in the old neighborhood is adding a new extension for modern-day living. I would expect a house blueprint to reveal what parts of the house to keep intact, ideally the foundational parts comprised of structural beams and posts, and what parts to modernize. A blueprint is necessary to assess the feasibility and desirability of a reno prospect before we spend the big bucks.

u Renovating Your Life

It would be an unorthodox, not to mention absurd, exercise to compare human beings to a house. But no comparison is ever perfect. Although a prestigious English language dictionary will refer to the architecture or renovation of a house, it would never dare to make such a comparison to a human being. When did you ever hear of someone renovating a broken-down old aunt with dementia or a young man with his schizophrenic wires crossed? Nevertheless, we all have some form of heating ducts, electrical wiring, and plumbing to worry about. The word “renovating” may be a stretch, but we’re all in need of some improving. This is all the more reason to have a Life Blueprint.

We all deal with the various facets of life – work, family, health, leisure, and so on. A blueprint of our existing life has similar traits of a blueprint of a house, but not all blueprints are in a usable form. I suggest that we develop a good sense of what we want in our lives by drafting a future Life

Blueprint and see where it goes. However, we’ll need a current Life Blueprint before any renovations can begin. There’s a reason the guy doing the renovations always asks for the blueprints.

This may explain why homeowners are apt to put off renovations. They probably anticipate that it’s going to cost a lot of money and chew up their time, not to mention the excruciating disruptions that they have to put up with. They dread the short-term inconveniences and suffer from the anxiety of getting through a renovation. However, in the long run, they know that it’s the right thing to do and something that they’ll enjoy for a long time in the future.

We all have expectations of a brighter future. It’s human nature to count on good things to happen, although we should anticipate the bad. We never know when our kids will get into trouble or suffer through a heartbreak, but we know it’ll happen sooner or later. There’s also the aging relative and it’s only a matter of time before things take a turn for the worse and they need us. I think it’s fair to say that we all have some preconceived outlook on life, but we don’t deal with the reality until we’re called into the principal’s office.

u Making Time for Desire

We often get wrapped up in our own life itinerary and neglect to consider what it takes to get from our current to future state of life. Did you notice a slight omission? It comes down to a simple but defining adjective. It’s easy to get to a future state life. We just sit there and let it happen. But, to get to a “desired” future state life takes a little more ambition and planning, not to mention practice.

We have already established the need for two Life Blueprints - one representing our current life and the other our desired future life. You’re probably thinking, “Easier said than done.” I’d say it’s a lot easier when we have a roadmap to connect all the dots, or rather our desires, to get us there. I wish it were as easy as picking up a roadmap at the nearest convenience store to guide us to our desired future destination. The truth is, we all need a personal roadmap, not to mention our own road. We’re all destined for that special place by taking the road less travelled as we explore the fundamental questions about our existence.

In Robert Frost’s poem, The Road Not Taken, the meaning of “taking the road less traveled” is a misinterpretation in the sense that the two roads in the poem are equally attractive. The message is that we shouldn’t waste our energy in regretting the choices we have made or contemplating the alternatives that we had rejected. Let’s face it, whichever way we go, we’re sure to miss something good on the other path. A personal Life Roadmap based on some soul searching and understanding of our desires is sure to guide and get us to that desired place.

u A Life Roadmap to Get You There

What would travel be without a roadmap in today’s “hustle & bustle” society where congestion and traffic lights seem to control our every move? Some of us used to carry a roadmap in our glove compartments in case we get lost, but now we have smartphones and GPS to navigate to that special destination, and ideally, by taking the most direct route. Similarly, a roadmap can take us from where we are in our lives today to where we want to go via a detour from our regular existence. A Life Roadmap enables us to navigate from our current to desired future Life Blueprint. Unfortunately, it will be some time before a Life GPS hits the market and saves us time.

Whether we’re in the midst of adversity and struggling to find our way or something as rigorous as improving our business, roadmaps enable us to get there. Plans often times fall through the cracks without a roadmap to help us deliver whatever it is we’re planning for. A Life Roadmap can pave the way from an arduous and uneventful life to one we’ve mapped out for ourselves in the future.

All this talk about geographic coordinates and establishing a route to get from Point A to Point B seems rather obscure. I’m sure that our graduation from high school must have felt like a form of obscurity into adulthood. Looking back, our achievements and milestones feel like natural outcomes, although we’d rather forget the hardships. Granted that things may get more complicated as we get older, Point B becomes hindsight sooner or later.

We should focus on making the most of our lives before we get on a runaway train and hope for the best. This requires a current Life Blueprint to map out Point A and a future Life Blueprint to locate our future at Point B. A Life Roadmap is the navigation guide to help us in our efforts to transition from Point A to Point B. I like to tell people that it’s a roadmap that they can confidently follow in life without worrying about swerving into the ditch.

A Life Roadmap to Navigate

LIFE ROADMAP

Let’s digress for a moment and consider where you are, namely Point A. So, where do you come from? How did you get to your life as it exists today? Why are you where you are? What circumstances put you there? What obstacles prevented you from moving forward with your life? We all have a past, a present, and an undetermined future. Our past dictates our present, and together they influence our future – Point B. “Where we come from is who we are, but we choose every day who we become” were the words of J.D. Vance who grew up in poverty and later graduated from Yale Law School.

It was the internationally-acclaimed filmmaker, Emir Kusturica, who said that without a past, we cannot have a future. I rather like the version provided by the blues musician Daryl Davis: “In order to know where you’re going, you have to know where you came from.” Kusturica was privy to the truth about where he came from. He learned that his family sacrificed their identity and religious convictions for a better life during Ottoman rule. He felt in his heart that this was not who he was and that his ancestry had been sold for societal privileges. He could no longer pretend to be someone he’s not with a secret that was centuries old. It became evident that his beliefs would influence his life – his values, family, and even the movies he made. We cannot always escape our identity and memories, no matter how hard we try to be something we’re not.

Point B Future Life Blueprint

Point A Current Life Blueprint

The movie critic Roger Ebert once said, “I was born inside the movie of my life.” I’m sure that people like Emir Kusturica could relate to Ebert’s sentiments. “We all are born with a certain package. We are who we are – where we were born, who we were born as, how we were raised. We’re kind of stuck inside that person, and the purpose of civilization and growth is to be able to reach out and empathize a little bit with other people.” We can’t change who we are, but we can change who we become and where we go.

Only when we are true to ourselves and others are we ready to open the doors to our life. A boxing trainer in the documentary Champs puts this “true to ourselves” philosophy into context: “Every human being that comes to this planet has a fight. The ultimate opponent is actually truth. The truth will wean out everything else.” Until we embrace the truth, we can’t be sure who we are, where we want to go, and how we’re going to get there. I’m sure the champs in Champs will agree that fighting for our identity or for who we are for real is one of the hardest things that we have to do.

u Be True to Yourself

While on the topic of champs, Michael Bentt, a retired professional boxer who had been coerced into boxing by an intimidating and narcissistic father, said that boxers are the world’s best liars because they deny everything, including pain, and they don’t even realize it. Boxers are also the bravest people in the world because if they want to hit you, they take the risk of being hit back. Bentt tells us that you don’t get anywhere without risking going somewhere. The time had come for Bentt to be true to himself by getting out of boxing and into something he loved to do. He got tired of lying to himself. I don’t think any of us lie to ourselves, at least not on purpose. And if we tried, we’d find ourselves in a very awkward position. We refer to this as “living the lie” – a far cry from “living the dream.” “He who lies to himself and listens to his lies will come to a point when he no longer recognizes the truth in himself nor around himself, and will stop respecting himself and others” was a truth shared by a famous Russian novelist by the name of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Lies have consequences that we cannot escape. In Russia, there’s an expression: “With lies you may go ahead in the world, but you may never go back.” When we stop lying to ourselves, we can be true to ourselves. Be true to yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else.

The outspoken women’s rights activist Gloria Steinem once said, “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” As a woman in a male-dominated society, one which denied social equality, Steinem was pissed enough to take a stand. It’s not easy being true to oneself when society is guilty of social injustice. In fact, we’re afraid to challenge a society’s norms in fear of being labelled advocates of anti-establishment. Not one to tolerate injustice, Steinem challenged the establishment by campaigning for equal rights. The more pissed off you are, the more likely you are to succeed.

It’s a shame the world doesn’t have more people like Gloria Steinem. Sometimes I wonder if she’s a transcendentalist. Transcendentalists seem to share a core belief in the inherent goodness of people and nature. They believe that society and its institutions ultimately corrupt the purity of the individual, and that people are at their best when they are truly self-reliant and independent. Purity can’t take roots in a society that won’t let it. Some of us question the motives of authority and its antiquated rules as we consider what’s important to us.

Our dilemma with society and our individualism is finding the truth. An early Danish philosopher by the name of Soren Kierkegaard had a more selfish perspective regarding the truth. “The crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die.”

The truth is something we believe in with all our heart and soul. And let’s just hope the truth is not something worth dying for as we fight for social justice and what’s best for us.

So, what does it really mean to be true to oneself? The truth is being who you feel you are. I once stumbled on a quote: “Your perceptions are derived from your feelings and your ability to be yourself, to own and trust yourself, and to say what you feel, even when it may be diametrically opposed to everyone else’s opinion.” We may not always be able to change an opinion, but we can guide someone toward the truth. We must never waver until we find the truth. It’s only when we know the truth that we’ll have the whole story and feel good about it.

The truth can pave the way to our desired future. Our desired future is an extension of our true selves. We have to understand who and where we are before we can reach the place we want to go. It doesn’t matter whether we aspire to become doctors, concert accordionists, or famous filmmakers, our road starts with the present. I meant concert pianists, but some habits never go away.

u Don’t Avoid the Present and Never Forget Your Past

No matter what our truth is, the past is a conduit to our future. The past is the teacher of life. It instills knowledge, experience, memories, emotions, habits, and personality traits. The way that we think and feel will follow us to our graves. However, the way that we behave can change everything in between. It is up to us to recognize the behaviors and circumstances that prevent us from making good decisions in life. We all have personal histories while we’re occupied by circumstances that influence our existence. This is why we are who we are and where we are. I’m sure genetics also has something to do with our personality traits and the choices we make in life. It is our capacity to be in touch with our past and present that allows us to break away and pursue a new beginning.

If it were only that easy to break away from the past and present, we’d all be doing it, right? Some of us experience the misfortune of a life altering event so dramatic that we lose the will to move on. The scars run too deep and never quite heal. We feel that nothing short of a miracle is required to get us back on our feet again. However, we welcome a lucky break like the lottery winner who has been forced to give up his food stamps.

We don’t always plan for change or anticipate events that change our lives. There’s nothing quite as stressful as finding ourselves in unfamiliar territory wondering what we’re going to do next. The sudden death of my father a month before graduating high school changed everything. Life as I knew it had changed forever. I felt like part of my life had ended. I was forced to re-evaluate my life ambitions and everything that I had planned for after high school. The only thing that I expected was a deserved vacation before settling into campus life. Like Michael Corleone in one of the Godfather movies said, “You have to understand, I had a whole different destiny planned.” I’m sure Corleone would have agreed it’s a wonderful life if you can get away with it.

As it turned out, Michael Corleone didn’t stay true to himself and deviated from his original plan to become a crime boss. Unlike Corleone, academia seemed to be my raisons d’etre, or reason for being. I continued to pursue my university studies after my father’s death. The fact that my mother was there to support me, both financially and emotionally, made it possible to make that dream come true. She was committed to help her kids complete their educations and become independent adults. It was her wish to see us succeed which made her true to herself and her family. And by having her children succeed, she would succeed.

u Truth is the Victim

It’s sometimes difficult to discern what’s true and what’s not true, especially with the advent of the public internet, information explosion, and yellow journalism. Money can also get in the way of truth. A gold prospector once said, “The only truth here is, when everybody’s getting rich, nobody gives a shit about the truth.” It’s even harder to come by the truth when we live under a tyranny. For a tyrant, the truth is often inconvenient. The truth invites debate and suggests people can question its validity. Tyrants take exception to those who challenge their authority, and remove troublemakers along with every day’s truth. It makes it easier to rule forever when you’re the only game in town. There’s a political saying that goes, “The value of a man isn’t what he reveals to the world but what he hides from it. The obsessive need for power has infected the political class, and the only ones worthy of power are sometimes the ones who don’t want it. The world is and always has been full of corrupt governments, self-serving political alliances, and greedy corporate interests. The famous English novelist George Orwell said, “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” Journalists face a moral quandary in an era where “truth has to be defamed, honest critics silenced, and free speech suppressed.” They do a good job keeping us away from where we need to look to find the truth. Maybe it’s just easier to lie to the world than it is to be honest with oneself. In a world of fake news and social media, the truth rarely wins and becomes the victim. “Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact; everything we see is a perspective, not the truth” was an honest observation by the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. The truth is not always easy to come by and it’s about getting as close as we can. And when it is exposed, not everyone is willing to recognize it, let alone accept it.

We are overtaken by natural forces that make it difficult to remain true to ourselves – greed and ego being our biggest enemies. I still remember reading about a charitable lottery winner who gave his entire winnings to charity rather than top up his bank account. He had all the money he needed and decided to share his good fortune. This is the type of guy whose generosity is unequivocal in both good times and bad. He gives whether he has or not. His past is a reflection of who he is, regardless of his good fortune.

We admire people who uphold a moral truth, rather than carry an inflated wallet. These are virtuous individuals who do what’s right at the expense of personal self-interests. They don’t make decisions based on their chances of winning; they make decisions according to what is right. There are some noble examples of such individuals which come to mind, including Corrie ten Boom who risked her life to save Jews during the Holocaust, William Wilberforce who sought the abolition of slavery in the late 18th century, and Martin Luther King Jr. who fought for civil rights in the US.

We all have lessons to learn in this school called life according to the American Psychiatrist Brian Weiss. “We need to comprehend completely the concepts of compassion, love, non-violence, non-judgment, non-prejudice, patience, generosity and charity, and hope. We need to recognize the deceptions and traps of the ego and how to transcend them.” This is a tall order for anyone, although we have a lifetime to try.

Even the great philosopher Confucius had a mission to teach people how to be virtuous in a world of political disorder and moral decay. None of us operate in isolation and we come together for a worthy cause. “It isn’t that man is the measure of all things, but man’s relationship with man.” Whatever our character, whatever situation we’re born into, being good and living a good life is possible. And as soon as we accept that life is a continuous process of struggle until the day we die, the better equipped we are to deal with things as we try to make a better life for ourselves. I have realized that I can’t change who I am and how I feel. I just want to get through life being myself.

u I Am Not Spock

Even Leonard Nimoy publically announced that he was not Mr. Spock, but rather himself. Although the book I Am Not Spock was criticized by some fans because of the perception that Nimoy was rejecting the character Spock, he maintained that he was only clarifying the difference between himself and Spock, whom he was known for in the Star Trek television series. I think Leonard Nimoy best expressed his sentiments in a poem:

I may not be I may not be the fastest I may not be the tallest Or the strongest I may not be the best Or the brightest But one thing I can do better Than anyone else… That is To be me

I’m sure I can do a terrific job of being me – being myself. That’s really all I can ask of myself. I may not be the fastest or the brightest, but I can be the best me and proud of it.

It was the popular comedy writer and producer Larry David in an interview with the talk show host Charlie Rose who said, “You are who you are from the time you’re born. And I don’t think that changes. It never did for me.” Sometimes I wonder why we just can’t accept who we are and try to become the best version of ourselves. A teacher trying to build the confidence of his students said, “Walk with who you are and move forward because lurking inside you is another you – a better you, a you that you and everyone else is going to love.” His words would have made a good poster.

The truth is, we rarely understand enough about the person inside us to get started. We all have various talents and capabilities, while we contend with our weaknesses. We try to do the best we can with what we got, and it’s only a matter of finding something we’re cut out for in this life of ours. Some of us are more capable and motivated to make changes that enrich our lives and offer a better future. Others just have so much clutter in their lives that they don’t know how to unclutter it. They become overwhelmed with life’s realities as their problems metastasize into hopelessness.

Many organizations find themselves in the same predicament. Their management is incapable of getting rid of the clutter so that they can start seeing things clearly again. Sometimes, it’s the managers who create clutter through their own incompetence and lack of process. Everyone would be much happier if they found themselves another job while more competent individuals were hired to turn things around. On that note, for those interested in architecting our lives, we have to understand both our capabilities and what we want in life. We’re here to become competent managers and manage our lives.

In Chapter 1, we learned that an organization has five capabilities, namely PROCESS, WORK ACTIVITIES, PEOPLE, SYSTEMS, and DATA. This is worth remembering for your next job interview or when the time comes to break the ice at a corporate Christmas party. All these capabilities make up an organization while their interrelationships influence organizational efficiency and effectiveness. Management is continuously asking questions: How do we streamline and support

our business processes, how do we get people to work as a team and how do we optimize their output, how do computer systems support their work activities, what data is required to make decisions?

Successful organizations carefully consider the five capabilities as they position themselves to move forward. Once an organization gets a handle on their capabilities, they are empowered to make decisions regarding their future. The maturity of an organization’s capabilities determines which capabilities to leverage and which ones to evolve as it strives to reach its future state. As individuals, we also leverage our capabilities as we strive for a better future.

u Leveraging Your Capabilities

We can only wish for superhuman capabilities whether they are exquisite inter-personal skills, herculean physical abilities, in-depth knowledge about a subject matter, or some other form of extraordinary human talent. We all have capabilities or competencies that allow us to do different things in life. Some of us are great at selling, talking, or writing. A few are very athletic and less inclined to talk and write. Others pursue professional careers like lawyers, doctors, and even enterprise architects. Then there are guys who just make things happen. Take my neighbor for example. He loves Corvettes and does a good business out of his garage customizing them for top dollar. Thomas Edison once said, “If we all did the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves.” How many of us read a book, take a course, or get some experience to improve our capabilities as we embark on our life mission? The better we are, the more we can do and make things happen.

It was the English actor Hugh Grant as the washed-up screenwriter turned college instructor in the romantic comedy The Rewrite who is cornered by an inquisitive female student when he admits, “The most idiotic thing that anyone has ever said is, ‘That if you just put your mind to it and believe in yourself, there’s nothing you can’t accomplish.’” Apparently, the literature professor didn’t believe that “writing can be taught” and was adamant about the fact that “you can’t teach talent.” The outspoken student takes exception and argues, “I think most people have talent, they just haven’t been exposed to the right teachers.” His rebuttal was “You can get me the best music teacher in the world and I still wouldn’t be able to write songs like Paul McCartney.” Touché! I must say that the good professor made a valid point.

Pretentious and self-centered screenwriters are not alone. George would be the first to agree that this screenwriter’s proverb about putting your mind to something is indeed a misguided notion. Although this resonates well with most of us, there are limits to what we can do. George admits that although he can aspire to be an opera singer and work incredibly hard, he’ll never get there because he lacks natural talent. He will also point out that self-help books are about fixing our weaknesses rather than building on our strengths. He suggests a more practical maxim: “You cannot be anything you want to be, but you can be a lot more of who you already are.”

Is George right? Most definitely, when it comes to George. The George I know is no Pavarotti, but he does possess remarkable acumen in business matters. He has graciously come to terms with his capabilities and limitations. An unknown cinematic character best portrayed George’s sentiments when he said, “Another part of being a man, no matter how painful it might be, is accepting your own limitations.” George’s philosophy is simple: “Know your limit, play within it.”

George just may have to accept his fate as a management consultant. Besides, he’s made a name for himself helping companies set realistic goals and gain a competitive advantage on the business stage. This definitely didn’t happen on its own and George had to push the limits to get

such expertise and notoriety. At the same time, he was objective about where his talents and capabilities lie. And, objectivity comes from being honest with yourself. If you can do something and you’re good at it, that’s what you do. In other words, do something that has a high probability of being successful.

u Pushing Your Limits with Objectivity

We all have limits but we’re not always sure how to get past them. Sometimes we’re not even sure what our limits are or where they lie. Let’s say you need to reach some place urgently but it’s far from your house. This could be a problem if you don’t own a vehicle or can’t afford a cab – or you’re just too cheap to pay for one. Your goal is to reach your destination but you don’t have the wheels or the means. How do we objectively overcome our limitations when we desperately want something? If I didn’t have the wheels or the means, I could always ask a friend who has a car. And if I wanted to push my luck, I could hitchhike or bribe a neighbor with a bottle or a basket of flowers. Sometimes we have to push our limits to get to where we want to go. Do you know your limits? The answers can reveal themselves through doing, not thinking. This is where objectivity comes in. We can fool ourselves that we can do something, but until we actually try, we’re not sure whether we’re capable of achieving it. George believed he could be an opera singer, but until he tried to get work as one, he realized he didn’t have the talent or capabilities. His sense of objectivity told him to stick to what he knows best – consulting. Then it became a matter of pushing the limits of his management and consulting capabilities to get noticed and hired by companies. Sometimes, we have to push our limits to reach our goals.

We’re capable of so much more than we could ever imagine. We just have to find our thing or the passion that drives us to greatness. We all have the capabilities to be great at something. George became a much better management consultant than he ever could be an opera singer. He pushed the limits within the confines of his capabilities and objectivity, which just happened to include business, management, and consulting. We all have a calling in life, we just have to look hard until we find it.

This brings me to another question: Just like organizations, why can’t we set realistic goals and conceive a better future? There’s no reason that a corporate goal-setting discipline can’t be carried over to our personal lives. Many personal development experts and authors do a fine job of convincing us to establish personal goals and objectives as clearly and early as possible. They also tell us to make our goals big enough to make a difference. We need capable people with big hearts and creative minds to live a purposeful life and manifest all the wealth, resources, and support they need to make a difference in the world and inspire others to rise up.

u Making Your Goals Big

Earl Nightingale, a famous American radio speaker and author, had an equally famous quote: “People with goals succeed because they know where they’re going.” Maybe you should be asking yourself the question: What kind of goals will help me get to where I want to go? Small goals usually fall on deaf ears, but big goals do something to the mind. Big goals solicit commitment and get noticed. Someone once said that a big goal is simply a dream with a deadline. Once we get started, we’re kind of expected to keep going until we achieve our big goal. No one wants to be singled out for missing a big goal, especially when it comes to improving our lives. I’d say the bigger one’s goals, the higher one aims to get there. You only have one life, so set big goals and make it worthwhile.

Many of us never thought we had a reason to lend our lives to such formalities. We never thought that one day our lives would be bounded by goals. We always believed life would be a natural and automatic progression just as it had during our adolescence. And when we entertained goals, we’d be apprehensive to make them big on account of failing or not having the know-how to carry them out. High school was a turning point for most of us. This was a time we did our darnedest to figure out what we wanted to do. A few keeners even formulated goals far beyond graduation. We’ll just have to wait and find out what happened at the next reunion. There is a point in our lives when we realize that we can’t be kids forever, and the time eventually comes to enter the adult world.

We are persuaded to abandon our dreams for a more practical future while we pursue goals that don’t always align to our capabilities and motivations. And if we are unclear about what we want to achieve, we’re hardly going to be motivated. “Nothing helps motivate more than a clear and challenging target, and I’m pleased to say the efforts paid off handsomely” were the bragging rights of a world-class cyclist. No one expected him to go to France and beat the French at their own game. His capabilities and motivation led him to cross the finish line first, even when his parents were pushing college.

As we get older, we tend to grow cynical toward those around us. We sometimes fall victim to self-appointed stakeholders, including our parents, relatives, teachers, friends, and others who influence our careers and life choices. When we are young, these are the same people who tell us that we can do anything and become whatever we want. But as our youth begins to fade, they change their minds and inform us that we must be more realistic. They don’t want us to find our own answers, but would rather that we believe theirs. They tell us what to do and what’s good for us as we become objects of their nurturing tendencies and self-interests. Their voices eventually become our internal naysayers.

Denzel Washington, a retired CIA agent not fond of naysayers, befriends a young prostitute in the movie The Equalizer, and sympathizes with her predicament.

Prostitute: You and I know what I really am.

Retired CIA agent: I think you can be anything you wanna be.

Prostitute: Maybe in your world…doesn’t really happen that way in mine.

Retired CIA agent: Change your world.

Change your world – now that’s a perspective I never considered. At the end of the movie, the prostitute changes her name back, takes a job as a waitress, and pursues her dream of becoming a singer. The days of being abused and fulfilling the erotic fantasies of an old pervert were over. She had changed her world and was happy.

It’s time to start living our dreams again. In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.” Limitations and restrictions are imposed on us from the day we are born. It’s the same people who oppose us that strip us of our individuality and future. They ignore the fact that we’re unique beings with unique aspirations, capabilities, and a will to make our own dreams come true.

u Embracing Limitations as Possibilities

Flannery O’Connor, one of America’s greatest fiction writers, said, “Possibilities and limitations mean about the same thing.” This is an interesting notion considering that possibilities move us forward while limitations hold us back. O’Connor embraced sensitive contemporary issues such as racial integration as possibilities for award-winning short stories. It was another short story writer, Bronwen Wallace, who discussed the importance of seeing our limitations not as restrictions which we try to overcome, but as guides to the possibility of what we are and can be.

I’m sure that Elizabeth Arden had her fill of limitations and restrictions at the turn of the last century when women had no place in business. Whoever thought that the beauty business she started in 1910 would grow into a cosmetics empire? Arden recognized her own aspirations, capabilities, and will to make her dreams come true. “Our only limitations are those which we set up in our own minds, or permit others to establish for us.” She learned from an early age that limitations are self-imposed.

Someone is always trying to get an upper hand and impose limitations and restrictions on us. We’d be better off to build capabilities that allow us to break away from the limitations and restrictions established by others. These are the people who should be influencing us to be our best, not their best. They should be supporting us, not living through us. We need to surround ourselves with people who can help us sharpen and improve the capabilities we need to achieve the things that we desire in our lives.

I feel sorry for young people who are unaware of their obstacles and impervious to reason. How many times have I gone out for coffee and overheard a couple of young strangers, barely old enough to drink coffee, share their life goals and ambitions? It’s obvious that they were there to impress each other with ambitious but preposterous life choices. After a while, the conversation defies all reality and enters Alice’s Wonderland. If only I knew them well enough to enlighten them, but they’d disqualify me as an intruder and find a new cafe.

Who am I to judge strangers? I’m just an eavesdropper at a local coffeehouse. Nevertheless, I’m tempted to politely interject as a life architect and advise these young minds not to lose sight of their capabilities. I find it a heart-wrenching experience to witness restless youth indiscriminately pick goals out of a hat and pretend that they know what they want. If they don’t know what they want, anything will do; but really, anything won’t do. And if they know what they want, they don’t always know what it takes to get there. It’s human nature. Confusion about what we want can happen at any age, including mine.

u Which Road Should You Take?

It even happened to Alice in Wonderland when she came to a fork in the road and asked the Cheshire Cat which way she ought to go. “Well, that depends on where you want to get to,” replied the cat. When Alice had explained that it didn’t really matter, the cat told her that therefore it didn’t matter which way she went. I guess this means that if you don’t know where we’re going, any road will take us there. Once you figure out where you want to go, you can take the right road or pave it yourself.

I thought I knew which fork in the road to take when I had a dream to build a big, fancy ranchstyle house on a scenic acreage just outside the city limits. I had the perfect lot, an experienced architect, a trusted builder, and best of all, this grand architectural vision of a Frank Lloyd Wright

design. I could hardly wait to hang up all my fine art and military collectibles. In my mind, they were already hung up. I just had to get that castle out of my dreams and onto a foundation.

It wasn’t long before I realized that I had started down the wrong road. What changed my mind? Oh, boy! Where do I start? For starters, my kids didn’t want to leave the old neighborhood. My wife felt it was too far from family, friends and shopping. Reality eventually kicked in and I realized building was an inconvenient and expensive proposition for what I was getting. My dream was a selfish one and I had forgotten my family was in it. My kids wanted to be close to their friends without making an appointment every time they wanted to do something, while I was fascinated with country living without ever trying it.

It turned out to be a timely lesson for a guy who was about to lose his sense of reality. I learned that a house is not a man’s castle but a family’s home. I decided to consider my family’s needs ahead of my personal desires. Perhaps, in retrospect, I had just about gone down the wrong country road, and one where I was not quite ready to build a country house. The change of heart also suited my immediate capabilities, especially in the finance department.

One day, I just may build that house in the country when we’re all ready to share the same dream and country lifestyle. My kids will be driving by that time and distance will have less bearing. Besides, university and other amenities will be at their doorstep when the time comes for more knowledge. Although it’s on my future Life Blueprint, it will have to wait a little longer. There’s a time and place for everything. For now, we have a comfortable and warm house that we all call home.

Sometimes, we just don’t know what we don’t know. Some of us know that we don’t know what we don’t know. Either way, we don’t know. A question most of us ask is, “How does a man come to know the unknowable?” This is the question that plagued Herman Melville when he wrote about a whaling voyage, ultimately taking the cursed whaler to Moby Dick. Where knowledge ended, speculation began, and only the survivors would come back knowing the unknowable.

Socrates may have been the wisest of men for he acknowledged the limits of his own knowledge. “I do not pretend to know what I don’t know.” He believed that the only evil is ignorance. But we can change all that by being more perceptive and living our life consciously through knowledge and awareness. The practice of Life Architecture can help us change. We can start by understanding our existing situation and clearly stating our life goals. Our capabilities and desires will have a lot to do with the goals that we aim to accomplish.

u Is There a Starting Point?

A man trying to find himself once said, “I don’t know anything anymore” to which his friend says, “But that’s a great starting point, my friend.” Ambitious people and those with a mission believe that the starting point is simply to start. Someone once asked a recovering gambler who was starting a new life how he did it, and he responded, “You start by starting.” People will tell you that it’s not that simple just to get you to give up. But it is that simple. “Just do the thing they tell you that you can’t, then it’s done.” All you have to do is press the start button. Every gadget has one, even cars nowadays. I wish kids had a start button. That way we wouldn’t have to get on their case to start their homework early. Unfortunately, some kids don’t even do homework unless parental intervention gets in the way. A start button just may prove to be defective for some kids allergic to homework. A doer once said, “There is no starting or stopping, only doing.” Regardless, it’s not about starting or where you start, it’s how far you go. I once read an enlightening quote: “No one can go back and make a brand new start, however anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.”

The problem is that we don’t always have the motivation or prescribed goals in life to start or go ahead and do something. And if we do have goals, they don’t necessarily represent what we truly want but rather what we think we want. Once we do get started, we figure our desires, goals, and capabilities will miraculously become evident.

It was God in the movie Bruce Almighty who counsels Bruce, “People want me to do everything for them, what they don’t realize is they have the power. You want to see a miracle, son, be the miracle.” Rather than rely on miracles, we have the power to craft our future. All we need are a few tools like a current Life Blueprint to assess our life as we live it today. We’ll also need a blueprint to help us paint a picture of our desired future, namely a future Life Blueprint. Seeing your life in front of you will make you feel like you’ve witnessed a miracle.

u Littlewood’s Law of Miracles

Littlewood’s law of miracles states that an individual can expect a miracle, or a miraculous event, to happen at the rate of about one per month. This is rather an ambitious and unproven statistic. I’d be happy with one miracle in my lifetime, let alone every month. But again, I’m not a famous mathematician from Cambridge. Someone once said that a miracle is a change in perception from fear to love. When our view of the world changes, our behavior changes. It is up to us to make our own miracles. I believe the miracle of life is knowing what we want and then making an effort to get it. Every day can be the start of a new life when we know what we want, as long as we’re willing to make an effort.

I remember asking my daughter’s orthodontist, “How on earth will braces straighten out her teeth?” I was particularly referring to that one tooth partially hidden behind another. I was skeptical that an orthodontist could conjure such a miracle. He replied, “You’ll be surprised,” and assured me that the braces would guide her teeth to move into proper alignment with her bite once he removed that backseat tooth to create space for the others. He even showed us “before” and “after” computer-generated images. These represented the current and future blueprints of my daughter’s teeth. I must say that I was a little skeptical of the power he had to straighten crooked teeth.

There was something surreal about seeing these images side by side. This allowed me to make a connection between now and the future, and the fact that I was about to pay seven grand for this transition. The braces were the navigational roadmap that was going to guide my daughter’s teeth into their proper place. The goal, of course, was to have beautiful straight teeth. Goals become great motivators when we define the right ones. What young woman doesn’t want a beautiful smile? Besides, a smile and an early morning coffee are a great way to start the day.

Life is truly a personal journey and different for each of us. Many of us get lost in a labyrinth of perplexities, which is typically characteristic of life. I look at life as being an aberration. It has no right, normal, or usual course. However, it does have a purpose, duration, and requires some sort of direction. I wish it were as easy as an orthodontist installing braces to guide us through life.

u The Nucleus of a Better Life

Life has an anatomy and genetic composition of its own, similar to all the cells that make up our body. Each cell has a nucleus which controls it. Our Life Blueprint and the capabilities we possess form the nucleus that controls and directs our life as we attempt to carve out a better future. What capabilities and levels of maturity do we need to attain to reach our future? That

depends on our goals. Our Life Roadmap is a guiding force that leverages our existing capabilities as we develop the appropriate capabilities required to achieve the future defined in our future Life Blueprint.

When I hear the word “nucleus,” I recall the first time that I came across the term in a scientific context during Mr. Fode’s introductory biology class in high school where we studied single-celled organisms. I specifically remember the microscopic capabilities of the amoeba and paramecium. These were simple living organisms with the nucleus at the heart of their functional existence. The nucleus is the control center of the cell and controls everything that goes on in it much like a brain.

Human beings with a brain, heart, lungs, and nervous system are much more complex than amoebas. That lesson was part of Mr. Knebel’s advanced biology class. Our human physiology is supported by a large brain relative to body size making us capable of abstract reasoning, problem solving, language, self-analysis, and social learning. We have a higher level of intelligence, not to mention a much longer life span, than most organisms on this planet. Thus, we require blueprints and roadmaps if we are to have purpose and fulfill our intellectual and emotional needs.

u Greg the Guinea Pig

Greg will show us the way as he develops his own Life Blueprints and Life Roadmaps. Greg has volunteered to be the token guinea pig for training purposes. He is a real person with a social security number, rather than a fictitious character looking to join life on Mars. We will meet Greg soon enough and learn from the joys and tribulations of his personal life journey. He’s determined to pick up the pieces of his life puzzle after some setbacks, and put them together in the best possible configuration to create a Life Architecture for himself. I’m sure he’ll find some missing pieces, make new ones, and reshape existing ones to make them fit just right.

Before Greg embarks on his Life Architecture journey, he will seize the moment and assess his current life. He will develop a current Life Blueprint to determine where he is and why. For the first time, Greg will ask himself, “Where do I want to go?” Where do I need to go?” “Why do I want to go there?” I’d hate to see him swim out so far that he can’t swim back. This will lead to a premeditated discovery of a desired future, which he will chart out in a future Life Blueprint. And if everything goes well, he’ll miraculously find himself in a position to develop a Life Roadmap to take him from his present life to his planned destination.

As we take the disciplined road of Life Architecture, we will learn to recognize the quality and meaning of our life while we still influence the lives of others. If anyone or any group has influenced lives in these modern times, it has been technology innovators like Apple Computers that introduced us to their iProducts. Apple has reinvented the world that we live in. I’m sure there was a future blueprint hidden in Steve Jobs’ desk next to his iPad.

The individuals responsible for innovating and revolutionizing mankind had to start somewhere, most logically with a current Life Blueprint. If Steve Jobs had never taken up calligraphy and applied it to personal computers, our world today would probably look very different. In essence, we are empowered to do what only our imaginations could once do. People like Jobs allowed us to put our imaginations onto an electronic screen and changed our lives forever. This reminds me of Pablo Picasso’s words: “Everything you can imagine is real.” Although very different artists, their imaginations became influential realities during their eras.

I’m sure Steve Jobs was in good company with all the talent and bright minds that had joined the technology revolution and given birth to the personal computer era. It was Henry Ford, a revolutionary in the days of horse and carriage, who said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Instead, he gave them an automobile. The affordable automobile was truly a radical change for the times, not to mention a lot faster.

u Making Radical Change

Life Architecture is a radical change. It is intended to help us apply some of the same methods and strategies that we use to turn failing companies into great ones. Greg is motivated to change his life, radically. Greg, as a change manager of his own life, will make radical change by taking advantage of Life Architecture and the discipline it has to offer. Life Architecture is only limited by our imaginations and poor attention spans. I once heard that small imaginations yield small results – and poor Life Architectures, I might add. The time has come to make radical change.

I remember senior managers, motionless and speechless in their seats, participating in a planning session as I helped them understand what was broken, where priorities lie, and how we were going to fix things. I had to ask a lot of questions to get some insight into their dire situation. I felt that I had to resort to some form of trickery by repeating and disguising questions until I got the answers I needed from an inattentive audience. I was hoping to get them to trust and like me, too.

Over time, I mastered the skill to ask the right questions and diagnose the pain points before prematurely setting out on the road to recovery, or better yet, the road to achieving great things. Sometimes we use radical and unconventional methods to fix problems and enable a better future. It was Albert Einstein who said, “Problems cannot be resolved at the same level of awareness that created them.” My hope is that Life Architecture brings a higher level of awareness.

I suspect Einstein would have agreed with President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s philosophy of trying something different until it works. “It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.” If a method or approach fails, we don’t keep doing the same thing. We need to develop a new awareness and adopt credible methods as we pursue the resolution of our problems and the rebuilding of our lives. This requires the same rigor used to methodically support organizations as they assess the problems, opportunities, and gaps that have held them back from meeting corporate goals and objectives.

We now have a Life Architecture methodology to guide us personally as we build a Life Architecture to realize our future. As we architect our lives, we continually seek the experience and knowledge to make life better and more meaningful. It was a Danish interior designer who said, “Experience and knowledge help, but the difference lies in how you use it. Good common sense and a passion for your craft will take you far.” It’s not so much the craft as the commitment.

u World Class Takes Passion and Commitment

Daniel Negreanu, a world-class poker player, is a prime example of passion and commitment. As a master of his craft, he advises, “I believe that whatever it is you choose to do in your life, being passionate is a prerequisite. Wanting it for fame and fortune will not get you there. Unless you have a passion for it and it’s something you truly love, the craft, then you’re very unlikely to be successful.” If you don’t have a passion for what you do, it’s just work and unfulfilling. Negreanu’s passion for his craft and commitment have definitely dealt him the right cards. He now makes a living trying to beat the odds.

Daniel Negreanu has learned that drive is at the core of his success. He also reminds us that having fun is a big part of it. We can’t be motivated forever without having fun at it. His success has also been attributed to being hospitable and understanding the importance of giving. “If your tombstone says ‘great poker player,’ that seems like an unfulfilled life. I’d rather be seen as someone who was inspiring to others. Someone who gave back, a good friend, a good brother, a good son.” It’s not all about poker but about having fun and doing something good for others with it. It just may be that Negreanu has a winning poker face.

You don’t have to be world class to have passion. Entrepreneurs are driven by passion. There’s no such thing as a lazy entrepreneur, or at least any that I know. An entrepreneur admitted that whether you like it or not, you have to be addicted to working extremely hard. There’s no such thing as a successful entrepreneur that doesn’t work hard. Mogens Smed, the captain of the office furniture industry, said that the biggest attribute of an entrepreneur is passion. Smed identified the 5 Ps for passion by articulating it in one sentence: “Passionate People Perpetuate Perfect Performance.”

My knowledge and experience have since culminated into a passion to help others apply this craft called Life Architecture with common sense, both in a corporate setting and in our personal lives. I’ve adapted to become more hospitable and learned the importance of giving. As aspiring life architects, we now have the means and the tools to develop a Life Architecture and to help those who want to rebuild their lives.

u The Beaver

“And eventually, what seemed strange becomes common. What seemed impossible becomes real,” said the beaver. The beaver is telling us that anything is possible once we set our minds to it. Beavers are exquisite architects and have legitimate qualities, naturally their sharp teeth and flat tails, to be masterful builders of dams, canals, and lodges. Some beavers have an architectural vision and a plan to get what they want.

“What’s The Beaver?” you ask. It’s a movie about one clever furry critter with impeccable insight and determination, which just happens to star my wife’s favorite actor – who other than Mel Gibson. What woman wouldn’t want Mel after seeing him as the charismatic advertising executive in the movie What Women Want. I would speculate that women want a knight in shining armor. The only problem is that we live in a world where knights don’t exist anymore. Mel is probably the next best thing. Anyhow, I’m glad Mel has finally aged so that middle-aged women can move on.

As for Mel’s interest in beavers, I’m not sure female admirers and Mad Max fans would fill the theaters. It was fate that I would watch this movie called the The Beaver one Friday night when it was too cold to venture outside. In hindsight, I’m glad that I gave in to romance and decided to watch the heart-throbbing Mel with my wife, although the beaver was supposed to be only a prop. The beaver turned out to be more than that and gave me the punch line I needed to complete this chapter. If it wasn’t for Mel, I don’t think that the movie title or synopsis would have been intriguing enough to take a chance on this flick.

I like the idea of making a reality of something that we think is impossible. As we forge ahead, this notion of Life Architecture will seem strange at first and then feel as common as riding a bicycle. I thank Mel Gibson and his beaver for this eye-opening discovery. Maybe we should take their cue

and get on with our lives, as long as we don’t allow some deranged beaver to take control of our future – the prize being a future that may now feel impossible.

Life Architecture is a new paradigm for self-discovery and the realization of our potential. I hope this doesn’t put psychologists, counsellors, mediums, and astrologers out of business. We hire these people in the hope of helping us define an auspicious future and cope with uncertainty. We seem to believe that others are qualified to fix our problems, or at least advise us. The famous American filmmaker Stanley Kubrick said, “If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered.” Our life is too important to live an illusion. I think that you will enjoy what I’m about to teach you. Are you ready to start architecting your life? Let’s get this show on the road, or rather your Life Architecture on a blueprint.

Chapter 3

Creating Your Life Blueprint

I remember attending a business technology forum on Enterprise Architecture a few years back. The guest speaker was considered an authority on the subject matter, and probably the only reason I left the office early that day. He could have talked about why the sky was blue for all I cared. I just wanted to see the number one guy in action after all the commotion and fanfare. I had no expectations, although I did have an ulterior motive that we’ll get to soon.

It was apparent that this expert had an ulterior motive of his own and was trying to break into the local marketplace. His angle was to sell thought leadership and work with high-level executives to develop Enterprise Architecture strategies for their companies. Those words “thought leadership” remind me of someone who tells you how to do something he doesn’t do himself. I remember thinking, “Oh, one of those semi-retired guys who has done a lot of thinking about his estranged career.” I’m sure with the consulting rates this fellow was charging, he could afford to be semi-retired and seemed to be an expert at that, too.

Deep inside, I considered that evening to be a personal challenge. I was curious as to how a world-renowned expert would conduct himself on stage and deliver an architecturally motivating presentation to his peers, or rather us local experts in town. I was more curious about him than his topic. It felt like my mind was oversaturated with questions, and this was my chance to confirm whether I had what it takes to achieve such celebrity. There comes a time in our lives when we have to test ourselves. The truth be told, I just wanted to get a sense of how I measured up to the best of the best. I was probably more judgemental than I was curious.

It was, in retrospect, a form of professional training and an opportunity to hone my skills. I was more than happy to pick up a few tips from a qualified international expert on a night off. You see, I was on a quest to find a better way of describing the value and benefits of Enterprise Architecture to senior management, and persuading them that they needed to take that road. Although our guest speaker was having too much fun getting laughs, he did leave time for a short presentation and more laughs at the end. It was gratifying to see there was hope in between the laughter.

The entire presentation was focused on one idea: If you want to persuade management that architecture is a means to solving a problem, you need to do it on one page using one diagram. I was pleasantly surprised, being a proponent of simplicity myself. I had used this “one diagram” concept more than a few times in my career to get some complicated messages across in simple terms. It was a bonus that the presenter and I had connected on a philosophical level as well, mainly that architecture delivers value and simplicity is the key. “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” were the words of a famous Renaissance architect by the name of Leonardo Da Vinci.

My challenge now is to present a new paradigm to you in a simple, concise, and clear manner just as I would to an executive who needs to understand what I am going to do for him before he engages my services. We will simplify without sacrificing the lesson. Albert Einstein also appreciated simplicity when he said, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” I believe Einstein would have made a good architect.

So, let’s cut to the chase. Even better yet, let’s get personal. What is Life Architecture in the context of your own life? After all, you’re the one who paid for the book.

u Personalizing Your Life Blueprint

We have to give our life context – a reason for living, a reason for existing, and a reason for moving forward. The purpose of a Life Architecture is to make sense of our lives. This includes processes we follow, actions we take, assumptions we make, outcomes we achieve, rules we live by, problems and challenges we tackle, and other life considerations awaiting our attention. We have to rationalize all these life attributes in order to live a life that makes sense to us and fulfills our needs and desires. We have one life, so why shouldn’t we live it to our fullest potential? Life Architecture empowers us to build a life worthy of living. But first, we will have to develop a personal Life Blueprint.

There is a standard format inherent in a Life Blueprint that we must customize for ourselves. It’s no different than a standard architecture blueprint used by a home builder. Of course, we’ll want to change interior materials and colors to suit our personal needs and desires. We may even want a fourth bedroom for guests rather than a bonus room as part of the second floor configuration. These extras also come with an extra cost. Fortunately, the builder should be able to take care of it without engaging an architect to redesign the entire floor.

If it’s a custom home that we’re looking for, we commission a qualified residential architect to create a fresh blueprint of a house for our distinct intents and purposes. Think of our existence and the time that we spend on this planet called Earth. We each live a distinct life that is unique to each of us. This makes it a custom life. It is custom tailored for each of us, and no one else gets the privilege to live the exact same life. In fact, we assume the role of a life architect, and architect our own custom life.

Whenever I meet with the management, I’m reminded that every organization is unique. My typical plan of attack is to develop a custom organizational blueprint for each organization that hires me. My intent is to help the organization overhaul itself in a positive direction, specifically by defining value-add business processes in its blueprint. Meanwhile, if management is on top of things, they should be attuned to the organization’s current state of affairs, and where it needs to get to in order to become proficient and competitive as a business entity.

These corporate guys act a little surprised when I meet their management team on the first day and inform them that we’re going to do a health check of their organization, or more specifically a business architecture. I explain this whole concept of an organizational blueprint and the fact that we’re going to do one for their organization. I then ask them for some markers before I take the show to the whiteboard. It doesn’t take long before I start drawing a picture of their current state to help them understand what is happening in the organization and why.

I’m well aware that my unsuspecting audience is waiting for a punch line, a good reason, or even an apology why we’re drawing pictures at all. I wish I had one. I just give them the goods and the picture does most of the talking. Actually, the picture is the punch line, no apology needed. I’m yet to receive a standing ovation following a blueprinting session. The best I can do is a smile and an executive nod to continue.

The organizational blueprint provides a simple illustration of the breakdown of business processes within an organization into lower-level, supporting, detailed processes. My corporate clients

have learned that this is called a process decomposition (also known as a functional decomposition), or decomp for short in consulting lingo. It is a decomposition because we break down or decompose an organization’s business processes into their lower level of constituent processes. An organization’s Sales function can be decomposed into several related processes as illustrated in the following diagram.

Example of Functional Decompostion

The six processes under “Manage Sales” are each a part of the “Manage Sales” process. All of these six processes are required to manage sales within an organization. If any one of these processes is missing, an organization cannot manage its sales cycle – or at least not very well.

The “Manage Sales” process is the parent process. As a parent, it has several child processes underneath it. The child processes represent the detailed processes that are all performed to complete the parent process above, namely “Manage Sales.” The child processes add up or equate to the parent process as illustrated in the following diagram.

The ABC’s of Process Decomposition

As we decompose a parent process into lower-level processes, it begins to resemble a tree with all its process branches. Each branch decomposes further into more detailed processes, which make up the leaves. Every process in the tree is part of a higher-level parent process, with the exception of the highest-level parent process which can be compared to a tree trunk as it digs its roots into the ground for nourishment and anchors the tree upright. The process called “Manage Sales” is the tree trunk with its six process branches as illustrated in the following diagram.

6

Branches

of Manage Sales

I have not yet taken the liberty to further decompose the process branches sprouting from the “Manage Sales” tree trunk into their lowest level processes, or the leaves that adorn each branch. This is the next and final level of process decomposition. The leaves represent the detailed work processes necessary to complete a process branch, each with a procedure or work instructions attached to it.

Let’s assume it’s late autumn and all the leaves have withered away for now. We’ll fill in the leaves once we have a solid tree trunk supporting sturdy process branches. This will be the topic of Chapter 7 when we decompose Greg’s life to the lowest level of process decomposition. A generic model of decomposed processes, also known as a process tree, is illustrated in the following diagram.

Model of a Process Tree

Why do we call it a process tree? It might have to do with the fact that the tree trunk decomposes into multiple branches and each branch decomposes into bountiful leaves. Each of the trunk, branches, and leaves constitutes a separate process level – identified as Process Level 1, 2 or 3. A single process decomposes into multiple related processes, which collectively make up a distinct process level.

As we move down the tree, more detailed processes are defined at the next level of process decomposition. Typically, a process level will have anywhere from three to seven related processes. Furthermore, it’s possible to have more than three process levels before we reach the lowest-level processes. I’m not here to make you a process expert, but a little process theory will go a long way. This will come in handy when we start decomposing our life processes just as organizations decompose business processes.

We still have some unfinished business. In the following diagram, we decompose the “Sell Product” process branch into its leaves, which represent the lowest-level processes in the “Manage Sales” process tree. In this case, we have decomposed to the lowest level of decomposition – the leaves or what we have labelled as Process Level 3.

Lowest Level of Decomposition

The process tree describes WHAT we do. In the example above, we describe what we do when we “Manage Sales.” The processes at the top of the tree are general in nature and evolve into progressively more specific processes as we move down the tree. The process “Sell Product,” a process branch, is more specific than the highest-level process named “Manage Sales.” “Sell Product” decomposes into very specific leaves – namely, “Create Sales Order,” “Qualify Customer,” and “Submit Order to Warehouse” – which are the lowest-level processes and cannot be decomposed any further. The leaves are as low as you can go without actually telling you HOW to do it.

u When Are We Done Decomposing?

Once we reach that point where we can no longer decompose a process into its lower-level processes, we’re done. If we try to decompose the lowest-level process further, we get into the HOWs or HOW we do that process. These are the work activities that take the form of procedures or work instructions. Procedures are usually attached to the leaves as instructions on how we need to perform these processes, and not depicted on the process tree.

If we attempt to decompose the lowest-level process “Create Sales Order” in the prior example, we are forced to describe HOW to create a sales order rather than identify WHAT else we do to create a sales order. In other words, there are no more underlying processes for creating sales orders. We are now at the lowest level of process where we’re obligated to perform a series of steps in a procedure to complete a sales order.

Employees must follow strict procedures to complete specific business processes at the bottom level of a process tree, such as “Create Sales Order.” These procedures represent the work activities that people must perform to do their work. Companies duly assign roles and responsibilities to individuals who work for them. Thus, we are held responsible and accountable for completing the lowest-level processes, especially when they come with formal instructions outlining HOW to do our work.

We may not always know when we have reached the lowest-level process. When are we done decomposing a process (WHAT we do) before we get into the procedures (HOW we do it)? The following diagram illustrates the distinguishing qualities of the lowest-level process. You’re welcome to skip the theory if you’re falling asleep. I apologize for all the theory but it’s fundamental to our Life Architecture journey. I promise, the pain is almost over and the fun stuff is about to begin.

How Do You Know It’s the Lowest Level Process?

This is a pictorial summary of the lowest level of process that is meaningful to a business or an individual. The lowest-level process is under a single authority (one person), has a single purpose, and is performed as a single unit with other lowest-level processes. They tend to be repetitive and discontinuous in nature, that is, they have a definable start and stop. All this makes for a good process as we follow it to the tee.

We’re all expected to carry out a good process consistently if we want to achieve consistent results, especially at work. It kind of reminds us of life, doesn’t it? I’m sure there are some repetitive processes in our lives that we’d like to abandon, while we perfect more stimulating and desired ones like the lowest-level processes that caught my eye on a wall behind the bartender at a pub: “Eat, Drink, Repeat.” I believe this combination of processes would have more detriment than benefit.

We all think that we know what a process is, but yet we don’t understand what makes a process a good process. The book The Devil In The Kitchen offers a few lessons about career and personal growth. The author, Marco Pierre White, who is considered the first-ever celebrity chef and youngest to be awarded three Michelin Stars, attributes much of his success to having a good process. White writes about what it took to achieve his own success and compares it to the preparation of a basic chicken sauce. In fact, White perfected a process to allow him to perfect a chicken sauce.

u How to Perfect a Process

A government policy official, and a fan of Marco Pierre White, perfected his own recipe for chicken sauce and shared a valuable lesson from the book: try-learn-refine-try-learn-refine. “It reminds me to always consider how I can make existing processes better, clearer, and faster while considering and trying new things.” It’s amazing what a basic chicken sauce can teach us about process. And whoever thought a celebrity chef could cook up career advice for the nation’s bureaucrats? So, if you want to perfect a process, just remember to try-learn-refine-trylearn-refine until it’s perfect. Now, if only celebrity chefs knew something about process trees, we could perfect the entire kitchen. But don’t worry, I got your back. This is one place an enterprise architect can out-cook a chef.

We’ve already established the fact that the process tree strictly focuses on WHAT is done, not HOW something is done. For now, if you take anything away with you, remember that this is the lowest level of process decomposition before we describe HOW a process is done. We’ve also learned that the HOWs are not shown on a process tree because they are no longer processes but rather the activities, procedures, or steps to complete a process. The process tree has proved to be an effective technique for collecting and grouping processes. Organizations have been doing it for a long time, or at least since they have taken an interest in their processes.

Once we have a process tree in front of us, we can start to identify what problems need to be fixed, what issues and concerns are gnawing at us, what opportunities are lurking, and what future benefits we want to realize. We’re not always aware of the reality around us. A talk show host once accused his guest of having a “false sense of reality” for believing her beauty would outlast her modeling career. Maybe a little Botox and a good plastic surgeon could prolong both. It all comes down to our goals and commitment.

Organizations seem to have mastered the fine art of goal setting. Many organizations have an inherent desire to become the best and have gone down the road of radical change. Their management team presents a set of goal-setting questions as part of a framework for planning: What

does it take to be number one, what is broken and how do we change the way we do business, how rad is radical for our organization, how do we optimize our performance? These seem to be radical questions, especially if we don’t know what we want. And trust me, there are more foundational questions that we need to ask before we can articulate our goals and achieve them.

The suave CEO of a biogenic corporation in the movie Self/less promises immortality to a dying old cancer-ridden real-estate magnate. Upon finding out that his consciousness wasn’t transferred to a new artificially-grown human body but rather the impure body of a young man with a past, the old man demands answers. The CEO counsels him, “You never asked the right questions…What do you want to do now to have all the answers?” However, even when we ask the right questions, we don’t always get the right answers. “You see, I’m the only one with the answers…You need me. I’m the only one standing between you and oblivion.” We don’t need arrogant CEOs, oblivious to our needs, setting our life direction. I don’t think anyone wants to get into a future life not knowing what they’re getting into. We need to stop relying on others and find our own answers.

There’s one question that nags me incessantly when I meet a management team that is about to dump their problems on me in order to save their bonuses. I can’t but help ask the question of all questions. It’s a consultant’s call of duty to understand his client’s performance and competitive disadvantages, and their true motivation to do something about them.

THE QUESTION OF ALL QUESTIONS

Do you want a better future?

I think this is a fair question and one that deserves an honest answer. It’s probably a good question to get out of the way before we go out on a limb. There’s nothing more fulfilling than knowing the answers to life’s problems – and our future. I hope that we can answer not only this question but others as well. I believe our future will be the judge on how well we answer them.

I’m sure that there are those who are fine with things the way they are, and there is no point asking more questions. Unfortunately, many of us haven’t thought about it or don’t know that an alternative future awaits us. Do you want a better future? If the answer is yes, I have a better question.

THE BETTER QUESTION

What does your better future look like?

I wish the answer were as simple as the question might seem. But the truth is, the question isn’t simple either, and I share your frustrations. The mysterious mechanic known as Socrates in the movie Peaceful Warrior advises a young restless gymnast, “You need to start asking better questions.” I suspect Socrates stuck around because the young man wanted answers to questions he had not even thought of yet. Socrates kindly pointed out that there’s a difference between him and the young man. “You practice gymnastics, I practice everything.” I think Socrates was trying to tell him that the future holds more than a flawless performance on the high bar.

It may be premature to want a better future if we don’t know what our future looks like. It’s like putting the cart before the horse. Thus, this can be an excruciating question for some people. We may feel that we don’t have the cognitive depth or experience to properly answer such a subjective question. When we imagine the future, we may see only the present. We sometimes lack the vision and confidence to see beyond our lives today. This may explain why the real Socrates was quite blunt about this whole premise of life: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

u The Real Socrates

It was the Socrates from Athens born in 469 BC who spent a lifetime searching for moral virtues and life’s answers. His timing couldn’t have been better as this was a time in human history when rationality overrode superstition and belief. Scholars and philosophers were free to explain the world in terms of natural forces. This was a quantum shift where rational debate and systematic thought were an accepted norm, while tradition, myth, and religious hierarchies took a backseat. However, only a few dared to question religious convention. After all, the destiny of all Greeks was still believed to be in the hands of the gods. Socrates starting argument was simple: Everyone yearns for a full and flourishing life. However, this wasn’t easily achieved in the transitory pleasures and distractions of the material world. Socrates believed that the only good was knowledge and nobody could buy knowledge. This explains why the rich and affluent weren’t huge fans of Socratic teachings. As any good philosopher would conclude, wisdom doesn’t come with a price tag or from listening to long speeches, but rather through passionate dialogue. Socrates was of the mindset that we can only realize our human potential when we nurture the most precious, the most permanent part of our being – our souls. In other words, when we do right, we protect our soul; when we do wrong, we harm it. The things we do wrong, they haunt us.

Knowing right from wrong was fundamental to every aspect of life in Socrates’ view of the world. When we do wrong to somebody else, we are damaging our own soul, and thereby taking away our chance of a virtuous, and hence a happy and flourishing life. We can take away someone’s possessions, we can damage their body, we can kill them, but we can’t harm their soul. The soul is an incarnation in the body, which is freed when we die.

Socrates postulated that our duty was to guide our soul toward the good. This would require all five moral virtues sacred to the ancient Greeks: justice, temperance, courage, piety, and wisdom. Socrates thought that all the virtues were interlinked and couldn’t be separated. Together, they formulated something he called knowledge of the human good. For Socrates, virtue was knowledge – knowledge of the human good – which enabled us to make the right decisions in our daily lives. Confucius said, “The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort.” Only when we are ready to empower ourselves to make virtuous decisions and take responsibility for our actions, will we attain the knowledge of the human good.

Since Socrates is no longer around to guide us, we’ll get the ball rolling together. But first I’d like us all to be honest with ourselves and answer the question of all questions, “Do you want a better future?” We have to answer that one for ourselves on gut feel or instinct. After we have committed ourselves to a better future, we’ll be in a much better frame of mind to answer the question: What does your better future look like? This is our vision of a desired life.

We can all realize a better life, maybe even a great one, but we have to figure out what we want – a better job, a meaningful relationship, a family, or to explore the world. You may find that you would just be happy ending a dead-end relationship or a stale daily routine. Some of us think about finding a hidden talent or leaving a legacy. And then there are those who believe that money will resolve all their problems and afford them eternal happiness. I’m sure there’s a rich guy somewhere who would trade it all for the simple things in life like playing with his children without having to look at the clock and sleeping in on a rainy day. It just may be that Henry David Thoreau was right: “We don’t own things; things own us.”

Maybe the secret to a successful life is to achieve what money can’t buy. The risk in seeking success is forgetting to enjoy the small things. Someone once told me it is he who knows, not he who

has, that enjoys life. There’s a certain romanticism to sitting around a campfire with friends and reminiscing about our childhood, which overshadows our financial well-being. However, the nice thing about being rich is having the option of where and how you want to spend your money. It was a rich guy who enlightened us, “If money doesn’t make you happy, you don’t know where to shop.”

u What is Money?

Money is nothing more than a means to an end, and we feel shortchanged when we don’t get fulfillment at the end. Money separates the haves and the have-nots. It’s underlying purpose is to help us achieve our goals faster, and enable us to do whatever we want without imposing financial restrictions. It allows us to get away from the people who make demands and take us down. Besides, having a little money in our wallets buys us the freedom to pursue health, love, and happiness on our own terms. The value lies in “being” and not in “having.” We sometimes get the two confused. Money is at its essence that measure of a man’s choices. For me, money is having the freedom to be in control of my life. That would mean I own my freedom. “Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of freedom?” I’m asked. Once I buy my freedom, it doesn’t really matter because I’m free to do whatever I want. Most importantly, I don’t need an alarm clock to start my day. I wish I were one of those guys who doesn’t know what day of the week it is.

We have this fascination with people in the public eye, especially when they make money and headlines. We glorify their public personas without getting to know who they really are. We’re not connected to any insecurities and negative beliefs they may have about themselves. All we see is the fame and glory. John Cougar Mellencamp gives an explanation that elucidates public behavior: “I can assure you that whatever you think your favorite rock star, movie star is like, they’re not. Because you only ever see the shadow self of that person. You only see the image that they leave behind, that they purposely are leaving behind, for you to follow and find. You’re never seeing the real person.” We all live a “flesh and blood” existence, regardless of who we are.

We appreciate John Cougar Mellencamp for his talents as a heartland rock artist who writes plainspoken songs that we can all relate to, whether it’s his shadow self or not. Plainspoken? Who are we kidding? We all dream of the full package – health, wealth, love, and happiness – in all its glory. Some of us welcome being called millionaires, or better yet, billionaires. More wealth is better than less. Even a beggar will take as much as you give him. He doesn’t have a care in the world, except for where he’s going to get his next meal. With a lot of money, he could eat in the best restaurants every day of his life. It was the artist Pablo Picasso who framed it best: “I’d like to live like a poor man – only with lots of money.”

A poor man once found solace in humor and the fact that he was in love. “I may not be rich in money, but I’m rich in love.” I wish there was a way to have the right quantity of both to be rich in life. I think of the old chemistry lab back in high school where we fumbled to mix the right chemicals in the right quantities at the right temperature to react and produce a desired compound. With a vision and a little bit of effort, we just may get the right mix of love, money, and whatever else makes us happy.

People, families, groups, and even caravans embark on journeys with a vision in mind. Organizations also have a vision before they set out on their corporate journeys. I earn a living helping organizations formulate that vision, whether they’re on their way to fame and fortune, or just out to weather the next perfect storm to survive in a competitive marketplace. However, before we set sail across uncharted waters, we need to create a vivid vision of the future.

u Creating a Vivid Vision

A vision is an imaginative conception or, as it relates to Life Architecture, a preconceived anticipation of our future. When we have a vivid vision, we form a distinct and perceptible mental image of what we want. In fact, we form a striking mental image of our future. The more vivid the image in our mind, the better we understand what we want and where we want to get to. The vividness of that vision is what excites and motivates us to get there. Our vivid vision becomes a reality when we have the courage to make it happen. Thus, we must build up the courage to realize our vision – one that has precise meaning for us. This reminds me of an appropriate aphorism: “You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.” A vivid vision pinpoints the exact place we want to get to, while courage is the means to get there.

Vision conveys confidence. Confidence is a belief in ourselves to make our vision a reality. It was the entertainment mogul Walt Disney who said, “Why is it that people who run things always lack vision?” It was Disney’s vision and confidence in himself to bring his caricatures and dreams to life that allowed him to establish the world’s largest entertainment corporation.

We need a “vision to imagine another sort of world” and the “courage to make this vision happen, no matter what.” These are the encouraging words from a Canadian poet and short story writer, Bronwen Wallace, and testify to her relentless social activism involving women’s rights, civil rights, and social policy. Courage is “necessary in order that that imagined world may become possible and whole – for all of us.” Our future is counting on it!

u A Vision Statement

Organizations are legally obligated to publish annual reports for their shareholders. These reports customarily describe management’s vision in support of the organization’s financial performance and activities throughout the preceding year. A vision statement is also shared with employees to articulate a future direction. This vision guides people to work together as a team and realize common future goals. And don’t forget, only when there is a vision can we define the future processes to get there.

On a personal level, our vision is influenced by our individual passions. When we have passion, we are more likely to unleash our imagination and dare to dream. It’s this dream that makes it easy to craft a vision statement of profound significance. However, a vision statement isn’t enough to get us there. It only sets the stage for all the planning we have to do to achieve that vision.

People like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs envisioned a personal computer in every home and business when they first started Microsoft and Apple, respectively. I’m not sure if they had any idea how to get there, or what steps were required to make it all happen. The delivery came later by engaging the right people and resources to realize their vision. Their dream to empower people with their own computers was the birth of the personal computer.

A corporate vision defines a company’s future. “Saving people money to help them live better” was another vision that Sam Walton had when he opened the doors to the first Walmart store half a century ago. Today, his vision stands so that people can buy almost anything at affordable prices to improve their lives. It’s near impossible to go into a city in North America and not drive by a Walmart. Even rich people shop there out of curiosity, not to mention value and convenience.

A compelling vision can change our world, or at least the footwear we buy. Nike came up with a crushing vision in the 1960’s when it decided to “Crush Adidas.” That’s rather a bold statement for an upcoming athletic footwear manufacturer wanting to replace the legendary three stripes with the stylish Nike Swoosh. Today, Nike is on a more aggressive mission – “To be the number one athletic company in the world.” Nike continues to promote its stylish logo as the new-wave athletic gear while downplaying the triple stripe as the boring old-fashioned trademark that our parents bragged about. Now that Adidas is making a comeback, Nike may have to “Crush Adidas Again.” The comeback can be greater than the setback.

Companies formulate a vision to articulate their future direction. The purpose is to clearly communicate their intentions and solicit acceptance from those who are accountable, especially the Board of Directors. A senior manager interrupted his leadership team by questioning their motives. “I think you lost sight of what the prize is. Why are we doing this?” Without a vision, his leadership team couldn’t be expected to know where it was going or the changes required to get there.

A vision drives the business processes necessary to accomplish future goals and objectives. A common vision positions an organization to define its future state blueprint and determine how its existing processes need to change. Management is paid to foresee their future and develop a vision to get from Point A to Point B. At the same time, they recognize the problems, gaps and issues that plague its organization today. We, both as individuals and as a team, soon become aware of our ability to resolve problems and remove obstacles, as well as leverage opportunities. We develop a sense of maturity in terms of what we can and cannot do.

u Removing Obstacles Like a Stoic

Stoicism is an ancient Greek philosophy from 300 B.C., which teaches the development of selfcontrol and fortitude as a means of overcoming destructive emotions. The intent is to enable an individual to develop clear judgment, inner calm, and freedom from suffering. Stoicism flourished during the Roman Empire where it was applied to everyday Roman life, focused on ethics and how to live one’s life. It was embraced by Roman emperors, most prominent being Marcus Aurelius, who lived by his words: “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” In other words, the obstacle is the way and requires perception, action, and the will to remove it. I have learned that there’s no one person more powerful than the other; the one with the most will is the strongest. Stoicism is premised on the idea that how we respond to obstacles is what defines us. Maybe there’s some truth to the argument that obstacles don’t inhibit success, but rather create success. As Stoics, we’ll be better prepared to remove obstacles and get past the negatives, while we focus on the positive outcomes we desire. This is my kind of philosophy, and one that clearly aligns with Life Architecture. Let’s get one thing straight, Stoicism is not just a set of beliefs but rather a way of life, based on a vision, experience, and practice.

We talked about an organization’s five capabilities – PROCESS, WORK ACTIVITIES, PEOPLE, SYSTEMS, and DATA – and the fact that an organization’s ability to compete effectively and operate efficiently depends on these capabilities. It would seem impractical to assess people against these capabilities. However, I’m sure that some subset of these capabilities has relevance to a person’s life, but is it the proper way to classify or assess an individual? Just for fun, let’s see how people stand up to organizational capabilities.

Are People Like Organizations?

Do people have PROCESSES?

Yes. People have life processes, whereas companies have business processes. While a business process is to “Manage Sales”, a life process is to “Raise Family”.

Do people have WORK ACTIVITIES?

Yes. People do work activities, as well as activities around the house. A work activity is nothing more than a low level task or chore like doing laundry. My wife has assigned me the task of taking the garbage out every Wednesday night.

Do people have other PEOPLE?

Yes. People can be on their own as individuals, or part of a group or organizational entity. For example, a person can be one half of a married couple. A person can belong to a group of friends, fraternity, or sports team. A person can also be a part of an organizational entity such as a company’s sales department or an incorporated biker syndicate know as the Hells Angels.

Do people have SYSTEMS?

Yes. Systems are tools people use, just like hammers. We all need tools to do our work. We create spreadsheets and documents using Microsoft Office, search the web for information, and file tax returns via accounting packages updated annually on our computers. Many socialites habitually recline in their favorite Facebook and Skype chairs. Don’t forget systems we all rely on such as stoves, fridges, washing machines, dryers, and electric toothbrushes to enrich our lives.

Do people have DATA?

Yes. People would starve without data. Data can be found in user manuals at the office, magazines in the washroom, mail piled up on the kitchen countertop, and billboards promoting luxurious lifestyles and mayoral candidates. Everywhere we turn, there is data to feed us. Most of the data we get these days comes from the internet. This is especially handy if we’re comparing products or tying to find the best prices for something. If we’re in the market to buy an SUV, the internet rates the Acura MDX as “hottest wheels on the road.” Unfortunately, my wife doesn’t pay much attention to data on price tags.

This is not the litmus test that I had in mind for assessing the impurities and balance of our lives. However, there is one capability that is important to people as it is to organizations – a process. A process is a process, right? Processes dictate how we work and how we live. We effectuate processes to maintain some sort of rhyme and reason as we go through life. Like organizations, we also have goals and objectives to guide us to our desired future.

If we can do a process tree for an organization, is it not possible to do a process tree for an individual? This seems to be a logical extension of organizational process theory. If people can define an organization’s processes, it only makes sense that they can define their life processes. I once read, “Organizational ability is an asset in life. For a great enterprise, it is a necessity.” It is also a necessity for all those who want to make a great life for themselves, but requires sound life processes.

We are all familiar with family trees, especially if we have families. We use family trees to identify all the people and relationships that make up our ancestry. The process tree is a similar concept, but focuses on processes rather than people. We use a Life Process Tree to identify all the processes that make up our lives and their relationships. It represents all the things that we do in our lives and includes all the people involved.

u The Tree of Life

The Life Process Tree is in fact the “Tree of Life” and represents the various life processes that make up our lives. Similar to the process tree used to decompose or break down an organization’s business processes into their related work activities, the Life Process Tree decomposes our life processes into all the routine, sporadic, and other activities that we perform in all facets of our lives.

Our friend Greg will show us how it’s done as he creates a Life Process Tree for himself. Actually, Greg is going to create a Life Process Tree that represents all the life processes he’s compelled to make part of his life. However, I don’t want Greg or anyone else jumping in with both feet just yet and without a life jacket. This is serious business. After all, we’re talking about our lives here.

This chapter is about “Creating Your Life Blueprint.” We have to step back and reflect, and think about ourselves for a change. We don’t get a chance to do that very often with our frantic schedules and commitments. Our mandate is to figure out if we’re doing the things that give our lives value and happiness, and if we’re doing the things that are “right” for us as distinct individuals. There is nothing quite as meaningless in life as trying to be someone else.

As we get acquainted with our current life processes and understand why we do certain things, we start to see all the possibilities around us. We become much better equipped to define our future processes, or more specifically, the life processes dictating what we want to do and how we want to live. It’s like waking up from a bad dream and realizing there’s a yellow brick road.

u Business 101

I’ve been throwing a lot of new ideas at you – blueprint, process tree, decomposition, roadmap, vision, and so on. It feels like we’ve taken a Business 101 course. A lot of these ideas aren’t all that new. We just borrowed them from the business world and adapted them for our purposes. We also introduced a few new ideas where business and organizational practices don’t quite meet our personal life requirements. We’ll leverage these concepts and ground them in our thinking as we architect our lives.

I understand that all this sounds rather idealistic. Most new paradigms do. I’m sure it will feel that way until you begin the process of architecting your life and chasing your dreams. I wouldn’t expect you to take anything at face value. All new paradigms seem to have their critics. Maybe a paradigm shift will prove these naysayers wrong. We will soon see how this paradigm of selfdiscovery helps us identify and fulfill our needs.

Back in the 1940s and 50s, the American psychologist Abraham Maslow developed the Hierarchy of Needs model, which remains valid today for understanding human motivation. It was a university professor who said that a good theory doesn’t change its mind. It doesn’t apply only to some; it stands the test of time. And so did Maslow’s when he theorized that each one of us is motivated by individual needs.

Our most basic needs, food and shelter, are inborn and evolved over tens of thousands of years. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs illustrates how these needs motivate us in a prescribed order of priority. Maslow argued that we must satisfy each need in turn, starting with our most basic needs and the need for survival itself. A political activist informed me now that we’re no longer hungry, we’ve evolved hunger into hate. This may explain all the wars, hostilities, and divorces.

How do we determine an individual’s needs? How many of these needs are associated with our own well-being? These are fundamental questions that we need to ask ourselves to better understand our needs relative to our own circumstances. We’ve all come across a wide range of variations of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The following adaptation of Maslow’s hierarchy will help answer these questions and assess our needs.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Self-fulfillment Needs

Psychological Needs

Basic Needs

Self-Actualization

Fulfillment, Personal Growth, Influence, Inner Potential, Wisdom, Truth, Justice, Morality, Creativity, Spontaneity

Esteem Needs

Self-esteem, Confidence, Feeling Useful/Needed, Respect by/of Others, Attention, Recognition, Achievement, Reputation, Status, Prestige, Responsibility

Social Needs

Family, Friendship, Companionship, Work Colleagues, Role Models, Affiliation, Acceptance, Belonging, Love, Intimacy, Affection, Trust, Connections

Safety Needs

Protection, Security, Order, Law, Limits, Stability, Employment, Financial Resources, Health Care, Property & Life Insurance, Living in Safe Environment

Physiological Needs

Breathing, Food, Water, Shelter Warmth, Sleep, Sex, Homeostasis, Excretion

Maslow’s concept of needs was based on the idea that needs must be satisfied in a given order starting from the bottom of the hierarchy. Only when the lower-level needs of “Physiological” and “Safety” are satisfied will we be concerned with pursuing the higher-level needs of “Social,” “Esteem,” and “Self-Actualization.” Once we take care of our basic needs, we aspire to achieve high-level ambitions such as self-fulfillment, personal growth & development, and influence on others. In this hierarchical model, when a need is mostly satisfied, it no longer motivates us and the next higher need takes its place.

When our lower-level needs are unfulfilled, we feel the anguish of grief, stress, and anxiety as we try to fulfill our higher-level needs. For example, a sales manager cannot motivate his sales rep to achieve his sales target (Esteem Needs) when that person is having problems with his marriage and family (Social Needs). You see, when things are bad at home, they’re most likely to be bad at work, too. Having peace in a marriage is the most important thing.

A radio personality recently talked about Maslow’s hierarchy and the significance of human needs in our lives. “When you put those things [needs] together, that’s the environment around you. Your environment shapes your life.” In other words, our needs influence and dictate our lives, and we have a few hierarchies to work through before we satisfy those needs.

I would like to think about Maslow’s hierarchical levels or classifications in more pragmatic terms. Let’s work up the hierarchy and see what these classifications actually mean and how they describe our lives. The following is Maslow’s Classification Table, which describes each hierarchical classification of human needs.

Maslow’s Classification Table

Human Need Satisfying the Need

Physiological Needs

(Bottom Level of Maslow’s Hierarchy)

Safety Needs

(2nd Level of Maslow’s Hierarchy)

Social Needs

(3rd Level of Maslow’s Hierarchy)

Esteem Needs

(4th Level of Maslow’s Hierarchy)

Self-Actualization

(Top Level of Maslow’s Hierarchy)

These are basic needs required to sustain life. These include air, water, nourishment, and sleep. If such needs are not satisfied, we become motivated to satisfy them. Higher needs, such as social and esteem needs, are not felt until we have met the needs basic of our bodily functioning.

Once our physiological needs are met, we focus on our needs to be safe and secure to avoid the threat of physical and emotional harm. Such needs might be fulfilled by job security, ample financial resources, health protection, insurance, and living in a safe area. If we feel we’re in danger, we will not pursue our higher needs.

After we have met our lower level physiological and safety needs, we have higher level needs for affiliation and acceptance by others. Social needs are related to interaction with others and may include belonging, love, and friendship.

Once we have a sense of belonging, we yearn for attention and recognition. We have an inner need of self esteem to feel good about ourselves, and external needs for social status, achievement, and respect. Maslow later refined his hierarchy to include two levels between esteem and self-actualization needs, namely cognitive (knowledge, meaning, self-awareness) and aesthetics (symmetry, order, and beauty).

The desire to achieve self-fulfillment and realize our full potential. Self-actualization is the pinnacle of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Unlike lower level needs, this need is never fully satisfied. As we grow psychologically, there are new opportunities to continue our growth. Self-actualized people tend to have additional needs such as wisdom, creativity, and the natural ability or spontaneity to take action.

We all have different needs and aspirations in life, whether it is to make our mark in this world or just enjoy it for what it is with friends and family. I pity the lonesome cowboy who has nobody to saddle up with nor a trail to guide him. He has no job to go to, no saloon to play poker in, nor a gunfight to attend before he rides alone again at dawn. He sleeps, not always in a bed, and sometimes eats if he finds something. These lost souls don’t always fulfill their basic needs to survive. Most of their time is spent fulfilling basic needs without pursuing higher needs. Life is more about existing than having purpose. This pretty well describes a homeless person.

There was a time when basic human needs were taken away from people. Many died of starvation and disease. Pick up a WWII history book and you’ll learn about the Holocaust and concentration camps. These were deplorable places that deprived people of their basic needs. The haunting images of skeletal people, obviously malnourished, living in barbarous shelters and foul conditions are incomprehensible. It’s impossible to focus on safety, social, and esteem needs when we’re hungry and cold, and being in a death camp only makes it worse. Bad things do happen to good people, Evidently, evil people thrive.

Let’s get back to present-day reality and not dredge up every possible life situation, especially the dark days of war. There’s no logical reason why some of us live and some of us don’t. I’d rather forget people worth forgetting and hang with those who have meaning in my life. We should consider ourselves lucky enough to be here and available for everything that life has to offer. Let’s make the most of it before the closing curtain falls.

u Life is a One-time Gift

An inquisitive student told an Auschwitz survivor, “After all you went through, the Holocaust and stuff, I don’t get how you still have such a joy of life.” The old man replied, “Listen, life is a one-time gift! Why let it go to waste?” He understood that there’s nothing worse than a man who has lost his joy, and he wasn’t about to squander his life just because someone didn’t want him around anymore. “All of us who are here received the gift of life and we’re all aware that one day we must return it” were the heartfelt words of an elderly woman whose sister had passed away.

Letting a life go to waste is hardly a life, even for a Holocaust survivor. The lucky ones have learned to disengage from their horrific past and enjoy their freedom by starting a new life. It was Nicolas Cage as the police officer in the movie Vengeance who said, “I’ve seen bad things, things I thought I’d never forget. We do forget, not all the way, but enough so we can move on.” The fact that we’re not standing behind a barbed-wire fence is good reason to pursue the good things in life. I’m referring to things beyond our basic needs. Once we have met our basic needs, it’s only uphill from there. We should all endeavor to reach the summit of Maslow’s hierarchy.

Maslow may not be the only authoritative expert and has since attracted his own critics, mainly other psychologists. In fact, there is evidence that contradicts the order of needs outlined by Maslow. For example, some cultures appear to place social needs before any others. Maslow’s hierarchy also has difficulty explaining cases such as the “starving artist” in which an individual neglects lower needs in pursuit of higher ones. Finally, there is little evidence to suggest that people are motivated to satisfy only one need level at a time. I guess there’s an exception to every rule.

u Is There a Theory That Explains Everything?

There are several classifications and various ways to group our needs and the things that we do in life. A forgotten but yet instrumental American psychologist by the name of Clare Graves observed that the level of behavioral freedom increased as we moved up Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. He came up with his own levels of human existence and developed theories of how people change and span these levels as circumstances change. Graves work culminated in what we know today as Spiral Dynamics and dubbed “The Theory that Explains Everything.” Life, according to this theory, resembles a kaleidoscope with its natural hierarchies, systems, and forms. I’d be suspicious if mirrors are involved.

Unfortunately, I don’t have another decade to master Spiral Dynamics, or any other theories for that matter, let alone figure out their applicability to the architecture of life. Besides, I’m not sure it would have any advantage or change anything. I’m not interested nor qualified in arbitrating the validity of psychological theories. There are several classifications and various ways to group our needs and the things we do in life. If you’re not a fan of Maslow’s or Graves’ classifications, you can always deliberate Jane Loevinger’s stages of ego development. Let’s stick with a classification that covers a wide spectrum for all of humanity, and put unfounded theories aside for now.

We have a tendency to classify our well-being according to our physical, mental, and emotional states. I could not help but notice a young woman with a book held against her face as I rode the train into the downtown core one morning. She was obviously immersed in some psychology lesson as the back cover of her book caught my attention, which was coincidental considering my piqued interest in classifying needs.

Physical Health the physical you

Mental Health the thinking you

Emotional Health the feeling you

This seemed to be a reasonable classification since we book appointments with doctors for health issues pertaining to our physical, mental, and emotional well-being. We have physicians to help us with our physical disabilities, injuries, and ailments. We also have psychiatrists and psychologists to help us with our mental and emotional problems.

We can’t forget about naturopaths and homeopaths who deal with the root cause of all these things in a natural and holistic manner. I engaged a homeopath after a dermatologist failed to find a cure for my skin rash. I liked the homeopath’s idea of focusing on one symptom at a time until we found a remedy to reactivate my immune system and clear up my skin. Applying hydrocortisone creams and swallowing a handful of different colored pills just wasn’t doing it for me.

While our physical, mental, and emotional states are integral parts of our well-being, I’d hate for this young train commuter to derail into the wrong direction – or worse, get railroaded into an incomplete picture of her life. I have outlined two possible ways to classify an individual’s life in the following Life Classification Table.

Life Classification Table

Life Classification #1

Physical (Food, Shelter, Body, Fitness, Yoga, Diet)

Intellectual (Learning, Understanding, Creativity)

Mental (Thinking, Analyzing, Evaluating)

Emotional (Feelings, Needs, Desires)

Spiritual (Life Philosophies, Beliefs, Religion)

Life Classification #2

Relating With People (Family, Friends, Dates, Colleagues, Community, Church, Clubs, Sport Groups).

Work / Career / Financial Obligation / Enhancing Living Environment (Money, Status, Work Fulfillment, Debt, Luxury)

Leisure / Recreation / Play / Idling (Travel, Sports, TV, Exercise, Sex, Shopping, Pubs, Family BBQs, Reading, Hiking, Games, Gambling)

Sleep / Eat / Bath / Rest (King-size Bed, Naps, Restaurants, Lavender Bubble Baths, Spas, Camping, Nature Walks)

Interests / Attitude / Outlook Affecting Human Spirit or Soul (God, Buddha, Cult, Darwinism, Nature, Inner Identity)

I believe that we all have our own flavor of classification or can have our lives appraised according to some combination of these life classification categories – Physical, Intellectual, Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual – which define us as individuals. From the time we’re kids, we begin to understand the traits and characteristics that are important to us as we pursue our interests and ambitions.

So, which one is it? “Classification #1” or “Classification #2?” There is no one answer, nor is there a right answer. It can be some of “Classification #1” with specific parts of “Classification #2,” and vice versa. It doesn’t really matter. Both classifications help us address the different facets of our lives. Upon closer inspection, these classifications are mirror images of each other with a different frame around the mirror.

If I told you that everyone’s life can be divided into the five categories under “Classification #1” of the Life Classification Table, or that our lives should be assessed in terms of the interests and activities outlined in “Classification #2,” or that there is a specific mix between the two, we would be engaging in an academic exercise that would have little value at the end. I’d probably attract the same critics criticising Maslow.

u All Intelligent Beings Believe in Something

The “Intellectual” and “Spiritual” classifications are key areas in life, which impart purpose and stimulate our mental and emotional states. These classifications represent an enduring part of our individual fabric since childhood. Without intelligence to find ourselves and the spiritual need to believe in something, we surrender any hope to fulfill our life meaning. We are incomplete without considering our “Intellectual” and “Spiritual” needs. While intellectual needs motivate us to discover knowledge and black holes, spiritual needs guide us to find meaning, purpose, and value in our lives, whether we’re religious or not. We’ve been indoctrinated to believe what we see, but some things can’t be seen.

We’ve all been exposed to education and some form of religious teachings from a very young age. There are even institutions for this training called school and church, respectively. Many of us have grown up with a strong religious and spiritual upbringing – others, not so much. I remember those dreadful days of strict parenting and discipline when I would be confined to a corner for bad behavior. Many valuable lessons were learned in that corner. Our parents had great influence on our “Intellectual” and “Spiritual” being, and probably the reason I went on to an institution of higher education.

There is a universal wisdom that we learn for the rest of our lives. The one variable that sets us apart is perspective. Perspective is based on the belief system we adopt. We develop our own perspective as we attempt to understand ourselves and the world around us. It’s no wonder we turn to religious or spiritual guidance while others seek answers based on some self-researched scientific evidence.

I’m sure atheists contend with the same issues although they’ll tell us that their minds are already made up on account of the laws of nature and contemporary philosophies of human existence. When the physicist Stephen Hawking was asked what he was, he simply answered, “I’m a cosmologist.” When asked what that was, he replied, “It is a kind of religion for intelligent atheists.” Who’s anyone to tell us what religion is when all religions are man-made, typically based on a creator.

Atheists tend to resist faith and the concept of a creator for a lack of scientific evidence. Science seems to be limited to making statements about nature and is very good at figuring out how things work. However, science cannot claim dominion over the question of God. According to Francis Collins, the past director of the Human Genome Project, atheism, the statement that there is no God, is not a scientific statement. “God simply used that process of evolution to carry out that creation in a way that is incredibly elegant. I think evolution is the answer to how, God is the answer to why.” I don’t think science can prove the existence or the non-existence of God.

u The Meaning of Life is a Personal Endeavor

We live in a culture now where we think we know everything. We can’t even have a meaningful debate because the truth can be found on the internet in seconds. However, the creation versus evolution debate defies an answer that we can all agree to. It forces us to continue to search for something we may never know. And the fact that we can’t know makes it all that more mystifying. Unfortunately, the creation versus evolution debate has become hijacked by extremists. However, there is still one dilemma: Without a belief in God, there is no authority for the moral values that have underpinned mankind for over 4000 years. Without God, there is no set of binding moral rules by which we can all live. And perhaps most importantly, without a belief in eternal salvation, life itself doesn’t have a higher spiritual purpose. Atheism is a declaration of freedom from God and left to the mastery of our own fates. No longer controlled by divine laws, atheists are now liberated, or condemned, to create their own values. It’s up to them to find new meaning in a godless universe. For creationists, the loss of religious belief would bring with it nothing less than a vacuum of meaning in human existence. At the end of the day, the meaning of life is a personal endeavor.

Although I may appreciate these arguments, who am I to disprove anyone? As someone who grew up with religion, how do I reconcile my faith with the theory of evolution? My dear mother used to say, “It doesn’t hurt to have faith and believe in something.” I think she was trying to tell me to keep an open mind. Faith was believing in something beyond ourselves, something that gave us hope and love. She was well aware that faith was accepting the full work of God at face value, although our religious upbringing introduced some questions. Someone once said, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence, the cold, hard reality of things not seen.”

People of religious order are obligated to take vows of chastity and obedience. The resilience of their religious beliefs and faith is an outcome of their environment, such as religious upbringing and societal norms. They sacrifice themselves without expecting anything in return, while the rest of us seek rewards and solicit justification for our behavior. As a religious person, the reward is in doing, but doing without expecting anything. This may be a lot to ask of people, especially those without a religious background, spiritual perspective, or those whose beliefs are mired in scientific and earthly evidence.

As children, we ask hard questions to try to make sense of the world; as adults, we offer answers without proof. I now understand there isn’t any one answer. We must all walk our own path and find our own truth. But whatever path we take, we all wind up in the same place in the end. Now that I’m all grown up, I feel doubt keeps me humble as I search for my own answers. We need to have an open mind considering that human history is just a litany of getting things dead wrong. I’ve come to realize that anything we don’t understand is possible, although we have to be so very careful what we believe in. I want to live in a world of possibilities, not one where I’m confined by others’ perspectives.

u An Interview with God

It was a young newspaper journalist, after returning home from the war in Afghanistan, who interviews an older gentleman claiming to be God. The journalist is at a low point in his life and everything around him seems to be falling apart. His wife leaves him after she has an affair, while he’s dealing with the trauma of war. His faith in God has come into question. God, in the form of a man, apprises the journalist that “faith isn’t something that you can just have, not in the conventional sense, because faith isn’t the goal; faith is the process.” As a process specialist, I’m a firm believer of process, and the process of restoring faith made a lot of sense. The young journalist realized that “having faith isn’t worth much if you don’t really believe.” He kept praying but stopped looking or even listening. I’m afraid that faith is in short supply these days. In the movie An Interview with God, it’s apparent that there is a misunderstanding about the nature of faith. Faith isn’t something we just happen to stumble upon. Faith is the confidence that we’ll get what we hope for without any assurance we’ll get it, but only the belief that a divine or supreme entity will look after us. Sometimes, faith is facing the facts and not being discouraged by them.

A friend once told me it’s best that life stay a mystery because we’ll never solve it. “I’m glad I serve a God I can’t figure out. If I could figure him out, he wouldn’t be God” was a pastor’s confession during a sermon about the mystery of God. His interpretation of God was simple: “Humans can think about how God creates. Humans cannot know the full intricacies beyond which God wants them known.” Everything is not knowable. There is a saying derived from Plato’s account of the Greek philosopher Socrates: “I know that I know nothing.” Our understanding of God may be beyond human comprehension. According to Einstein, “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.”

The good pastor was in the business of faith and believed because of his beliefs. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have a job. He believed that our choices in life reflect whether God is honored in daily decision-making. He was grateful for all of God’s creations and preached that we’d all do well to appreciate a life granted by God. This may be a shallow argument to some and the word “faith” can be construed as a cop-out, but it’s a perspective that’s as old as civilized man. And as for the Bible and other religious texts, we can at least follow some of their teachings and commandments to uphold the righteousness and justices among humanity.

Faith is rather intangible and whatever side of the argument we side with, we consider a certain amount of unknowns. We’re in a never-ending search for that something that gives our life meaning and purpose. God means different things to different people. “God is awareness, so when we tune into our awareness, we close the space between the individual and God.” Ram Dass, a famous Stanford psychologist and atheist turned spiritual teacher, became aware and found his own version of God after embarking on a personal spiritual journey. He no longer had any confidence in the non-existence of God.

Our religious and spiritual beliefs, or lack of them, dictate who and what God is to us, and teach us that God created man in his own image. However, the opposite has been proved time after time – man has created God in his own image. Although religion allows us to interpret God and formulate a perception, it’s our faith that unites us with God. Whether we are religious or not, fulfilling our personal needs is an exercise of faith as we strive to find purpose and peace in our lives. It’s impossible to accomplish anything without faith, even if it’s only faith in ourselves. And when we arouse faith in others, we overcome our differences and merge our thoughts. We fulfill our higher level needs according to Maslow.

u Maslow’s Self-actualization

Abraham Maslow pretty well covers everything that we see in the Life Classification Table we came up with earlier, but also includes an essential need called “Self-Actualization” in his Hierarchy of Needs. This is the realization of our potential and the achievement of self-fulfillment. Although we may have an intellectual understanding, directly derived through logical reasoning, we have a need to actualize by experience to realize fully our potential. Self-actualized people have faith in themselves and encounter frequent occurrences of peak experiences, which are energized moments of profound happiness and harmony. This is something that we should all endeavor to achieve and experience in our lives.

According to Maslow, only a small percentage of the world’s population reaches this level of selfactualization. I would like to believe that there is a way many more of us can get there, primarily by adopting a Life Architecture. As human beings, we have a natural tendency to seek personal growth and optimize our life experiences. This is inherently important to most of us, and we should keep it at the forefront of our minds as we assess our own needs and what is important to us.

I’m sure you’re wondering how needs and life classifications relate to some unknown future that we’ve dreamed up. We’ve seen two different classification schemes earlier that I believe capture every aspect of our lives – Physical, Intellectual, Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual. Everything that we do and think falls into one of those classifications. Rather than wonder, maybe we should partake in an exercise to identify our desired future life processes and understand how they meet our needs.

u Putting Your Life Blueprints Together

All the things that we do, think about, and believe in define our life processes. It only makes sense that we identify these processes and make them part of our Life Process Tree. This may very well be the first time that we see all of our life processes collectively, including the life processes that consume our time everyday and those that occasionally make their way into our lives. It’s all going to be captured in our two Life Blueprints – one representing our current life and the other our future.

In this chapter, we have patiently sat through a lecture about the organizational need for two blueprints. We should have learned that one blueprint is the focus of a current state understanding, while the other provides a future direction by leveraging the current state. A current Life Blueprint documents our current state of affairs using a Life Process Tree, together with a diary or journal of life’s issues, concerns, problems, and opportunities.

In order to understand what’s wrong and what we can do better to improve our lives, we come to realize the constraints that have held us back and the opportunities we have missed. We can then start to cement the foundation for our future Life Blueprint when we know why things have been stale or gone off track. We deliberately transform and adapt our current life processes into some perceived formation as we develop our future Life Blueprint.

It is important to foster a clear vision and transcribe it onto paper. Remember, the things that are committed to on paper are the things that are committed to in life. I suggest that we get organized and file our Life Process Tree models together with any supporting analysis of issues, concerns, problems, and opportunities in file folders for easy reference as illustrated in the following diagram. We’ll be using and referring to these two Life Blueprints during our Life Architecture journeys.

It’s not realistic to expect us to understand the purpose and value of a Life Blueprint without actually doing one. I can probably best relate the concept of a Life Blueprint to the financial statements that we use in accounting. These statements help us understand the current state of an organization’s financial situation, as well as its potential. You don’t have to be an accountant to appreciate their importance, but you do need to learn how to interpret and understand them.

If you know anything about accounting, a balance sheet provides details of all the assets and liabilities of a company at any point in time. The assets represent all the things of value in a company, while the liabilities represent its debts. The balance sheet basically tells us whether the company has any value and its net worth. An income statement, on the other hand, provides details of how much money a company has made or lost during a specific period of time. And to get a better handle on the cash flow a company is generating to manage its current and future affairs, we request a cash flow statement.

All these financial statements together provide the financial blueprint of a company. Their purpose is to gauge the company’s current financial situation, while forecasting its future growth. The company may be either in dire straits or in a position to make its shareholders a blissful bunch. A company’s financial statements describe where it stands and allow management to plan for the future.

A Life Blueprint has a similar purpose and helps us understand the relative worth, merit, and importance of our lives. Like a balance sheet, the Life Process Tree provides the details of all the assets and liabilities in our lives through the processes we’ve defined. We create a future Life Blueprint to transform our life processes to ones that we feel we’re destined to live – the assets – and get rid of processes not worth living – the liabilities. We gauge our current situation and forecast the life-worthiness of the future we envision.

Our Life Blueprint provides insight into where we stand and where we want to go. It serves as a plan for the future. The future should be a place where we believe in ourselves and others believe in us to achieve our dreams. I think Kirk Cousins, the quarterback for the Washington Redskins, best described it when he said, “There’s something powerful about feeling believed in and there’s something powerful about knowing where you stand.” Belief in ourselves is having the confidence that we’re heading in the right direction, or toward the future that we have always dreamed about.

u Sex On the Beach

What’s life without fun and games – golf trips with buddies that wives aren’t fond of, getaways to mysterious lands with wives of course, blues festivals with friends, block parties with neighbors, or the odd weekend in Vegas with whoever has a few extra bucks. Life is also about work, family, and all the things that make up our lives now and in the future. However, we all love our “Leisure/ Recreation/ Play/ Fun/ Idling,” a cherished classification in the Life Classification Table. These are the things that provide the life assets we so much enjoy in life. We cherish our downtime after a hard day’s work. Vacations are the ultimate rush of adrenaline where we do crazy things like have sex on the beach. My wife and I have “Sex on the Beach” all the time. After all, this just so happens to be one of her favorite cocktail drinks. We can all use vacations to rid ourselves of life’s liabilities like cold winters, horrible bosses, and bad relationships. Ideally, we can all eliminate life’s liabilities quickly and permanently. Why shouldn’t life be sex on the beach all the time? I would like to think it is, although I have yet to find that perfect beach house.

Although sex on the beach between young lovers makes for a steamy romantic interlude, this is much more appreciated by a moviegoing audience. I can’t help but think how passionate and exciting young love must feel. This could very well be the invigorating part of life that we’ve been missing. We have forgotten about the things that excite and motivate us – our so-called niche or passion in life. Life is a choice and we all have the freedom to enjoy and do whatever we want.

So, how do we make life an invigorating existence? Well, I would probably say that we need the “Intellectual” capacity to find this part of our lives, and then a commitment to further our personal growth. Together with our “Spiritual” philosophies, this will provide the purpose and selffulfillment that we’ve been searching for. And yes, our “Spiritual” philosophies can be that of an atheist. I don’t want to leave anybody out. This was the point of familiarizing ourselves with the classifications in the Life Classification Table. Our “Intellectual” and “Spiritual” well-being are inextricably joined at the hip. Even the slaves of ancient Rome needed religion to give them a sense of meaning and allow them to disavow their insubordination. Spirituality and religion can be the guiding light when nothing else seems to make sense.

I remember listening to an old man describing the war and hiding from the Nazis as a child. His teacher tried to calm the children, “Look, this world of ours, this life of ours, is only a corridor to get to the world to come. And there, what beauty, what brilliance, what light, what love!” The old man said, “Suddenly, I didn’t care if I died.” He was convinced that this wasn’t the end and there was something beyond. His spirituality gave him hope and allowed him to dismiss his fears. Without spirituality, many people would be lost in a world that presents more questions than answers. Life would become colorless and mundane without faith to fall back on, not to mention a terrifying existence.

u René Guénon

The French metaphysician René Guénon looked to the world’s religions for answers to the meaning of life. Education has taught us to view all things in terms of historical progress supported by evolutionary theory. Guénon helped us see things in terms of historical disintegration. In his book The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times, Guénon explained how the elimination of traditional spiritual principles has led to the degeneration of humanity. He pointed out that twentieth-century science was based on quantitative analysis while placing value on material things. “In attempting to reduce everything to the stature of man taken as an end in himself, modern civilization has sunk stage by stage to a level of his lowest elements and aims at little more than satisfying the needs inherent in the material side of his nature.” Trying to fill the void left by science and materialism in the modern age, “pseudo-religions” have sprung up like weeds and further obscured the truth.

There are those of course who believe that René Guénon was too steeped in his own narrow view of history. It’s hard to believe that humanity has degenerated when we compare hockey and football, violent though they may be, to the gladiatorial games or the disembowelment and quartering of criminals as a public spectacle. Although Guénon may not have intended to compare the likes of Sharia law to traditional spiritual principles, he did favor a set of principles defined by a spiritual leader. Guénon’s depth of thought may be great, but his range of thought is sadly deficient.

I think of St. Athanasius, honored in the Church for his mighty struggles in suppressing the Arian heresy, and compare him to men such as Galileo, Newton, and other forward thinkers who defended truth rather than doctrine. We are told in the New Testament to give unto the poor. Maybe it is our concentration on material things that has carried out that order by eliminating a great deal of poverty and making life better for everyone. I’d say humanity has progressed, not declined, as social equality has become an international movement. And hopefully, we’re better people than we were during Guénon’s time.

Over the last half-billion years, there have been five mass extinctions with a sixth one being predicted. However, this time, we’ve done it to ourselves – mankind being the cause of the cataclysm. Humanity is the primary cause of permanent planetary change as we out-grow the planet at a rapid rate and deplete the very resources that give us sustenance. We have become a major force of nature in this new Anthropocene epoch on the verge of moving the planet outside its natural limits. Stephen Hawking advised that mankind must become an inter-planetary species if we are to survive. This may be our only salvation.

We all have our own ideas about creation, salvation and death, and what it means with regard to our lives. This can be a sensitive topic depending on who you talk to. Bible salesmen, atheists, scientists, and friends all have a different perspective on the topic. And the worst part is, we’ll never reach an agreement but can only hope for mutual respect regardless of our opinions.

u Creation, Salvation, and Death

There’s nothing more personal than salvation – just you and your soul. From a religious perspective, salvation is the redemption from sin and reunification with God for eternity after a lifetime on Earth. It was Russell Crowe as the Gladiator who said, “Brothers, what we do in life echoes in eternity.” Christians believe that salvation is returning to a state of perfection with

the Almighty and absolution from sin forever. Salvation means different things to different people. Some disregard religious beliefs as a fallacy of faith. The concept of salvation really comes down to faith. This is about our faith being greater than our fear – our fear of death. At the end, we all die. We just don’t know what happens after that, beyond having a funeral. Ironically, everybody wants to get to heaven but no one wants to die. In the meantime, we abide by a moral code of conduct defined by devotional experiences and ritualistic observances, or some manifestation of scientific evidence that makes sense to us. Somehow we co-exist in society regardless of our beliefs and make it work through all of our differences. Our beliefs are substantiated by learned behaviors from a very young age, whether we become churchgoers or atheists one day. And if we can’t pick sides, we just become agnostics. These beliefs form the basis for governing our human existence while we seek meaning, purpose, and love throughout our lifetime.

There comes a time when we question the meaning and purpose of our lives. Generally, we have enough to live by but nothing to live for; we have the means but no meaning. We seem to get stuck in a state of meaninglessness and purposelessness as a result of past events, but yet we don’t know who to turn to for answers. We feel compelled to go through an arduous process of discovering ourselves, but there are no predominant or conventional methods at our disposal. Everything comes down to a guess, hopefully an educated one, but remains an inconclusive decision. If there was only a universal and conclusive answer, we wouldn’t be divided on the meaning and purpose of life.

Philosophers, academics, and spiritual leaders seem to be a natural place to start, but even they tend to be engrossed in abstract ideas and detached from reality. “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point however is to change it” is the inscribed text on the tomb of Karl Marx. Some of the great philosophers like the Buddha believed that the meaning of life comes from inside of us. This kind of reminds me of the connection between the body, mind, and spirit. According to my dictionary, spirit is defined as the “inner part of a person that includes the feelings, thoughts and character.”

u Body, Mind, Spirit

Many of us have never given any thought to the connection between these three parts of ourselves and our current life circumstances. “Body, mind, spirit” has turned into sort of a catch phrase for yoga and spa treatments. Mind enables you to think and feel and is closer to your brain’s logical function, but spirit is closer to your emotions (mood) and character (attitude).

Using the Life Classification Table, we gain a profound wisdom when our “Intellectual” selfesteem aligns with our “Spiritual” convictions and tenets. As individuals in search of our own life meaning, we have to bring our intellectual and spiritual being into a single thought process. When our intellectual quest and spiritual beliefs co-exist, this is the prize – regardless of our relationship with God or some agnostic Darwinian belief.

Intelligence is the capacity to rationalize our existence and perceive a meaningful future. We all have our own ideas about how to stimulate ourselves intellectually. Our “Intellectual” being is the part of us that seeks knowledge about ourselves and the world around us. It is the part that wants to read this book and learn something new in the realm of our modern day life, while we contend with our intellectual and spiritual being and philosophical interpretations of our existence.

We have an opportunity to fulfill all our needs as outlined in the Life Classification Table – Physical, Intellectual, Mental, Emotional, Spiritual – in order to understand ourselves better and discover a desired future. I have distinguished the “Intellectual” and “Mental” classifications as a matter of practicality. While our “Intellectual” needs focus on learning, understanding, and creativity, we possess “Mental” abilities as we’re constantly thinking, analyzing, and evaluating things every day of our lives. Just think about all the reasoning that goes into putting items into our grocery cart at the supermarket.

u The Mind of a Grandmaster

It was the father of Magnus Carlsen, the Norwegian chess prodigy, who observed his son from a very young age and identified the traits that would make him a world-class chess player one day. Little did he know that his son would become the highest ranked chess grandmaster in history. A chess enthusiast once said that Magnus’s talent comes from another universe. Magnus’s father attributes his son’s success to his “Mental” abilities, specifically thinking, analyzing, and evaluating. These “Mental” abilities led Magnus to fulfill his “Intellectual” needs of learning, understanding, and creativity in regard to the game of chess. Remember, after just four moves, there are a billion different alternatives and as the game goes on, it’s more or less infinite and takes a lot of creativity to win.

Our “Intellectual” needs supersede our “Mental” abilities. We all possess a need to satisfy our appetite for knowledge and to learn as we pursue our individual interests and desires. Along the way, we develop a level of expertise that fulfills our creative and innovative identities. Some of us develop an expertise that is recognized far and wide, and has a profound effect on others – just look at like the guy who invented contact lenses and made it easier to do sports and kiss a girl. We quench our curiosity and effect change to make the world we live in a better place. “What our curiosity arouses is what we should do” were the actionable words of a motivational speaker.

We stumble upon all kinds of opportunities throughout our lifetime, but not all of us endeavor to make the most of them. Our destinies are defined by how well we respond to opportunities, yet we don’t take the time to understand their impact. When we don’t embrace our opportunities, our lives suffer and remain small. Someone once said, “Feel the fear and run to them anyway, and your life will be big.” “There should be no boundary to human endeavor,” according to Stephen Hawking. “We are all different. However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. While there is life, there is hope.” As a life architect, I’d say that we must first make some changes in order to transform hope and opportunity into a successful life.

Rest assured that we’re not here to change everything in our lives. There are things in our lives that are pretty good just the way they are and we’re going to keep them around, while others need some fine tuning. But there are also things in our lives that are totally out of whack and worth throwing out. This is no different than the City Planning Department when it plans neighborhoods and the downtown landscape as part of its modernization efforts.

u City Planning

City planners take great care to preserve valuable old property assets, replace outmoded assets, and add new invigorating assets – all in the context of an urban modernization infrastructure linking them together as coherently as possible. If we go downtown, we’ll see a mix of beautiful old buildings interspersed with modern skyscrapers. Some of these old buildings

have been refurbished and reconfigured to house trendy shops. Others have been converted into condos offering modern lifestyles. There are also old warehouses that are untouched but still serve a useful purpose for storage and alternative commercial uses. A few warehouses have even been converted to residential and office condos. I’m sure that we’ve also seen a decrepit old building go down in dust only to see a beautiful new building arise in its place. This is all part of city planning and urban renewal, and it takes careful planning to continually build and renew a city.

Similar to cities, we also need renewal in our own lives, and in some cases, a rebirth is required to start a new and better life. Our lives are an infrastructure of sort, probably more intricate than that of a city, and comprise all the needs that we’ve identified in the Life Classification Table. Rather than simulate some city planning manual, we need a somewhat more delicate life planning approach to deal with our current life circumstances while putting us in touch with future life possibilities. Some of our lives need fine-tuning and moderate changes, while others require a total reconstruction. Everyone’s lives are as unique as faces in a crowd.

There is something called a “matter of timing” to consider in life. At one point, life may be going great, but due to unforeseen circumstances, life can become burdensome and not much fun. It feels like losing your best friend. We try to make changes but can’t quite seem to make it happen, or at least not until the timing is right. It just doesn’t make sense to swap out the sports car for a mini-van until the baby is born and the mother-in-law has staked out the extra bedroom and moved in.

Sometimes we weigh the outcomes of the decisions we make based on our life circumstances and the life that we see ourselves living. Mothers-in-law have been known to influence our decisions and interrupt our lives when we let them. All of our personal needs, interests, and activities can be pegged into the life classifications outlined in the Life Classification Table. The two sets of classifications that were presented with earlier represent everything we do in life. As kids, how many times have we tried to put a square peg into a round hole only to realize that it doesn’t fit, or tried to fly a kite when there was no wind? When the stars align, everything comes together in a positive way.

u Float Like a Butterfly and Sting Like a Bee

As one of the greatest boxers of all time, Muhammad Ali was a square peg in a square boxing ring and his time had come. “I know where I’m going and I know the truth, and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want.” He was known to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee, while he punched people out for a living. I’d say Ali stung a few opponents during his boxing career and his timing was impeccable. He found the truth about who he was and what he wanted to be. Muhammad Ali was also one of the greatest fortune-tellers of all time. According to his ex-wife Veronica Porche, “He took control of his destiny by making himself accountable with things like his predictions where he would, you know, say what round and then he’d sort of pretty much live into his future and be more pressured, actually, or accountable to do what he had said he would do, and so he pretty much, I think, mastered life in that way.” Maybe it’s true that pressure is a privilege and only the privileged get to experience pressure.

I wish we all had such predictive abilities and timing. After all, a little foresight and timing has made more than a few millionaires and billionaires. It has also preserved a few friendships. A

long-lost friend reminded me recently, “I never forget friends, time is not important but timing is.” I think he was trying to tell me that we’ll always be friends, although we rarely see each other. He feels that when he does come into my life, it’s good timing. And every time he does, I must admit that I’m still thrilled to see him.

We all have the potential to make things happen, but our lack of direction and timing prevents us from reaching our true destiny. For the first time in your life, you may be presented with something that gives you a fighting chance to make a life altering transformation. In the last chapter, we referred to this as Life Architecture. I think it’s best that we take a proven and pragmatic approach to improve our chances.

u Form Follows Function

“Form follows function” is a fundamental principle adhered to in architecture and design. The principle implies that the structure of a building should be primarily based upon its intended function or purpose. The design and decorative aesthetics are important but only after the functional features have been considered. This explains why sensible people buy Hondas for their reliability and diamonds for their glitter. I’m somewhere in the middle and recently got rid of a second chimney on my house. Although it served its function, it was an eyesore. I had eventually built an exquisite house in the city inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright, which would have made the great architect proud if it wasn’t for the unsightly chimney of course. The chimney’s purpose was to accommodate an extra fireplace for a bonus room on the far end of the house. Unfortunately, a grand central chimney dominated the rooftop, which could do without a baby brother distracting from the vivid symmetry and flow of the cantilever roof. I may as well have attached a metal trash can on the opposite side of the roof to regain the symmetry I had lost with a second chimney. Function pretty well killed form, and it wasn’t too long before I got rid of the chimney and considered an electric fireplace. Actually, it was an astute architect who came to the rescue and ran ventilation ducts through the attic for the extra fireplace to come out the central chimney. Remember, it pays to pay for a good architect who has a sense of both form and function.

Great architects respect the fact that great architecture starts with this principle in mind, that is, form follows function. It was a Danish interior designer who relaxed this principle a bit and said, “While function may be the starting point, it’s the small bursts of details that make the difference. They refine the look and make design distinctive.” In other words, although utility and beauty are a trade-off, we can have the best of both worlds.

We all remember growing up with the fairy tale of Cinderella where a pumpkin is magically transformed into a golden coach that takes her to the royal ball. It had the form of a glitzy horse-drawn carriage fit for a princess with all its gold trimmings and exquisite craftsmanship, and gallant white horses to lead the way. However, it lacked the function of a real-life coach – capacity for other passengers, sturdiness, weather-proofing, and longevity. The coach had a lot of form but little function. Its sole purpose was to make a one-time return trip to the royal palace and back with flair. At midnight, as luck would have it, Cinderella’s coach lost all its form and function, and turned back into a pumpkin.

Although Cinderella was naturally beautiful with a body to die for, she had more function than her evil stepsisters combined. She was caring, considerate, loving, friendly, honest, trusting, and hard-working. She had everything any prince would want in a princess bride. Form followed as Cinderella entered the palace in all her glory wearing a beautiful gown, glass slippers, diamond earrings and necklace, stylish hairdo, and makeup that brought out her blue eyes. Her beauty was destined to catch the prince’s eye.

Maybe we’ve just been spoiled and expect function without sacrificing form. The architect Frank Lloyd Wright later modified the principle to “form and function are one,” implying that the visual design and aesthetics of a building should be primarily based upon its intended function or purpose. The Empire State Building, for example, was intended to have the sculpted tiered slender form of the world’s tallest building while it served the function of providing modern office space in a prime location for its uptown corporate tenants.

What does all this have to do with people, or how does it even apply to people? It doesn’t have anything to do with having good posture, but on the contrary, it has everything to do with the fact that people have unique lives with a wide array of functions. We have different functions in society and perform distinct processes to satisfy our own needs. Doctors heal, teachers teach, engineers engineer, and so on, while others are expected to be in good form if they’re to attain their fame as models, actors, and bodybuilders. But, as we all know, beauty has an expiry date and doesn’t last forever. There’s a certain irony to beauty: If we don’t get what we want, we suffer; when we get what we want, we still suffer because we can’t hold on to it forever.

As we architect our lives, we will focus on the processes that lead to what we want to do and what we want out of life. These are the processes in our lives that give us meaning and purpose. We go through life not knowing what’s important; sometimes we just forget. Not all of us are lucky to be a prince or princess with a kingdom to rule over one day. I’m confident that our Life Blueprints will set out all the processes that give us purpose and fulfill our desires. And one day, we’ll be perfectly comfortable with who we are in our own kingdom.

u A Living Canvas

Don’t worry, I’m not talking about the tattoo on your back, but rather a Life Blueprint captured on a big white stretch of canvas. Actually, we create a Life Process Tree on a large piece of paper or computer screen as a visual representation of our Life Blueprint. I’m sure you remember the eloquent Life Process Tree diagrams in Chapter 3 entitled Creating Your Life Blueprint.

If you were paying attention, each lower level process is composed of more detailed processes. As we get to the bottom, we find the activities that we perform in all facets of our lives. The reason that we call it a living canvas is the fact that the current Life Process Tree is transformed into a future Life Process Tree, and keeps transforming itself during our lifetime. Form and function are one as we add and change processes that take their rightful place in the process hierarchy of a Life Process Tree, each process representing a function of our lives. We’re all unique individuals with our own canvas exhibiting a personalized Life Process Tree. The transformation from a current to a desired future state life is the Life Architecture journey we embark on.

Since it’s impossible to complete a Life Architecture of everybody’s life in this book, we’ll just focus our attention on Greg. We were informally introduced to Greg in the last chapter. Greg can be described as a mildly charismatic introvert who has decided to break out of his shell and build a better future. His life has taken many twists and turns over the years, and probably the

reason he’s volunteered and is keen to architect his life. This makes him an ideal candidate for Life Architecture, not to mention that he is coachable. The basketball great Michael Jordan once said, “My best skill was that I was coachable. I was a sponge and aggressive to learn.” Like Jordan, I expect Greg to treat his life like a contact sport by being coachable and training hard.

As Greg applies Life Architecture to his own life, we’ll follow his example and address our own life circumstances and desires. There’s no better way to learn than through practical application. Life Architecture allows us to piece together the life we never knew we could have. Greg will collect all his life processes and try to understand what’s important to him. He will tweak existing processes while he introduces new ones he thought were an impossibility. He will swap out the bad things for the good. This reminds me of something I once read: “Life is like a camera. Just focus on what’s important and capture the good times, develop from the negatives and if things don’t turn out, just take another shot.” This negative will slowly develop into Greg’s future Life Blueprint, and just may give him a new lease on life.

Greg’s journey will allow him to consciously be aware of the life that he is living today and the one he wants to lead in the future. Deepak Chopra, a famous mind-body-spirit guru, expressed this philosophy very well when he said it’s “how mindfully you live your life.” Mindfulness means that we are not sleepwalking through life. These self-care gurus teach us self-acceptance and advise us to be less critical of ourselves. Life can be an agonizing journey if we hate who we are. Sit back and relax as we observe and evaluate Greg’s Life Architecture experience from the sidelines. Maybe one day you will embark on a Life Architecture journey as you transform yourself into a better person with a better life.

Chapter 4

Introducing Greg

If anyone deserves his own chapter, it’s probably Greg. Like most people, Greg poses the traditional philosophical questions: What is the meaning of life, what is the root of our existence, are we here for a reason, is there a point to any of this, who am I, what am I doing here, how do I stand in this world, how does this world stand to me? Greg has a lot of questions about his life. He believes not knowing the answers has induced him to repeat the same mistakes. As someone who has made his share of mistakes, the only advice I have for Greg is never make the same mistake twice. This is going to take some understanding and discipline. Until now, Greg’s life has been void of Life Architecture.

Who is Greg and why did I decide to architect his life? Well, I suppose I could have picked myself out of over seven billion people on this earth but then I’d be accused of playing favorites. Besides, I would be introducing bias into an assessment of a life whose molecular composition I’ve studied indefinitely under a microscope and refactored several times trying to get it right. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad since I probably know myself better than anyone else. But the problem is that you would get so tired of hearing how perfect I am, or even worse, you’d recognize my imperfections and hold them against me.

A co-worker once said that perfection is seldom useful. This was ironic coming from a guy who had a prior career in the military. After all, he learned everything that meant anything in the army. His view was that we can’t be perfect nor wait for the perfect opportunity to solve our problems. That would be like waiting for the perfect battle before engaging in warfare. I’d be more worried about having a sensible plan and adequate resources before attempting to liberate the fort. A good plan today is better than the perfect plan tomorrow. “Perfect is the enemy of good” was a lesson on strategy shared by a senior manager at an IT planning session.

We must make a move to get early results rather than over-analyze a situation to the nth degree. In the big picture of life, there is little value digging for details that are irrelevant or rarely applicable to the task at hand. We refer to this as “diminishing returns” and it applies to all of us who take too much time to get something done. Thus, the more time we take to complete the task at hand, the less the incremental value of the desired result achieved. Wasted time is wasted life. A dear friend once said, “If everything needs to be okay around us so we can have some joy, then we are slaves to circumstance.”

We never know when tragedy will strike or life will expire. It was a cancer victim with an uneventful life who said, “I was never even in the driver’s seat of my own life. I mean, I thought there was so much time…so many things were beginning.” I’m not sure I can shed any more light on such a sad situation. When it’s over, our knowledge ends; our limitations are terminated. It doesn’t matter how ready we are if we’re unavailable or not planning to be around. We must take advantage of life while we still have the opportunity.

We always seem to be looking for the right moment and the right circumstances to make a move, and achieve a desired goal. Sometimes the inability to achieve perfection may be holding us back. But as we wait for the right timing and circumstances to align, nothing gets done. Our motivation gets stale and our problems intensify. Sometimes we’re forced to do things faster, thinking

that getting them done in the eleventh hour makes up for the lack of quality or the rightness of our efforts. Even Stephen Covey taught us that “doing things faster is no substitute for doing the right things.”

I think that my military co-worker was trying to tell us that there’s no perfect way to win a war. Wars and grenades aside, I still have a problem picking the perfect pineapple.

u Picking the Perfect Pineapple

Holding out for perfection can be a daunting, if not an impossible, task. Do you ever recall searching out that big, colorful, textured pineapple with long green stems that is so perfect that you have to think about whether you’re going to eat it or admire it on the kitchen counter. We don’t quite find the perfect one but we do find one that is among the best of the bunch. When I bring this pineapple home, it adorns the kitchen for about a week before we decide to eat it fearing it might get too mushy inside. The truth of the matter is that this pineapple probably tastes as good as the perfect one if there is such a thing. The pineapple bin where we buy groceries is one big corral of ripening pineapples, each waiting for its rightful owner. Rather than waste time looking for the perfect one, I suggest we briskly inspect the size and softness of the first one that catches our eye before we throw it into the shopping cart. Perfection on the outside has little to do with taste on the inside. They should all taste the same, especially when they’re from the same batch.

I don’t claim to be an expert on pineapples, but I’ve always admired their tropical origins. Pineapples render visions of tropical paradises and relaxation. That’s probably the reason I picked up a green, glossy ceramic pineapple in Maui that now hangs unripe on the kitchen wall. Every time I see it, I think of myself on a tropical sandy beach with a pineapple cocktail. The ceramic pineapple symbolizes perfection as it is too perfect to get mushy. And I never have to worry that it spoils.

If a juicy pineapple does make its way into the kitchen from the supermarket, we eat it regardless of how perfect it looks. Perfection is seldom useful when we’re salivating over a pineapple that is meant to be eaten. If perfection is what we’re looking for, we always have the perfect Hawaiian pineapple on the wall reminding us that we can’t eat it while we appreciate its beauty.

What is perfection and who is qualified to judge perfection? It was Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, a laureate of several of France’s highest literary awards, who said, “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” I’ve become a little self-conscious about taking a tropical vacation where bikini babes and six-pack studs, as my son calls them, own the beach. Just like a ripened pineapple, my body has become a little mushy over the years. Maybe it’s time to trade in that beer belly for a six-pack. And trust me, there’s definitely something to take away to achieve perfection. But again, what’s perfection going to get me?

During my selection of the ideal candidate for Life Architecture transformation, I was definitely not searching for someone with a six-pack or any other inflated attributes. Furthermore, I had less interest in someone whose life was in total shambles or fell on the opposite side of the spectrum where life just seemed to be too good. I was after a candidate who had enough life problems but less appreciation for the future. The ideal candidate would exhibit a willingness to change and develop the confidence to architect his or her life.

It’s not easy being a scout. It was an announcer in the movie Moneyball who enlightened me about finding the right candidate. “Few scouts can go into the mind of a young man and determine whether he’s really confident about what he can do. So you can sign him based on his

ability, but then he’s gotta be successful to be confident. And once he becomes confident, that’s when you got something.” I’m sure Greg has the ability and the will, and with some success architecting his life, he’ll develop the confidence to make the most if his life.

This ideal candidate must accept the fact that life is cyclical and changes with or without us. There is something called the “ecocycle of change,” which also applies to life. As we change ourselves in parallel with the changing life we are living, we can try to keep in sync and make the best of Mother Nature’s offerings during our lifetime.

u The Ecocycle of Change

The ecocycle of change is a natural phenomenon. When we hear the word “ecocycle,” we imagine a forest. A forest is continuously changing as it goes through four cycles of change – birth, growth, destruction, and renewal. This cycle then repeats itself. The law of nature states that everything that grows must die. This creates fuel that can be used for fire, and fire creates the conditions for renewal, in which new growth can flourish. Do you see how that works? Humanity has a similar ecocycle of change: we are born, we grow up to be adults, we die of various causes, and we are finally replaced by our offspring or someone else’s. As parents, we expect our offspring to learn from our mistakes so they may have the opportunity to lead a more wholesome and productive life. We don’t want our children to live the lives we survived. We have high hopes for our children with the expectation that one day they will make the world a better place. Although life doesn’t always work out the way we want it to, the ecocycle repeats itself regardless of how we want things to turn out. “There’s no way to know what makes one thing happen and not another. What leads to what. What destroys what. What causes what to flourish or die or take another course.” A young woman contending with unknowns in her own life was confident she could influence things in her favor. Sometimes our ecosystems need our help to change in the right direction.

Creation and destruction are essential to the sustainable development of our planet. However, the process of growth is slow, while the process of destruction can be instantaneous. Wildfires can devastate large forested areas within days while newly planted trees to replace the forest take decades or longer to grow to maturity. Many plant species depend on the effects of fire for growth and reproduction. Forest fires can be a good thing as long as you’re not caught in one.

Nature is more apt to change in times of crisis. In fact, nature uses crisis to change itself, whether it’s fire, disease, termites, or hurricanes. These things have a disastrous impact on humanity, with personal implications. This may be the reason we name hurricanes with proper nouns. The ecocycle leads to renewal while we are forced to change in a time of crisis. We either prosper or perish. And in order to prosper, we must rebuild and make changes. Companies have become good at prospering in a changing and competitive economy in order to survive, especially at a time of economic crisis.

I sometimes think of people as a forest in the sense that we go through transitions during our lifetimes. We too undergo an ecocycle of change. We’re born, transform our childhood into adulthood, try to find ourselves along the way, and, if we’re lucky, work on becoming better human beings before we die. And then the younger generation takes over and goes through their own ecocycle of change. When we change proactively, we change our lives to meet our desires; when we change in a time of crisis, we change to survive. Change is a natural part of life in both good times or bad.

Sometimes our reality is often confused by our own perceptions. It was an avid hunter waiting in the cold for elk who described the perception of his own reality: “There comes a point in every

hunt where I think, ‘Why in the hell did we come here? How could my ideas about this hunt be so different from the reality?’ But then, looking at this vista, I remember. We came here to keep on waking up tomorrow in order to try again.” The hunt was the motive; being surrounded by nature was the attraction.

Before we embark on change, we must be ever so careful that it is our reality we are changing to the desired one, not our perceptions. Although the hunter recognized the hardships of hunting, it was nature he enjoyed and wanted to be a part of every day of his life. Every morning I wake up, I try to make my life better in hope that something joyous will happen and make things feel different from yesterday. Then I see the beauty and love around me, and what I have. This is the perception of the reality that I have come to appreciate every day of my life. As we architect our lives, we learn to align our perceptions with our reality before we make necessary changes.

u Our Perception is Our Reality

A meditation instructor once told me that perception is a blend of thoughts and feelings. He also believed that most people live in a state of unconsciousness and our not in control of their destiny. Sigmund Freud, the founding father of psychoanalysis, said that the unconscious mind is a reservoir of repressed inner desires and irrational impulses, and the hidden source of what motivates and makes us. Our perceptions are formed not only by our conscious self, but also our unconscious mind. Perception is what we interpret to be our reality, or should I say that we believe our perceptions to be reality. What we don’t understand is that it is our own perceived reality – not necessarily perceived by others. Unfortunately, our perceived reality can get in the way of the one and only one true reality. While we are sometimes oblivious to reality, our perceptions influence our thoughts, feelings and actions, thus creating a perceived or false reality for ourselves. All these perceptions culminate into a perspective, and we all have our own perspective or point of view. This means that we, as individuals, may see things differently from others. The sooner we see past our perceived reality and align to the one true reality, the sooner we will be able to deal with the real world, rather than a perceived one that we have conceived for ourselves.

The real world can be disproportionate, not to mention unfair. This became clear when I was shopping for a scotch worthy of its price. When the store clerk asked me if I needed help, I replied, “What do you have for a high-quality brand of scotch?” as he showed me one in a locked-up display case next to a $5000 bottle. I asked if the quality was worthy of its $5000 price tag. He said it was a matter of perspective and explained he had customers with more money than taste buds. They didn’t think twice about dropping fifteen grand on a few bottles every couple of weeks. It was their wallets that granted them a different perspective than mine, as well as a better scotch. This was when I realized there was a disproportionate number of affluent scotch drinkers. Unfortunately, I wasn’t one of them.

The clerk had a point – it was all a matter of perspective. My perspective was of the common man, and not the man who flies anywhere he wants in a private jet. I’m sure the latter has a better appreciation of what a good scotch is. I’ve never had the opportunity, or money, to taste a $5000 scotch. My perspective of a good scotch plateaus at about $250 per bottle. In mathematical terms, the rich man’s scotch is 20 times better or that much rarer. My shopping spree that day turned out to be a course in sociology, and I learned that my perspective was based on a middle-class rather than an aristocratic existence. The truth be said, I experienced my first opera, The Barber of Seville, watching Bugs Bunny.

We’ve all heard the saying “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” What is beautiful or perfect to someone may be surprisingly undesirable or mediocre to someone else. And no one can change our minds without changing our perceptions. Maybe it’s perception that is in the eye of the beholder. “What we believe changes what we perceive” was a message from the pulpit about heaven being real. Unless we believe in the teachings of the Bible, we cannot perceive heaven or an afterlife as part of our future reality. And if we don’t believe in God, we can’t have a religious perspective.

It really comes down to a simple philosophy: We can’t perceive a positive future unless we believe that it’s possible to have one. The reality is that we have collected a lot of perceptions during our lifetime – good and bad. And it’s those bad ones, like thinking my $250 bottle of scotch was the best money could buy and whoever paid more was crazy, that obscure our reality. Maybe that’s not the best example but you know where I’m coming from. Perception can be misguided by prejudice, ego, and delusion. The reality of our situation may take time to sink in before we can alter those bad perceptions and develop a new perspective for a better life.

Aristotle, a Greek philosopher and grandmaster of logic during the Classical period in Ancient Greece, believed that “all peoples’ concepts and all of their knowledge are ultimately based on perception.” Our Life Architecture is also shaped by the perceptions we have of ourselves and our lives, even when others don’t agree with them. We may look at things in a different way, especially when our perceptions are not aligned with a truth, reality, or common belief.

It’s a fact of life – our perceptions are not always calibrated with reality. It’s like owning a chicken. I remember seeing a billboard with an impoverished African boy with a grin on his face holding a chicken. The caption underneath read, “It’s not a chicken, it’s a new life.” I saw a chicken, while he saw hope in that chicken – hope to overcome famine. Perception is best described by a famous proverb: “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” Varying life circumstances tend to make us see the world differently and skew our perceptions.

u Blinded by Stubbornness, Arrogance and Overinflated Egos

The movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles is more about misadventures than it is about the three modes of transportation. This reminds me of three modes of self-defeating personalities, namely stubbornness, arrogance and overinflated egos. These personality traits can also be nonadventurous as they typically break down or dull relationships with others. Sometimes, just plain old stubbornness prevents us from accepting the reality we face. Arrogance and overinflated egos are also culprits, and alienate what’s left of the rest of us. I see it in business all the time. How many times have I witnessed power and control defeat common sense and reality? It’s not always easy to overcome a false reality or misguided corporate perceptions, especially when you’re hired as a consultant. I sometimes feel like companies hire me to be their scapegoat and blame me for their problems, which usually stem from their own stubbornness, arrogance and ego. No one likes to admit to their own personality disorders. Sometimes we have to help them see the problem before we can fix it.

What clients say and what they think are not necessarily the same. “The client doesn’t want to hear the truth” was a fair observation shared by a fellow consultant. Consultants are used to bad behavior in some form of stubbornness, arrogance or ego – not to mention disrespect from their clients. We’ve developed a thick skin over the course of our careers, and take precautions to make the client see things from a more realistic perspective. And if we’re really good, we let our clients believe they came up with a great idea or made the right decision when in fact we planted the seed. That’s what great consultants do.

It’s human nature to give ourselves more credit than we deserve. Sometimes people have misconceptions about their abilities. A boss will never admit that his secretary makes the tough decisions around the office. If he did, he wouldn’t be the boss. We all like to take credit for making decisions. As a consultant, I like to think of myself as the hired gun when I step foot into the boardroom, even if that means making my boss look good and letting him take all the credit. Anyone can wave a gun, but not everyone can be trusted to use one. That’s why we have consultants and secretaries.

Greg has mellowed over the years and I can’t say I see any pronounced personality traits in regard to stubbornness, arrogance, or ego. As a competitive athlete during his youth, Greg always had a sense of confidence but was never one to throw it in your face. He had a sincerity and humility which we all had come to respect.

u Who is Greg?

We still haven’t answered the question: Who is Greg? I mean, who is he in terms of his physical, intellectual, mental, emotional, and spiritual being? I’m sure you still remember the life classifications we discussed in the last chapter. We will focus on some key areas of Greg’s life and get to know him better. This is probably a good time for me to give you a character reference since there is no other friend I have known better or longer than Greg.

I suspect Greg lives his life without really thinking about it. This is probably true of many people we know. It was a guy who grew up in the streets who said, “You just do what you gotta do to survive. Somehow you just end up where you are.” Greg didn’t grow up on the streets but ended up where he is without giving it much thought. He’s not fully aware of why things are the way they are, or what is missing in his life. How can he be self-aware when we’re subconscious beings by nature? He’s only human and hasn’t been conditioned to be aware of a premeditated life that is possible or one that he can control.

It was the scientist in Transcendence who asked the artificially-intelligent supercomputer, “Can you prove that you are self-aware?” “That’s a difficult question Dr. Tagger, can you prove that you are?” was the logical response by a machine that had the ability to feel, perceive, and experience subjectively. I hope that one day we can all prove our awareness of the life we are living.

Greg’s goal is to develop a self-awareness during his Life Architecture journey. It was during the movie trailers at the theatre that I turned to my daughter and asked her for a pen. She didn’t have one. I couldn’t wait to get home to write down a quote that I felt captured Greg’s sentiments: “You know I have a past. I’ll find out who I was.” Greg is on a quest to determine who he was and why he is who he is today, and how his life derives meaning. So, without further delay, I’d like to introduce you to Greg.

1. First and foremost, a great athlete

As kids, Greg was the first among us to wear Nike running shoes. I still remember the green neon color with the big white swoosh on the sides. It would become the next generation of athletic footwear. We never heard of the brand name until Greg modeled them at school during recess one day. He was the de facto fashion leader while some of us felt privileged to own Adidas Tobacco shoes, which came in a dingy brown suede. The rest of us stuck to the standard Puma or North Star brands. Sometimes I wonder if Greg’s dad had more disposable income or interest in his son’s sports activities, being a community coach. The point is, Greg was always the first with any innovation that had to do with sports.

Greg was the talented jock most likely to become a high-priced professional hockey player. We all believed that one day he would be signing his rookie card for all his buddies. Unfortunately, he never got drafted. Greg has always excelled at all sports from the first day I met him in elementary school. It started with organized hockey and baseball, and later, basketball, football, ball hockey, racquetball, and squash became competitive pastimes. Now, he plays softball and racquetball after a premature hip replacement. I was disappointed about losing a squash partner and rival. I had been on a crusade to beat Greg, but to no avail. His bad hip ended my hopes for bragging rights. Who knows, maybe it was all the sports and his own fault for wearing out his joints. Or, there just may have been a hereditary factor involved. It’s a cruel world, but not the end of the world.

Greg has always loved and still loves sports more than anything else in the world, with the exception of his beautiful daughters. Sports have always been a focal point in his life. When he didn’t make the roster as a professional athlete, there was no backup plan for an alternate future. It was rather a life tragedy. This probably explains why Greg stayed behind working on a receiving dock while most of his friends went on to university to pursue their careers. He had sacrificed academia for a sports dream, which never came true.

For the record, Greg has a higher than average IQ. Back in our elementary school days, he was an Eskimo and I was a Canadian. The smartest kids were the Eskimos. There were about five of them. The average students were the majority known as the Canadians. The rest of the poor learners were put into the bottom rung which I’d rather leave nameless. After an illustrious academic beginning, Greg’s sports life took over and ended uneventfully.

2. Great looking guy, probably too good-looking for his own good

Greg has always been aware of the virtues of his being a pretty boy. While most of us have lost a few feathers and gained a few pounds, Greg still sports that seriously thick hair on top of a boyish physique. It’s a little grayer but its fullness hasn’t faltered. Actually, the last time I saw him, I didn’t see any silver in his hair. He must go to the same hairdresser as my wife.

Most of us, meaning Greg’s buddies, are still envious when we think about all those discos and cabarets we adorned as single guys. It was always Greg who was approached by the hot chicks for a dance. You could count on him being on the dance floor with the best looking girls, especially when Jenny 67409 was played by the DJ, while the rest of us sat out with the not-so-hot girls who’d rather just watch Greg dance. Let’s face it, with Greg around, we had about as much chance as a snowball in a hot skillet.

We asked, we lost; Greg sat, he won. That about summarizes our disco days and youthful ambitions. Who said life is fair? Today, we take pleasure in fooling ourselves about having great careers and being better dancers than Greg. No matter how you look at it, we’re still sitting, mainly at the office.

3. The Big “D” – twice

Greg divorced the first time with one daughter, then divorced again with two daughters. That’s two divorces too many for a guy I thought would be the ideal husband and father. However, he got three beautiful daughters out of the deal that he may never have had otherwise. I admire him for putting his kids before all else. Sometimes, you just have to do the right things, especially when you’re a dad.

Greg has always been a family man. Even as a kid, I remember his nurturing relationship with his parents and siblings. He was disheartened when his parents divorced and life as he knew it went into a tailspin. His mom, without warning, moved to their vacation home on the lake and went dark on him just as fast. A couple of siblings had their own reasons to flee and soon after joined their mother. Everyone seemed to be looking for an escape.

Greg felt disappointed that his parents had not taken an active role in the lives of their grandchildren. His dad started to come around but struggled with his own demons. Greg was there for him as best as he could be, and assumed the role of a guardian when his father could no longer cope with the pain and emptiness in his life. Although he couldn’t free his father from the pain, Greg gave him the strength to bear it. He could only rely on a brother who lived across the country and moored to his dental practice. Greg may have come to terms with his family’s isolation, but always hoped they could be a bigger part of his life one day.

Now that his marriages were over, Greg would fill the void by heading out to the King’s Head Pub on the odd weekend to listen to his favorite bands. Greg had always loved his music. I still remember his 700+ vinyl album collection decorating his living room floor and furniture before turntables became obsolete. He could now enjoy his music in peace, and maybe find that special girl who would accept him for who he is.

I always believed that Greg deserved a partner in life who accepted him for the person inside and not because he’s good looking and built like the surfers on Bay Watch – a popular television show from the ‘90s focused on bikinis rather than acting. I remember women falling over him before he opened his mouth. If he could only find a girl unimpressed by physical appearances and sensitive to his personality, I’m sure the rest would fall in place. Next time Greg says, “Let me be me,” I hope she sees that his inner beauty is as much a virtue as his outer skin. “You never really know someone until you’ve been through a divorce” was a conviction shared by a man who divorced three times. For Greg’s sake, let’s hope it doesn’t get to number three.

4. Occupation: School bus driver by day and part-time janitor by night just to make ends meet

Greg did finish a one-year cooking program at a local technical school. He proudly called it chef school. I always thought that chefs made better money. It was quite an eye-opener when he learned that he could make more money on the loading docks of a supermarket. Greg was considered nothing more than a junior cook, and the upside was a couple of bucks more an hour after a year, or taking a second job. He decided to pack it in as an aspiring chef and ended up taking a job as a school bus driver. He also worked in the evenings cleaning offices to make ends meet.

Greg confided that wife #2 couldn’t accept the fact that he was content with what he did for a living. He reluctantly agreed to go back to school on his wife’s wishes and get his production accounting diploma. He hit a roadblock when no energy company would offer him a job due to lack of experience. His disappointment escalated as his wife persisted to change who he was, especially when he was alright with himself. It was his wife who was not content. She could not comprehend that Greg was allergic to office jobs or any job confined to four walls. This was paid jail time as far as he was concerned.

Greg is a lot like Lester Burnham, the middle-aged magazine writer who has a midlife crisis and despises his job in American Beauty. In the movie, Lester decides to take a job at a fast food place taking orders from drive through customers. When he gets interviewed by a teen-aged manager, Lester gives a candid response, “I’m looking for the least possible amount of responsibility.” Lester’s midlife crisis transforms him into a man who no longer wants a life of responsibility but the freedom to enjoy the beauty of the world around him.

Greg seemed to fit that mold. Unlike Lester though, Greg knew all along that he never cared to work in an office with a manager breathing behind his neck. He was happy working as a bus driver, if only he could get more hours from this part-time job.

After his divorce, Greg was promoted to a full-time maintenance position for the same property management company that he was cleaning for part-time. The promotion was short-lived after the owner sold his business to someone else, leaving Greg without a job. This came at a time when Greg had improved his financial prospects. I was confidant that he would rebound and get another job, which he did with a reputable property management company in town. Although I always believed that Greg could have done better in terms of career and money, I knew he was content with himself. He doesn’t live for corner window offices with a view, fat bonuses, and trips to tropical beaches.

I am sure Greg is happier than most guys I know who have successful careers and time shares in Hawaii. This puts him ahead of the majority in my circles. And most inspiring is the fact that he never had to go through a midlife crisis to know what he wanted. But at the same time, there were things he needed to work on to make his life more meaningful and fulfilling, not to mention affordable.

5. Last but not least, he’s my friend

We may not be the closest friends today, but we are the longest in terms of calendar pages. We rarely see each other for different reasons. He’s rock, I’m pop. He’s sports, I’m not. He’s burger & beers, I’m pasta & wine. He’s action movies, I’m documentaries. He’s instinctive, I’m analytical. I think that makes our friendship rather “black & white.” But it’s our values and what’s important in life that lands us on the same page.

I still remember Greg and Larry shouting at a hard rock band at a night club to play Fernando. This was a high school shot at the ABBA guy – me! I guess it’s true: Three can keep a secret as long as two are dead. This means I’ll have to deal with it while we’re all still living. It was both unflattering and underhanded, but I got over it. Even with all our differences, our friendship has stood the test of time, and so has ABBA. Today, Greg’s daughters listen to Mamma Mia. That’s what I call payback.

Although we don’t have regular rendezvous anymore, Greg and I make the effort to rekindle our old friendship from time to time. I’ll occasionally join him for a Superbowl or Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) main event, that is, if he hasn’t already made arrangements to go to a Hitmen semi-pro hockey game with his former high-school roommate. He will call the old gang to take in a band from our teenage years and step back in time, while I round up everybody for Christmas drinks.

I miss our regular Saturday morning squash battles. I miss getting up in the morning knowing that Greg and I would battle it out for bragging rights. We lived for those intense games and shouting matches, even one that almost cost us our friendship. He was the bigger man

and made the first move to explain that our friendship was more important than our gold medal aspirations. I must say that Greg taught me an important lesson in life that day. The world’s full of lonely people afraid to make the first move. Those acts of friendship are what has kept our friendship together all these years.

Greg has always been a good friend to me and I would never trade that for the world. In fact, he is a good friend to all those who want to be his friend. I must say that I have come to respect and appreciate him for his sense of fair play. He would never jeopardize truth for friendship. Although Greg has never been a man of many words, he has never had a problem pointing out an injustice or character flaw, even when it concerns a friend. I will always cherish Greg’s support after a mutual friend borrowed a substantial sum from me that turned into a perpetual loan. It was Polonius in Shakepeare’s Hamlet who said, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be; for loan oft loses both itself and friend.” Maybe that’s why I no longer see our mutual friend. Sometimes the price of a good friendship is depreciated by a bad loan. Greg will be the first to point out that they’re both bad – borrowing and then forgetting about it.

Greg is someone I can always count on and talk to about the important things in life. And in my book, that makes him a very dear and special person in my life. “You reminded me about what the most important thing in life is. Do you know what I think it is? Friends...best friends.” These were the heartfelt words of an old woman reflecting on her past. As we get older, I cherish and respect my friend even more.

u Do You Have What it Takes?

That’s a loaded question if I’ve ever heard one. We all have something that it takes to be of consequence or do something of significance. Every time my wife puts on a dress before we go out to a formal event, she always asks me for my opinion. And I always say, “You got what it takes.” She should know better than to ask a question that will always get the same answer, especially when the consequences are predictable. Now you know why my marriage has lasted this long. Once my wife asked me what it is she has that it takes. I replied, “You have good height and a great butt; you can wear anything.” Now she just asks the question to confirm a color choice, satisfy her self-esteem, or simply solicit a compliment about her figure. Kidding aside, do you have what it takes to architect your life? Louis Zamperini, an American Olympic distance runner and WWII veteran, lived by the words “If I can take it, I can make it.” His strength to take it allowed him to survive 47 days on a raft after his bomber crash-landed in the ocean, and endure the brutality of a Japanese prisoner of war camp. Louis Zamperini had what it takes and lived 97 years to make a good life.

Does Greg have what it takes to make it? I’m sure he still has what it takes to be asked on to the dance floor. I already said that he’s a “great looking guy, probably too good-looking for his own good” and that hasn’t changed. Only the age of the women asking may have changed. He always had what it took when it came to attracting the opposite sex. Whether Greg has what it takes to make something of his life is an entirely different matter.

Although Greg hasn’t graduated from academia, he has a diploma from the School of Hard Knocks. Greg never made the pros, but he still remembers what it took to excel and endure the tribulations of organized hockey. He wasn’t born with the skills of a great hockey player but de -

veloped them over time, and gained the experience necessary to become a talented and competitive hockey player. Now the time has come to deploy that model in other facets of his life.

Greg has worked hard to make a good life for himself. He has never been one to be afraid of applying some elbow grease to get the job done. However, things didn’t come easy for him, and like everyone else, he made some wrong turns along the way. Do you ever wonder where you took a wrong turn, or where your life became the exact opposite of what you always wanted it to be, or at least diverged from your plans to some extent? Unexpected circumstances can easily take us off our deliberate path and into an emergent existence.

Everything considered, Greg’s past failures and challenges have been part of a training program to prepare him along the way. People tend to fail in life because their experiences haven’t prepared them well enough for the challenges of life. They haven’t been trained to overcome the obstacles to succeed. As Greg considers his own Life Architecture, his experiences of competing and overcoming obstacles will give him the wherewithal to tackle new challenges. Now that he’s been accepted to the University of Life Architecture, he’s ready to work hard to complete his degree and achieve a better life. Human nature is to work harder when we’re running out of time. Maybe after two failed marriages, Greg feels he has to make up for lost time.

This time round, Greg must become more deliberate in sharpening the capabilities and processes required to achieve his ambitions while drawing from past experiences during his Life Architecture journey. I’m not implying that Greg has been sloppy with his life. However, it is uncertain whether his life has been deliberate or unanticipated up to this point.

u A Deliberate Versus Emergent Life

A Harvard business professor by the name of Dr. Clayton Christensen observed a persistent dilemma between deliberate choices and unanticipated events in our lives. It’s not easy having a deliberate life as we struggle to make choices in a fast-paced and changing world. “We are constantly navigating a path by deciding between our deliberate strategies and the unanticipated alternatives that emerge. Each approach is vying for our minds and our hearts, making its best case to become our actual strategy.” In the book How Will You Measure Your Life?, Christensen and his co-authors provide a credible argument about weighing our deliberate realities with unanticipated opportunities that throw our plans into a loop when we least expect them. This Harvard entourage will tell us that “strategy almost always emerges from a combination of deliberate and unanticipated opportunities.” How will you measure your life? I think Morgan Freeman says it best in the movie The Bucket List: “I believe that you measure yourself by the people who measure themselves by you.” I suspect that we all measure ourselves by each other deliberately, especially when there’s something to measure up to.

I’d say a lot of unanticipated circumstances have emerged in Greg’s life, leading him to the choices that he has made in his marriage, work, and other areas of life. For instance, he went back to school to get his production accounting diploma upon his wife’s impulsive nagging to make a better living, as well as to appease her own desires. At the same time, Greg has made some very deliberate choices such as actively participating in sports and making it the joyous pastime it has always been.

Whether we take a deliberate versus an emergent road in life depends on the goals that we have set for ourselves. Greg doesn’t have any prescribed goals to speak of nor has he been too deliberate about the life he has chosen, and probably the reason he may feel vulnerable and exposed. I think its best that he deliberately set a few goals rather than leave things to chance. Sometimes things don’t always go by plan, especially if we’re still finding our way in the world.

A deliberate strategy doesn’t mean that our future is cast in stone and it’ll be smooth sailing from here on in. Greg will have to make some adjustments as unexpected opportunities arise and he figures what’s out there for him. If Greg doesn’t know what he wants out of life, he may need to be more emergent and experimental in his approach. He has to keep going and adjusting until his strategy begins to click with his goals and priorities.

Greg will soon figure out how to deal with the areas of his life that he values most and in which he will shine, production accounting likely not being one of them. He must get out there and try different things in order to learn where his talents, interests, capabilities and priorities will start to pay off. Once he finds out what really works for him, “it’s time to flip from an emergent strategy to a deliberate one,” according to our Harvard experts. Of course, a deliberate strategy will require a plan, or at least one that clearly outlines a deliberate set of goals. Sometimes we lack a wellprepared plan, and we end up relying on improvisation dictated by circumstance.

We can all be a little more deliberate in life while we take advantage of emerging opportunities. As we endeavor to find a balance between our plans and opportunities, we should be prepared to fail to get it right. A key message from How Will You Measure Your Life? has stuck in my mind: “You’ll know that getting something wrong doesn’t mean you have failed. Instead, you have just learned what does not work. You now know to try something else.” You just have to make use of the resources at hand – time, effort, talent, and money.

u Life is An Investment

Life is an investment that we shouldn’t take lightly, or unconsciously. It’s to our advantage to develop a strategy on how we’re going to invest in our lives. Strategically speaking, we prioritize our time and decide where to expend our energy to maximize our returns. The question is whether our returns are financial, humanitarian, egotistic, or set on how many people attend our funeral one day. Some people believe it’s a numbers game, usually measured by interest and dividend payout. At the end of the day, we allocate our personal resources – namely time, effort, talent, and money to pay for things that we need to get there. “In fact, how you allocate your own resources can make your life turn out to be exactly as you hope or very different from what you intend” were the sentiments of Dr. Christensen in the book How Will You Measure Your Life? Do you ever feel like your life has turned into something you never intended? We need to invest in our lives for the long term rather than play the lottery in hope of an early retirement. Our happiness is a long-term investment, and not something to be measured by temporary gratification and accumulated material possessions.

How Greg invests in his life will determine his future. He needs to allocate his personal resources – time, effort, talent, money – among his children, relationships, work, sports, and other interests. However, our resources are limited as different areas of our lives compete for these resources. This is why we have to identify what’s important to us and prioritize our investment in the various parts of our lives. But first, Greg needs to figure out who he is, what he went through, his background, his pain, his plight, and his fight. Greg is, by nature, a fighter, and not one to throw in the towel in despair, regardless of how trying life has become.

Greg is aware that his life has been more emergent than deliberate, and he’s willing to make a conscious investment in his life. His life has been determined by accident and unplanned events. Unfortunately, the emergent areas of his life have been the result of those around him calling the shots, including his ex-wives – not an ideal way of living life in my opinion. Greg has been through a lot in his lifetime, and it’s about time that he ease the pain and embrace life on his own terms, deliberately.

u It Takes Two to Tango

It takes two to tango on and off the dance floor. There are two sides to every story while it takes great love and commitment to establish an unwavering relationship. We can’t always blame one side without understanding the other’s perspective. I’m not here to judge anyone nor am I in a position to judge. I don’t want you to think that Greg’s ex-wives were these cynical selfcentered women who held their husband at bay with a whip. Actually, I liked both of his wives. They were attractive and intelligent women who wanted a better life, and obviously, a better man – the ideal husband with professional career aspirations. I once heard that “love is helping someone be the best version of themselves.” Apparently, Greg’s wives didn’t see it that way. They were expecting a complete makeover, and he couldn’t appease either one of them.

Greg’s second wife struggled with her own career aspirations while she was on a quest to create a life that was both personally and financially rewarding. She expected Greg to recognize their financial woes and do something about it. She wanted him to be a career man and someone she could be proud of in her life. Maybe that just made her an ambitious and caring wife.

At the end, Greg’s wife joined a community support group where she found God and meaning in her life. Prince, the famous Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, said, “I think when one discovers himself, he discovers God. Or maybe it’s the other way around.” Greg’s wife had a purpose to discover both herself and God, and she seemed content. There was this aura of confidence about her. She had found the direction she was missing. I felt that my friend’s wife was finally at peace with herself.

As kids we never shared our religious beliefs or thinking, apart from reciting the Lord’s Prayer in grade school. I’m not sure if there was a spiritual side to Greg, or if he understood the significance of spirituality. This may have been the bond that Greg and his wife needed to dance the tango and save their marriage. Perhaps if Greg had joined her, they could have resolved their differences and forged a path forward together. Maybe Greg just needed to find his own meaning.

I’m afraid that the ex-wife thing goes much deeper than what I’ve shared with you. It was a career woman blaming her marital problems on herself who said, “I can’t get used to marriage. Maybe it’s time marriage gets used to me.” As a friend and witness to Greg’s wavering marriages, it was obvious that Greg’s ex-wives were focused on their careers. At times, it seemed their careers interfered with marriage. I’m not sure Greg had a chance being a married man to women who were out to improve their own status.

Who knows what whose intentions were at the beginning. Maybe Greg’s ex-wives felt that they had to take a chance. I sometimes wonder if his ex-wives feel some remorse for not trying harder and losing someone like Greg. After losing someone important in his life, a grieving man said, “The past few years, I’ve acted like she was nothing to me. But really, she was everything.” Sometimes we take those close to us for granted. Whatever the thinking, there are beautiful children that Greg and his ex-wives are a part of.

Let’s face it, some people just aren’t happy until they get what they want. Greg’s ex-wives expected a little more status and success than he had bargained for. It was more about what they wanted rather than what Greg could give them. Sometimes I wonder if they were driven by narcissism, personal vanity, or simply ambition. Regardless, I hope that they find what they’re looking for one day.

It was the professional strongman Eddie Hall, the only man to deadlift 500 kilograms, who concluded that narcissism isn’t a bad thing. Actually, it’s a trait possessed by many successful people. “Narcissistic people think they’re God and better than everyone else. But that’s also what pushes them,” according to Eddie. Maybe that’s what pushed Greg’s ex-wives to find a godlike husband. Sometimes I wonder if narcissistic people are confident or arrogant. Eddie feels that people get mixed up between confidence and arrogance. We have to be arrogant before we can become confident. I’m sure it works the other way around, too.

There are people who would disagree with Eddie, especially capable individuals with confidence in their skills. I’ve worked with capable individuals who believed in themselves while they refrained from offensive display of superiority or self-importance. We respect and like to be around such people. It just may be that people like Eddie, who live in the spotlight, feel compelled to show off a little arrogance to their fans from time to time.

u Are You Arrogant or Confident or Both?

Which one would you rather be? I’m sure Eddie would choose confidence, but he believes that you can’t have one without the other. “Arrogance is thinking you’re better than everyone else. Confidence is knowing you’re better than everyone else. But to be confident…to get to that confidence, you’ve got to be arrogant. And it’s the arrogance that gets you to that number one spot. And that’s when the confidence comes.” Arrogance is not only thinking that you’re better than everyone else, but also exhibiting that thinking. In society, we identify confidence as a positive trait, while arrogance has a negative connotation.

Arrogance may be a key requirement when it comes to deadlifting a record weight. This not only takes physical but also mental endurance – arrogance being a form of mental ability. Eddie didn’t win both the UK’s and England’s Strongest Man titles because of his commitment and training. Eddie may have trained hard and gained the confidence to achieve his dreams, but it was his arrogance that made everyone else believe in him. Some of us call this ego and this gave Eddie the spotlight he needed to excel.

Greg is also here to achieve his dreams. I can go on about Greg but I think that you probably know enough about him to go on a first date, or at least a hockey game. There is much more to him and his life, but we’re not here to write his biography. His mission is to discover his purpose and meaning in life and build a vision to achieve the life that will make him happy and at peace with himself – a life that doesn’t include his ex-wives of course. As for the rest of us, we’ll attentively observe and decipher Greg’s Life Architecture journey.

Before Greg embarks on his journey, he’ll want to hire a Life Architecture coach. Without sounding too forthright, I was available and up for the challenge, especially after searching for an ideal candidate myself. Anyhow, I’ll save you the suspense. I think I’m not only the logical choice as a Life Architecture coach, but I’ll also work for free. How can Greg say no to such a great bargain? I’ve made a career of figuring out the whys of human behavior, which makes Greg lucky to have me both as a friend and coach. Besides, I want to show how to be passionate and how to dream big.

Although nobody pays me to give life-changing counsel, it’s only a matter of time before a popular daytime talk show discovers my exhilarating new Life Architecture vogue as a welcomed change from celebrities and their psychologists. Then I’ll be too busy and important to be doing free consultations.

u Life Architecture Coach

What is a coach? Someone jokingly said that it’s a person who eliminates mistakes before he gets fired. I’m sure that we’ve all seen one or two celebrated professional sports coaches get replaced. The dictionary defines a coach as “a person who trains an athlete or a team of athletes.” It also describes a coach as “a private tutor who prepares a student for an examination.” And just for good measure, it gives us one more Hollywood variation as “a person who instructs an actor or singer.” I think we get the gist of it. A coach is an individual with specific knowledge who can advise and help us acquire that knowledge for our benefit. I wish I had someone to advise me, because this life of ours, it can overwhelm. So, without beating this one to death, let’s just say that a Life Architecture coach is an individual who can help us develop a Life Architecture to attain a better future. And when it comes to Life Architecture, we’re not always qualified for what happens next.

As a Life Architecture coach, I tell people that I have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that we live in a world of rules and regulations where we thrive to meet societal demands. The good news is that we can move to a more hospitable world without societal stresses, a Utopia so to speak, where we are reborn and live life on the basis of our own rules. The fact that the two worlds mirror each other and provide a habitat to all of us, doesn’t matter. What matters is that we live a better life, free and unafraid, before the future passes us by. Ideally, a Life Architecture coach can help us find our way. If we don’t find our way, we get lost.

Del Close was the master of improvisational theater who had coached many of the best-known comedians and comic actors of the late twentieth century. Dan Aykroyd, a notable student and comic, described the coaching essence of Close: “What he taught all of us was to be free, and to be unafraid, and to go out and fail as often as possible, to try things, to die on stage, who threw off convention, and kind of blew the lid off the form so that we could really do the freest work that we were capable of.” As a mentor and coach, I don’t want you to die on stage but deliver the performance of a lifetime – your lifetime.

Everybody needs a coach, especially when they don’t have a clue what they’re walking into. As Greg’s personal Life Architecture coach, I will expose him to the strategies, methods and techniques required to develop a Life Architecture. I know the results will be life changing. I feel like the new head coach hired to turn around a floundering football team and get some wins under the belt. A league championship would be the icing on the cake. I’d settle for a life-winning Life Architecture.

I’m not here to play the role of a psychologist or high-school counsellor, nor am I here to give advice, free or otherwise. Rather, I’m a life architect coaching Greg as he maps out his own life – the way it is today and the way he wants it to be. I’m at Greg’s disposal to help him identify the possibilities as he pursues the best opportunities. A mother told her daughter, “If there’s one thing I could teach you, it’s how to find your best self. And when you do, how to hold onto it for dear life.” I’m here to help Greg become his best by tackling all the things in life that have been neglected.

A good coach must carefully listen to what his client wants; he does not impose what he thinks is best for the client in order to meet his own agenda. Such insight, judgement, and guesswork would have a fatal outcome for the client. The ability to coach requires two-way communication to effectively guide the design of a Life Architecture that meets the client’s own requirements with creativity and imagination. “What I’ve found with all of my clients is they have to know what you’re doing, what you’re thinking, and they need to be part of that decision-making process” was the sound advice of a high-profile criminal lawyer in a murder case.

u Whose Life is it Anyway?

It sounds like an appropriate title for one of those human drama movies. Actually, it’s an actual movie about a guy who wants to die after a car accident leaves him a quadriplegic. I’m sure he never predicted that one day his life, as he knew it, would come to an end. No one can predict the future. Nor does anyone know what’s best for us. And if they did, is it their place to sway us in another direction? When it comes to our life – our families, our careers, our health, our ambitions – we can’t rely on anyone else but ourselves to direct our future. Good life coaching and mentorship are always welcome, but we can’t allow someone else to take control of our destiny. I’m afraid we can’t outsource our life decisions to others, even if they care about us or have our interests at heart. It would be like eating for someone else when they’re hungry.

We’re not here to live somebody’s life, but a life we have a desire and passion for. Sometimes we try to emulate parts of somebody’s life, especially if we have worthy role models. Pablo Picasso said, “Good artists copy, great artists steal.” Good artists imitate other artists’ work and call it their own, while they make a few bucks at it. A great artist, on the other hand, borrows many ideas and concepts from other artists while he comes up with his own creativity.

When we copy someone, it means that we lack creativity. We’re perceived as being unoriginal and artificial. It also means that whatever we’re copying belongs to someone else. Whatever our motives, trying to be like someone else is meaningless, not to mention impossible. Besides, wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are and a good way to give up your creativity. However, Picasso believed stealing from other artists stimulated creativity. There was a time when Picasso produced reinterpretations of the art of the great masters, but it was his own creativity that made his art unique and belonging to him. We transform something that already exists into something fresh and new – something that is so personal and original at the end. Maybe we should all take the best things from others through the creative alchemy of our own creative processes.

Nobody knows you better than yourself. Some claim to know you for their own interests. An inventor looking for investors to finance his invention said, “Show me the first seven years of your life, and I’ll show you the man.” This inferred the first seven years of a man’s life formed the basis of his character, and such knowledge could help the inventor predict whether an investor would invest in his invention. Just as an inventor can’t guarantee a return on investment, no one can claim they know what’s better for us. Nobody’s going to take care of you the way that you can.

Psychologists argue that there are patterns to human behavior. This is why law enforcement agencies use criminal profiling to catch the bad guys. Someone, probably a criminal profiler or control freak, once said that everything is made of patterns. “Once you can predict the way a person will act you can learn how to control them.” However, criminal profilers have been known to be wrong. As for inventors, they should leave their fate to venture capitalists while we’re left to our own fate.

I’d be skeptical that inventors, venture capitalists, or anyone else understand Greg’s eccentricities and desires better than he does himself. We will get to know Greg’s eccentricities and desires a little better as he explores his life and desires, and expresses his individualism. His Life Architecture is unique to himself. It was a book on house architecture that taught me a valuable lesson: “What an architect misses by not picking up on a client’s small eccentricities is an opportunity for individualization that will make the architecture special and bring it to life.” As Greg’s Life Architecture coach, I will do everything I can to bring his Life Architecture to life while I pay more attention to his eccentricities.

A young insightful corporate director that I had once worked for shared some insights about his own personal journey. “The best teachers are those who kick the shit out of your belief system,” he said, as if he knew I was destined to be a Life Architecture coach. He suggested that the best teachers teach their students to view life through their own eyes and challenge their choices in life. In the same educational spirit, this is what I’ll be doing with Greg. I want him to conceive his own life aspirations and assess possible directions in life while he makes his own choices. This will take a certain amount of emotional intelligence.

u The Power of Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand our emotions and those of others when it comes to making choices. We have all heard of empathy, which is typically associated with emotional intelligence because it relates to individuals connecting their personal experiences with those of others. Sometimes empathy allows us to put ourselves in other people’s shoes and make decisions based on how the outcome will impact them. It’s no wonder we teach empathy in schools nowadays and the importance of emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence allows us to recognize other people’s emotions while we discern our own, and act in a way that takes into account everybody’s feelings. I know a guy with a high IQ but he usually sits alone at the lunch table. Sometimes, a high IE, or emotional intelligence, can get you further in life than a high IQ. It was another Bob who had a high IE and people couldn’t get enough chairs around the lunch table to be with him. Bob had the ability to make people feel good about themselves, and everybody respected him for that. As for the IQ guy, he was very effective coming up with great designs for our project, although he did it alone. And it’s no fun being alone.

A good coach provides prescriptive guidance to ensure a desirable outcome. Greg doesn’t know this yet, but as his coach, I’m going to help him break some rules to achieve that outcome. I hope to make a momentous impression on him by changing the rules in his life. An effective Life Architecture coach knows which rules to break in which circumstances. Some rules can be broken with ease, while others require deeper evaluation and planning. Greg is not only going to become a rule breaker, but he’ll learn the value of diplomacy before he breaks any rules. He’ll also tap into his emotional intelligence to amend relationships with others who may bear the brunt of his rule breaking.

It’s up to Greg to decide which rules can be broken while he gets a handle on the consequences. He must break some rules that have held him back from living life in a way he could only have dreamed possible. This is his chance to become a warrior who breaks through enemy lines without leaving casualties. This shouldn’t be too difficult considering he already knows what he wants. He just doesn’t know it’s possible yet.

If I were to choose a Life Architecture coach, I’d probably have to go with Jim Morrison, the lead singer of The Doors. My second choice would be Mr. Miyagi, the crafty old karate teacher and surrogate father figure to The Karate Kid. I’m not sure if it was Miyagi’s coaching or wit that I fancied more in the movie. In any case, I liked his coaching philosophy: “You can choose whether to do or do not. There is no try.” The karate kid had no choice but to get off his butt and fend for himself. When someone thinks he has no choice is when you see his true character. Both the karate kid and Mr. Miyagi demonstrated true character on and off the martial arts mat.

Although the karate kid was anxious to learn karate and use it against his antagonists, he realized that everything in life, especially karate, was a process and required commitment and practice. Even more important, the process taught him that the secret to karate lay in the mind and heart, not in the hands. Although Mr. Miyagi was tough on the kid, it didn’t speed up the process but transformed him into a skilled competitor. We can all use some sound advice and direction in our lives.

Jim Morrison, however, was the ultimate life architect because he knew how to break rules that held him back from enjoying life his way. Some say he broke rules to his own demise. Regardless, he was a brilliant, charismatic, and obsessed seeker of life’s meaning who rejected authority in any form. Morrison’s biographers referred to him as an explorer who probed “the bounds of reality to see what would happen.” It would take Morrison’s father another ten years to admit, “My son had a unique genius which he expressed without compromise.”

Some believe that Jim Morrison dropped out of the spotlight to find the peace to write and the freedom of anonymity. If I were Morrison, I too would have taken the opportunity to retreat into obscurity. No matter what the truth, the pressures of stardom and the appeal of a cultural hero may have taken their toll. Morrison may have stumbled upon his own life discovery and was inspired to evolve his true life ambitions. There is no glory in dying and we may never know the truth of his departure. All these years later, people still wonder about the way he died. I prefer to remember the way he lived.

I’ve always considered Jim Morrison to be a rebel – someone who follows his heart with no regard for what others think. The word “rebel” has become somewhat synonymous with rule breaker. Regardless, these are individuals who get tired of rules imposed by society and live the way they want. They possess a psychopathic deviate conflict in regard to society’s rules, and develop the courage to stand up to bureaucracy, societal norms, or simply rules that don’t make sense. They eventually find their own truths and end up living life on their own terms. Maybe Morrison had an Inner Scorecard that made him better at breaking rules than most rule breakers.

u Are You an Inner or Outer Scorecard Person?

It was the iconic financial guru Warren Buffett who distinguished people with an Inner versus Outer Scorecard in his biography, The Snowball. People with an Inner Scorecard truly believe in themselves. They make decisions based on their own intuition, internal value system, and abilities, and couldn’t care less what others think. On the contrary, those with an Outer Scorecard rely on others to get them through the day, and can’t quite make decisions without someone else’s approval. It was a place of worship that posted a sign outside its doors: “Don’t lose yourself seeking approval.” If our self-worth is based on what everyone else thinks of us, we relinquish our power to others. We rely on others for validation. The amount of validation we yearn is correlated to our level of insecurity. Warren Buffett relies only on himself. He has a robust Inner Scorecard and attributes his success to the impeccable track record of his Berkshire Hathaway investment fund. Buffett makes decisions based on his superb judgement. He trusts his own judgement more than anyone else’s, although fact-based input is always welcome. A recent interviewer attests to the fact that the only person Buffett wants to see in the mirror when he wakes up is himself. Who has more inner security and trust in himself than one of the richest men in the world? If you were to mimic someone, who would it be? I’d say Buffett is a logical choice, and I see him as a role model for our kids. Buffett has some stimulating words for every parent: “In teaching your kids, I think the lesson they’re learning at a very, very early age is what their parents put the emphasis on. If all the emphasis is on what the world’s going to think about you, forgetting about how you really behave, you’ll end up with an Outer Scorecard.” It’s tragic that individuals with Outer Scorecards base their entire existence on how others perceive them, while their future is molded by others. However, those with Inner Scorecards pursue their own personal interests and ambitions, and don’t allow others to hold them back. My wish is that my children find the courage to live life according to their Inner Scorecards. “Courage and bravery, and the ability to act, are essential” was a lesson shared by a friend who had overcome many of her own obstacles.

Truth is at the forefront of who we are and what we want out of life. It was Louis Kahn, “America’s foremost living architect” at the time of his death, who said, “Architecture is the reaching out for the truth.” It is our birthright to find our own truth, and the reason Greg has been searching for his truth. We have the ability to architect our lives as we consider our own realities. The truth will pave the road to our future. It is our responsibility to find the truth and the measures that we’re willing to take to find it. Logic and human reasoning are not always adequate to comprehend the truth. “The truth is rarely pure and never simple” was a fitting inscription above an entryway inside a pub.

I just have one question for Greg before we get started: Are you ready to reach out for the truth and pave the road to a desired future? As the new general manager hired to rescue a floundering pro hockey team said, “I’m ready for this.” He believed in hard work with the dream to build a winning team. “You don’t have a chance if you don’t have a dream.” Our dreams will lead us to the truth and help us define who we want to be, where we want to go and why.

It is my objective to stimulate Greg in the discovery and realization of the truth that “he himself is the maker of himself.” I wish I could just give him a pill. It kind of reminds me of the guy in the movie Limitless who takes a pill that gives him perfect recall and allows him to use 100% of his brain. He has the ability to remember the most insignificant details from his past and crosscorrelate them to make optimal decisions. “I wasn’t high, wasn’t tired. Just clear. I knew what I needed to do and how to do it.” I want Greg to be clear, rather limitless, and figure out what he needs to do and how to do it. Life Architecture is that pill.

A famous psychologist was asked to sum up his career. He replied, “I help people as a way to work on myself, and I work on myself to help people. To me, that’s what the emerging game is all about.” I’d say that this philosophy pertains to a Life Architecture coach as he guides as much as he learns from his client. As Greg’s Life Architecture coach, I hope to help Greg identify his life obstacles and decipher his dreams before he can change his life. As coaches, we can only lead others to the truth; we can’t make them believe it. The truth is, Greg has some rules to break first. In the words of Dwane Casey, a highly-regarded NBA basketball coach, “We’re going in with the seriousness it takes to win.”

Chapter 5

Life Has Rules

Eddie: Dad, why do we have rules?

Father: Now so people can live together in peace and harmony.

Eddie: Mmm, I don’t know if we have too many rules or not enough.

Father: Maybe we have too many people.

Eddie: Then we need more rules.

Father: Then we have less freedom.

Eddie: What do we do about that?

Father: Eddie, you’ve just put your small thumb on a big question.

Most of you are too young to remember The Courtship of Eddie’s Father. As a kid, I still remember the dialogue between father and son in the intro to this popular television show. Eddie’s father is a thirty-something magazine publisher and widower left with a six-year-old son to raise. However, Eddie wants a new mother and makes a cunning effort to promote his father as an eligible bachelor. This requires tact and a new set of rules. It also requires the cooperation of a nurturing housekeeper, who’d rather play by Eddie’s rules than those of her employer.

Life has plenty of rules, depending on who you are and what you do. It was a Catholic priest who apprised a journalist, “We don’t pick and choose which rules to follow. We follow doctrine, rigorously.” The scriptures are full of rules. I read that there are 227 rules for Buddhist monks enacted every day. Nuns aren’t so lucky; they have 311. I consider myself fortunate not being a man of the cloth so to speak, otherwise it would be rather difficult for me to break rules, or even write this book for that matter. I hope that doesn’t mean I’m disobedient, revolutionary, or sinful.

I hate to break the news to you, but I don’t think the rest of us are too far off the mark when it comes to rules. Just think of all the rules that we have to follow when we cross the street, never mind when we drive. Even when we get to work, we have rules for riding up the elevator. I remember being in a hurry and breaking the “courtesy rule” that insists men wait until the women have entered the elevator. I’ll never forget the dirty look I got from someone old enough to be my grandmother. Let’s face it, we’re obliged to follow rules whenever we’re conscious and awake.

People are always talking about rules, and more often than not, complaining about their consequences. It seems to be a hot topic of conversation which preoccupies us during regular coffee chats and other social interludes. This includes rules about diet fads, buying stocks, settling insurance claims, or even how to fight an unfair parking violation. We’re often and involuntarily drawn into conversations about beating the system or breaking rules.

Diet fads are the ultimate curse. A curse works only when people believe it works. Unfortunately, there are no generally-accepted principles, rules, or systems we all agree on when it comes to diets. Everyone seems to be promoting their own diet philosophies. Just look at all the diet books out there peddling diet gospels. No one has nailed it yet, otherwise we’d all choose a program

with the fortitude to sustain our diet. The low-carb and low-fat camps are still fighting an endless battle. And God forbid that Jenny Craig takes an extended vacation and leaves her followers stranded. Many of us who can’t quite settle on a diet borrow rules from several popular diet fads. However, I still intend to get Al’s opinion to address any diet violations.

Who’s Al? The parking guy that we’ve all come to respect as the expert on parking violations. After a good sweat on the squash court, tradition beckons that we take the game to the local pub and quench our thirst. It doesn’t take many beers before Al perks our interest with a parking story. Sometimes we’ll initiate the conversation with a crazy parking incident knowing that Al will provide a remedy. As the head honcho for the city’s parking authority, Al knows how to break the rules, or more specifically, how to beat an undeserved parking ticket. After all, money for parking tickets is better spent on beer.

Although parking seems to be a popular rule-based topic since parking tickets were introduced, there’s been a recent craze for cross-border vehicle purchases. The cross-border deals emerging from a shifting economy may be tempting, but clearing customs to successfully bring our hot rod home is another matter. You have no idea how complicated this process can get, depending on the type of vehicle, year, region, standard option requirements, border legislation, and the list goes on.

A few years ago, my wife and I decided, for economic reasons, to beat the system and save a few bucks. The new vehicle we bought could only cross the border by converting it to an old vehicle. Simple, right? We get ourselves a broker, he buys the vehicle from a dealer through his crossborder company, he racks up a few miles on the odometer, and then he resells it to us as “used.” So the vehicle has a few extra miles on it, big deal. The point is, the vehicle is no longer a new vehicle, technically, but a used vehicle. My broker may have broken the rules to get around the system, but it was all legal and we saved six grand when all is said and done.

There was one small hitch, however. Actually, it was more of a glitch. The law stipulated that a purchased vehicle had to be off the production line for at least six months before it could cross the border. Shucks! This was one little rule that we never prognosticated to confirm our purchase decision. Sometimes there aren’t signs when we’re about to get into trouble. It turned out the dealership didn’t have the vehicle that we wanted in stock and had to order it from the manufacturer. I’m sure you can see where this is going.

After waiting six and a half months and unable to get a warranty at the end of it, I wasn’t a happy camper. I think that we would have been better off buying a camper. At least we could live in it in the time that it sat idle at the border. There’s nothing worse than buying something that we can’t use while it is depreciating. Unfortunately, I didn’t know all the rules to break them properly. I did learn that nerves of tempered steel are definitely an asset in such a vulnerable predicament.

The discussion of rules is a never-ending conversation no matter where we turn. Even while sitting next to my daughter as the orthodontist was fitting her braces, the cell phone topic came up. His assistant mentioned that her boyfriend wanted to cancel his existing contract because a better deal was being offered by another provider. The penalty to cancel was full payment for the price of the phone. The orthodontist ardently argued that all he had to do was pay the standard flat fee of $200 to break the contract, regardless of the price of the phone. All this was happening while my daughter was squirming and holding the arms of her chair for dear life.

u Why Do We Have Rules and Why Do We Break Them?

Rules are imposed to help us understand what we’re allowed to do and what is improper or unacceptable, otherwise known as taboo. We are obligated by society and the companies we work for to adopt rules, both written and unwritten. Their rules help guide actions toward desired results. We sometimes feel that their rules are antiquated or without logic, and we break them. Sometimes we break rules to benefit ourselves and believe that only some rules are worth following. Everybody thinks they know the rules, while a few sly orthodontists seem to know how to maneuver their way around them.

Ironically, we enforce more rules on our kids for their own safety, and the fact that they’ll break rules if we let them without understanding the consequences. We actually devise rules to follow rules. I remember telling my kids not only to make sure that the pedestrian walk light signal has changed before crossing the street, but also to ensure they are out of harm’s way by checking that all approaching cars are stopped. Making eye contact with the driver before crossing is another rule. Although they may be following the traffic rules, the driver may be sleeping behind the wheel. While I have force-fed an extra rule or two to ensure their safety, I tell my kids to use common sense when they break rules.

We have rules wherever we go and whatever we do. We are bombarded by rules whether they’re practical or not. At the same time, breaking rules has consequences. Thanks to my daughter’s orthodontist, I now know how to break a cell phone contract without consequence. I just didn’t realize there are people who actually read the fine print. Rules come in all types and sizes, and we’re expected to follow all of them. It’s too bad the good doctor isn’t licensed to hand out a prescription for rules.

Some societies rule with absolute authority and install a system of legalism to control its citizens. These are typically dictatorships where people are controlled by laws and rewards and punishments, so that they behave as good humans and keep up the harmony in the state. Sometimes I wish I could just remove myself from modern society and leave all the rules behind. This may be a reason that some people who don’t want to follow rules leave city life for the Alaskan wilderness. “I don’t think I’d do too well working in a cubicle. My office is a hundred million acres of wilderness.” Only an Alaskan resident living 67 miles north of the Arctic Circle and fed up with rules can have such a perspective.

u A Life With No Rules

A life with no rules sounds like Utopia or Alaska. Where there’s society, there are rules. And to live a life without rules, we must live outside of modern society like the Alaskan wilderness. Personally, it’s a little too cold and lonely up there. But with loneliness comes freedom – to go where you please and do what you want. It is innate to every man to be free, to be able to fulfill his calling here on earth. In John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, it says that liberty is the point of human existence. For Alaskans, living in the bush offers an existence of freedom and independence. It also offers privacy. After all, privacy is the foundation of freedom. There’s pretty much no place left on Earth except for interior Alaska where you can have absolute freedom. That’s probably because there are no rules to follow. You have no choice but to be independent when you’re living in total isolation. If you’re hungry, you can’t just go to the grocery store; you go hunt for food and hopefully you’re a good shot. This is actually wealth without money. Alaskans will

tell you that you don’t need money to be rich; rather, you must have a good attitude and work hard. Persistence is the key to subsistence, while power and money are illusions. It’s a simple philosophy: The more independent you are, the more freedom you have. So, if it’s freedom that you’re looking for, I’d say Alaska is a good choice. You sleep when you’re tired, you eat when you’re hungry, and you work when there’s work to be done. There are no rules, nor anyone to enforce them. Unlike you and I, Alaskans have the freedom to build the life they want to live, and then live that life without rules governing their conduct. “There’s nothing I’d rather be doing. If there was something I’d rather be doing, I’d be out doing it. I do whatever I want, literally,” said one Alaskan living in isolation. He measures the quality of life by how much free time he has to do what he wants to do. “My day can be made just by seeing a moose and watching him walk across the river.” Although it’s an ancient way of life, it’s freedom in its purest form. The freedom and simple beauty is just too good to pass up.

I can’t imagine living in a free world where I can park my car anywhere I want without paying for parking, or one where I don’t need home, auto, and health insurance. This is probably why Alaskans don’t go into town unless they have to. Most of them have converted to another mode of transportation, namely dog sleds, for the same reasons. Everywhere we go costs money, and if we stay at home, we still have to pay for utilities, cable, property taxes, condo fees, and the list goes on. You don’t have to worry about rules in the Alaskan wilderness.

On the flip side, companies are an integral part of civilization where people work together to make a living. These companies define rules to protect their interests and expect its people to abide by them. As a consultant, I’ve been trained to objectively interpret a company’s rules and policies, even those hidden in fine print. I’m continuously on the lookout for rules when I go into a company to assess what they do and how they do it. I’m basically hired to understand why they do things a certain way while I find a better way to do them. An agent once told a country music star, “My job is to give you the best advice that I can.” I wonder if that includes breaking the rules. If we don’t understand the rules, we don’t know which ones to break. This is where a good agent is worth his weight in gold.

Some of us can’t afford an agent and rely on neighbors for advice. When a teenager in the movie Ashby starts taking advice from his next door neighbor, a retired CIA assassin, he soon realizes that he can break rules that he never dreamed of. When he makes the football team and is bullied to quit, he makes excuses why he doesn’t belong on the team. The leery neighbor asks, “Is one of your goals to bullshit yourself into submission?” It turns out that this improbable mentor is in desperate need of a driver and drinking buddy to resolve his own problems. “Driving with a couple of shots in ya, it’s a skill” is hardly the kind of advice a young man with a driver’s license should be taking from a desperate neighbor.

Breaking the right rules is a genuine skill, unlike driving after a couple of shots. Consultants are programmed to break rules, but only when it makes sense to do so. Breaking rules can be an excruciating dilemma for companies expecting its people to follow the rules. Who are we kidding? Companies can’t afford to live with antiquated rules that no longer work for them, while they hire capable consultants to help break them. This requires a management leadership team gutsy enough to break rules and make radical change.

u Following the Herd

We often follow the herd blindly or voluntarily, and yield to society’s expectations. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche referred to this as “herd happiness,” also known as “herd morality,” and is only worthy of animals. I guess for some people, happiness is being in the herd. This way the herd takes care of everything for us. Herd morality is good for the herd but bad for the individual according to Nietzsche. Being part of the herd undermines our individuality. As good citizens, we are expected to follow a code of conduct in society comprised of principles, norms, rules, and accepted practices. Companies have a code of conduct and if we don’t abide, we may find ourselves on the street. These companies are slowly waking up and deliberating why they’re governed by certain rules and what rules are followed solely for the sake of tradition. As consultants, we challenge rules that are followed blindly. Employees simply tell us, “This is the way we’ve always done it.” And I can’t help but think that their companies are run by a flock of sheep. Herd mentality has become somewhat of a common and recurring theme, as well as a self-destructive process. Maybe it’s time that we become a little more selfish and independent. Even Nietzsche said that we need selfishness to be able to achieve something in this world because it’s our achievements that drive civilization and culture to its highest peaks.

I sympathize with the working man who’s been brainwashed by the company he works for into following rules that have no value. This can lead to a diminished sense of purpose in life. “You take on a kind of a matrix of thought that is not your own” was the wisdom of a former Scientologist. I’m not qualified to comment on Scientology or any other self-interest group wanting to indoctrinate us, but I’m sure most of us believe it can’t happen to us until it happens. They advocate that we think for ourselves, and then tell us exactly how we must behave to be accepted. And if we try to get out, there can be serious consequences.

The guys who tell us to follow the rules are usually the same guys who come up with them. And many times they have personal agendas. No one has apprised us that we should follow our own rules or pointed out which societal rules are in our best interest. “Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men.” I can’t say I came up with that quote but it truly embodies some truth. Regardless, my hope is that we all become wiser and renounce blind obedience, while we devise a set of rules worth following.

Although my initial meeting with a company is typically a “meet and greet,” by my second meeting I’m ready to conduct a work session to evaluate their processes and the rules they follow. During this exercise, I tell the meeting participants that I will identify the business rules that restrict or negatively impact their business processes. Many sit there and pretend to know what I mean by business rules. I make it clear so that there are no misconceptions about the types of business rules that I’m talking about and need to capture.

So, before we get into it, I’ll politely put it out there and ask, “Who can tell me what a business rule is?” Although I don’t expect anyone to give me the correct answer, I play the role of a teacher while they think that I’m doing consulting. Depending on the maturity and mood of my audience, I may rattle off a few examples and ask them for their opinions. I also consider if my audience is a group of talkers, disbelievers, or victims of corporate expectations forced to attend my workshops. Regardless, I end up at the whiteboard and write down the four types of rules.

• The meaning of something we deal with or affects us

Example: Medex is a pain relief drug used to relieve pain.

4 Types of Rules

• A truth or observation about something

Example: An adult over 18 can take 1-2 Medex tablets every 6 hours.

Definition Fact

• Something derived from something already known

Example: A child can only take half the dose of Medex as an adult - 0.5-1 Medex tablet every 6 hours.

Derivation Constraint

*Medex is a fictitious, non-trademarked product

• Something that restricts our actions

Example: Do not drink alcohol if you have taken Medex.

All those pretty know-it-all faces in the room don’t know this yet, but I’m there to break their business rules. As a consultant, I’ve been conditioned to use a technique called “rule-busting.” Sometimes I have no choice but to tame their egos. I feel like a cowboy from the Wild West about to break in a bucking bronco. Of course, I’m there to sabotage their business for the better.

Ideally, I get rid of rules that obstruct process efficiency or don’t add business value. If I can’t break the rules by changing the way people do something, then we try to come up with a new process that avoids all those silly rules altogether. It’s always a challenge to get people to understand how to do something better, let alone getting them to do it. Together, we determine what rules we need to break to get from a current to a future state process – or to where they can do things better. It’s important to get their buy-in or else they will never accept their new or improved processes.

I take care not to break rules that govern a business from a policy standpoint or have legal implications. I don’t think my liability insurance would cover me for such negligence. I have a moral and legal responsibility to the client. Regardless, I always ask, “Why do we do it this way?” and “Is there a reason why we can’t break this rule?” If a rule is hindering the business and no one knows why we’re doing it, I break it, assuming it won’t put anyone in jail.

It was the director of NASA’s Space Task Group during the Space Race against the Russians who said, “Whoever gets there first will make the rules, that’s been true of every civilization.” I rather think of it as a race to the market where companies have to break some rules and remove constraints to compete in a market economy. They make their own rules while they break old ones.

u Constraints Are Obstructive

The one business rule that seems to be the most obstructive is a constraint. Constraints are the obstacles that restrict or hold us back, either in business or our personal lives, from moving forward and accomplishing great things. Constraints are rules that we believe we must follow because they are the law, a norm, or a standard code of conduct that is expected of us whether they are written down or not. There are many unwritten rules or constraints that we accept as gospel.

Most organizations expect me to wear dress slacks and a collared shirt to work, except on casual Fridays of course. One day, I decided to dress down and meet a few friends after work for a hockey game. I didn’t have time to go home to change, nor did I feel like wearing dress clothes all night. I walked into a meeting that day in jeans. I broke the rules, or rather the corporate code of conduct. I’m sure some colleagues noticed my disregard for the workplace, but I relied on my group relationship to soften the blow. Besides, there were no VPs in the meeting that day. I could have brought a change of clothes but toting a duffle bag between clients would have been an inconvenience.

There are many constraints that prohibit us from doing things in life. Although prohibition has ended, slavery has not quite been abolished and no one deserves to be a slave in a democratic society. Today’s corporate hierarchies imply that we have masters and subordinates. I pity the factory worker on an outdated production line with no union to look after his well-being. I won’t even talk about the extensive network of sweatshops in third world countries where human beings are used as disposable assets. It takes only one deranged superior at work to put constraints on us. This may explain why some of us work for ourselves.

I wish we could all be independent and in control of our lives. The trick is figuring out which rules we can break and which ones are worth breaking. Some rules are undeniably obsolete, but yet we follow them to a tee. I wonder if we keep them around for political purposes like the companies we work for where corporate politics is responsible for enforcing bad rules. Sometimes we’re prevented from getting rid of rules that make no sense. In the face of corporate obstacles, we try to change rules enough to accommodate our process improvement efforts. Other times, it’s more serious and a matter of changing the corporate culture.

I don’t think management will regret breaking a rule if it is going to save the company some money and improve the bottom line. Speaking of regrets, there is one constraint attributed to people themselves more than the organizations they work for. And that constraint is something we have all experienced in our lives at one time or another – regret itself.

u Forget Regrets

A man’s greatest enemy is regret. These are the dark forces pent up inside us. Regret is a selfdefeating feeling over something that happened in the past – something that negatively impacted us so deeply that we’ve refrained from doing certain things in life. We tend to accept that negative experience as our fault. We believe that we could have done it differently and blame ourselves. We keep replaying it over and over in our heads until we go crazy thinking about it. We are consumed by thoughts such as “If only I had done it this way” or “If only I had another chance.” Regrets stop us from thinking clearly and hinder us from taking action. We must overcome our fear of unrealized dreams and pursue them objectively. I personally have

a fear of a mundane life. As Mark Twain pointed out, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.” It’s time to sail away from the safe harbor and start exploring, dreaming, and discovering our lives. Forget regrets and do the things you desire while still able to do. Break through all the regrets and fears and anything else that still lives in the past. Besides, the only way to forget regrets is by moving on and achieving something much greater.

Forgetting regrets is not as simple as a flip of the switch. We all harbor guilt believing we could have done something better or differently. Past opportunities have been lost forever while guilt festers inside of us. We are sometimes overcome by regrets and conclude that maybe our entire life has been a waste or lie. We end up feeling sorry for ourselves as we struggle with depression and self-worth. We become stale and immovable in our thinking. It’s as if the world has come to an end. There is a state that one gets into when it’s completely grim. Life just doesn’t seem that important. That’s where we courageously lead ourselves out of depression and forget the regrets. Such experiences teach us to be happy with who we are, no matter what we’re going through.

We all have regrets in some form or fashion. People who never went to college identify this as a missed opportunity regardless of how successful they may be. Society seems to correlate higher education with higher status. Some people without formal education may feel inadequate or threatened. I personally admire successful entrepreneurs with no degree to show for it. They made it on their own initiative by chasing their passions. Truth be told, I don’t think I ever found my passion. Maybe that’s why I went to college.

Sometimes people fail because they focus on what they can’t do rather than on what they can. They don’t believe in themselves and disregard their potential. They fear the possibility that they can actually accomplish something. Marianne Williamson, a spiritual leader and author, explained this phenomenon when she said, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be?...Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.”

People owe it to themselves to play a bigger part in life, rather than worry that they’re unqualified or undeserving when opportunities arise. They don’t seem to understand that their experience and practical knowledge more than make up for it. Their self-esteem prevents them from applying for specific jobs because they’re competing against guys with a diploma. The irony is that they may dazzle the interviewer on their own merit based on experience, passion, and social aptitude.

u Guilt and Worry Lead to Erroneous Actions

The self-help guru Wayne Dyer said that “the two most futile emotions are guilt for what has been done and worry about what might be done.” Maybe we just need to tell ourselves that most of the things we worry about will never ever happen. Someone with a sense of humor advised that alcohol works even better and frees the mind of guilt and worry. Dyer criticized societal focus on guilt and saw it as an unhealthy immobilization in the present due to actions taken in the past. Parents, institutions, and even we impose guilt trips on ourselves. “Guilt is a motherfucker, isn’t it? It eats away at your aspirations, your dreams, your fucking soul” was a young man’s admission about his own guilt – a guilt that was preventing him from moving

on. Thus, if you’re plagued by guilt or worry and find yourself unintentionally falling into the same old self-destructive patterns, then you have “erroneous zones,” according to Dyer who wrote a popular book on the topic. These erroneous zones refer to negative thinking, attitude, and behavior leading to negative emotions – worry, guilt, depression, helplessness, anger, and neediness – which in turn have negative consequences by taking erroneous actions. Erroneous actions create problems which prohibit success and happiness. Remember, no amount of guilt can solve the past and no amount of anxiety can change the future. Maybe it’s time to be positive and start loving ourselves enough to let go of the guilt, resentment, and criticism. Otherwise, we’ll never be able to embrace the compassion, joy, and gratitude life has to offer. A self-help book author once said, “Guilt, shame, and self-criticism are some of the most destructive forces in your life, which is why forgiving yourself is one of the most powerful.”

As a life architect, I find there’s someone always asking me, “What do you think?” I usually respond, “Assess your own life by asking yourself, ‘Am I happy what I’m doing and how I’m feeling?’” Don’t waste your time on something that won’t enhance your happiness and future. Do you honestly think it’s worth Bill Gates’ time to go back to university or make more money? It’s best he focus on his foundation and serve mankind. Bill has been awarded honorary degrees for his achievements and has no reason to harbor regrets, guilt, or worry. He’s demonstrated his superiority over Ivy League graduates.

Regret should be taken as a lesson learned to further improve our future. While most people see regret as lost opportunity, it’s an opportunity for a new beginning. Regret is our calling in life to take action and avoid further regrets, and find peace and happiness. I personally regret that I did not break more rules when I was younger. I don’t mean rules like skipping class or trying to get away with things as a teenager. I’m talking about rules that jeopardize our lives and negatively influence the decisions we make with regard to a better future – job, marriage, passions, etc. Sometimes we need to break rules to avoid regrets in the future. I’m now at that age where I can say that avoiding regret takes age and wisdom.

u Maturity of Judgement

Breaking rules requires a maturity of judgement, something we lack in our adolescence. We just may be too young and naïve to embark on a rule-busting campaign at a time that we’re confronted with life-changing decisions but lack the experience. Evidently, it comes down to one question: What life rules can we break? We’ve learned that we can break rules in business, but can we break rules that direct us in all facets of our lives? Just as in business, we must break rules that have held us back from achieving a life we so much desire, especially when the rules don’t make sense. It was Dustin Hoffman as The Graduate who said, “It’s like I’ve been playing some kind of game, but the rules don’t make any sense to me. They’re being made up by all the wrong people. No, I mean, no one makes them up. They seem to make themselves up.” Breaking rules just may be the type of thing that can help a graduate land a better job or get into a lucrative business. Regardless, rule-busting requires a certain attitude and degree of maturity.

We’re conditioned to follow rules before we even take our first step. As toddlers, we learned what areas of the house were off-limits. From the moment I could comprehend things for myself, my parents started filling me up with a lifetime’s worth of beliefs, many of which had nothing to do with who I actually was or what was necessarily true – like school being the ticket. I was told that if I didn’t go to school I’d end up on the wrong side of the tracks with my father. There was a constant nagging to get good grades so that I could get into college. My parents’ definition of

success was a white collar job where one had to wear a suit and work downtown. I can’t put the full blame on my parents. They were assisted by their social circle and society at large.

My father was a simple man – a laborer by day and a family man by night. I forgot to mention that he was also a superhero. To me, a hero is someone who steps up when everyone else falls down. A drill sergeant shared a simpler definition of a hero: “It’s a man doing the job he has to do, the best he knows how.” That was my dad. He possessed superhuman abilities to transform railcars into scrap metal faster than any man on the planet, or at least the Morley Reserve. He’d entice his friends to make an extra buck on weekends but they’d sooner turn back than break their backs. Most quit the same day. My dad was the record holder and his scrap metal production was twice the runner-up. These are stories any son would be proud to hear about his father.

Sometimes I feel that my dad never maintained his superhero status because he didn’t follow his heart and didn’t break the rules. His Morley gig was only a weekend money grab, while his real job with a national railroad was his primary occupation. He could earn more in those two days than all week at the railroad. However, the security of benefits, a pension, and a full-time job outweighed his dream of working for himself. And my mother made sure he understood the value of security. He wasn’t ready to take the plunge.

There was a sort of conventional wisdom that inferred that a company takes care of you until the day you die. Fate overpowered conventional wisdom and my father would be killed on the job. I sometimes think that if he had broken convention he would be alive today. He would also have been freer, happier, and wealthier.

u What is Conventional Wisdom?

I’d say it’s bad for us, but that’s me thinking out loud. I don’t like it because it means that people conform to the usual accepted norms, practices, and standards of conduct. People are conditioned to give up their individuality and originality. They become unimaginative and routine in their daily life, reminding me of the sheep I observe as I drive through the countryside. I’d like to think that my individuality supersedes conventional wisdom or public opinion. Conventional wisdom is believed to be true, but is often false. If you look up the definition of conventional wisdom, it is the body of ideas or explanations generally accepted as true by the public. Such ideas or explanations, though widely held, are unexamined. And worse, we as a society embrace this unqualified wisdom and preserve it as status quo, which we feel obliged to conform. I’m yet to distinguish our lives from that of a herd of sheep.

My parents’ conventional thinking put a lot of weight on a college education and the fact that I should have one. They felt obligated to make a decision for me about my future. There was an expectation that I would go to college and work in an office one day. It now all makes sense why I was on the honor roll in high school and ended up getting a couple of college scholarships. I could have predicted my mother would buy me a briefcase after I graduated with a university degree.

“Nowadays, you’re nothing without a degree” was the advice from a grandfather to his grandson. I’m sure he stole that line from my mother. He also informed his grandson that in Thessaloniki they used to say, “The more you know, the more you suffer.” This may be the reason I didn’t go to college in Thessaloniki, although I didn’t know what I wanted, nor what I was going to do with the education I worked so hard to get. But I did know that I wanted to live life fully. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said, “To live life most fully, one had to risk suffering and overcome it.” For Nietzsche, suffering was the key to unlocking the secret of happiness.

We traditionally see happiness in opposition to pain, anxiety, suffering, etc. It’s not just pleasure, but pain that can lead to happiness. Pain is almost an enabling condition for achieving happiness according to Nietzsche. As we strive to achieve something, we must suffer in some way to get it. Taking a gondola to the summit of a mountain will not give us the same happiness that we’d experience by hiking to the top. It’s overcoming obstacles to achieve a goal that gives us happiness. We must also bust some rules to overcome obstacles.

I’m not sure how much Alice Cooper had to suffer but he definitely had to bust some rules to get to stardom and live life fully. He even took a girl’s name. In an interview, Cooper admitted that it was either a rock band or working at the local Walmart. There was no college in this equation. Who needs education when you have musical talent, band members, and parents who mind their own business? I never had any talent, at least none to make me a rock star. This was probably the reason I had to suffer through business school. I’m sure Alice Cooper suffered too by wearing a snake around his neck.

I didn’t know it back then, but I had been pigeonholed to pursue a college degree and follow the herd. That piece of paper turned out to be a prison sentence and would dictate what I was going to do in life. Looking back, it was my only option for success, or at least the one I believed had long-term viability. It’s funny how success seems to change course as we journey through life. It took me awhile to realize that having confidence in oneself and the ambition to overcome challenges is the key to success. Age does that sometimes.

Growing up, we were all told to have confidence in ourselves. However, it was too much of a cliché to make an impression. When you’re a kid, everybody is ready to give advice, but yet nobody has a plan. Nobody offers us a manual with a step-by-step process outlining how to live life. The world is filled with self-appointed advisors who seem to think that their age and experience give them the right to advise us. They don’t seem to recognize that their advice is rather hypothetical than proven. We have to be careful and selective when taking advice.

u Taking Advice with a Grain of Salt

Between you, me, and possibly a behavioral psychologist reading this book, some adults in our lives don’t have it all together. They should not be giving advice but rather seeking it themselves. However, not all advice is bad. It just has to be validated. It’s good practice to consider the source and its applicability to your life.

• How can advice be applicable when the advisor doesn’t know what you want out life?

• How do we get a grip on life and a handle on what we want?

• How do we assess the benefits of what we want and how do we get it?

• What life rules are we supposed to follow or break when there is no such thing as a life rulebook?

Whatever anyone tells you, take it with a grain of salt. It’s up to you to figure it out.

First things first, we have to figure out what these life rules are and the purpose they serve. Life rules impose behaviors which restrict us from acting by our own free will and at our own volition. After all, our independence and freedom depend on the existence of free will. Some people take it upon themselves to decide our will for us as we swim through life’s murky waters. We seem to be conditioned to live life by these inviolable rules enforced by others.

I always ask my kids why they do certain things and if there is a better way of doing them. I even say things like, “Did you ever think about breaking that rule?” They’re rather surprised how many rules are breakable. They’re even more surprised that they can break them. They know what I mean by rule-busting. They also wonder why I don’t follow rules like other parents. I tell them that other parents aren’t life architects and never really grasped the concept of free will.

u Rule-busting for Dummies

“For Dummies” is an extensive series of instructional/reference books which are intended to present non-intimidating guides for readers new to the various topics like rule-busting. Busting rules is not supposed to be intimidating. There are two types of rules: those we can break and those we can’t. And it’s important to understand which rules we can break. Change is initiated by breaking rules that are breakable. Rule-busting is a process by which we break rules to achieve desired outcomes, while understanding and appreciating the consequences. It takes prudent decision-making to break a rule whose desired outcome outweighs its negative consequences. It’s time to be prudent and break some rules. I assure you that no one will call you a dummy after you break some life-debilitating rules.

Many years ago, I was doing some consulting work for a small process re-engineering firm here in town. This band of process re-engineering gurus took a client’s processes, figured out why they were inefficient or stale, and then developed a process picture that illustrated how their company could do things more efficiently and effectively. I was sold. They were inarguably onto something.

I was most impressed by the unassuming twin sisters who co-owned the company, and their casual, informal business conduct which seemed to be a big hit with the client. Their impromptu presentation style and giggling was soon overshadowed by their professional approach and results. Although they had this sweet and innocent demeanor about them, they had the ability to empower their clients to make decisions during a series of process improvement sessions. The end goal was to get the client to “buy into” a brand-new process that would increase operational efficiency and promote corporate effectiveness, otherwise known as “killing it with improvement” in business lingo.

My new bosses prided themselves as experts in rule-busting, and were on a mission to kill it with improvement. This is probably where I first picked up the term. At first, I had misconceptions that they were trying to get employees to do things behind their managers’ backs. It became apparent that the employees were following rules that were unnecessary and holding them back. In some cases, there were rules prohibiting them from doing their jobs.

It feels like it was just yesterday that I was observing this dynamic duo in action as they were introducing “rule-busting” and soliciting existing business rules from people in the room and writing them on a flip chart. You should have seen the look on their faces when the twins suggested that they turf certain rules. The concept of rule-busting was a key enabler of their approach for improving business processes and getting people in the company to “think outside the box,” as they put it. The end game was to get companies to improve their processes by changing or dropping rules.

I must say that I get a little suspicious when someone tells me to think outside the box, especially when there is no box. Someone boorishly said, “Think outside the box, collapse the box, and take a fucking sharp knife to it.” That’s one way to get rid of the box. Malcolm Gladwell was a little more

tactful and less offensive when he said, “If everyone has to think outside of the box, maybe it is the box that needs fixing.” I’m curious whether Gladwell had a box to fix in order to get five books on The New York Times Best Seller list. Personally, I’d be inclined to just get rid of the box and start thinking about the rules we need to bust around us.

Thanks to the “killing it with improvement” twins and their process re-engineering firm, their rulebusting approach had become a habitual ritual for the rest of us. I had this Ghostbusters symbol across the word “Rules” etched in my brain. Two decades later, I would incorporate rule-busting as one of many analytical techniques in this progressive but radical Life Architecture methodology. It was obvious that there are rules in life that have hindered us from taking positive action. Since rules influence our lives, it is also important that we make the right assumptions before we go on a rule-busting binge.

u Figuring Out Greg’s Life Rules

Let’s get back to Greg, the lead character in this Life Architecture drama, and talk about his life rules. Before we get too deep into understanding all the pieces of Greg’s life and where things eventually need to land, we’ll have to consider some of the existing life rules that have held him back, which we will now refer to formally in Life Architecture as Life Rules. What are all Greg’s Life Rules in the grand scheme of things or the big picture? He follows a set of rules that dictate his life today. As Greg creates a Life Blueprint of his future, he will modify his Life Rules and discover new rules along the way. This is where a Life Architecture discipline will come in handy.

We talked about creating a Life Blueprint in Chapter 3 with the analogy of breaking down an organization’s operations into its subordinate processes using functional decomposition. Together, these processes make up everything an organization does as a business entity. An organization decomposes all its processes into lower-level detailed processes using a process tree so that it can analyze them and put them back together in a better way. It also breaks the old business rules and introduces new ones as processes are revitalized.

Similar to organizations, Greg has adopted a Life Process Tree to break down everything he does into bite-sized pieces. How many times have our mothers told us to chew before we swallow? Greg has decomposed his life processes into lower-level detailed processes and the underlying numerous activities that make up his life. His focus has been on the key processes that he needs to change in order to meet his vision of what gives his life meaning and makes him happy.

Greg must get a good handle on all the Life Rules that impact his life processes. This will help him understand which rules he needs to break or just tweak a bit, and which new rules will be required to allow him to achieve a desired life in the future. His life processes rely on the rules he follows. If an organization can get “lean & mean,” why can’t Greg? In Chapter 1, I shared some valuable lessons that I learned during my student days in business school about companies becoming more efficient and effective, aka “lean & mean.”

There are many Life Rules that Greg considers important, including those from the past. He’s also aware that he’ll need new rules in his present-day life endeavors, as well as his future, which are still undetermined. Some of the rules he believes impact and dictate his life are outlined in the following table according to the various facets of Greg’s life, which we refer to as life classifications. Some of these rules may have perpetual relevance while others have a limited timespan. These rules will change as Greg discovers himself and his desired future.

Life Classification

Family

Greg’s Life Rules

Life Rule

• My children will live with me every other week.

• I cannot negotiate directly with my ex-wife in matters concerning the well-being of our children and finances.

• I must have a life partner to fulfill my emotional, physical and intellectual needs.

• I must work two jobs to earn a living.

Work Leisure

Education

Physical (Health)

Intellectual

• I must pursue an education to get a better job.

• I must go out on the town on weekends, including my favorite pub, to release stress at the beat of a good band and meet women.

• I must play the sports that are a big part of my life - namely hockey, baseball, and squash - to fulfill my competitive nature.

• I must regularly watch sports on the air, follow sports news, and attend sporting events with friends to fulfill my professional sports interests.

• I must regularly explore the outdoors, take my kids camping and hiking, and retreat to the family cabin for relaxation.

• I am not capable or smart enough to go to college or another post-secondary institution to land a “real” career.

• I am too old to go to school for a better job opportunity.

• I must get an education to meet the expectations of the woman in my life.

• I must work out (exercise) to feel healthy and good about myself.

• I must follow a strict diet to keep trim and feel healthy.

• I must grow as an individual through personal life experiences and learning from mistakes in both my personal and work life.

• I must follow the news channel, as well as watch stimulation and educational documentaries, to keep abreast of current events in the world.

There are more Life Rules that put constraints on Greg’s life, but this is a good start for the exercise at hand. People can have hundreds of Life Rules – the sky’s the limit as they say. Rather than evaluate all of Greg’s Life Rules at once, we want to focus on developing his Life Architecture. Greg will evaluate the merits of his Life Rules as he develops his Life Architecture.

For those who are really interested in Greg’s personal life and the rules he plays by, there’s no better way to get to know him than meeting up at the King’s Head Pub on a Saturday night. Greg will be the single, middle-aged, good-looking guy at the bar with a bird’s eye view of the dance floor, mainly to scope out the perfect dance partner. If that’s too vague, he’s six feet tall, 180 pounds, athletic physique, and wavy thick hair with an amiable disposition should you decide to engage in conversation. He’s also not one to dress fancy, usually jeans and a casual shirt. And as a side, his pickup days are over unless the right one comes around for a more meaningful relationship.

We will examine some of these Life Rules by which Greg lives by, and discuss what they mean and how they influence his life. You may be entertained and enlightened at the same time as Greg decomposes his life into processes that make up his Life Process Tree. He will derive meaning in his life by better understanding the nature of each process hanging off his tree, and further evaluate their process relationships and priorities in the context of his life as a whole.

Before we get into Greg’s life, I feel obligated to tell you about the Mother-in-Law Rule. This is not so much about rules as it is about our human capacity to change things around in our lives, especially when it means breaking rules to be in our wife’s good books.

#1 The Mother-in-Law Rule

Anything is possible, even a good relationship with your mother-in-law.

If you feel that some things in life just cannot be changed, let me tell you about a no-good son-in-law who alienated his mother-in-law for six years and then became her best friend overnight. I was about to say, “And lived to tell about it.” Joking aside, you’re either on your motherin-law’s good side or you simply don’t exist. This son-in-law, and long-time work colleague, was about as noticeable as a broom inside a broom closet whenever his mother-in-law came over to visit her daughter.

One day, Wes and I were having a coffee downtown when he brought up his mother-in-law and the fact that he was now on speaking terms with her. It turned out they were now one big happy family. Big deal. As he started to explain how this transformation panned out, I noticed an older gentleman outside the coffeehouse struggling to lower himself into the driver’s seat of a Porsche Carrera. I wasn’t sure who had the bigger challenge – Wes or the old guy. I was taking more interest in an old man with fast wheels than Wes’s personal philosophies about domestic life.

As Wes gave me the play-by-play, I could not but compare him to Petruchio in the Shakespearean play Taming of the Shrew – except in Wes’s case, he was up against a stubborn and self-righteous mother-in-law rather than a disobedient wife. Anyhow, to make this very long story short, Wes was on a crusade. He sat down with his wife and told her that he was tired of the negative energy every time his mother-in-law walked into the room. It was time to bury the hatchet and move on. And that’s exactly what Wes did and his mother-in-law bought it. It seemed surprisingly simple, but brilliant.

It didn’t matter whether Wes was right or wrong. It took a while, but he overcame his shortsightedness in favor of a happier family. He philosophically explained to me, “You may be right, but are you doing the right thing?” Apparently, he was right while his mother-in-law’s meddling was unpardonable. After he told me his mother-in-law story, I said, “You realize your mother-in-law is going to screw up again?” He chuckled and replied, “That’s exactly what I told my wife.” But Wes was committed to doing the right thing. Wes and his wife agreed that she would manage any negative behavior or incidents concerning her mother. And that’s basically the Mother-in-Law Rule.

I wish Wes much luck and fully believe he will become the ideal son-in-law. For the rest of us, we need to take this as a lesson. In order to break rules, we need to break barriers. Barriers can take different forms. Barriers are simply misunderstandings resulting in the parting of ways. Sometimes, barriers are false beliefs in how we are or should be perceived by others. They can also be flawed principles and values we live by.

It is in our best interest to break these barriers in order to resolve our problems and fix relationships. Mothers-in-law aren’t the only bad guys here. Who knows, maybe we’re the bad guy and

don’t even know it. I’m sure we have all tried to get a relationship back on track but found it impossible to reason with some people. It is near impossible to resolve an argument with people who are irrational and self-centered.

We can all live without someone else’s arrogance, self-importance, or just plain stubbornness. But we all have to live with our mothers-in-law, especially during family gatherings for Christmas and Thanksgiving dinner. We all know who the good cooks are in the kitchen, and they’re usually in charge.

3 Reasons We Get Into an Argument

1

Both parties are on a power trip“I’m the boss”

2

Both parties think they are right“I’m right, you’re wrong”

3

One party is just too messed up and does not know how to deal with people - interestingly, they don’t say much or just won’t shut up

These antagonists blame others for their problems rather than take responsibility for their actions. Julius Caesar, the self-proclaimed dictator of the Roman Empire, said to his trusted general Mark Antony, “I should have been here, but don’t blame me for what you did.” We must get down to the root cause of a problem before blaming others for a misunderstanding, poor judgement, or personal differences. As human beings, we have a tendency to argue our opinion and blame others. We get offensive when others don’t agree and see it our way. We don’t realize that our opinions are not always the right ones, or just come at the wrong time. Opinions are confrontational, while facts are respected. I tell my kids to keep their opinions to themselves and share facts if they want to get respect in this world.

Resolving or winning an argument can be a tough proposition when arrogance, stubbornness, and anger cloud our reason. As rational human beings, all we can do is state the facts, provide a rationale, and then let the other person make up his or her own mind. Like my stockbroker once told me, “You can’t be angry with people who don’t agree with you.” Mind you, he said that after the stock market crash. Regardless, our lives become a lot easier when we try to get along with people.

Most of us have heard the phrase “Know your audience,” probably from someone who sells something for a living. In Chapter 1, I was adamant about the fact that our success depends on knowing our audience. In the case of Wes the son-in-law, he knew his audience all too well. He knew that his mother-in-law believed that she was always right just as he believed that he was the absolute authority. This realization helped Wes understand that he and his mother-in-law would never see eye-to-eye, although they could co-exist in the comfort of his own living room. As Wes would say, “Two of the greatest assets in life are patience and wisdom.” I wonder how long his patience will last.

I think I’ve said enough about mothers-in-law. They are a part of our lives so let’s just accept them, love them, and learn to live with them. Although Life Rules are about people and how we deal with them, they are also about life situations and how we react to them. We are confronted by many things in life on a daily basis. We seem to become more reactive than proactive as we try to follow all these rules. Let’s not forget, though, we do have the power to eliminate or change rules by becoming more proactive.

Mothers-in-law may in fact be the least of our worries as we deal with other obstacles at home, work, and wherever we’re faced with people and situations. Everybody’s got stuff in their life that they have to deal with. And it’s a given that they must overcome obstacles in life to move forward. We have the opportunity and ability to overcome obstacles by formulating our own Life Rules and changing existing ones.

u Change is a Part of Life

As we go through the different stages of our lives, we face continuous change. We adapt to change in order to overcome obstacles pertaining to our jobs, our relationships, our health, and anything else that is part of our existence. We are at the mercy of a fast-paced and changing world around us. Change affects our life ambitions and goals, and determines our course of action. If we’re unprepared for change, those ambitions and goals start to fade and, in time, lose our interest. Change can compel us to overhaul our lives by quitting our job to become a day-trader, or it can be as simple as fine-tuning something in our lives such as spending more time with our kids. Many things change in our lives, and we must anticipate and adapt to change in order to survive or, preferably, live better.

Change is the one variable that prevents us from living a habitual life. There are no sure things or “happily ever afters” unless your life is a fairy tale. I cannot help but think back when a friend’s life turned upside down overnight. Dennis was a manager at an energy company and a creature of habit. One day, his regular routine of driving home from work to have lunch with his wife would be his last. The writing was on the kitchen wall and he’d have to brown bag it with the rest of us here on in.

After twenty years of marriage, Dennis’s wife wanted a divorce. There was no reason or explanation. The woman he loved and had two children with just wanted out. It didn’t matter how much Tabasco sauce he wanted to add to their marriage, she neither wanted nor cared to work things out. The good times were over and Dennis had to find a way to move on and put this ordeal behind him. In the face of terrible mishaps and deep sorrow, the show must go on. That’s the way life works, and the world doesn’t stop for anyone’s pain.

Dennis was emotionally devastated and his life had changed forever. But, at the end, he did find a new life and a new wife, or at least a happy wife who loves to have lunch with him. Happy wife,

happy life – sorry, I couldn’t help myself. Today, Dennis has an amazing life and partner to share it with. They climbed Kilimanjaro together, wrote a book together on retirement, and continue to explore the world and themselves every day of their lives.

I’m not sure if Dennis knows it, but he had invented a whole set of Life Rules that he never had before. He had to adapt and overcome obstacles like most rule breakers. After a few lunches alone in the office and dealing with the shock of divorce, Dennis went out for help. In order to understand his changed world and how to deal with it, he joined a support group and later took courses to help others who had suffered a similar fate. Dennis had learned how to deal with things and fend for himself. But most of all, Dennis had accepted that couples don’t necessarily stay married, but tend to stay divorced.

We have all experienced loss and know what it’s like to hurt and lose someone we love. We are confronted with change while we adapt during difficult times. Change seems to happen when we least expect it. It feels like the calm before the storm. And when it does hit, we’re stuck with cleaning up the debris after the storm has died. Change comes at a cost, whether it’s time, effort, money, stress, or just an emotional alteration.

Oddly enough, my business life depends on change. If it wasn’t for change, I don’t think clients would hire me to help them get better performance out of their people and corporate assets. Management must develop a keen sense for change before it can transform its organization into one that is dynamic in a competitive business environment and more conducive to teamwork. “Our ships must all sail in the same direction” is a well-founded quote that comes to mind.

Much of my efforts are spent understanding people’s roles, capabilities, and motivation when change is required. When we are focused on making big changes, we must take big steps to improve the workplace – including work processes, human interactions, systems, and a bunch of other things that prevent people from doing a better job. At the end of the day, it’s about people making change to improve their lives.

u A Life Long Ambition

It became obvious that what I was doing for people in organizations could be applied to regular life. It was actually quite natural to make the transition from the management and operational processes of an organization to the life processes of an individual. “Life makes you deal with things far outside your job description.” After I heard that on a Ziploc commercial, I had to write it down. It then goes on to say, “Life needs Ziploc.” They’re probably right if you’re toting around a sandwich. Think of Life Architecture as a Ziploc bag to tote around your life processes and keep them fresh for consumption. Rather than focus on how people do things better at work and help a company improve its profits, I had this determination, kind of a lifelong ambition, to show people how to do things better in their personal lives as they adapted to a changing environment around them. This was the golden opportunity that I was looking for and my chance to teach people to do what organizations do to get ahead. As long as I can remember, I wanted to do something that was unequivocal. And what a better legacy than to help people change their life from within in order to be in control of what’s outside.

Change is a catalyst for most things we do in life, regardless of whether we’re in the workplace or on our own time. The problem is that we don’t always know when it’s going to happen. At least with pasta, we know its done when it sticks to the wall. And when it does happen, we’re not always sure how to deal with it. It’s like speculating on real estate or stocks. The difficulty is betting against the consensus and being right. What worked yesterday may not work today. We need to know what to do in different circumstances.

Buying a piece of real estate during a boom market requires a different strategy from acquiring property in recessionary times. The price and timing in each case will be very different. During a boom, everybody wants top dollar, and it takes a very keen eye to find value. During a recessionary market, value is all we can find but nobody has money. It’s only your best guess when the market will change, but it takes a calculated decision to know when to buy or sell.

A successful merger arbitrager once told me, “There are better deals than buying on speculation. I want to know what price I can get it for now.” My friend Darcy wants to know if he’s getting value today, not tomorrow. His business relies on managing change and taking the right action to mitigate risks. I admire his sensibility and trust his business acumen and entrepreneurial instinct in order to invest some of my own money in his ventures. I haven’t retired yet, but my profits based on his advice were enough to buy a big blue pickup truck so that I never have to borrow a truck on weekends ever again.

I wish we were all so lucky to have a big blue truck and friends in the merger arbitrage business. An arbitrager’s job is to manage change and assess risk so that he and his investors don’t lose money. Darcy is continuously refining his stock purchase criteria according to market conditions and news. He will be the first to tell us that we need new rules for a new market. This goes for life as well – we need new rules for a new life. Just as the market is continuously changing, so are our lives. These rules become part of a continuous life plan as we adapt and adhere to discipline.

People typically put a plan in place and think that it’s a one-time deal. They believe that a plan should stand the test of time. Organizations have short-term operational plans, intermediate tactical plans, and long-term strategic plans. Short-term plans focus on improving operational efficiencies in the present, while tactical plans focus on corporate effectiveness in the near future. Long-term plans are more strategic in nature, and consider future initiatives. These plans all have a purpose in how organizations plan to tackle their future timelines. How do we develop plans to tackle our future life timeline?

u A Plan for a Changing Lifetime

We all need a plan when we go on a journey. I’m confident that a good plan can guide us to a better future. But what happens when we have multiple journeys throughout our lifetime, or we’re required to change journeys as life circumstances arise? Do we need a plan for every day of the week? If that were the case, we’d be busy planning ever day for the next day; today’s plan helps us plan tomorrow, tomorrow’s plan helps us plan the day after, etc. Life Architecture doesn’t require us to have a new plan every day of our lives, but we can definitely have a plan that maps out the next few years. We modify our plans as our circumstances change. Sometimes a change in our motivation forces us to tweak our plans. We continually plan during our lifetime, and change our plans as events unfold. Good planning requires a long-term vision while we update our plans to reflect anticipated changes. A child once told his father, “A plan’s no good if it doesn’t come true.”

In retrospect, we cannot use the same plans forever. Most successful companies keep fine-tuning their plans as their business environment is changing. Those who do not and oppose change get left behind or even perish. Their business model no longer has future relevance. As a result, their value diminishes and their stock price drops from dollars to pennies overnight. The only guys making money on penny stocks are promoters and insiders. My stockbroker’s book, Rampaging Bulls – How to Outfox Stock Promoters at their Own Game, is a testament to that fact. I’m sure that you know who’s enjoying life on the beach from the title. I can also guarantee you that they had a plan.

It was a management consultant who strongly advised, “Come with a plan or leave in defeat.” Companies in particular have learned that they cannot afford to be without a plan while the world is changing around them. Although they can’t control government policies or the weather, they can control their operational and competitive effectiveness in a changing economy. They can challenge rules by which they are governed both within the company and the industry in which they compete.

People also rely on plans to guide them in a world of high demand and continuous change. Surely, we all run into life’s roadblocks and need to break a rule every so often, or at least bend it a bit. We don’t always follow rules to the tee but just enough to meet our moral and legal obligations. Sometimes we face a dilemma and are forced to break the law or societal rules for good reason. You would never go through a red light, right? Of course you wouldn’t because that would be breaking the law. But, what if it was an emergency and your grandma had fallen and called for help. Time is of the essence and a matter of life and death. You would rush over to her place as fast as you can. This might motivate you to speed and take a red light or two, assuming no other cars are around. When we do what we do for good reasons, then we’ve got nothing to worry about.

Now, let’s change this scenario slightly. It’s 3:00 a.m. and you just got into the city after driving for ten hours. You finally get into your quiet suburban neighborhood. The place feels like a ghost town. There’s only one traffic light controlling an intersection by the convenience store. The light is red and the police are at the donut place on the other side of the freeway. Now, let me suggest you go through the red light. You may break the red light rule if you truly believe you’re not endangering anyone’s life. You rationalize that this red light should be a flashing red light after midnight because no one’s on the road, except you of course. This means everyone yields and stops only for pedestrians. I’ll be blunt, no one is there except you and all you can think about is your bed.

Why should you sit at a forsaken light that has no right wasting your time? That red light makes as much sense as a tanning salon in the desert. You’d rather not waste your time because City Hall has not yet gotten around to rationalize all its traffic lights. You just happen to be that unlucky homeowner not to have a flashing red light in your neighborhood. You’ve given up your fight to petition City Hall or take it up with your city councilman. This means you’re pretty well on your own. Nobody cares you’ve been driving all night and just want to get home and go to bed. But don’t forget, you’re still breaking the law if you go through that red light, regardless whether it makes sense or not.

It is much easier to break rules that are not law, although all rules are breakable if we’re willing to break them. What would I do? Probably less petitioning and a lot more shoulder checking. While my examples may seem extreme and unjustified, I’m trying to make a salient point. We have to be selective and responsible about the rules that we break. The law is the law and there are consequences when breaking laws regardless of whether they’re good laws or bad. No judge is going to revoke a red light traffic violation even if our neighborhood has been evacuated by aliens. We must be punished for breaking the law. But, at the same time, we must be commended for breaking rules that neglect our dreams and our future. Don’t let red lights stop you from reaching your desired future.

While we’re on the topic of traffic, there’s one rule that I break every time I’m on the golf course – the rule that prohibits teenagers from driving a golf cart. I’m actually quite proud of my track record on this one, not to mention my reason.

#2 The Golf Cart Rule

You don’t have to be an adult to drive.

Long live youth! Before you accuse me of being an irresponsible father, I’ll let you in on a golf secret: Most fourteen year olds can drive a golf cart just as well as anyone with a driver’s license. My son is living proof. I’ve had my driver’s license for the better part of over three decades, but this hardly gives me an advantage behind the steering wheel of a golf cart. It’s not surprising I manipulate rules that I don’t believe in, especially on the golf course where driving rules seem to be as important as traffic laws.

It’s ironic that in my neck of the woods one can get a learner driver’s license at the age of fourteen. This means that my son can drive a car as long as an adult is in the passenger seat next to him. Yet he can’t drive a golf cart, or more correctly, he’s not allowed. Golf courses have this archaic policy that you can’t drive a golf cart unless you’re an adult. I’m not sure if this has anything to do with the absence of traffic lights and passing lanes. Furthermore, an adult can drive a golf cart while drinking beer. It just may be a precaution to avoid drunk golfers by those who can’t legally drink for another seven years. I suggest golf course owners change insurance policies, but this isn’t my customer relations problem.

The hell with them and their policies! My son loves golf. Even more, he loves to drive a golf cart when he goes golfing. What do you tell a kid when he says, “Dad, I can’t wait to drive the golf cart.” I just nod my head and smile. At this point, he knows he’ll be driving a golf cart even after I’m kindly reminded by Mr. Personality in the pro shop, “You know the young man is not allowed to drive the golf cart?” Again, I nod my head and smile. There’s an advantage to having selective hearing.

I’ll just say it. I let my son drive the golf cart every time we go golfing. We just pretend that he has his learner’s license for golf carts and I’m the responsible adult sitting next to him. I must admit that it got tricky one time when the guy working in the pro shop finished his shift and joined the threesome behind us. However, that didn’t spoil our fun. It just meant that I had to get more creative. My kid took the driver’s seat once we eluded our gracious host, while we kept our distance. I think we also exchanged shirts and caps.

Now, here’s the logical question: Do I make my son’s day or do I take it away? Trust me, my son is going to have fond memories of the father who put a smile on his face, and not the responsible adult who followed instructions from the guy behind the counter. And as far as being responsible, I know and trust my son’s capabilities. Besides, I’m right there by his side guiding his every maneuver on those hilly landscape features where I can mitigate the slightest chance of risk.

I must say that I am proud to have broken the prison rules enforced by golf courses. Otherwise, I would have missed out on my son’s happiness and a great golf experience. The value of breaking the Golf Cart Rule far exceeds any safety concerns the club may have had, in my opinion. If I were in their golf shoes, I’d be more worried about the casual golfers on their sixth beer. And it’s just a matter of time that my son reaches legal drinking age, and I won’t have to worry about those quirky rules anymore.

u Don’t Be a Prisoner

Some of the most evident and easiest rules to break, but yet seem to be the most difficult to detach ourselves from, are those dealing with personal choices that we have made in the past. Don’t be a prisoner as a result of poor choices or rules that have held you hostage longer than you can remember. Prison is for criminals who don’t have consideration for anyone or anything. They very well deserve to be in prison when they get caught. The irony is that they go to prison for breaking rules, but once they’re locked up, there are less rules to break. And in some prisons, there are no rules to protect them. The only question on their minds is “How do I survive in this atavistic, primitive environment?” As for the rest of us, there are an inexhaustible number of rules holding us back, undeservingly I might add. We have an opportunity to break rules that free us from society’s clutches and personal inhibitions restricting us from reaching our true potential. But first, we must believe that we can break rules beyond a reasonable doubt, and without going to jail. It’s time to break the rules holding us hostage.

It doesn’t take much to be a prisoner in our own homes. We’ve been conditioned and trained that way. Just think of all the prison wardens in our lives – our parents, teachers, coaches, and society as a whole. We seem to be living in a constant state of feedback and judgement. It feels like everybody has ganged up on us. We need to free ourselves by making our own choices, the right choices. And it doesn’t matter how old we are, we always have a choice.

It was an old man at his 45th wedding anniversary who said, “As we get older, we seem to stop making choices, big ones anyway. Perhaps we only get so many in a lifetime and once we’ve used them up, they’re gone.” I’d say celebrating 45 years with our favorite gal and all our friends is a 24carat choice. Her tears eliminated any burden of proof that he had borne over the years. I agree that the choices we make early on in life are important, but we never use them up. They may just have a more far-reaching effect and influence on others when we’re young, careless, and left with too many choices.

Early experiences set us up for health, learning, and relationships later in life. However, it’s never too late to make the right choices. Whether we’re young or old, we should aspire to be keepers of our life rather than prisoners in it. Whoever wrote the following script gets an “A” from me.

IChoose...

to live by choice, not by chance to be motivated, not manipulated to be useful, not used to make changes, not excuses to excel, not compete I choose self-esteem, not self pity I choose to listen to my inner voice, not to the random opinion of others

These are definitely what I consider to be optimal choices in life. I refer to them as “choice principles” to help us design a good life. Good choices make for a good life; bad choices make for a life of regret, struggle, and defeat. We all have choices. I can choose, and so can you. Take one of my dearest friends, a competent engineer and genius in his own right. He never entertained the fact that he could just get up and leave a job he despised. Milan worked for a prominent high-tech defense company where he was engaged in the research and development of militarybased software solutions. He was the brainchild of a technology that enabled military personnel to communicate in the field and share information across disparate computer systems and mobile devices.

Milan is one of those personalities who should be teaching at a university rather than playing office politics. And when he’s not working, he should be pursuing a television guest appearance on Jeopardy or demonstrating his survival skills in reality shows like Survivor. It’s a pity he couldn’t survive in the office. Even his work colleagues detected his genius and advised him to write a book on leading-edge technology concepts he had developed. I’ve given up debating him on topics in which I consider myself an expert.

Now let me tell you about the “un-genius” part of Milan’s abilities. He was somewhat disillusioned. He seemed to have locked himself into a dead-end job, threw away the key, and then never bothered to look for it. Milan had lost his motivation and, as he puts it, “I was bored.” His continued lack of motivation and inability to get his head into the game was the beginning of his perilous downfall. The government had also cut back on its military contracts during these recessionary times and Milan was unwilling to relocate due to an ailing mother he had to care for. However, condemning his boss’s managerial aptitude as a motivator a couple of weeks prior was probably the nail in the coffin. He also admitted that he didn’t deliver anything in the last few months of employment.

This was not the Milan I knew. He is one of those guys who gets up well before dawn and beats everyone to the office. He hardly has time for a chat at the coffee station or even a coffee. However, this all changed. He lost interest. I was stunned when he didn’t deliver anything at the end. When I asked him what he would be doing at work, he said he’d be “surfin’ the net.” The fact that he also had a Facebook account really threw me for a loop. The Milan I knew would be the first to tell you that surfing the internet and Facebook were frivolous activities.

So what happened? Milan happened, that’s what happened. He allowed himself to become a prisoner. He allowed himself to be manipulated and his career to be decided by others who were less competent. The managers he worked for lacked the emotional intelligence to recognize his emotions and deal at a personal level. They seemed to be more interested in delivering innovative solutions but yet their management style prevented their engineers from being innovative. These were young managers guilty of possessing unconscious bias, while they were distracted by typical corporate politics in a stagnant corporate culture.

u Blinded by Bias

There is a saying: “The real enemies aren’t on the outside, they’re within.” It’s a tragedy that we can be our own worst enemies. Dr. Lasana Harris, an associate professor of experimental psychology at University College London, explained that our pre-existing biases shape our view of the world. “Our human brains are here to help us gain awareness of our thoughts.” The

only problem is that we have too many biases to deal with. Sometimes bias prevents us from knowing that we’re heading in the wrong direction. Remember Milan’s managers, the guys I accused of having unconscious bias? They were unaware of their own ineptness. Their attitudes, behaviors, and actions were subconscious and unintentional. Their bias clouded their decision-making and precluded their company from becoming innovators. Thus, they unintentionally dismissed Milan’s ingenious technology ideas without understanding them, and they came across as being derogatory and acting superior. Milan believed that as engineers, they had a cognitive bias, which is a mistake in reasoning, evaluating, remembering, or other cognitive process, often occurring as a result of holding onto one’s preference and beliefs regardless of contrary information. As you can see, there are different types of bias. Sometimes I feel that he developed confirmation bias and may not have been able to communicate his ideas at a management level. Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s pre-existing beliefs. I personally know that it’s hard to convince Milan of anything once he makes up his mind. Maybe that just makes him stubborn, or maybe he’s just lived so long that he lost his filter.

Human nature has demonstrated that people wield as much power as they’re granted, and sometimes their bias gets in the way of what they’re supposed to deliver. Maybe we should be mindful of the adage that some people represent authority without ever possessing any of their own. How many times have I been tempted to tell a pretentious executive to lose the ego so that we can talk candidly. It’s unfortunate that we can’t tell someone what we think until we reach that comfortable threshold of mutual respect. Sadly, many of us never reach that threshold with our boss, including Milan. Although we try to be around people who make us feel comfortable, it’s not always possible.

At the end of the work day, Milan’s managers were unable to see his technical genius. It was the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer who said, “Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.” Although Milan was being his best, it wasn’t good enough for his managers. He felt that his work was misunderstood and minimized. The radio show host Howard Stern, although considered brazen and outrageous, harbored similar misgivings. “Most of the things I do are misunderstood. Hey, after all, being misunderstood is the fate of all true geniuses, is it not?” I’m sure most geniuses feel the same way. I know Milan did.

Milan’s genius was beginning to take a toll on him. At times, he felt that he was going crazy trying to convince management to buy into technology innovations which would propel the company above its competitors. In Milan’s case, the definition of crazy was seeing things nobody else did. And when he was able to get his point across, they would shrug it off as an “easy” concept that anyone could have come up with it. Something that may seem to be a simple solution is in fact a complex engineering feat. The fact that we can take something so complicated and make it simple is the genius aspect of our work.

Milan was trapped in an environment where he could no longer deliver recognized value. Coming up with a logical solution gave him purpose, while recognition and challenging work motivated him. Maybe money gave him a false sense of motivation. That’s why he hung around as long as he did. He was just happy to invent some ground-breaking software that would be appreciated by both his peers and the top brass.

u A False Sense of Motivation

Motivation comes in many forms. People are motivated by money, greatness, revenge, fear, and even love. I’d say love is the most powerful motivator of all. According to her mother, the mixed martial arts champion Ronda Rousey was motivated by spite during her time in the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship). I’d say she was motivated to be the best. Many people don’t understand or just lose sight of what motivates them. Work is a classic example. I think this whole motivation thing was best put into perspective by Frederick Herzberg, an American psychologist, with his Motivation-Hygiene Theory. Herzberg identified such things as status, compensation, job security, and work conditions to be “hygiene factors.” These things are required to keep us satisfied, but not motivated. True motivational factors, or “motivators” as Herzberg calls them, include things like challenging work, recognition, responsibility, and personal growth. These give one feelings or a sense of self-worth. Unfortunately, many individuals choose careers using hygiene factors as their primary criterion, like income. Money may pay the bills and buy yachts, but beyond that, it offers a false sense of motivation in the long run.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that money is the root cause of all evil, but rather a blinding force when it becomes a priority above all else. I’ve seen money, fame, and illusions rule over our very existence. Although our hygiene factors may be satisfied by money, there is an unrelenting urge to make more. Our true purpose may have taken a backseat in favor of a superficial plan for a luxurious and fickle future. Insecurity can be a good motivator when money and ego measure our success in life.

I was sorry to hear that Milan later lost his job, but yet, he was happy. He told me that he felt relieved and that I had no idea how stressed he was at work and in his personal life. It dawned on me that one of the greatest positive emotions in our lives is the relief of removing all those concerns that accumulate into stress. I can’t think of anything that makes us happier than ridding ourselves of the stress that takes us down in life. It also makes it much easier to get up in the morning, with a smile to match. It was Jim Carrey, the comedian, who woke up in the middle of the night with the answer to what people wanted. “Everybody wants to be free from concern.” Carrey made it his purpose in life to free people from concern by making them laugh. A clear conscience is the greatest source of joy.

u Free From Concern

For the longest time, I thought that Jim Carrey had cracked the code to discovering what people wanted in life. However, being free from concern is only a temporary interlude if we don’t know the root cause of our concerns. Not too long ago, I was befriended by a work colleague. Little did I know that I would become his lunch-hour psychologist and after-work drinking buddy. He shared his concerns in life, including his struggle to meet his financial obligations, spend quality time with his family, and trim his waistline. He also shared the fact that he was jealous of his wife. He was one of those guys who couldn’t fathom seeing his wife talking to another man. Then it hit me: We can’t truly be free from concern unless we have an awareness of our reality. Awareness is our key to freedom. This means peeling the layers of our reality until we get to the root cause of our concerns. My friend eventually dealt with his insecurities by confronting his feelings, and opening up to his wife. His wife became instrumental in helping him rebuild his confidence and understand that she loved him as much as he loved her. Today, he is free from concern, and so is his wife.

I have hope that Milan has become aware of his reality, and has realized that his last job was a bad fit. I compare him to the rich guy in the infomercial who says “Getting fired was the best thing that

ever happened to me” before he goes on to make his millions. Unlike the guy in the infomercial, Milan has no desire to own the Ferrari and the yacht in the background. Ironically, he can’t even swim, nor does he have an urge to drive on speed-unrestricted stretches of the Autobahn in a Ferrari.

If being terminated is the best thing that ever happened to Milan, it’s too bad that he didn’t break some rules earlier. He could have avoided all the stress and feelings of ineptness. He didn’t have to wait for a hatchet man to come around and axe his undervalued and mundane job, especially when he could have axed himself long before things got unbearable. I’m sure he’ll find something among all the high-tech companies out there. He can now architect new possibilities for himself as he pursues his passions, dream job, and a boss he can work for. I’m sure he’ll find a career that both motivates him and satisfies his hygiene factors. I suggest that he talks to a life architect for some coaching and realizes his true purpose and motivation in life.

We define our own success, or, should I say, how to personally succeed. If we were to dissect success into its constituent parts, we would discover a manifestation of three fundamental but closely linked qualities. We strive to master these qualities to succeed.

The

1. MOTIVATION (Our Passion)

Motivation is a strong desire to accomplish or achieve something. We are aroused by passion when we know what we want and believe we’re capable of making it happen. We will persevere as long as we’re motivated to finish what we started. We’ve all had the pep talk to “go for it!”

2. PERSEVERANCE (Our Dedication)

Perseverance is unwavering determination to never give up. We become overwhelmed with dedication to see it through. Life forces many rules upon us. Sometimes to overcome rules, we persevere and try different things until we get it right. And in order to get it right, we break or change the rules. I’m sure you’ve heard the term “whatever it takes.”

3. CAPABILITIES (Our Potential)

Capabilities are needed to reach our full potential, regardless of the enormous motivation to get there. These are also known as skills and knowledge. Sure, we all want to be rocket scientists, but unless we have the knowledge and experience to build rockets, we’ll never work for NASA. An engineering degree and experience with space flight exhibits the capabilities we need to participate in the space program.

It doesn’t matter how we slice or dice it, or how many personal development books we read or how many seminars we attend, success is built on three fundamental qualities: motivation, perseverance, and capabilities. Not one, but all three are required to bake a cake. These are the success ingredients that must come into the mix to some varying degree. And when we have the right mix of all three, we’re in a state of blissful success. What level of success do to you want to achieve?

Anatomy of Success

Determining

the Right Level of Success

Successful people are easy to recognize. These are people who dedicate themselves to their passions and work hard to reach their potential. They are committed to making their dreams come true. I’m sure we all know someone like that. We see these people on the big screen, in professional sports, or at the end of a boardroom table. Success doesn’t happen over night and can be summarized in one word – progress. The common denominator is the perseverance successful people demonstrate and the progress they make through dedication and hard work.

Some people call it grit. This is the behavior that we mostly associate with athletes who give it their all and do whatever it takes to win. Even psychologists tell us that the secret to a successful and happy life, more than anything else, is this willpower to persevere with passion and a sense of purpose. Some of us old enough to enjoy Westerns would say that cowboys like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood had true grit, or an indomitable spirit, which allowed them to succeed against the bad guys.

How many times have I told my own kids to do their homework and work hard to be successful in school, or anywhere for that matter. You have no idea how much I would like them to have some of that grit when it comes to school and life in general. Nobody likes to do things they’re not passionate about. But in order to get into college, qualify for a desired job, or start a business, we need to take control and work hard to achieve our goals. And hopefully, one day, we’ll be doing what we love to do that has meaning and purpose for us. In the meantime, we’ll just have to overcome the obstacles to get to where we want to go. I told my son if he wants to get into the financial industry, his best bet is to go to business school and get some skills.

u Suppress Stress

When we exercise control over something, we lessen and sometimes avoid stress altogether. “Dad, do you know when I feel stressed? When I have lots of projects” was my frustrated son’s admission. I replied, “So, why don’t you get them started early to reduce the stress?” This would definitely give him control rather than instill panic the day before the deadline. I tell my son that time is on his side until it runs out. All he needs is a little motivation to take control of those projects and his life. The capabilities he’ll need in life will come and so will his ideal career. The famous UCLA head coach, John Wooden, said, “Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”

I still remember those grueling days of academia and pulling all-nighters to make the grade to get into a good college. A scholarship seemed to make it all worthwhile, except for the fact that I had to sacrifice sports and parties while worrying about exams and assignment deadlines. Maybe it was that same motivation and perseverance that got me voted as most likely to succeed in high school. “It’s not important who votes; it’s important who counts the votes” were discouraging words of the ruthless and persevering Soviet Communist dictator Joseph Stalin.

We’ve all read books telling us that success comes with motivation and perseverance. I don’t know how writers of how-to books motivate themselves to write the obvious. Even more mysterious is when people don’t do the obvious. It was the American publishing mogul, William Jovanovich, who said, “The lesson is never to despise the obvious.” However, not so obvious are the capabilities required to achieve success. It hardly makes sense to achieve success without the capabilities to do so.

The Success Formula

My editor will attest to the fact that if it wasn’t for my determination, my book may never have made it into your hands. I told him that my determination was a combination of motivation, perseverance, and capabilities. And I thanked him for helping me develop my capabilities as a writer. Capabilities are the skills, knowledge, and talent we require to tackle something with greater certainty. When it comes down to it, if you’re determined to succeed, you’ll succeed. You’ll be motivated and persevere to get there, and you’ll develop the capabilities to get over the finish line. And if you don’t, you may still have a fighting chance.

Remember Rudy? Rudy is a movie about determination and based on a true story. Growing up, Rudy dreamed of playing football for the Fighting Irish at the University of Notre Dame despite significant obstacles, namely lack of size and the talent to play college football. In Rudy’s case, talent was a pursued interest. It was Rudy’s motivation and perseverance that got him a spot on the practice squad and the respect of the other players. However, he didn’t have the athletic capability to make the dress roster as a player. Rudy simply wasn’t good enough, and his football career was over before it started. But his motivation and perseverance will go down in history.

At the end, it always seems to be the guy who never gives up who gets the prize. You know the type I’m talking about. He does the obvious to succeed. He doesn’t let failure stop him. And when he does fail, it’s because he didn’t give it his all. He’s the guy on the poster in my health club running up the stairs of an empty stadium wearing black running shorts and no shirt. The word “PERSEVERANCE” stretches across the bottom of the poster in big capital letters with the following caption underneath.

This is the guy who doesn’t care that the stadium is empty. He’s running up the stairs not because he’s found some free time or his friends have left town for the weekend, but rather to develop the capabilities required to compete as an Olympic athlete. He learned a long time ago that winning is not about how well you play, but how well you compete. Winning comes down to your ability to compete and persevere. For the car racing giant Carroll Shelby, participating wasn’t important, winning was. He was never one to quit. “Perseverance is the most important thing in life. Believe in what you want to do and go do that, and don’t let anybody sidetrack you.” Shelby’s perseverance ended Ferrari’s dominance on the race track and Ford took the stage, at least for a little while.

The perseverance it takes to be the best is giving everything of yourself. Muhammad Ali once said, “I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.’” Tough times don’t last; tough people do. I’m sure Ali ran up a few stairs and persevered during his lifetime to become the “The Greatest” – the greatest boxer of all time. I believe that we all have the potential to be champions if we have a dream and the perseverance to fulfill it.

Even video gamers persevere to break and maintain their records. It was one of the greatest video gamers of all time, Billy Mitchell, who achieved a perfect score at the arcade. This took great intensity and sleepless nights. “The fact that you can dedicate an intensity towards a goal has to come to benefit you in every aspect of your life. It has to make you a better worker, a better husband, a better partner. It has to make you a better man.” Mitchell also forgot to mention a better video gamer. One gamer’s philosophy is that “work is for people who can’t play video games.”

u You Must Fail to Win

If you’ve ever been a video gamer, you’re well aware that you have to keep playing a video game over and over to get to a higher level. Tim McVey, not the bomber but another video game master, had some very impressionable words about perseverance and winning after regaining his Nibbler world record: “Not everybody’s gifted, not everybody gets it the first time. In fact, people rarely get it the first time. You know, if every time somebody tried something once and they failed, and they never tried it again, think of all the things we wouldn’t have in this world that we have right now.” After all, it took McVey almost 28 years to regain his title. McVey proved that whatever we choose to do, it must be something that we’re passionate about, otherwise we won’t have the perseverance to see it through. Overcoming failure means never quitting. This takes passion, motivation, and capabilities.

I have learned that by being willing to fail, without any limitations, you will eventually succeed. But first you must find your passion. If you’re not passionate about something, there’s no way to

succeed at it because you won’t put in the time and effort to improve and become proficient at what you do. By being passionate about something and being willing to fail as many times as it takes, you set yourself up for success.

Mickey Mouse wouldn’t be a household name if it wasn’t for the relentless efforts of Walt Disney. However, his dreams didn’t become realities without a lot of failure and hope. He was aware that he had the capabilities and a special talent, but every time he thought he had it, someone found a way to take it away from him. His passion and perseverance eventually conquered his adversaries and allowed him to control his destiny. Someone once said, “Business is like riding a bicycle; either you keep moving or you fall down.” Walt Disney knew, better than anyone, how to overcome. He fell many times, but eventually rode his way to the top of the entertainment industry.

While we all have the power to control our destinies, we need certain capabilities to succeed. Practically speaking, even one or two core capabilities will help our cause. But preparation is the key to developing our capabilities for a long life journey.

u Preparation is Fundamental

Everything we do of value comes with preparation. This reminds me of the quote, “Great moments are the product of great preparation and great opportunity.” The Olympics are a great opportunity for an athlete to make a great moment. It is great preparation that allows him or her to excel and take home an Olympic medal. These athletes train to perfect their physical and mental capabilities in order to compete. It was the Canadian Olympian and flag bearer at the 2012 Olympic Games in London who emphasized the importance of preparation as the key to his success, and attributed this trait to his father. We all have capabilities and can improve on those capabilities through preparation.

Tonya Harding was another athlete who prepared for the Olympics as best as she could. Growing up in a lower-class household with a troubled childhood forced Harding to compensate by manipulating the rules. “The only time in her life she ever got anywhere was when she circumvented the rules and took for herself what appeared to be given to the Nancy Kerrigans of the world” was a journalist’s remark. Apparently, Kerrigan’s upper-class status gave her the upper hand. Maybe this is why her rivals retaliated. However, it was a broken shoe lace during an Olympic performance, rather than not playing by the rules, that pretty well ended Harding’s career. It’s unfortunate that things didn’t work out after all that preparation, especially with that stupendous triple axel.

Remember Darcy, my merger arbitrage friend? He may not be an Olympian but he is the archetype of preparation and hard work. We seem to admire those with commitment and dedication. “He didn’t come up the hard way, he came up the impossible way” as someone once explained to me. Darcy has a strength and a certainty that most of us don’t have. I call Darcy a “career chameleon.” He navigated through seven distinct careers in the two decades that I’ve known him. And he’s been successful in all of them. I’ve seen him go from a petroleum engineer to an oil well owner/operator to a real estate magnate to a merger arbitrager to a property investment capitalist, to the founder of a medical marijuana dispensary, and finally, to the owner of an alternative energy start-up. Darcy’s life is a little more transient; nothing seems to last, especially careers.

People sort of expect that if you’re successful in one walk of life, you’re automatically going to be successful in another. But at some point, you start to wonder, where are the lines between dedication and obsession? It just may be that Darcy has an obsession with success. Perhaps people

like Darcy bring a champion’s mentality to everything they do, but it doesn’t mean that it will always work out. I’d say Darcy has done very well in diverse walks of life in a relatively short period of time. He has a knack for finding opportunities with economic viability and then acting on them immediately. Money begets money based on no other principle. Darcy made his fortune by taking advantage of opportunities before others could see them. “Other people’s incompetency made me rich.”

Darcy reminds me a little of the billionaire Dallas Maverick owner, Mark Cuban, who is as prolific as he is versatile. It’s also ironic that both entrepreneurs had humble beginnings and basically started with nothing. Cuban admits that the best pieces of investing advice he got when he was young was to be as poor as possible first. Apparently, it doesn’t take a million-dollar idea to become rich. In fact, Cuban argues that anyone can be a millionaire with the right mindset. It just takes time and frugality, and the discipline of saving. The key is living within your means, which Darcy has perfected. He also perfected being Mark Cuban.

u Being Mark Cuban

Mark Cuban may not be God, but he is a billionaire. He’s also a rags-to-riches story with a genuinely valuable lesson for all of us. As much as I believe that preparation is fundamental to our success, there is an underlying truth that we must understand about preparation. We have to prepare for the right thing. And “What is that?” you ask. It’s those things that we devote time and effort to. I think of it as those things that I’m doing when my wife yells, “Dinner is ready!” and I yell back, “I’ll be there in a minute!” By the time I get to the dinner table, everybody is well into their dessert, and what used to be hot is now barely warm. As I sit down, my wife asks, “What were you doing?” I’ll tell her it’s work stuff. Any more detail makes it a dull and boring dinner conversation. “The things I ended up being really good at were the things I found myself putting effort into. A lot of people talk about passion, but that’s really not what you need to focus on. You really need to evaluate and say, ‘Okay, where am I putting in my time?’” explains Cuban. We tend to be good at the things that we put in our time and effort. And the more time and effort we put into something, the more productive we become. Let’s face it, when we are good at something, we enjoy it more. We tend to become experts. “If you put in enough time, and you get really good, I will give you a little secret: Nobody quits anything they are good at because it is fun to be good. It is fun to be one of the best… but in order to be one of the best, you have to put in effort. So don’t follow your passions, follow your effort.” Cuban shares one more secret: “The one thing in life that you can control is your effort.” Mastering these secrets is what it means to be Mark Cuban.

“We only control two things in life: our attitude and effort” was a correlative message from a professional athlete. Darcy has done a pretty good job of controlling both. Actually, he’s probably maximized them to get to where he is. We’re talking about a guy who has reinvented himself many times over and created a new company each time. And each time he had to push himself to the limit. Even Mark Cuban will tell us that when you’re an entrepreneur with a company, you have to figure out a way to kick your own butt before someone else does it for you. Darcy did it by putting in a lot of time and effort, with the attitude it takes to become rich.

Darcy doesn’t deny that he’s motivated by money, and he definitely doesn’t like to part with it. He doesn’t buy horses for his wife just because she loves horses. These are luxuries he doesn’t need although he can probably afford them. A retired farmer offered some valuable advice to a neighbor who kept horses for recreation, “Never buy anything that eats while you’re sleeping.” This explains why Darcy bought his wife a dog and has money in the bank. He also sleeps soundly at night.

u The Darcy Motto

Darcy’s motto has always been, “Make a difference, improve lives.” If it was up to Darcy, they’d get rid of dry-cleaners and bring back laundromats where people can do it themselves and save money. He makes his money by finding an opportunity to help people, and then takes advantage of a better opportunity when he sees it. Each time, he prepares and positions himself to make a profit while he improves people’s lives. Darcy is a career chameleon who strives to improve people’s lives in all facets of life.

Darcy has had quite the ride, but it’s not over yet. Although he has done very well for himself, he’s also made his investors happy. I tell my wife, “I love that Darcy. Whenever he calls me, he has a check for me.” I love my wife too, but I’m yet to get a check from her. So, why is Darcy successful? It boils down to the way he thinks. He believes he can prosper by being where the action is and competing for a stake. He has a knack for being in the right place at the right time. Every time I see him, he asks me if I’ve read the book Who Moved My Cheese? Apparently, it can help people see how to anticipate and manage change. Although Darcy is prepared to put a lot of time and effort into his endeavors, he’s also willing to break a few conventional rules.

People like Darcy have an ability to find the cheese. They have the foresight to find money-making opportunities. Some are even as bold as to educate themselves in industries that they don’t know anything about. Their success is based on assessing and preparing for opportunities. They are non-conformists refusing to fit in or be molded by other people’s rules. They familiarize themselves with the rules of business and society, and then figure out how to get around them to succeed.

Remember, rules are made up by people just like you. They don’t know any better than you, they don’t have any more wisdom than you, they are just people. In fact, you more than anybody knows what your rules for your life should be. You know you. Everybody else’s rules are created by people without considering what you want or need. You need to decide if you’re a rule follower or rule breaker. You then decide which rules you are willing to break, or at least revise, in order to take advantage of an opportunity and gain the upper hand.

u Opportunity is Dressed in Overalls

Thomas Edison’s business acumen overshadowed his success as an inventor. He had a knack for finding opportunities. As he said, “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” It’s ironical but Darcy wore overalls renovating and selling houses while the housing market was trending upward. He had no problem rolling up his sleeves and doing the job himself when his hired help fell behind. He once told me, “You have to get out and get shit done!” Then he corrected himself, “That’s too many words, just get shit done!” Are you one of those people who tells others what to do, or someone who just does it? It’s funny how things don’t get done unless we do them ourselves.

Darcy is the first to change into overalls whether it is to renovate a property he’s selling, or concocting an innovative cannabis product, or helping out on the construction of his alternative energy facility. And when he’s not evolving his money-making ventures, he’s on the trails mountain biking or on the hills snowboarding. I think Edison would have liked this guy and his overalls. It’s been a long and winding road but he’s successfully exploited his opportunities.

There are a lot of people out there trying to make it. What would you say if someone asked you, “Why have you not made it?” I’m sure Darcy would say you’ve most likely failed to be resourceful, and didn’t adequately tap into your resources. In Darcy’s case, his resourcefulness came from his emotional readiness, confidence, and passion to succeed. But it was his focus on preparation that gave him a competitive advantage. I’d say he just may have architected his life without knowing it. We just have to put in the time and effort it deserves.

u The 10,000-Hour Rule

If you spend 10,000 hours at something, you will become a master of your craft. In the book Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell says that it takes roughly 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery in a field. In other words, the key to becoming successful in any field is simply a matter of practicing a specific task for a modest total of 10,000 hours. I’d say that’s a heck of a lot of practice. Gladwell explains that this can be accomplished with 20 hours of work a week for 10 years. There’s no better way of learning the work than by doing the work.

Greatness is a vision and requires a dedicated time commitment, as well as talent. We all know of The Beatles, but we all have our own ideas how they became the most popular band ever. The story goes that they performed live in Hamburg, Germany over 1,200 times from 1960 to 1964, amassing more than 10,000 hours of playing time. Apparently, the early years they spent performing shaped their musical talents. “By the time they returned to England, ‘they sounded like no one else. It was the making of them,’” according to The Beatles’ biographer Philip Norman. Although The Beatles made it look so easy and natural, it was truly a labor of love.

So, for all of the aspiring rock stars and Olympians out there, are you ready to put in your 10,000 hours? The jazz musician Miles Davis had a relevant quote, “Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.” We’re all trying to figure out who we are and what we can do. Maybe all we need is a 10 year plan. Come to think of it, it took me ten years to write this book. I was told the key to writing is to start before you are ready. I hope this means I took adequate time to write about life architecture, while the rest of the time was spent preparing to be a life architect.

The 10 Year Plan

We have to be careful who and what we believe, otherwise we may put in 10,000 hours for nothing. Struggling musicians struggle for a reason. There’s no silver bullet in life, otherwise we’d all be The Beatles. We would all be practicing to get in our 10,000 hours to be in the spotlight. Although Gladwell may be on to something, the 10,000-hour rule doesn’t apply to everyone and everything we do. He, too, has his critics, and all critics have their own perspective.

One of those critics, a group of researchers, conducted their own study which was published in Psychological Science some years ago. They claimed that while practice plays a role in one’s ability to do things such as play chess or the violin, it’s certainly not the defining element for success. Furthermore, that same success depends on what the task is for. For example, practice played a larger role for games like chess, where this task accounted for about 26 per cent of one’s overall ability. Music was 21 per cent, sports 18 per cent, education four per cent, and our bland professions less than one per cent.

The study concluded that no matter how hard people practice a particular task, they can only become so good at it, or at least remain mediocre. The English stage actor St. Clair Bayfield conceded his realization: “I was a good actor. But I was never going to be a great actor. It was very, very hard to admit that to myself. But once I had, I felt free from the tyranny of ambition. I started to live.” At least this was the movie version and rather ironical coming from the long-term companion and manager of amateur soprano Florence Foster Jenkins, who was known and mocked for her flamboyant costumes and notably poor singing ability. I’m sure Carnegie Hall will never witness such mockery and laughter again.

u Practice Doesn’t Always Make Perfect

This may very well come back to what my friend George concluded back in Chapter 1. Although George may want center stage at the opera and work incredibly hard, he lacks the natural talent to be an opera singer. Practice doesn’t necessarily make perfect, and sometimes it’s best to walk away and find our niche in the world. And for those who do have talent, they should count their lucky stars.

Don’t get me wrong, Gladwell should be commended for at least motivating us. I just believe that you should be the judge, hopefully an impartial one. I’d hate for you to spend 10,000 hours at something and then blame guys like Gladwell for not making The Tonight Show. After all, this isn’t an insider stock tip where we invest a little money and hope for the best. This is your life and I urge you to exercise caution before you invest all that time and take advice from those who can barely run their own lives.

Regardless whether it takes 10,000 hours to become the best or highly successful at something, you won’t have to spend that much time getting your life in order. Although Life Architecture is about preparing for a better life, the good news is that we can prepare along the way to get to where we want to go. It will take some of us longer than others depending on our desires and capabilities. Although we may trip along the way, we can pick ourselves up and forge ahead.

There are people in this world who can do almost anything. Even when they trip up, they get right back up on their feet and do what it takes to succeed. You’ve probably heard many success stories about people who have failed multiple times before they actually got rich or achieved something of great significance. Donald Trump lost his real estate empire only to rebuild it into a larger empire. A reporter once said, “Turning a negative into a positive is one of the things the Trumps do best.”

When it comes to Trump, we don’t know how it’s going to end, but we’re pretty sure it’s going to make the papers. Donald Trump eventually gave up his real estate empire to become President of the United States. As a businessman taking over the Oval Office, that made Trump a man of politics and finance. A politically-astute mafia kingpin tried to explain the difference: “Finance is the gun; politics is knowing when to pull the trigger.” Trump used the promise of economic prosperity as the gun and knew when to pull the trigger to win the presidential election. Although he made more than a few enemies and didn’t win a second term, he never quit.

u Successful People Never Quit

As the Chicago Bears’ coach Mike Ditka put it, “You’re never a loser until you quit trying.” In other words, failure is quitting. There are no losers until the game is over. I’d even extend that to the end of the season. And when you do come out on the losing end, you have the choice to work harder and win the next one. The nice thing about being a loser is that you have nothing to lose when you get there, so you may as well give it your best shot. Quitting has proved to be a sure sign of failure.

Chael Sonnen was frank about the nature of failure. He was regarded as one of the top wrestlers in the UFC middle-weight division in his time. He was described as having “a power double like no other, and his ground impound is absolutely ferocious. ” That’s wrestling talk and probably the reason he became a champion. Sonnen described failure as an option:

“When doubt seeps in, you got two roads. You can take either road. You can go to the left or you can go to the right. And believe me, they’ll tell you failure is not an option. That is ridiculous. Failure is always an option. Failure is the most readily available option at all times, but it’s a choice. You can choose to fail, you can choose to succeed. And if we can plant seeds and let him know, move your feet, keep your hands up, stay off the bottom. That is the road to victory. Or, self-doubt and negative talk and that is the road to failure. But failure is always there, and it’s OK to recognize that. And if I can leave you with anything today in my long journey through this – one, it’s OK, and two, it’s normal. And as athletes, and especially as men – as male athletes – hate to admit weakness even to ourself. And when you’re dealing with something, you got some kind of hiccup, ya…first thing, acknowledge it like you just did.”

– Chael Sonnen, UFC Fighter

Chael Sonnen’s analysis of failure is the kind of pep talk I would expect from a champion. I think Sonnen was trying to tell us that it’s easy to give up. It’s quite normal to have some fear. And if you don’t, you’re probably a sociopath of some sort. That fear of failing can be very motivating for an athlete, especially in an individual combative sport where you’re in that cage all alone. There isn’t anybody else you’re gonna point to and blame and say, “Well, he dropped the ball,” or “He missed the catch,” according to UFC fighter Randy Couture. It’s just you. You have to learn to deal with that and embrace that fear, and use it to motivate yourself to do the things you need to do to make sure you don’t lose. It comes down to who’s going to impose their will in the game.

We’ve all been told at one time or another that it’s all in the mind. The mind is a fragile thing, and Sonnen was aware of its significance in winning matches. Choices are what win or lose competitions. People have this uncanny ability to convince themselves that they’re going to win or they’re going to lose. Yet they continue to make choices that set them up for failure. It’s like asking a homeless man for money. Sonnen never lost because he gave up, but rather because he tried his best. The paradox is that he had to lose to win, and overcome failure to succeed.

Sir Winston Churchill defined success as “the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.” People like Chael Sonnen have the enthusiasm to fail until they succeed. Rudyard Kipling, a famous British writer and Nobel Prize recipient, said, “Treat those two impostors just the same.” Accept failure as you do success. You will lose one day, but you’ll be playing again. Someone else can have a better day or wants it more on any day. But next time, it just may be that it’s your day. Nobody is invincible, but we all have a choice in regard to what we do and how we overcome defeat.

As a high school wrestler, I can relate to Sonnen’s philosophy. Wrestling became a focus shortly after I gave up the accordion. I made the choice to succeed in something I wanted to do. Dan Gable, the American Olympic wrestler and head coach, said, “Once you’ve wrestled, everything else in life is easy.” I wish that were true in my case. Although wrestling was something I enjoyed and excelled at in school, I remember having the anxieties and doubts to deal with. I would fall back into the rut of everyday life, worrying about the usual things. Doubts would surface and incapacitate me in many walks of life.

u Doubt Kills

Back in my high school days, doubt killed some wrestling moves I had perfected but was too afraid to attempt at wrestling meets. I must have practiced the fireman’s throw a thousand times but doubted myself when the big day came to execute it. While anxiety and doubt can be long-winded, certainty is brief. When “doubt seeps in” as Chael Sonnen puts it, we don’t have to take any roads and we can just stay parked long after the meter runs out. This way, we’re sure not to fail. We’re also sure not to succeed. We don’t seem to grasp the idea that failure teaches us to succeed. If we’re not failing once in awhile, we’re probably not aiming high enough. Sonnen risked failure to make it to the top of the UFC food chain. And if we want to be in charge of our lives or make it to the top, we’ve got to risk it too. I’ve since learned that doubt kills, and we shouldn’t doubt ourselves. It was a professional boxer who said, “I’d start working with my inner destructive self [doubt]. And the moment I had overcome her, I could face my opponent.”

Apart from being a fierce competitor in the ring, Chael Sonnen was a showman known for trash talking his opponents. I suspect it’s no fun winning if you can’t rub it in. The undisputed Muhammad Ali said, “It’s not bragging if you can back it up.” I’m sure Sonnen believed in himself, and fight promoters had to put up with his antics knowing he would inflate the purse. Like any great artist, promoters found he was “impossible to live with but worth the effort,” and welcomed the entertainment benefit and publicity. Sonnen’s fans admired him for his fighting skills, while they relished the public humiliation of his opponents.

The fight world will always remember Chael Sonnen as a great champion who gave it his all until the very end, even when he failed. A sports journalist once commented, “Some pro wrestling finishes are best when you are left with more questions than answers as you exit the match.” And Sonnen definitely left us with questions and little answers, as well as artistic wrestling moves we’ll never forget. Unfortunately, a few failures eventually ended his career.

The point is that it’s OK to fail. “No virgin does it right the first time.” Although I still get a chuckle from this whimsical quote, I appreciate the fact that most of us won’t get it right the first time. Consider yourself a virgin until you get it right. Failure isn’t the end but the beginning of the process toward success. I have yet to meet someone who can claim success without failure. We can’t accomplish something without the possibility of failure. We can’t stop trying to succeed, but hopefully we don’t try endlessly. Someone once said, “Trying is the intention to fail.” We just have to try enough times with the intention to succeed until we do so. We don’t get anywhere if we don’t try.

I cringe when someone says, “This is too big to fail.” The last time I heard that line, we were on the verge of replacing a company’s old mainframe computer with new technology to broaden functionality and improve performance. Although my team had the track record to make the transition, the problem lay with a self-centered manager who focused on failure. At the end, the old system could no longer adapt to his company’s needs and was decommissioned. Bigness no longer had any relevance. Even had we failed the first time, their legacy systems would remain as backup during the warranty period. But now, it was too late for all that. Life was too big to fail, and the reason their systems failed.

u Systems Are for Winners

Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comic strip, credits his scores of embarrassing failures for his unlikely success. He even wrote the book How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big and shares a game plan that he’s executed from a young age: “Invite failure in, embrace it, then pick its pocket.” Apparently, failure is not knowing what you’re doing, and success comes at the expense of failure after you figure it out. It seems that Adams believed in the idea that creativity sometimes comes out of mistakes, unplanned things. Whatever his success or failure formula, Adams has consciously managed opportunities in a way that would make it easier for luck to find him, or in this case, I’d say he’s lucky that Dilbert found him. Adams will tell us that passion is bull and what we really need is personal energy. I fail to see the distinction although Dalai Lama followers espouse positive energy through positive thinking. Adams has concluded that goals are intended for losers, while systems are for winners. Throughout grade school, and into post-secondary education for some of us, we were taught to set goals to achieve success. I would argue that systems are based on goals. Regardless, Dilbert was a big success, and Adams was successful as a result of a balance of talent, hard work, and luck. It just may be that his system had the right balance.

How many student drivers stricken by an anxiety attack have pulled to the side of the road only to be driven back by the instructor? This is a sure way not to get a driver’s license. By doing nothing, we get nothing. Old age is probably the only thing that we can accomplish by doing nothing. Guys like Donald Trump, whether we like them or not, didn’t get where they are by staying parked on the side of the road. This would be considered a form of failure. Trump would rather own parkades charging premium rates, and tow customers at their own expense as soon as the meter runs out. Whether we’re at the top of our game or not, we’ll never know until we shift out of park and press the gas pedal.

What would you do if the local Immigration and Customs Enforcement office disallowed your daughter a visit for Christmas? Scott’s daughter was refused entry on the premise that he had neglected to fill something out on the travel visa form. He was advised to redo it and then wait four to six weeks for a new visa. The immigration officer informed Scott that this was non-negotiable. I’d beg to differ, but name one thing in this world that is not negotiable.

Christmas was only three weeks away and Scott had two choices: He could go to his daughter or she could come to him as originally planned. Scott wasn’t about to spend Christmas with his exwife and her new boyfriend. He was prepared to try every trick in the book to celebrate Christmas in his own living room with his daughter. However, Immigration and Customs Enforcement had strict rules and didn’t appreciate desperate daddies telling them how to go about their business. Regardless, Scott had his own rules and rulebook.

Scott’s Immigration Rules

So what did Scott do? He cursed to himself, pulled out his rulebook, and then contacted another Immigration and Customs Enforcement office across the country. His travel experiences reminded him that the French-Canadian officials were a little less bureaucratic and known for their compassion. Ten days later, Scott’s daughter had a packed suitcase and visa in hand. Some rules can get in the way of Christmas and we must take advantage of their incongruous interpretations and senselessness.

The lesson is that we all have to follow rules. However, rules are only as good as the people who govern and enforce them. In Scott’s case, he crossed the street to look for another store where the owner was a little more accommodating and pleasant to deal with. “In every adversity, there is an equivalency to benefit if you just look for it” was Evel Knievel’s advice to guys like Scott. Knievel and other stunt performers like him don’t let rules hold them back. Rather, they skip rules altogether and do what they think is right. Breaking rules and doing what’s right takes a lot of courage.

I don’t think that it’s fair to one day wake up and say, “Why didn’t I…?” That wouldn’t be just plain wrong, but a life tragedy. And sometimes, we ask, “Why didn’t I do it earlier?” Life offers us a reentry permit, while time passed is irrelevant. The comical Walter Matthau shared a revelation about relationships with a friend. “There’s no such thing as too late, that’s why they invented death.” He was trying to tell his buddy Jack that we shouldn’t wait it out but live it up, and it’s never too late to start again. “Then get ready, you’re here, now, you’re living, you’re breathing, you got a choice.” We have been blessed with a long life and no one knows when our time is up.

C.S. Lewis, one of the most influential writers of his day, pretty well summed it up for us: “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” We can’t change what has already happened, but we can learn from it and improve the future. So it is with your life, and now is the ideal time to change the ending.

u Say “Goodbye” To Dick’s Soccer Academy

No family should be held hostage, especially by a soccer academy – football for those in the rest of the world. What happened to the days when sports was fun growing up? Now, it’s all about money, mainly for the soccer academies and their professional associates who intrigue us with foreign accents from all the great football countries in Europe and South America. Parents have lost sight of what it is to be a kid. In some cases, they have been brainwashed to believe that their kids are going to make it into the big leagues. They sacrifice their children’s childhood for a dream. They believe that their kids are destined to become professionals and live happily ever after. I’d say it’s time to say goodbye to Dick and Dick’s Soccer Academy and others who put themselves ahead of our children.

While I’m not a big fan of Dick and his academy, I’d say parents are also to blame for putting their children’s well-being into the hands of others. Parents have conceived this falsehood that others can do the job for them. They’re even willing to pay big bucks and outsource their kids to the soccer experts who, by the way, won’t even look at your kid without compensation, regardless of skill level. For those of us unfamiliar with the term “outsource,” this is when we pay someone else to do the work for us.

Companies do a lot of outsourcing. They hire qualified consultants to evaluate their opportunities and then come up with a plan. Management usually lacks experience and the capabilities, and is willing to pay for it. As for my kid and his soccer, I’m more interested in making it fun at this age. We could possibly hire a soccer parent who has grown up with the sport and radiates a passion to coach kids, or a seasoned soccer player involved in the soccer community who would not only be cheaper, but more dedicated and in touch with our kids.

I wish I could convince parents that Dick was in it for himself and didn’t give a damn about our kids. He acted as if he was entitled to make the rules when it came to our kids’ well-being. While Dick was given free rein, my son decided to short-change Dick and left him high and dry in the goaltending department. This was a tough pill to swallow as parents. I’m sure Dick wasn’t happy either about losing the extra cash. We were stunned that a Tier 1 divisional soccer goalie would just pack it in. When my wife desperately tried to keep our son on the roster, he imposed his own rules. That’s all a part of growing up. I’m just glad he had more common sense than the parents.

I’m sure you know that I’m smiling right now. I was well aware of what was happening, unlike my wife. Our son was suffocating. He hardly had any time for himself. Life consisted of soccer and homework. He also fell in love with golf, which couldn’t be squeezed into his busy schedule. Dick’s Soccer Academy had turned soccer into an incessant boot camp. Between soccer practice, tech training, conditioning, and games, he’d be lucky to get one round of golf a month. This was a losing proposition for a kid who wanted to play golf more than anything else in the world. The time had come for our son to start enjoying his childhood. As the great Brazilian soccer legend Pelé once said, “I think the biggest gift you receive in victory isn’t the trophy, it’s the relief.” I was relieved my son was free again.

In life, there is no second half. Freedom means self-determination and enables us to achieve unlimited potential, without being beset by forced diktats and constraints. We won’t find the answers blowin’ in the wind, although Bob Dylan’s poetic song lyrics raise a thought-provoking question: How many years can some people exist before they’re allowed to be free? There comes a time to be free to make decisions and to live life on our own terms. This reminds me of a scene

in a movie where a father watching his children play in the courtyard turns to his wife and says, “How wonderful to be that free.” Freedom is not just what makes dreams come true, it makes dreaming possible. Our new-found freedom will make a desired future possible.

u Say “Hello” to Freedom

Freedom comes by ridding our lives of things that take us down. Much of this is provoked by societal expectations and the regular life bullshit that we put up with. You know the stuff that I’m talking about – the lemon on wheels we call a car that continues to be a money drain, or the boss whose ego outweighs his inflated bonus. Then there’s the steady girlfriend who leaves us behind to party with her bimbos in Mexico. These are the things in our lives that we feel compelled to live with. It’s time to regain our pride and personal freedom. Freedom is something we can only give ourselves. The moment has come to break the chains of stupidity.

“If there is one sacred thing in life, it’s personal freedom. Every person has not only the right but also the duty to do whatever he wants.” So prescribed Jacques Villeneuve, the son of the great Formula One champion Gilles Villeneuve. The Villeneuves found the freedom to chase their dreams of racing. Sometimes, we just have to get rid of the lemon, the cranky boss, and the quirky girlfriend with the sombrero to get our freedom back. I now drive Japanese, work for myself, and am married to a wonderful girl who would sooner shoot me than take separate vacations.

Freedom is possible, as long as we’re prepared to break a few rules along the way. But most people follow the rules to avoid trouble. It was James Bailey of the Barnum & Baily Circus who said, “The best fun in the world is dodging trouble you’ve made for yourself.” This may explain why I like comedies – everyone breaks rules regardless of the trouble they get into. Maybe we need to be more carefree as rule breakers, but less careless in how we break rules.

It was the young woman in the romantic comedy Change-Up who casually enlightens us about ourselves and our affiliation with society:

“We were not put on this earth to work, breathe, and die. We are here to have fun, right? I just think there’s too many rules. Think about all the amazing experiences that we miss out on because we’re so worried about what other people will think. At the end of the day, I am just tired of over thinking things. We should just do what we want to do.”

I’m sure I’d be open to having a coffee with a young and beautiful carefree brunette to discuss her liberal perspectives were I not happily married. Some people work hard to be perfect or in control all the time but there really is no need to impress anyone. A Danish polymath by the name of Piet Hein didn’t care what people thought by poetically articulating his sentiments:

Some people cower and wince and shrink, owing to fear of what people may think. There is one answer to worries like these: people may think what the devil they please.

People’s opinions motivate our decisions, especially when we’re young. We shouldn’t worry about others while we break rules for the right reasons, and as long as we understand the consequences. It’s natural to make some mistakes along the way. We’ve all screwed up and, the odds are, we’ll do so again. Everyone is born with an innate ability to make mistakes. The only people who don’t make mistakes are people who don’t do anything. “Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong.” It’s funny what you can read on a courthouse wall when you’re waiting for wrong-doers who broke rules for the wrong reasons.

While I was waiting for my court hearing, I was contemplating the possible outcomes. I wasn’t expecting justice, but rather legal results that would at least get some of my money back from a couple of unscrupulous individuals. Isn’t the law just a collection of rules meant to maintain order and help us correct a wrong-doing? I would like to believe the wrong-doing was a mistake. I was once told that when a mistake is made and then corrected, it’s no longer a mistake. It’s only when we keep making the same mistake that it becomes a problem. The good news is that I’ve since resolved my business problems while I’m careful who I do business with.

Our freedom lies in knowing that we can solve our problems and change our lives. It’s human nature to do the things that make us happy and feel alive. Think of freedom as an after-hours bar. The King’s Head may be one of Greg’s favorite places to relax and enjoy live music. But what’s a guy to do when the bar wants to go home and he doesn’t? He can hightail it home with the regulars, or join a few rowdy staff members at an after-hours bar after they punch out to have their own fun. This analogy may be a little far-fetched, but freedom can take on many different forms.

There’s more to life than the normal hours that society bestows on us. That’s why they invented happy hour and after-hours bars. And this doesn’t mean it’s a good way to get drunk. Some of these happy and after things are meant to get us together and enjoy ourselves. As a matter of fact, Greg should have his own life rule, which I’ll take the liberty to formalize as the Gregorian Rule. It’s a spin-off of the Mother-in-Law Rule and I owe credit for these rules to both Greg and Wes. I hope the Gregorian Rule becomes as popular as today’s internationally-accepted calendar, known as the Gregorian calendar.

#3 The Gregorian Rule

Anything is possible, even good fun outside “happy hour” and after-hours bars – anywhere and everywhere where there are good people, a good mood, and the possibility of good fun.

There’s only one caveat to the Gregorian Rule: It’s up to you to set the mood, especially when no one else is willing to take the initiative. It was an enthusiastic devotee of the anonymous graffiti artist Banksy who professed, “A lot of people never use their initiative because no one told them to.” I’m not only telling you but spelling it out for you: Get off your butt and take initiative to live the life you’ve always wanted to live. I wish for Greg and everyone else to live by the Gregorian Rule as gospel.

We are free to discover the after-hours bars in all aspects of our lives, including family, work, leisure, education, health, and intellectual growth. Such life classifications make up everything that we do in life as we endeavor to recognize what we do and why we do it. It is only when we understand the WHAT and WHY that we can make the changes required to achieve our desired life. This enables us to enrich our lives while we overcome life’s challenges.

The unhappy lawyer and family man, who removes himself from society in the movie Wakefield, admits, “I no longer seem to require those things that only days ago were so indispensable – the armor of a clean shirt, the smooth shave, credit cards, cell phones, clients.” He gives up the rules that had control over him earlier. He feels unshackled, free, and overjoyed by abandoning his responsibilities. “I’ll become the Howard Wakefield I was meant to be.” However, he eventually returns to the real world and realizes how “strange to be subject to rules again,” and that he had forgotten the “God awfulness” of his societal ritual. He’s dismayed to see people in endless numbers on the streets against the backdrop of stacked-up buildings. It’s impossible to imagine he had worked there before, or could ever go back.

I suspect it was the WHAT and WHY that made Howard return to a society which reduced people to rotating gears in a giant machine. Society has no problem taking away our autonomy and freedom. Regardless, Howard had a family waiting for him. Although living alone and isolated could no longer fulfill his purpose, it was kind of nice to live with no rules at least for a little while. Maybe his awareness of defeating rules in his past life would allow him to formulate new ones by which he could live a life of purpose and happiness. Awareness is a precursor to change, motivating us to answer the WHAT and WHY.

CHAPTER 6

WHAT and WHY. Don’t Worry About HOW.

It was the comedian George Carlin who said, “Not only do I not know WHAT’s going on, I wouldn’t know WHAT to do about it if I did…Some people see things that are and ask, WHY? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, WHY not? Some people have to go to work and don’t have time for all that.” I don’t want you to think that George Carlin taught me everything that I need to know about life, but comedians have an uncanny way of presenting life and asking questions the rest of us should be asking. Their brilliance shines as they stand on stage and make us look stupid for not asking the right questions. It’s ironic that such off-the-wall humor has a deliberate truth to its messages.

We don’t always know what to do or who to turn to in order to change our lives. George Carlin informed his audience that instead of praying to God, he prays to Joe Pesci because “he looks like a guy who can get things done.” By the way, Pesci is known for his volatile psychopathic mobster roles while those around him walk on eggshells, and most likely end up dead in his or a friend’s trunk. At the end, the bullet settles everything, especially when people don’t do their jobs. For those of us who make an honest living, maybe this is an indication of how serious things really are when it comes to change and not knowing what we want to do with our lives.

Our inability to take action is a direct outcome of not having a clue where to start. Sometimes we take reckless risks just to get the ball rolling. We’re advised to talk to people who are more knowledgeable than us, explore our options, and then let the facts guide us. Warren Buffett, a financial mastermind very familiar with risk, said that risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing. This may very well be why we allow ourselves to be guided by other people’s emotions and biases. If we can make informed decisions, we just may diminish the uncertainty and shift probability in our favor.

u The Uncertainty Epidemic

Uncertainty and personal inertia have become an epidemic affecting all ages of the human race, whether it is a high school student considering what he wants to do after graduation or a middle-aged manager wanting to change a dead-end job. Mr. Dead-End Job will most likely blame his boss or the company for his lack of ambition, social incompetence, or inability to play corporate politics. Many people don’t have the aptitude for politics. It was Pilate, the governor of the Roman province of Judaea, who said, “The lesson is, don’t play politics unless you’re good at it.”

How many times have we seen a young woman behind a reception desk dazzling enough to be a model, or a Clark Gable or Brad Pitt look-alike on the floor of Walmart forgo a movie career or any career at all? Some people are just born with it. Brad Pitt once said, “I’m one of those people you hate because of genetics. It’s the truth.” And it probably is the truth until one day he gets that first bag under his eye. We’re all victims of circumstance. There aren’t many modeling or acting jobs in my neck of the woods where one has a better chance of becoming a rodeo clown.

Many people have reserved themselves to do things that don’t interest them but rather just pay the bills, which I refer to as “pay-the-bills syndrome.” They end up in a rut because of circumstance, while others find the will to succeed and take extra measures to end up where they want to be. I’m amazed at how much effort we need to put into our temporary existence called life. But at the end, it’s worth it. After all, it’s the only life we have. People who succeed in life have a vision to aspire to something beyond paying the bills. Some even have a talent they’d rather pursue.

There was an aspiring artist who was rejected by the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. If he had been accepted, maybe an Adolf Hitler masterpiece would be on display at the Louvre Museum or a gift shop in Bavaria. The world would have been a different place today had Hitler become an artist. Instead, fascism was born during economic instability and the collapse of liberal institutions, while a fanatical fascist from Bavaria rose to be the national leader whose actions would destroy the world. As an architect of genocide, it was to be one of the most monstrous careers in history where circumstances and a warped vision were responsible for the genocide of millions of innocent people.

Many innocent people have perished since the dawn of humanity. How many people does it take to murder millions and millions of people? Who murdered all those innocent victims not so long ago in 20th century Europe? Probably the same evil men who followed the orders of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, among others. But, these murderers were the same people who had families before the war, and most of them continued to be loving fathers and husbands after the war. However, their primordial instinct to kill was stronger than their empathy toward their victims. Someone once said, “You can be a human or a killer of humans, but not both. Eventually one of those people will extinguish the other one.”

It would be impossible to try and convict so many killers, so we just let them all integrate back into civilized society. Most of them have lived out their long happy lives and died of natural causes as respected husbands and fathers. So how can husbands and fathers kill? How can you love God but yet hate other people? Maybe it’s this supremacist mindset that is at the crux of the issue. A sports commentator responding to racism in the sport of hockey said that you can’t expect a white guy to understand what a black guy has gone through because he hasn’t lived through racism. There are many theories and opinions premised on the conditioning of hatred and prejudice such as antisemitism, homophobia, and negrophobia to name a few. After all, hatred is a learned behavior.

When one group or people kills another, they are judging the victims and assuming there’s something wrong with them. But then I ask how can you judge or hate a child, regardless of race, social status, or other differences? I believe good people succumb to authority and, rightly or wrongly, embrace its rules. This has come to be known as “obedience to authority.” Who are we to challenge authority? Besides, if we refuse to take orders, we just may perish with the rest of them.

u Obedience to Authority

Stanley Milgram’s experiments on obedience to authority conducted in the 1960s during his professorship at Yale may explain why good people do bad things. According to Milgram, “the essence of obedience consists in the fact that a person comes to view himself as the instrument for carrying out another person’s wishes, and he therefore no longer sees himself as responsible for his actions. Once this critical shift of viewpoint has occurred in the person, all of the essential features of obedience follow.” He believed people don’t have the resources to resist authority. “The experiment taught me something about the plasticity of human nature. Not the evil, not the aggressiveness, but a certain kind of malleability. 65 percent of volunteers were obedient.

That left 35 percent who recognized a moral breach, took responsibility for their actions and resisted….But obedience, compliance, was more common. You tell yourself: ‘I wouldn’t do that. I’d never do that.’ But then, what did Montaigne say? ‘We are double in ourselves. What we believe we disbelieve, and we cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn.’” The experiment explains a kind of flaw in social thinking – a deadening, a suspension of moral value. Although there was controversy regarding Milgram’s experiment, his work was a springboard for revealing basic human truths.

Philip Zimbardo uncovered a harsher reality with his Stanford prison experiment, also known by the title of his book as The Lucifer Effect, where volunteers were randomly assigned to be guards or prisoners in a mock prison. The experiment demonstrated how behavior alters depending on availability of power or authority, and a willingness to dehumanize others. According to Zimbardo, “Good people can be induced, seduced, and initiated into behaving in evil ways.” People cannot be defined as good or evil because we have the ability to act as both based on the situation. “No one can truly know what they might or might not do when presented with the demands of a particular situation.” Thomas Jefferson said, “Evil triumphs when good men do nothing.”

People are motivated by fear. This may explain humanity’s passive tolerance of injustice and evil through inaction or indifference. Stanley Milgram believed that we’re puppets with perception and awareness. “Sometimes we can see the strings and, perhaps, our awareness is the first step in our liberation.” Not many of us are capable of liberating ourselves from authority. We just may need to break some rules to be truly liberated. The bottom line is that we’re conditioned to obey authority and fear the repercussions of not doing so. The majority of German citizens became Nazis and vowed to obey authority even if it meant the killing of others.

In an agentic state like Nazi Germany, the individual assumes the role of a worker fulfilling the wishes of one’s superiors. He yields to authority and becomes alienated from his own actions. The agentic state relies on what is referred to as “store policy” where people follow orders blindly: “I’m just doing my job”…“That’s not my job”…“I don’t make the rules”…“We don’t do that here”…“I’m following orders”…“It’s the law.” It has taught us that more dangerous is the common man, the functionary ready to believe and to act without asking questions.

In George Orwell’s prophetic book 1984, he describes a totalitarian world where people aren’t very good at thinking for themselves. Things don’t seem to have changed much today. We all have a choice but sometimes choose to be agentic. Could it be that Hitler’s million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Regardless, they chose their own reality when they lost empathy and became executioners. This was exacerbated by racism, hatred, and fear for one’s own life during sanctioned and systematic acts of violence.

u Why Do We Hate?

Maybe hatred stems from jealousy because we want things for ourselves that other people seem to have. Or maybe we feel guilty about who we are and need to blame someone else. Or we just may be plain fanatics who feel that our own life is so meaningless that it has no weight in the universe. Such people are embarrassed about themselves, they feel guilty about how small and worthless and meaningless their lives are, and the only way they can feel themselves bigger or to have a place in the world is to attach themselves sort of fanatically to a certain kind of extreme idea.

I ask myself, “If Hitler had become an artist, would the Nazis have come to power in Germany and instigated WWII?” I’m sure if someone had a crystal ball, Hitler probably wouldn’t have made it out of Vienna had he been accepted into the Academy of Fine Arts. It was a mafia figure in the movies who said, “You know, you got to stop them at the beginning. Like they should have stopped Hitler in Munich. They should’ve never let him get away with that. They were just asking for big trouble.” The mafia seems to have a knack for getting rid of people who are a threat to their business long before the big trouble starts. It’s unfortunate that the mafia never crossed paths with Hitler.

Adolf Hitler’s role as Fuhrer was a circumstantial beginning with a harrowing and tragic ending. The fatal attraction of Hitler was the belief that he had brought to an end the hardships of the Great Depression and the humiliations which the country had suffered at Versailles. It was his vision of economic prosperity and world dominance, and the fact that the German people were desperate, that placed him in a position of power. Evil can be very deceptive. While many believed that Hitler was their saviour, he left a legacy of evil. Not even the devil could have contrived the enormity of the SS’s infliction of misery, destruction, and death. Hitler’s inconceivable foresight and scale of devastation sealed the fate of many and changed the world forever.

u A Duty to Decide Your Fate

“There are times in our lives when it seems that we decide our own fates. We freely choose our company, friends, and profession; we start our families; our success depends on our own knowledge and effort; we calmly prepare ourselves for old age. But there are moments, and even entire periods, when our fate is in someone else’s hands. Then, that someone or something outside ourselves, some inexorable power that we are unable to resist, makes decisions for us. We can try to escape it or resign ourselves to it.” These were the words of Slavko Goldstein, a distinguished Croatian journalist and publisher, who described the fate of his family, and many other families, in his astonishing historical memoir 1941: The Year That Keeps Returning. His fate was determined for him, although he was lucky to escape Nazi occupiers and pro-fascist nationalists, so that he could later seal his own fate in a country he called home. “It’s common belief that life is nothing but few lines of fate” were lyrics in a song I listened to on the radio. Although fate may be governed by the vagaries of chance, it is our duty to decide our own fate whenever and as best as we can. Goldstein learned that forces beyond our control can take away everything we possess except one thing, our freedom to choose how we respond to a situation.

Sometimes we can’t make things happen, and allow others to make them happen for us, regardless of their rationality and consequences. The flamboyant oratory of Hitler exciting new hope, combined with Nazi propaganda, gained popularity during an economic recession. I thought about how people tend to congregate in homogeneous groups, avoiding and often fearing outsiders. Hitler had persuaded the country’s Aryan sympathizers that Jews were such outsiders. This was the root of prejudice and hatred where an Aryan nation gave unquestioning loyalty to a madman promising them what they most needed: law and order, a sense of purpose, and above all, a belief in themselves. Underhandedness and trickery played a big part of Nazi deception. For the sake of the human race, I hope that was a one-time deal and history doesn’t repeat itself.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was instrumental in momentous decisions made during WWII, said, “In history, nothing happens by accident. If it happened, you can bet someone planned it.” Planning and an underlying vision are fundamental to achieving preconceived outcomes. This is not to say that planning and a vision alone effect change around us or win world wars. There are many influencing factors involved, depending on what needs to happen and the wherewithal

to get something done. There are also contrarians and self-serving individuals involved who we must contend with. Thus, to take advantage of our opportunities, we’d be well-advised to wait for the right circumstances.

u Luck is Opportunity

We all get lucky once in a while. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Some argue that we just need a little luck to realize our dreams. The comedic actress Lucille Ball once said, “Luck to me is realizing what is opportunity and what isn’t.” However, I’d be leery of a Fortune 500 company hiring an executive based on his ability to get lucky. This wouldn’t be a practical business decision for any organization targeting success. Maybe luck is finding the right guy. As for Hitler, I believe it was a combination of a dream of economic revival, timing, charisma, desperation, and luck that granted him the opportunity to resurrect a Nazi Party and eventually form a government – one which would lead a people in favor of a New Order in Europe and desperate to follow his evil plan. And let’s not forget preparation. Nazi propaganda was a crucial instrument for acquiring and maintaining power. It just may be that luck happens when preparation meets opportunity.

Some things just happen out of the blue and most likely will never repeat themselves. The Detroit Red Wings must have had a few horseshoes up their sleeves when they scored the winning goal in two back-to-back hockey games with about two seconds left in each game. These desperation goals came at a time when Detroit needed them to clinch a playoff spot. They are unlikely to ever cross the goal line again with two seconds left in two consecutive games. But the point is, it did happen mysteriously, miraculously, or by some act of fate. This was definitely not a typical or realistic or even planned outcome.

Do you remember the movie Down and Out in Beverly Hills? Such comedies make us wonder how the situation would play out in real life. The movie is about a rich Beverly Hills family whose entire household is turned upside down with one act of uncharacteristic generosity. The affluent homeowner notices a street tramp named Jerry attempting to drown himself in the backyard swimming pool and rescues him. Sometimes God happens fast. He then invites the homeless man to stay with his family.

Without getting into all the plot details, this Beverly Hills household is far from normal, with a wife in search of inner peace who spends her days meditating, a teenage son confused about his sexuality, a daughter suffering from eating disorders, and a neurotic dog with a doggy therapist. You can imagine that a homeless man added to this eccentric family scenario shouldn’t complicate things too much further.

Anyhow, Jerry gets cleaned up, dressed up, and loses all physical evidence of once being a street tramp. It doesn’t take long for his charismatic personality to fool everyone into believing that he had never dined out of a sardine can. Jerry is the epitome of a Hollywood guest as he settles in and forms his own family ties. Sometimes losing family obliges us to find our family, even if they’re dysfunctional. Jerry’s unsuspecting antics remind this dysfunctional Beverly Hills family of what it means to be a family again.

I would like to tell you that this movie is about a guy who breaks all the rules. However, more duly, I’d say that Jerry is somewhat of a mentalist playing out his own family fantasies than he is a rule breaker. Jerry goes from being a bum to a high-society aristocrat enjoying all Beverly Hills has to offer, but he has very little to do with his own transformation. It’s not every day that a Beverly Hills

businessman brings a total stranger into the house and says, “Make yourself at home and stay a while.” If that were the case, there would be more homeless jumping into opulent pools.

People who live on the street, whether mentally stable or not, cannot transform themselves without the desire or confidence to do so. A homeless person doesn’t usually become homeless because he or she wants to. It may be one bad turn in life instigated by circumstance. In many cases, it is a sequence of things gone wrong. When people fall victim to homelessness, they don’t see a way out unless there is some miraculous act of generosity by a Beverly Hills businessman. Life for them is a hardship.

u Life Isn’t for Everybody

A humorous Scotsman once advised me, “Life isn’t for everybody.” Actually, it was a friend of Davie’s who was apprised of this epiphany. His friend had a painstaking ritual complaining about his life. Davie finally had enough of his friend’s self-pity and advised him, “Life isn’t for everybody.” Davie was trying to tell his friend that life is only for those who want to live it. His friend got up in a huff and didn’t talk to him for three months. No one realizes how short life is, especially when one is having too much fun living it. “I didn’t expect life to go by this fast,” admitted Davie. Life goes by faster than summer vacation. We just need to take the time to live it. Enjoy it or waste it. Enjoy your life. Enjoy it all. What good is life if you’re just making excuses and waiting to die?

“Life’s awful. I planned it that way” was a humorous caption in a Garfield cat poster at a client’s office. I suspect Davie’s friend planned an awful life without giving it much thought. Life can be a hardship for those who live with fear, misery, sadness, jealousy, and so on. However, when life is filled with happiness and excitement, and feels just plain good, life is the ultimate joy. Life is for everybody who wants it. We just have to grasp a life that will give us joy every day. Don’t let telltale signs of death and poor life habits get in the way of living. I’m sure this is what Davie was trying to tell his friend.

I have a timely confession to make: Everybody is different. You got to be who you are in this world, right? We are who we are, no matter what we may pretend to be. This is why we have different aspirations and expectations in life. A Beverly Hills millionaire enjoying a poolside glass of champagne and caviar has a different palate than a homeless man scrounging the back alleys. Although Jerry no longer contemplated suicide, he got tired of high society. By the end of the movie, this Beverly Hills house guest gives it all up to become the same homeless person he once was. The novelty of high-society had passed. He realized that his old life was saner and simpler than that of a wealthy and dysfunctional family whose lives focused on luxuries rather than life’s necessities.

Do you know those drugstore kits that tell you when you’re pregnant? They should have one that tells you when you’re sane. What we need and what we want are subjective. Comfort can be subjective. And Jerry didn’t need a plush life to be comfortable. Maybe if he hadn’t lived life on both sides of the tracks, he never would have realized his sanity. Jerry was ready to return to a life where he could exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality. Delivering a shopping cart full of empties to a nearby bottle depot gave him a sense of sanity, and the freedom and purpose that he had always wanted but never understood. He came to terms with who he was and what he wanted. “Your outlook on life is a direct reflection on how much you like yourself” were the insightful words in a yoga wear advertisement. Jerry liked who he was and his life on the street.

The bottom line is that Jerry learned that his previous life on the street made him happy. Although his life may have been improved economically during that brief stay with his Beverly Hills family, he felt deep inside that it was an empty and unsatisfying way of life. He missed his street family and the shenanigans of street life. His friends on the street had a much simpler and more wholesome outlook on life that made sense to him. Jerry’s dog was also relieved to cancel his doggie therapist appointments.

u The Big Lesson in Life

What’s the big lesson in all this? Until you know WHAT you want to do and WHY you choose your life, you cannot transform yourself into anything but who you are now. Jerry never changed who he was inside while he lived in the Beverly Hills mansion because he didn’t want to change – nor was there a reason to change. He had no inclination to get a job or aspire to owning his own place, especially one with a pool. Mark Twain said, “The two most important days in your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why.” It just may be that Jerry figured out why after he had champagne and caviar.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure Jerry enjoyed a short departure from his poverty-stricken life. He didn’t have to think about what he was going to eat, where he was going to sleep, and maybe even enjoyed his new found family, for a little while anyway. It was this little distraction that made Jerry realize that he’d already reached his idealistic state of happiness and self-fulfillment. Maybe he’s luckier than most of us can imagine. Many of us own our homes and lead luxurious lives, yet we don’t necessarily have the happiness and self-fulfillment we so desire.

It would be selfish and arrogant of me or anyone else to ask you for your trust, and promise that you can change your life into some idealistic state of happiness and self-fulfillment. We can achieve only what is possible and in our control. We will start with the control that we possess over our own lives. However, I do promise that it can get a whole lot better than it is. And I’m not talking about changing our appearance or boosting our self-esteem on a makeover episode of an afternoon talk show focused on women’s lives. If it was that easy, we could do it all in one day with a trip to a fancy spa, an uptown hairstylist, and Nordstrom. The truth is, we can do a lot more than change how we look from the outside. We can change our outlook on life from the inside.

Change comes with desire. It is our desire to change not because we have to, but because we want to. It means we have to take the appropriate actions to make that change happen. We must believe that we’re in control of our destiny with the confidence to be who we want to be, rather than succumbing to some unknown fate or coincidence. It was a serial killer’s father trying to save his daughter from serving time who said, “I don’t believe in coincidence, just destiny or inevitability.” In her case, it was inevitable that she go to prison one day. Some would argue that it was destiny.

u Control Your Destiny

William Ernest Henley, in the Victorian poem Invictus, wrote, “I am the master of my fate.” I believe that we’re all masters of our own destiny. We alone control our destinies to attain happiness and self-fulfillment. This means that more than a possibility exists to change it. Relevant actions, or those required for the matter at hand, sometimes rely on breaking rules that stand between us and destiny. This is not always easy. We must embrace change to grow as human

beings and understand that sometimes “growth comes with uncomfortability.” It’s evident that breaking rules is an uncomfortable task, especially if we’ve been conditioned to follow rules our entire life. There is an entire chapter on breaking rules ahead of us. Stay tuned. For now, ask yourself some foundational questions: Do I want to control my destiny, am I willing to break rules, am I ready to cut loose those who do nothing for me? There are people who actually prevent or deter us from moving ahead in life. “Stop letting people who do so little for you control so much of your mind, feelings, and emotions” in the words of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air who went from a modest rapper to a Hollywood star. Will Smith, the once-upon-a-time TV prince, took control of his own destiny. “You just decide. WHAT it’s gonna be, WHO you’re gonna be, HOW you’re gonna do it. Just decide! And then from that point, the universe is gonna get out of your way…So, for me, I want to represent possibilities. I want to represent the idea that you really can make what you want.”

Although this may sound like regal encouragement coming from a prince, it’s practical advice from someone who has fulfilled his own ambitions. It doesn’t matter what we did or didn’t do before, destiny would have found us either way. If it wasn’t something bad that’s already happened to us – sickness, layoff, or a family tragedy – it would be something else waiting to happen. It’s always going to be something; that’s part of the game of life. No one gets through this life without something bad happening. We keep our head down and hope the perfect storm passes by, or we deal with it head on.

It was the owner of a yacht caught in the perfect storm who said, “This is my boat,” refusing his crew to go back to shore. “This is my life,” responds a crew member as she takes matters into her own hands. The moral of the story is that we own our life, not anybody else including the guy with the yacht. Sometimes we must abandon another man’s boat and get on our own lifeboat to make it back to shore. One day we will sail our own yacht and reach our own destiny by fulfilling our ambitions.

u Suspicions of Destiny

Even the ambitious Damien had a destiny. Damien is the Antichrist in the movie The Omen He does anything to remove obstacles that get in his way, specifically those that interfere with his plan. The young Damien is told that the time is coming to put aside childish things and face up to who he is. When asked if he’s feeling the changes that come with puberty and manhood, Damien responds, “I think so. I’m not sure. But I feel that something’s happening to me, is going to happen.” Damien’s befriended advisor referred to this anticipation of change as “suspicions of destiny” and the fact that we all have “the deep wordless knowledge that our time has come.” I remember having suspicions of my own destiny and questioning my chances of reaching it. I would sit there in wonderment thinking whether I’d be guided by righteous omens, but not exactly sure what form they would take. I’m bewildered at the path that our destiny takes to reach its destination.

The time had come to make some choices and control my own destiny. Although I was willing to take a couple of chances that made sense, I had to make the right choices. There is an old proverb: “Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice.” We control our destiny by the choices we make. The proverb continues: “It is not a thing to be waited for; it is a thing to be achieved.” This means that our choices determine the actions we take. I’m sure this proverb won’t mind if we break a few rules along the way to reach our destiny.

There are many ways to reach destiny. I can even pay a few extra bucks and make a Date with Destiny by taking Tony Robbins’ seminar for a motivational experience, but who knows where I’d end up or the sob stories I’d get out of it. I believe that we discover our own destiny, and it likely takes more than a week-long course to find it. “Destiny is what you make it,” according to the bedridden forensics expert in The Bone Collector. It’s best we make it reachable and satisfying.

There was a time I was worried about my destiny of going bald. My brother still teases me about those scalp therapy lotions I used to apply before putting on this electric heat cap that looked like it came from my grandmother’s travel bag. I was worried how everyone else would see me. Luckily, I never did go bald but still regret all the money I spent on those useless lotions, not to mention the jokes I had to put up with. But if I were to go bald, I’ve learned that it’s beyond my control. My buddy Bob will be the first to tell you to shave it all off and be free again. That’s easy for him to say, he’s got matching tattoos and earrings.

Along the way, I have learned that looks are deceiving but character is revealing. We’re lucky to be alive in the 21st century where anything goes, and guys shave their heads for effect. We can also put it back. We live in a world where hair, body parts, and even confidence can be transplanted. It is just a matter of wanting something bad enough. Our character and will are persuasive factors in achieving success and happiness. There isn’t a book in the world that can change who we are or want to be. Not even parents can do that, although they do have unrelenting influence. Our character is set at an early age and follows us throughout our lifetime.

u A Worthy Plan to Remove Obstacles

As a devoted practitioner and author of Life Architecture, I don’t want us to change who we are. I just want us to change our lives. I want us to challenge the beliefs and truths that have subconsciously obstructed us from changing our lives for the better. At this very moment, we may be our own worst enemy. The desire to change comes from within us. We’re sometimes afraid of what’s inside, and that’s the only place we may ever find what we need. A bit of soul searching and guidance will pave the way toward a well-architected future life. This requires a plan. We may have a plan to get there but unless it can remove obstacles that prevent us from reaching our destiny, it hardly seems worth the paper it’s written on. A worthy plan provides the means to remove obstacles. The intent of this book is to develop a plan to reach our life goals and aspirations. We will also develop the capabilities and leverage the right tools to get there.

This plan must be our plan and nobody else’s. If we are expected to control our own destinies, we need to make our own plan. This plan is about what we want, not what others want for us. When we allow others to make plans for us, they make less sense to us. Even worse, they become meaningless and end up being their plans. We lose all sense of commitment and ownership. It almost feels like communism where we lose all individuality and let the state run our lives.

It was Edmund Burke, an Irish statesman who served many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain, who said, “I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.” In other words, don’t let anyone else meddle with your plans because only you can direct your life in the direction you want it to go. Anyone else, no matter how qualified, is truly unqualified to plan for you. You’re the one inside your own skin and who knows more about yourself than you do. However, you still need to build relationships with others who have meaning and influence in your life.

u Build Positive Relationships

While we take control of our own life, we can also influence the lives of others. The two are interdependent. You see, we can’t control our lives unless we develop mutually favorable relationships with those who take part in our lives. Unless we live outside the bounds of society, we have no choice but to interact and deal with people. People influence our lives in either a positive or negative way. It is in our best interest to develop and maintain positive relationships. Although we can’t be everybody’s best friend, we can build relationships when and where they matter most.

The most effective leaders develop confidence and humility, while they’re focused on relationships and results. We don’t have to choose between the two. Toastmasters International, a nonprofit educational organization that has been teaching public speaking and leadership skills for the past century, tells us that “the key to what they call ‘winning well’ – that is, sustaining excellent results over time – is to combine a focus on achieving results with building healthy professional relationships.” If anyone knows how to get through to people, I’d say Toastmasters has a proven track record.

As a consultant, I build relationships for a living and my job is to get along with people, even when they’re not all that accommodating. It’s as sure as the early morning sunrise that there will be at least one individual who resents my presence at the office, even before setting foot on the premises. Such corporate antagonists can be professionally rude, tenacious at best of times, devious at worst of times, or just downright impossible. It’s like being “wanted dead,” never mind the “or alive” part. Regardless, I’m there to get people to work with me, not against me. “You turn in your buddy, you’re screwing yourself. You go along to get along” was good advice from a personal coach.

This is where diplomatic peacemaking skills come in handy. I’ll never forget my mother’s words, “You’re the older and wiser one, it is up to you to make peace.” She was referring to her sons’ quarrelling. Although my little brother was the undeniable troublemaker, it was up to me to be the peacekeeper. This has enabled me to become an effective consultant with a simple philosophy: Treat people well, and they will treat you swell. The harsh truth is that how others treat you is based on what you allow. You are the only one who can determine how others treat you by teaching them how to treat you. When you behave in a certain way, you preprogram others to treat you in a certain way. If you do something with tact and diplomacy, people will take to you, include you, and respect you. This makes it easier to negotiate the rules.

The German writer and statesman Johann Wolfgang von Goethe eloquently wrote, “Treat people as if they were who they ought to be, and you may contribute to their becoming all they are capable of being.” This philosophy promotes people’s ambitions and they will respect us for our kind efforts. People don’t see themselves in a negative light and when we put them in a positive spotlight, they usually respond kindly. At the very least, they will remain neutral or less confrontational. “I can’t change your attitude but I can change your behavior,” said a boss who treated people as individuals and made them feel like a team.

I have become somewhat of a people promoter at the workplace. I take the extra steps to get people that I work with on the radar. People love nothing more than to be noticed and complimented by others. An experienced consultant understands that it’s good practice to make client

personnel look good in front of their peers and bosses. It takes acute consulting skills to make them feel like they have made or contributed to a good business decision. I can’t remember how many times I’ve commended someone’s work in an email to someone they’d like to impress or have them take notice.

u Don’t Write Others Off, or You’ll Write Yourself Off

If we decide not to work with someone, that is one person less who will help us accomplish our mission. Even worse, that one person may work against us, obstruct us, and even turn others against us. The more people that we write off, the fewer people that we have to work with us. Even worse, we have more people to work against us. If we’re not careful, we could end up sitting alone at the lunch table and overlooked when work colleagues go for after-work beers. Sooner or later, everybody turns on us. The best advice I can give you is the following: Don’t let anyone get the best of you, let alone the last of you. It is our duty, and in our favor, to work with everybody. It doesn’t matter that they have the personality of a slug – that’s their problem. There’s an old Balkan aphorism: “The wheat and the weeds grow together, and it will be so until the harvest.” Thus, we must live with our adversaries for the rest of our lives. We talked about negotiating our own rules in the last chapter. I just may keep the Mother-in-Law Rule in my back pocket for the sake of building good relationships.

It is much easier to make an enemy than a friend. Good friendships take years. But, we can make an enemy by simply saying the wrong thing, looking at someone the wrong way, or just by blowing our own horns. I think of all the crazy drivers who cut me off in traffic only to give me the onefinger salute after I lean on the horn, and boy, does that piss me off! I should be thankful I don’t work with these guys, and I’m lucky no one pulls out a gun.

We’re all too quick to make an enemy because of something we don’t like about that person or something he or she has done. Even worse, we hate them. “Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgement” was the wise advice of The Godfather’s Michael Corleone. Michael also points out that your enemies come at what you love and get strong on what you leave behind. And when you don’t leave anything behind, especially broken relationships, you’ll be stronger for it.

It’s human nature to avoid our enemies, although we may have an opportunity to get close to them. A grandfather, grieving the death of his granddaughter, recounted her gift for attracting others. “She had an amazing ability accepting people for what they are, embracing their differences.” It’s a fact of life, we have to deal with a lot of people in our life, and accept them for who they are. Sometimes we even befriend them. We graciously move from a place of judgement to a place of acceptance.

We are each painted with a different brush, and every once in a while we cross paths with someone who changes the meaning or definition of who we are and what we think is possible. It was a discerning old man in the movie Flipped who enlightened his grandson. “Some of us get dipped in flat, some in satin, some in gloss. But every once in a while, you find someone who’s iridescent. And when you do, nothing will ever compare.” In a world full of creeks and ponds, we are introduced to the ocean. I don’t expect us to find iridescent people at work or anywhere else, but I believe that if we treat everyone with iridescence, or in a positive light, we just may encourage both a friendly work environment and happy home life.

u Grandfathers Have Intuition

I rather think of grandfathers as wise old men. I wish mine would have lived long enough to share his wisdom. Grandfathers have this intuition when it comes to their grandchildren. It was a granddaughter who sacrificed her own life to help her aging grandfather after her grandmother died. Her grandfather felt obligated to set her free and advised, “You’re a wonderful person, so much love to give. Sharing that love, that’s the most important thing – more important than work, more important than dreams. It’s more important than anything.” He knew that it was her time to move on and share her love with her own family and those she had neglected on his account. It was time for her to be her own person.

We give ourselves to others in the hope that they reciprocate in kind. We don’t have to go around loving or being friends with everyone, but we can inspire some magnitude of mutual respect with most everyone. This can be important in the workplace where we have to see people that we may not like, including arrogant co-workers and self-indulging managers. It was the wife of a Roman Emperor who said, “No man can please all men.” If we can find a way to work with people, we empower ourselves to succeed both as individuals and as a team. “There’s always a way” as my kilted friend Davie would say.

We’ve all had the displeasure of working with a lunatic. I was convinced that my next door neighbor’s cat had more cognitive abilities than a lunatic I was working for. While describing this selfcentered lunatic, a friend offered an explanation to help me come to terms with our work relationship. “Every problem starts when we forget we’re animals.” He was trying to tell me that people are driven by instinct like animals. He may have a valid argument considering we share 98.8% of our DNA with chimps. However, as human beings, we have this incredible ability to reason and make moral judgement, otherwise known as “human exceptionalism.” Maybe God works in mysterious ways and used science to create the animal kingdom.

Regardless of our beliefs, my friend’s insights helped me justify my lunatic’s behavioral problems which culminated into anger, frustration, irrational behavior, and other negative traits. Although I never did figure out a way to work with the lunatic, it was easier to tolerate his instinctive but irrational behavior. It is this notion of animal instinct that provokes people to lash out and fulfill their personal needs while sacrificing those of others. We tend to resort to instinct rather than reason when we’re put in a corner. I wonder if it’s some sort of tribal identity that spurs irrational behavior in people.

We don’t always follow through on our instincts; that’s what makes us moral. Other times, we respond instinctively rather than rationally or morally. We instinctively get defensive and confrontational when we’re criticized, challenged, or unable to perform according to expectations. Sometimes we even cheat and steal to get what we want. A homeless man may instinctively steal food from a convenience store in order to satisfy his hunger. Others simply have an ego. I’m still trying to figure out how to deal with egos without resorting to psychedelics to conquer their misconceptions.

u Kind Confrontation

Good leaders tend to master the skill of “kind confrontation.” They understand the importance of graciously handling difficult people around them. This has allowed them to further their careers and improve their relationships, life perspectives, and health. At the core of that skill is to

start with your heart. These leaders have learned to identify what they want for themselves, the other person, and the relationship between them. They also articulate what they don’t want, namely conflict, anger, or bad feelings. This is not always easy to do and we have to dig deep to find a way to accomplish all that. The key is to create an atmosphere of safety by being kind and preserving everyone’s dignity. We don’t need to choose between candor and kindness, and offer both.

In my many years of consulting, I’ve realized that those who try to get along get further along. Confronting people kindly has allowed me to build trusting relationships. I’ll never forget an arrogant project manager for a telecommunications manufacturer. One of the senior consultants approached me and said, “You’re the only guy on the project who hasn’t had a run-in with Leroy, what gives?” This was an irrefutable observation considering that several people had left the project or were looking for a way out. I replied, “What you see is what you get.” Although Leroy managed to erect the Berlin Wall between him and his team, I knew what I was getting into when I took the job, not to mention how to get along with arrogant people. As a military enthusiast with confrontation management skills, I was well aware that walls and cold wars promote division.

I was fortunate to have learned how to fence against an eccentric boss who swung a sword. It was Leroy’s eccentricity that attracted me to work for him. “One should never underestimate the stimulation of eccentricity,” recalled a draftee about his sergeant’s bizarre but far-reaching influence in the movie Biloxi Blues. Besides, Leroy always seemed to get the most interesting projects. Between eccentricity and interesting, I knew there would never be a dull moment, as well as regular beers after work on his tab. I believe you have to get in touch with someone’s human side to know a person.

Although I saw Leroy as a “driver” personality type, others perceived him as a sort of bad human experiment and regarded him a dictator. This of course was prompted by his cynical attitude and distrust of others. The singer-songwriter Frank Ocean said, “Don’t confuse my personality with my attitude. My personality is who I am, and my attitude depends on who you are.” Leroy was a competent project manager with the attitude that he knew best. He seldom paid professional courtesy to anyone, and his drive to get things done was usually at the expense of relationships and feelings of others. This caused some confusion, especially since his coworkers considered themselves professional and were always prepared to do a good job.

Leroy’s philosophy was obviously lopsided. It was his way or the highway via the nearest exit ramp. And if there was no ramp, he’d force you into the ditch. Although he was a fair and reasonable man, as a project manager he expected you to follow his protocol, which incarnated elements of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto. I’m sure Leroy used to be much more sympathetic, but he lost much of that when people didn’t do their jobs. Sometimes, we have to give up on people, not because we don’t care but because they don’t. Even countries change leaders when their economies falter.

It would be unfair to accuse a top performer like Leroy of Stalinism. He did manage to demonstrate a people side to him, and has been known to mentor and offer a helping hand on a few occasions. Good ideas don’t always make good things happen but if we brought good ideas and made good on delivering our part of the project, our relationship with Leroy had an excellent chance of building mutual respect. We might even get a pat on the back and an invite for coffee. This was a big accomplishment considering that Leroy didn’t drink coffee. Sometimes it’s difficult to juggle people’s feelings and project deadlines at the same time, especially when we want to finish on time and on budget.

Let’s face it, Leroy can’t help everyone, especially those who don’t want his help. Someone once asked me, “Why is it that the people who need the most help won’t take it?” I’d say that they don’t see our help as something that takes them in the direction they want to go. Even band members break away to become solo artists. All we can do is lend an ear and let them do things their own way. Maybe what they really want is somebody trying to help them, regardless whether they take it. I’m afraid Leroy isn’t that type of guy. He’s just not good at social games the rest of the world plays.

u You Gotta Give It to Get It

There’s an old Zig Ziglar quote that I cherish to this day: “If you help enough people get what they want, you will get what you want.” Maybe if Leroy would have listened to Ziglar, infamous for his motivation and selling skills, he would have got more projects over the finish line quicker and everyone would be happy. All he had to do was give them a little respect and a helping hand, and they may have reciprocated with commitment and a few overtime hours. Maybe they would have even liked him. Sometimes you gotta give it to get it. The celebrity television psychologist Dr. Phil once advised his loyal viewers, “You get what you give. When you give better, you get better.”

When people like you, they listen to you. Everything else hinges on that. I’m sure guys like Leroy could have had it all if only they had changed their ways and gave a little better. If we can’t work with someone, then we have failed in many aspects of our life. We have failed the company that counts on us and rewards us with a paycheck. We have failed to improve the working environment, which includes everybody that we work with. We have failed to perform our personal best and accomplish the best outcome that we can. In general, we have failed ourselves.

As architects of life, we look up to people who want to better themselves by design. Leroy may be advised to take the Marshmallow Challenge with his team and learn one or two things about team building. I believe we can all make corrections by making connections. This may be of value to any project manager who has a dysfunctional team and the desire to boost morale and performance.

u The Marshmallow Challenge

How many of you have heard of the Marshmallow Challenge? If it wasn’t for an organizational transformation project I was involved in, I would have thought it was some camping activity we partake in around a camp fire. Here I was part of a corporate group exercise whose objective was to create the tallest freestanding structure that would support a marshmallow. We had 20 minutes to complete the task, which seemed like more time than we needed. We were all given the following items: one marshmallow, 20 spaghetti sticks, string, and tape. At the end of the exercise, two structures collapsed, two were about to collapse, and one was suspended high up by a string taped on an overhead beam. It resembled a spider dangling from a silk line with its long spaghetti legs touching the table. The other groups perceived it as cheating and filed a complaint, which fell on deaf ears for lack of rules. This competition among co-workers was appropriately called the Marshmallow Challenge.

There was something intriguing about this group exercise, which demonstrated the nature of collaboration and teamwork. An interesting observation was the fact that all the participants ran out of time. We were later informed that kindergarten children had the best results, beating everyone including business grads and executives. Their success rate was attributed to the fact that they kept refining or fixing their structures, also known as “prototyping.” And with each version, they were able to get instant feedback about what worked and what didn’t.

The grownups, on the other hand, set a single target and realized too late in the game that they had to change their tactic, finding themselves in a crisis mode. Furthermore, they didn’t know how to pool their capabilities as a team, and strategically deploy their resources where capabilities were lacking. Now you see why prototyping and fixing things along the way makes kindergarteners all-stars. I have a confession to make: Architects and engineers actually do the best in this exercise. Otherwise, we’d be hiring kindergartners to build our bridges and skyscrapers. However, kindergartners do have the next best track record, which isn’t bad for a group just about to start a formal education.

People who excel at making change, as exhibited by the Marshmallow Challenge, are usually very skillful in facilitation. They understand and manage the process for change. And the team that manages and pays close attention to the work effort and its progress will significantly improve the team’s performance. This is probably what the guy on TED Talks meant when he said, “Design truly is a contact sport. It demands that we bring all of our senses to the task and that we apply the very best of our thinking, our feeling, and our doing to the challenge that we have at hand.” Maybe every project has its own marshmallow, but we can’t change anything that people aren’t ready to do.

u Loving What You Do

“If you love what you do and you love the people you work with, it shows.” Just ask the popular home-reno Property Brothers on TV who claim to love what they do and are ready to do it. They also love the demanding clients that they do it with. They are more than just two reno guys with flair and a sense of humor. If I were to take a lesson away from these “how-to” renovation brothers, it would be the following: “Let what you do do the talking; let what others do do what they do best.” I’d say a little charisma, a good home improvement reality concept, and some good trades are enough to get attention on television.

Leroy loved being a project manager. He was the gold standard when it came to project management. It’s a shame he didn’t fully leverage the capabilities of others on his team. A project manager is only as good as the people he relies on. The Property Brothers were well aware of that principle. Leroy was a great project manager who was ready to do it, but guilty of estranging those working for him. He couldn’t bother with those who didn’t meet his standards. He never quite figured out that a leader was nothing without his team. It would be like General Douglas MacArthur without his army. Even our mothers taught us that we ought to play and get along with others.

There is no greater deterrent to work than working with someone who we hate and who hates us back. Our negative actions will undoubtedly trigger negative reactions. We all have egos whether we like to admit it or not. There may very well be a Leroy in our lives who is impossible, but it is better to deal with one challenging personality than a roomful of enemies. One bump on the road doesn’t mean that we have to have a bumpy ride all the way home. Even Leroy eventually learned to like and spend time with other people, both at work and outside the office.

It doesn’t take much to smooth the road, just a change in attitude. The female recruit in the movie The Imitation Game advises the arrogant MI6 code breaking mastermind, Alan Turing, who considers his colleagues inferior, “If you really want to solve your puzzle, then you’re going to need all the help you can get. And they are not going to help you if they do not like you.” I think that Turing always knew that he couldn’t do it alone, and it was just a matter of time before he had to make friends.

More often than not, abstaining from personal confrontation gives us a chance to resolve our differences. Don’t write people off but rather change how you work with them, even with the guys who wield swords. You never know if someone can become a great co-worker, or even aspire to great things, when given a chance. Ironically, it was the same MI6 cryptanalyst who admitted to his female recruit the reason for helping her. “Sometimes it’s the very people who no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.” As a scientist, he probably understood that chances follow a probability distribution, and that there was a chance he’d get something in return.

u The Pareto Principle

The Pareto Principle, named after the Italian engineer and economist Vilfredo Pareto, is also known as the 80-20 rule. It was Pareto who figured out that approximately 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. This rule was confirmed by the United Nations in 1992 when they reported the distribution of global income to be very uneven, with the richest 20% of the world’s population controlling 82.7% of the world’s income. Although this is an economics principle, it’s a common rule of thumb in business: 80% of sales come from 20% of clients. Since this same principle has application in various disciplines – including economics, business, mathematics, science, computer science, occupational health and safety, and others – it seems only natural that we apply it to the people in our own lives. Therefore, 80% of people are a piece of cake to deal with, while the other 20% require extreme caution. I hope that I didn’t get it backward, or else humanity is in real trouble.

The Pareto Principle may be the reason that I get 80% joy from 20% of my friends. After I shared this principle with my stockbroker, he suggested that we get rid of 80% of my stocks before the market takes a downturn. He said it would also do me well to get rid of 80% of my friends. He believed that the majority of people are not bad, but that we should avoid “sinners, cowards, and weasels afraid of their own shadows.” Sometimes it’s impossible to outrun our own shadow. We all have flaws, although 80% of us are in relatively good shape. The other 20% just need a little more work. In reality, we all need to improve and develop our relationships in hope of achieving a common goal.

Sometimes it’s just impossible to reach an agreement. I think of all the coaches who got fired because they couldn’t get along with their players. You turn in your buddy, you’re screwing yourself. You go along to get along. No one wants a coach without a team, but rather a coach who listens to everyone on the team. We must foster new ideas and develop an environment where we can disagree but make decisions based on differing opinions.

u Agree to Disagree

Someone once told me that it is human nature to disagree. I’d be more inclined to say that people do not agree all the time. If it was human nature to agree all the time, then nobody would have an opinion. Disagreement initiates different perspectives. And different perspectives allow us to generate great ideas and land on the best one. This is what we call progress. Sometimes we just have to agree to disagree, which means that we agree not to argue anymore about a difference of opinion and accept the fact that we’re not going to change each other’s mind. We stop arguing and move on with the intent to find a mutually accepted solution. There’s a solution to every problem when we work together.

We’ve all been up against self-serving salient point makers who seek attention and like nothing more than to hear their own voices, regardless whether they know what they’re talking about. I’ve come to realize that corporate life would be chaos without meeting room etiquette and democracy, although democracy is something we need to achieve together. After all, democracy is the process of appealing to the majority. Everyone should be heard rather than subjected to the egos of a few. When we do decide to agree or disagree, we do it together and consummate our arguments with logical reasoning and business justification.

There are times when an outcome affects us all and we must work together. Our success depends on our ability to build as many relationships as possible. A man with many friends and a sense of humor once said, “I have friends I haven’t even used yet.” These are people who spend their entire lifetime investing in relationships. As fate would have it, we’re born and die alone. “You come into this world as you leave it – on your own” as eloquently articulated by the British actor Benedict Cumberbatch. I read another version on a tombstone: “I came here without being consulted and leave without my consent.” I’m sure they mean the same thing. How any of us enter this world and exit is beyond our control. Regardless, everything in between takes personal commitment and relationships. We can’t do it alone and it’s good practice to treat people well.

People may not always remember exactly what we did or what we said, but they will always remember how we made them feel. They will remember the impressions that we made on them. A friend once offered an elderly couple deliver their big TV in his pickup truck after noticing they couldn’t fit it in their trunk. He later admitted that he did it for the story, so that they could tell others about the great guy in the parking lot. I think it was he who wanted a story. Building great relationships empowers us to build a better future for ourselves. We will achieve much greater things with the people who like and respect us.

u Moral Compass

Trust, credibility, and confidence build character and bestow honor. There is an attached moral or ethical quality, something a professional colleague referred to as our “moral compass.” We’ve all heard of someone having character and honor, which are worthy labels to be awarded in life. To quote Njegos, a bishop, prince and poet who ruled Montenegro in the 19th century, “Everyone is born to die once. Honor and shame live forever.” Someone labelled a “man of honor” has a very strong moral compass, and possesses qualities of honesty, fairness, and integrity. When Anthony Hopkins is lost in the Alaskan wilderness in the movie The Edge, he says, “Just because you’re lost doesn’t mean to say that your compass is broken.” As a man of great integrity, he relied on his self-esteem and the esteem of others to get them out of a bad situation. Our moral compass isn’t broken, we just have to learn how to use it properly to go in the right direction.

I’ve always admired the “stand-up” guy. This is the guy who relies on moral and ethical conduct to get him through the day, and always stands up for the right thing. He’s a man of character and doesn’t waver or sacrifice his moral principles. “He wasn’t afraid to make new enemies. I think that’s probably why he had so many friends.” These were the devout words of a son describing his father’s character to the many mourners who attended the funeral. His father was a man with a moral compass whose character had touched many lives, even through adversity. “How a person responds to adversity, that’s his measure” was a befitting assessment of the man’s character.

Character is something you demonstrate when you do the “right” thing or do for the “good” of others. “You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.” That one is definitely up there as one of my favorite quotes. I believe it comes from

Goethe, although a few others have tried to take credit for it. Nothing exposes a man’s character more than his habits. Someone said that character is what you do when nobody is looking. When we have character, it pretty well speaks for itself. But at the end, “You must judge a man’s greatness by how much he will be missed” were the eternal words of the famous cowboy Will Rogers.

I believe character is built on altruism or devotion to the welfare of others. People value how they are treated and attribute such treatment to character. Would it be too bold an assertion to say that candor builds character? I always believed that the quality of being honest, open, and sincere is a good place to start. Growing up, we’ve all been told that “honesty is the best policy.” Character makes the emotional connection that leads to respect, which in turn leads to trust. Respect and trust go hand in hand, while candor is the ring on the finger.

u Character Versus Reputation

Character is being our best, giving our best, and showing we care. We need character to remove obstacles and make changes in our lives. As head coach at UCLA winning ten NCAA national championships in a 12-year period, John Wooden was an expert on character. His players and those who know of him will never forget his eternal words: “Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.” Although we are who we make people believe we are, even for a short while, character follows us forever. When we have character, our reputations shine while our character is endorsed by everyone around us.

I must say that if I’ve learned one thing in business, it’s the fact that we have to earn people’s trust and develop our character to have a good reputation. I tell my own children that honesty and keeping a promise builds trust. Promises are made to be kept. This principle will guide them in the right direction and enrich their lives. The choices we make and the promises we keep reveal the true nature of our character. When we have good character, we naturally become leaders to those around us by building trust and gaining acceptance. We lead by example. We are the guys in the crow’s nest high above the ship saying “Land ahoy!” and letting those around us know what we can see so they can see.

We live our lives by example to discover ourselves and make those around us better. “The way that I go about my life is I set examples” was the life philosophy shared by Michael Jordan. And he was indeed a great example to all the other players in the NBA and elsewhere. As Greg architects his life, we will learn from his architecture journey. So, let’s get our notebook out and settle into our favorite chair. I’m serious about architecting your life if you are.

u Decomposers, Let the Games Begin!

I know that we’re a lot of things in life, but to call someone a decomposer is a little harsh. If I remember from my high school biology class, bacteria and worms were the decomposers. However, I have another purpose for being a decomposer. As decomposers, we can start unraveling our life by decomposing or breaking it down into all the bite-sized pieces of our life puzzle. This will enable us to scrutinize all the pieces that make up our life and evaluate the meaning that they add to our life as we consider our present life circumstances. Let the decomposing begin!

I hope you don’t think “decomposing” is a menial and dirty word, and should be left to the worms. While many of us have this mental image of something decaying or rotting, it also means something else in the business world. It means to break things down into its constituent parts such as all the business processes required to manage or run a company. We’ve learned that a company

is a complex array of business processes, which are performed by their respective departments. These are staffed with people who follow formal procedures to complete specific business processes. We know how frustrating it can be when someone from another area of the business holds up our process. We’re just interdependent cogs in a wheel of this giant corporation. Companies decompose processes into lower-level tasks in order to perform the right work, assign the right people, and do everything in the right order.

The decomposition of life also has processes to deal with, in this case life processes. We need to decompose our life processes so that we can put them together according to our needs and desires. It becomes surreal seeing everything we do and desire take form in front of our very eyes, especially when our goals and priorities become apparent. This gives me a much better appreciation for corporate goal setting and the annual reports companies distribute to their shareholders. No one wants to invest in a bad company.

My son recalls his first lesson in decomposition when he decomposed his social studies textbook for a school assignment. He had to write a paper on George Washington’s influence on our rights and freedoms. He saw that the book was sectioned according to continents and turned to the section on North America. He then found that there were sub-sections categorized by country and flipped to the USA, which was further divided chronologically. He skimmed through the periods until he found another sub-sub-section entitled “The Federalist Era (1789-1901).” Finally, he landed upon two sub-sub-sub-sections he was interested in, namely “George Washington’s Presidency” and “The Constitution of the United States.”

This was my son’s first exposure to decomposition. As for his school assignment, I’m sure he could have just turned to the index and found what he needed a little quicker, but this gave him an opportunity to preview his topic in the context of related historical events and time periods. It also allowed him to determine if there were other topics that had relevance to his own research topic. I’m just relieved he no longer thinks of comic books and Kim Kardashian’s first marriage as history.

u The Art of Decomposing

The art of decomposing allows us to see where something sits in relation to other things in the big picture. This is especially true of processes. Relationships between processes become important as we try to understand how all these processes relate and depend on each other. It reminds me of my son connecting a bunch of numbered dots only to be surprised with a picture upon connecting the last dot. He would then color it to impress us with his masterpiece, while we were more interested in his budding cognitive abilities. The key to his success was being able to count and draw a line, which would eventually lead to more advanced skills such as decomposition.

Many things in our lives relate and depend on each other. This is why we’re here to decompose or break up our lives into more digestible elements of understanding. While my son is busy decomposing American history in his social studies textbook, we’ll be decomposing life processes in the next chapter. The purpose of this effort is to better understand our life processes today so that we may develop the life processes by which we want to live tomorrow. All we need is to be honest with ourselves and have an approach to make it happen.

An approach is simply a way of doing or thinking about something. This usually takes honesty and a bit of science. It was a teacher who said, “One of the personality traits that a scientist should

have is being honest. To see what is there and not what should hope is there.” I hope this doesn’t mean we all have to be scientists to architect our lives or make the world a better place.

The Flat Earth Society ignores scientific evidence altogether and believes the Earth is flat. Flat Earthers are notoriously obstinate as they explain everything away and claim that we’ve all been brainwashed by scientism – a search for the truth through evidence with no motive on where it takes us. It’s the same old argument: “Conventional wisdom isn’t to be trusted, governments aren’t to be trusted, scientists aren’t to be trusted.” Apparently, the rest of us are part of a conspiracy and share a perspective taught in school without thinking for ourselves.

As a consultant, every so often I feel like a I’m walking into a corporate boardroom about to be challenged by flat Earth thinkers. Corporate executives take this attitude that they know best without understanding the underlying reasons for their problems. Yet, their companies are losing market share and their P/E ratio is scaring investors away. Regardless, they hire consultants to help them get answers, and hopefully ones who ask the right questions and provide ideal solutions.

These consultants usually start with an understanding of an organization’s five capabilities, namely PROCESS, WORK ACTIVITIES, PEOPLE, SYSTEMS, and DATA. This is fundamental to understanding any organization. Consultants evaluate an organization’s capabilities by seeking answers to the 6 Ws, or more correctly, the 5 Ws & 1 H – Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How. It was Clark Gable playing the hard-headed city editor for a large metropolitan newspaper in the 1958 movie Teacher’s Pet who says to the copy boy, “Barney, you have just asked me six very important questions: who, what, where, when, how, and why. That’s what every news story should answer.” This is graphically depicted as the 6 Ws Hexagon.

The 6 Ws are regarded as the basic tenets of information-gathering. They’re also the questions that need to be asked to get the complete story on a subject, or a social studies topic for that matter. My son will read this one day and realize that decomposition has far-reaching applications. When I work with different organizations, my routine begins by inquiring about their golf handicaps or the origin of a painting on the boardroom wall. This can be construed as a form of foreplay to the actual drama that’s about to unfold. It doesn’t take long before I’m digging for information, customarily by getting them to talk about their capabilities in terms of the 6 Ws.

This may sound a little like investigative journalism or police interrogation as we ask questions until we find the truth. There are three things that cannot be easily hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth. You’re probably too young to remember Columbo, the shrewd but inelegant bluecollar homicide detective on TV whose trademarks included a shambling manner, a rumpled beige raincoat, and an off-putting, relentless investigative approach. Columbo earned a reputation for getting to the truth by using “circumstantial speech,” which occurs when the focus of a conversation drifts, usually by way of a story, but often comes back to the point with a few more details.

People like stories, sometimes much more than they like the truth. The reality is that truth often isn’t as dramatic a story as people would like. There’s a built-in tendency for people to invent, tweak, or cover up the truth altogether. How much of what we see in the media really happens, or has it been embellished by journalists and editors to make it more dramatic? “In an age of disputed facts, disputed truth, ‘my truth’ and ‘your truth,’ how are we going to get at the actual truth when the actual participants are gone?” wonders Jeral Podair, an editor of “The Routledge History of the Twentieth-Century United States.” In the end, the truth is always up for grabs. Everyone seems to want to disguise the truth with a good story.

u Truth, Fiction, or Hoax?

I think of a good hoax as a good story because people find it mysterious and captivating. It’s no wonder that some people believe or want to believe in ghosts. Hoaxes eventually get exposed and when they do, we appreciate the truth. Nobody likes to be hoodwinked. The classic American writer Henry David Thoreau said, “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.” What Thoreau meant by “truth” was that which lies beyond us, far away from the superficialities of daily life. We seem to cherish the truth while fiction and hoaxes provide a means of escape with little more than entertainment value. Our reality is defined by the truth or what we believe to be true. “There’s such an onus on making it interesting, that there probably comes a point where you feel that even if it’s based on fact, it’s a problem of proportion” was a psychologist’s insight about discerning truth from fiction in a documentary entitled History’s Greatest Hoaxes. The purveyors of a good story try to find a legitimate balance between the two. As for hoaxes, they’re just plain deceiving.

I’ve known some consultants to be notorious for being fast and loose with the truth because their management expects a good story. Their subject matter expertise is overshadowed by their ability to grab attention and convince their audience. They’ve become masterful storytellers and give life to a topic that puts most of us to sleep. Ironically, sometimes people don’t care if someone is lying. They believe in that person, and that’s more important than believing the truth. I may be old fashioned, but I believe consultants are better off sticking with the facts and letting their managers tell the stories. Without facts, a decision cannot be made logically.

My objective in this formidable corporate investigation is to identify where an organization’s capabilities or competencies lie, and of course, where the problems are so that we can fix them. And trust me, I’m not one to sugarcoat the problem and would rather let the facts speak for themselves. As we say in the sport of wrestling, “No holds barred.” So, how do I get the answers to

the 6 Ws? Here, I’ll let you in on a little secret. I ask the 6 Ws in a discreet manner to determine the capabilities or competencies of an organization as illustrated in the following diagram.

The 6 Ws to Pinpoint Capabilities

The Goals, Objectives, Critical Success Factors & Business Drivers tell me WHY they do something

The Processes tell me WHAT they do

Goals

The People in their organization tell me WHO does what

CAPABILITIES/ COMPETENCIES

The Work Activities people perform tell me HOW they do it

Work Activities

People Processes Systems

Data/Info

The Data they use tell me WHAT information they need, HOW they use that information, WHO uses that information, WHERE that information exists, WHEN they use that information, and WHY they use that information

The Systems, Applications & Technology tell me HOW their work is supported or automated by computers

It seems rather sneaky, doesn’t it? I can live with sneaky, as long as I’m not regarded as sneaky and a betrayer in the same sentence. This would paint me as deceitful and downright unprofessional – a reputation I cannot afford if I want to keep working as a consultant. Nonetheless, asking the right questions is a required skill set for most consultants, not to mention detectives trying to solve a case. After all, we’re trained to ask the right questions or companies wouldn’t hire us. I’ve been doing this so long that I ask questions about whether I’m still asking the right questions.

The 6 Ws are part of my consulting arsenal to get the information I need to be effective. For all intents and purposes, this is pretty well how I get all the answers that I need about an organization to understand its ineffective ways. You’re most welcome to study my information-gathering technique using the 6 Ws in the prior diagram. Here I pinpoint the various capabilities and pose the questions necessary to identify the level of competency for each capability contributing to an organization’s success.

As an architect and consultant, I aim to please and make a difference. Someone once said, “If you want to make a real difference in this world, it’s a lot harder than it seems.” I guess I won’t know until I try. If I’m to help an organization make a real difference, I have to know WHAT they do, WHY they do it, HOW they do it, WHO does it, WHERE they do it, and WHEN they do it. It is my mandate to find out if a company is producing results and whether those results make sense. I must focus

on WHAT they do that makes them a poor or mediocre performer and WHY they continue to do it. I can sympathize with Ben Affleck as The Accountant when he says, “It’s very hard for me to interpret why people do what they do.”

u Don’t Worry About How

I’m not so worried about the HOW for the time being. The HOW seems to come a lot easier when we know the WHAT and WHY. The WHAT and WHY provide the strategy while the HOW is the way to get there. In other words, it’s a lot easier to get the directions once we know where we’re going. A work colleague working on a project without a strategy admitted, “Because there is no strategy, everything is tactical.” In short, strategy describes the destination and offers a plan of attack to get there, while the tactical identifies the actions we take along the way. At the end, this work colleague and his project team didn’t take the right actions and missed the mark to meet their organization’s corporate objectives. A US military commander summed it up best: “Amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics.”

I’ll never forget a Starbucks moment when two golf course consultants sat next to me. When you’re alone with your laptop and latte, you’re obligated to overhear conversations around you, especially when the topic is as tempting as golf. One fellow was on his cell phone speaking to whom I assumed to be a client. It was obvious that he was promoting his consulting approach and offered a layman’s translation: “Here’s what yes looks like and here’s the why…I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t answer the why and what that looks like.” He was definitely focused on strategy. These would be the consultants I’d hire if I owned a golf course. Regardless, I regret not interrupting them for a business card.

In Chapter 1, we had discussed all the things we need to consider when evaluating the capabilities of an organization, namely process, work activities, people, systems, and data. The following diagram identifies where the 6 Ws fit among those five capabilities. You may remember an earlier version of this diagram, although it has been embellished with dark gray champagne bubbles mapping the 6 Ws to the capabilities of an organization. The 6 Ws may also be derived from an organization’s guiding set of goals, objectives, policies, critical success factors, and business drivers. At the very least, they should help us answer the WHY.

Where

Do the 6 Ws Fit?

WHY?

1 Process

WHY?

3 People

WHO?

5 Data/ Information

WHAT? WHEN?

4 Systems Goals, Objectives, Policies, Critical Success Factors, Business Drivers WHAT? HOW? HOW? WHERE?

2 Work Activities

WHO?

These bubbles designate the organizational capabilities that we must assess by answering the WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, WHY, and HOW. The diagram not only matches the 6 Ws with the five capabilities, but also implies that data is at the center of the universe. Data or information is the one thing that ties it all together. No wonder they call this the Information Age. It comes down to having the right information at our fingertips to make decisions and communicate effectively with others.

There is a subtle difference between data and information. I tell people that data is simply facts and figures, but not information. Data is the raw form of information, while information is composed of data and provides context for data. For example, an address is information we need to find someone, and is composed of data such as name, house number, street, city, country, and postal code. People process, interpret, organize, structure, and reformat data to create meaningful information and make decisions. This is why we have computers to store and process data, and produce information for people’s use. However, let’s not get hung up on these inconspicuous differences.

It’s somewhat ironical, but soliciting answers to the 6 Ws is an exercise in compiling and interpreting data before we can translate it into meaningful information about an organization or anything else that we’re evaluating. The 6 Ws are the standard lead-in questions for consultants confronted by corporate strangers in the boardroom. These questions allow everyone in the room to understand the present health of an organization and its capabilities in the market it is serving. The information collected empowers consultants to evaluate organizational concerns, problems, issues, and opportunities.

The previous diagram with the dark gray champagne bubbles is pretty well my starting point when I first meet with the client. It visually depicts all the parts of an organization that allow it to do business. I routinely pull out a pen and notepad, and then draw it as my cue to begin my forensic questioning. I ask their staff the 6 Ws in order to diagnose the health of their organization. It’s one way to talk it out and gauge business performance, or lack of it. Even more important, it’s something that they can readily understand and get their heads around. Some of them even take a picture of my sketch with their smartphone and study it at home or on the train.

u Extracting True Confessions

How does this interrogation or fact-finding mission extract true confessions about their organizations? The 6 Ws, some experience, and good manners go a long way. For example, if we want to understand WHAT an organization does, we ask questions about their business processes. If we want to understand HOW they do things, we ask questions about their work activities or the procedures they follow, as well as the systems they use, including applications, technologies, and other tools. Likewise, if we want to understand WHO performs these activities and how well, we ask questions about people and their skills and competencies. We also need to understand who they work with and how all those involved function as a team.

Once we’ve answered these questions, we can begin to understand and decode the genetic makeup of an organization. This allows us to identify WHO uses data, WHAT data is used, WHEN do people in the organization need the data, WHERE does the data reside, WHY they need the data, and HOW they use and get that data. The data required and shared within the organization helps us determine the WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, WHY, and HOW. Data is the glue to the 6 Ws and the reason that we see them clustered around data and information as illustrated in the following diagram.

Data is the Glue to the 6 Ws

HOW?

WHY?

WHO?

Data/ Information

WHERE?

WHAT?

WHEN?

If you’ve been around organizations as long as I have, you’ve probably heard the saying “It’s all about the data.” Everything we do – regardless of WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, WHY, or HOW – depends on data to do it. And when we do it, we typically refine data until it becomes information, which we’re then ready to share with others. This allows us to take action and communicate with everyone in our lives. Information is refined data that takes everything into account – the WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, WHY, and HOW.

Think about the significance of data in our personal lives. As parents, we scrutinize our children’s report cards and share their grades with potential tutors. We pay bills and invoices representing our mortgages, utilities, and other debts – and typically require this information to get a loan from the bank. We coordinate our timetables to plan family activities, assign household chores, and schedule transportation to and from our kids’ school. We communicate by sharing data, or more appropriately information, with each other. Otherwise, I’d have kids with poor grades, a family in disarray, and debt collectors knocking on my door.

A CIO once confided that consultants are his best friends because they help fix “matters of difficulty” that his company is experiencing. They basically give him the information that he needs to make informed decisions. It’s an honor to be the CIO’s best friend while being paid for this friendship. Great things are possible when consultants properly diagnose the problem and determine WHAT is broken and WHY. I would like to think of them as experienced doctors prescribing the right medicine to get companies back to health. Some prescriptions have been known to provide a miracle cure for a failed business plan.

u Diagnosing a Life

If we want to resolve the problems entangled in someone’s life, regardless of their severity, we must ask some pointed questions: WHAT it is that the individual does in life, WHEN and WHERE the individual does them, WHY the individual does certain things in life, and HOW the individual does them. I’d also like to know WHO else might be involved in these problems or has a stake in the resolution of these problems. The 6 Ws is a cognitive checklist for getting the complete story about someone and his or her situation, similar to the assessment of an organization.

Our focus should be on WHAT we do and WHY. We’ll figure out the dreary details in due course. If we understand WHAT we do in our lives and WHY, we are more likely to figure out HOW, WHEN, and WHERE we want to do them. I’m sure we already have a good sense of WHO is compatible and WHO we want to do them with. Such answers enable us to discover ourselves and our future. WHAT we do today and WHAT we want to do are two different things. I just don’t want us wasting our time figuring out HOW to do the wrong WHATs.

Doing the right things and doing what we want to do in our lives is at the crux of our Life Architecture – and the reason we ask the WHAT and WHY. We each have innate talents, passions, and a personal calling in life. Everyone has a purpose in life. We just have to find it.

u What is Your Purpose in Life?

That’s like asking, “What really matters in my life and piques my interest?” If the answer is “Not much” or “I don’t know,” we don’t feel much like getting out of bed because we don’t have a purpose once we get up. If it wasn’t for work, we’d probably stay in bed until we had to go to the bathroom or got hungry. Most of us have a tough time articulating our purpose unless it’s just to stay alive like a cancer patient who appreciates every breath. It’s ironic that people find a strong sense of purpose when confronted with terminal illness. I’m of the belief that we should find our purpose before we’re forced to. Purpose is knowing what we want and committing ourselves to achieve it. If we don’t know our purpose, we should be asking ourselves the following question: How do we find our purpose? I’d say with a lot of soul searching and a mission to architect our lives. Defining our purpose must be a conscious and deliberate act, not to be left to chance. Don’t worry, our chances will come as opportunities and challenges present themselves. The person that we become one day, and the purpose we fulfill, are a reflection of deliberate choices we make in the wake of opportunities and challenges, which emerge inadvertently and shape our lives. At the end, it’s up to us to deliberately achieve our purpose in life. There is nothing sweeter in life than waking up each morning on purpose and with purpose. This is living life on purpose.

Once you find purpose and believe in yourself, it’s contagious and other people start to believe in you. It was a Canadian journalist and political activist, who said, “If you don’t think it, you can’t do it. So you have to think it, you have to believe it, and you have to know how to make other people believe it.” He went on to set up the “Committee to Free Bobby Fischer” resisting Washington’s failed effort to extradite Fischer to life in prison for playing in a world chess championship hosted by a sanctioned country. He believed in Bobby Fischer, and convinced others to believe in Fischer’s right to freedom and the right to be a champion.

There’s one quality inherent in every champion, and that’s the fact that a champion believes in oneself. This isn’t more evident than it is in sports. Novak Djokovic, after winning the Wimbledon, said, “Focus and find the right purpose. Believe in yourself.” He had lost earlier Wimbledons and attributed those losses to his lack of mental strength and belief in himself. This must feel like the search for God or some spiritual entity who we are told is inside us. Purpose is not always easy to comprehend and has its own set of attributes.

The best-selling author and Harvard professor Clayton Christensen said purpose is composed of three parts – likeness, commitment, and metrics. We begin by conjuring an image in our mind of what we want in our life and resembles something that we believe gives us purpose. Imagine three mounds of ice cream in between two banana slices with strawberries, pineapples, and chocolate on top of each mound. The purpose of this banana split is to satisfy our sweet tooth.

When we see this image in our mind, we rush to the nearest ice cream parlor and order a banana split. Similarly, in reference to life, a likeness is our perception of the life that we want to lead before it becomes a reality. It’s rather unfortunate that we can’t order our perceived life over the ice cream counter.

Our life is repeatedly emerging in unpredictable ways while demanding our time and shifting our priorities. As a result, we let the world around us compromise this likeness by surprising us with a myriad of life circumstances and opportunities. We must stay true to ourselves and prevent life’s little surprises from disrupting our purpose. After all, purpose allows us to put the important things first. This requires an unwavering commitment to the likeness that we are trying to create, and then honoring that commitment. We must commit ourselves and our resources to fulfill our purpose. It’s the metrics where we may stumble a bit.

u How Do You Measure Your Life?

What meaning or purpose would life have without the metrics to measure our progress? I’m sure you know how that works when we only eat half of our banana split and put the other half in the fridge for the purpose of satisfying our midnight craving. Mathematically speaking, two halves twice a day make up one metric of satisfaction. In terms of measuring our life, the key is to allocate our time and resources to the things that matter most to us if we want to make any progress. We just need the metrics to measure those things. Some of us who are conscious about our weight may count calories and measure progress by the number of pounds we’ve lost. I don’t think eating a banana split everyday is going to help us achieve that weight loss goal. We measure our life according to our purpose, whether our metric be the number of pounds we lose, hours we spend helping others, or number of banana splits we share with our kids over the summer. So, there’s a question that deserves an answer: How do you measure your life?

We like to measure a lot of things in life, but mostly our successes. Even movements are started with the intent to succeed. Their success is measured by gauging their momentum. People lead movements for the sake of major social or political reforms and are driven by purpose such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Women’s Rights Movement, Mahatma Gandhi’s Indian Independence Movement, and Martin Luther King’s Civil Rights Movement to name a few. These individuals have a passion, or feel it is their calling, to make change. They thrive for success and devote their lives to a higher purpose, regardless of the consequences, and their popularity is measured by the number of followers.

Do you remember Ebenezer Scrooge, the old and bitter miser who devotes his entire life to the accumulation of wealth? It is only after he realizes his life is devoid of love and family that he rediscovers himself and takes a new pathway in life. In the movie A Christmas Carol, Scrooge undergoes a profound experience of redemption over the course of a Christmas Eve. That night, Scrooge is led by three spirits on a journey through his past. Here he confronts many people and events that had shaped his life and character. He learns that he can avoid the grim future in front of him and alter his fate by changing himself.

By the end of the story, Scrooge transforms himself and reverts to the generous, kind-hearted soul that he once was in his youth. I relish the scene where Mrs. Dilber, the house cleaner, is rather stunned upon witnessing this frolic and transformation, and asks, “Are you all right, Mr. Scrooge?” In his ecstatic and giddy state, Scrooge replies, “I... I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I never did know anything. But now I know that I don’t know anything!” Maybe it was this revelation and admission that allowed Scrooge to take life on with an open mind and a joyful heart. The Wizard

of Oz said a heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others. I want to be on everyone’s list because I wear my heart on the outside. That’s how I define my success.

I doubt any of us will have the good fortune of Scrooge to have uninvited spirits wake us up in the middle of the night and take us on a magic carpet ride into our past. It’s not every day that we get to manifest and correct what we have done wrong in our lives. If there was only a crystal ball to predict our future while we reflect on our past as we realize the important things that we have left out of our lives. We are in constant search of a true life meaning that has been lost or hidden from us. Unfortunately, we have to rediscover ourselves without crystal balls, spirits, and magic carpets.

The reality is that we can only rely on ourselves to succeed in life, regardless how we define that success. We rely on our own desires and virtues to paint a proper picture of our lives. We all have the means and ability to acquire the knowledge to architect our lives. We just need an approach and a reason to deal with our problems, desires, and life in general.

u Scrambled Eggs: WHAT and WHY are Important, HOW is Not

We don’t have to worry about the HOWs. HOW we sleep, eat, or do our work are the mechanics of WHAT we do. In other words, the HOWs are all the steps we take to complete the task at hand. Do you eat eggs? I don’t care what kind of eggs, I just want to know if you eat them or not. If you do, you’re probably not too health conscious, especially if you eat a lot of eggs and ignore your cholesterol. That’s why we have Easter only once a year. Think of eating eggs as WHAT you do. I don’t need to know whether you eat them sunny-side up, over easy, or scrambled. I don’t even care if they’re deviled, poached, curried or pickled, nor if they’re fancy enough to be an omelette or Eggs Benedict. I care even less what kind of bird laid the egg. That is a matter of personal preference and I’m sure that an egg prepared over easy impacts your cholesterol the same way as a scrambled egg. Think of sunny-side up, over easy, and scrambled as HOW you eat your eggs. I’m interested in WHAT you do and not HOW you do it because HOW you do it is irrelevant. If you have a bad habit, it’s a bad habit. If you smoke, I don’t care if you smoke a cigarette, cigar, or pipe because they are equally bad for you. I might care if you smoke a joint. This has legal and social ramifications. I just want to know WHAT you do so that I can figure out if you’re harming yourself. And then I want to know WHY you want to harm, or even kill, yourself. If it’s because you’re addicted, that’s a pretty darn poor excuse for giving up on your life. And if any egg companies think about coming after me for slander, my defense is that eggs are delightful in moderation. However, I need a better defense for tobacco companies.

I remember shuffling through the bookstore aisles every so often in search of books that would help me find my desired future. There was no yellow brick road to lead me to the Emerald City. The sad chapter with bookstores is that they’re overstocked with “how-to” rather than “what-to” books. Most people don’t even know WHAT to do or WHY, let alone HOW. I admit, how-to books have a purpose for the home repair novice who has a good idea of WHAT improvements he wants to make to his home but doesn’t quite know HOW to make them. I’m still not sold on how-to books for personal development. I beg you to ask the question “WHAT do I want and WHY?” before you spend too much money on how-to books or materials you probably don’t need.

The whimsical George Carlin once said something that I think most of us will agree with: “We’ve learned how to make a living but not a life. We’ve added years to life, not life to years.” I don’t think the great psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud could have framed it better. Before we learn HOW to make a living, let’s figure out WHAT we want to live for and WHY. We can all add a great life to the years that we have left.

It’s WHAT and WHY we do things that help us determine HOW to move to a healthier, happier, and more meaningful life. We can always figure out the HOW once we know WHAT and WHY we’re doing it. “He who has a WHY to live for can bear almost any HOW” was an insightful observation by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche back in the 19th century. This is also a practical philosophy to adopt in the 21st century. Thus, having a WHY to live for readily enables us to figure out the HOW.

An FBI agent trying to solve a murder had his own formula: “WHAT + WHY = WHO.” He believed that once he understood the details of WHAT happened and WHY the crime was committed, this would lead to WHO committed the crime. Its evident that the WHAT and WHY lead to the WHO, WHEN, WHERE, and HOW. If we don’t know the WHAT and WHY, the rest of the 3 Ws and HOW don’t make sense. The WHO, WHEN, WHERE, and HOW are the mere details of the WHAT and WHY.

Once these questions have been answered, hopefully we know what we want out of life and there are no more dead ends. It reminds me of the lost Indian boy in the movie Lion who finds his biological mother as an adult after his painstaking search. He tells the woman who raised him, “I found her, but that doesn’t change who you are.” There is no better feeling in the world than knowing the answers to your life. It was understanding the WHAT and WHY that allowed the man in search of his mother to find the answers to WHO, WHEN, WHERE, and HOW. In the promotional words of a leadership development company, “People lose their way when they lose their why.”

It is time to get a handle on WHAT we do in our own lives. So, where should Greg start with this Life Architecture way of life? Should he figure out WHY he lives his life the way he does? Or, should he figure out WHAT he does? Should he start with WHAT he does in life to understand WHY he does it? Sometimes it’s counter-intuitive to start with WHY as it leads to more WHYs and we never resolve anything. There are infinite outcomes and reasons for life. Let’s see WHAT Greg does in life, now that we have got to know him a little better. He’s about to decompose his life as it exists today. I’m sure he’ll set a fine example as we decompose our own lives and embark on a personal Life Architecture journey.

CHAPTER 7

Decomposing Greg’s Life: What Does the Present Look Like?

You must be thinking a lot of things right now. How does one decompose a life? What kind of game is this? How is this going to help me enrich my life? Just when you thought I had this uncanny ability to write fiction, I’ve decided to roll up the sleeves and give you the goods. I assure you, we are not entering the supernatural and this will feel as natural as learning to ride a bicycle. Although Greg has fallen into a daily routine, he’s more than ready to decompose his life.

Greg should be asking himself the following questions: How does a man go on to become who he is and do what he wants? To answer that question, Greg is going to start with WHAT he does and WHY. There is no need to dwell on the WHERE, WHEN, and HOW until he has had a chance to appreciate his reasons and willingly commit to change. The WHAT and WHY will help him do just that. These details will become more important when Greg is ready to develop a roadmap to where he wants to go. Only at that point will he care WHERE he goes, WHEN he arrives, and HOW he gets there.

I hope the 6 Ws aren’t as confusing as Peter Piper picking a peck of pickled peppers. The truth be told, Peter Piper never picked any pecks of pickled peppers because pickled peppers aren’t pickled when they’re picked. Perhaps, it would have been in Peter Piper’s best interest to first decompose his life rather than pick peppers. I’m sure that the outcome would have been more productive and less strenuous. I’m relieved that we’re dealing with Greg and not Peter. Picking pickled peppers is not the way to go through life. Greg has some work ahead of him as he starts to scrutinize his present life and desired future. It will quickly become apparent WHO Greg is and WHAT he wants and WHY.

LIFE’S BIG QUESTION

WHAT do we do to live our lives?

I think we’re all here to answer that question. I promise not to give you the biblical response. We’re all individuals with distinct beliefs and identities. Otherwise, people with religious convictions would be going to the same church, while the rest of us would be donating to the same research institution. Our beliefs and identities are a part of who we are. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution that takes into account all our diverse personalities, demands, and desires. Odds are that such a singular solution would discount our very own identities and fail to be sensitive to our personal needs.

My point is somewhat poetic: We all have to work with what is in our hearts and what we want out of life. If only I had the literary talent to get it to rhyme. Some argue that our lives should be guided by faith and religion. I remember a religious scholar on the radio saying “Every religion sees itself as a way of life.” For those people strong about their religious beliefs, faith becomes an enabling life process. The rest of humanity will just have to consider those things that are at the root of their own life meaning.

We’re not here to change what we believe but rather determine whether we’re on the right path as we straighten out our lives. Organizations seem to be much better at rationalizing their processes and motives for their existence. I must say that dealing with organizations can be a whole lot easier than dealing with people. Fundamentally, organizations exist to make money or provide a service to mankind. Individuals are not as direct and focused in their purpose, and have a whole whack of personal processes.

We spent a good part of this book discussing processes and the fact that everything we do in life is a process. This is the premise for having a Life Architecture. Now the challenge is figuring out our life processes and naming them appropriately.

u Naming a Process

When naming a process, we need one verb and one noun to get things started, and maybe an adjective to dress the noun. If someone were to ask me, “What is the overall thing that Microsoft does?” I’d have to say, “Sell computer products,” where “sell” is the verb and “products” is the noun. What kind of products? This is why we need “computer” as an adjective describing what kind of products. I’m sure a lot of Microsoft executives would challenge me and tell me that they “market computer products” or “manage computer sales.” Their customers would be more agreeable to the fact that they make big bucks. It depends on whose perspective you take.

If I were to offer a grammatical principle that applies to life, it would be the following: Everything we do in life is a verb; everything we do it to (or do it for) is a noun. In a nutshell, life is verbs and nouns, and some adjectives to qualify nouns or add meaning. We use different verbs, nouns, and adjectives to distinguish what we do today as opposed to what we need to do in the future to improve our lives.

In the following diagram, I “enjoy,” “work for,” “nurture,” and “cultivate” a bunch of nouns. As you can see, I use verbs and nouns to construct a process.

Life is Verbs & Nouns

I know for a fact that Greg performs at least one of these processes – he works for a paycheck. Unlike Microsoft, Greg obviously doesn’t sell, nor market, nor make big bucks. That’s not what his life is about. If I had to say what Greg does as an all-encompassing life process, I’d have to say that he does what everybody else does – he lives his life. This will be his pivot point as he starts his Life Architecture journey with a Life Architecture methodology primed to guide him.

Greg will begin by identifying all the processes in his life. He’ll arrange these processes in an orderly fashion and come up with an idealized picture of his life where he can visualize his process dependencies and relationships. We have already discussed the notion of a process tree on which to hang all the different organizational processes of a company. Similarly, Greg will hang all his life processes on his Life Process Tree.

Every Life Process Tree is developed from the top down. Greg needs that pivotal process at the very top of his tree so that he can break it down or decompose it into all the intricate life processes that make up his life. Think of it as the angel ornament that goes on top of a Christmas tree. I tell people that we all have to start with our angel process. If you don’t believe in angels, now’s the time to start.

u An Angel Process Atop of the Life Process Tree

What is Greg’s angel process? Presumably, the same as everyone else’s. As human beings, we all “Live Life.” Such a prominent and worthy process belongs on top of any Life Process Tree, including Greg’s. Even life begins with some natural or miraculous conception, so why not a process describing that life? This angel process will be decomposed into multiple levels of personal life processes that get more specific as Greg works his way down the branches of his Life Process Tree.

As Greg continues to chisel away and break down his processes into more finer and detailed processes, we’ll start to see processes that are unique to Greg. We all lead exclusive lives and do different things, with the exception of eating, sleeping, and a few other physiological needs that we have to take care of. It’s only logical that, as individuals, we each have distinct Life Process Trees representing our own individual lives.

Before Greg starts to work double-overtime defining his life processes, it would be a potentially lost effort, not to mention a flawed outcome, if he didn’t understand what a process is and some of the rules behind creating a robust process. This would be like me teaching my daughter how to drive a car without giving her a chance to read the driver’s manual and familiarize herself with traffic signs, speed limit zones, driver responsibilities, and so on. As with most things in life, we have to learn a little theory before we get behind the wheel.

Although some process theory is foundational and necessary to move forward, I’m not here to make you a process expert. For our intents and purposes, understand that processes come in different shapes and sizes, and have distinct characteristics that set them apart. This is especially true when we compare general processes such as “Live Life,” at the top of our Life Process Tree, to those refined and detailed processes at the bottom.

u Top-down Versus Bottom-up

The top-down versus bottom-up debate has been going on forever. The top-down approach goes from the general to the specific, while the bottom-up approach begins with the specific

and moves to the general. Without getting bogged down in which one to use in which situation, top-down is the only way to go because it allows us to break large general aspects of an entity, like a life processes, into its smaller more detailed constituents. If we used a bottom-up approach by collecting all the specific pieces of our life, we wouldn’t know where to start nor how to find all our detailed life processes. The top-down approach allows us to start with one general life process such as “Live Life” and decompose it into all the detailed processes in our lives. And to make you feel better, I use the top-down approach to break down a problem into smaller problems that contribute to the big problem. It’s much easier to solve all the little problems before we can make the big problem go away.

As we develop our Life Process Tree, we will start with general processes at the top which decompose into detailed processes unique to ourselves at the bottom levels. In other words, as we work our way down the tree, the processes become more specific at each lower level. The lowest-level processes include specific details of the things we do in life. You will see this when Greg creates his own Life Process Tree.

The characteristics of a low-level process have been outlined in the following diagram. Think of it as a refresher course, and remember a low-level process is that very detailed process at the bottom of your Life Process Tree – and the reason we call it a “low-level” process. This is a process that you do repetitively and is unique to yourself. You don’t have to study these process characteristics, just be aware of what a process is and what it means. We will keep this in mind as Greg identifies his own life processes.

Characteristics of a Low-level Process

A PROCESS is performed and controlled by a single person

A PROCESS has a single purpose and produces identifiable results

A PROCESS is repetitive with a definable start and stop

A PROCESS requires specific data or information

PROCESSES are performed together as a unit

Sometimes, we have to group or combine processes to achieve the goal of a bigger or higherlevel process. Let’s say Greg has a goal to become a purchasing manager in order to manage his own purchasing group. Greg may have to undertake two other processes as prerequisites to this higher-level process that we named “Manage Purchasing Group”:

1. Complete a business management diploma from a local college, and then

2. Work as a purchasing agent in order to obtain the required experience

In other words, Greg has to complete two processes named “Complete Business Management Diploma” and “Obtain Purchasing Experience” before he can “Manage Purchasing Group,” although he could work as a junior or part-time purchasing clerk/agent to get some experience while going to school to complete his diploma. This is illustrated in the following example.

Complete Business Management Diploma Obtain Purchasing Experience

Manage Purchasing Group

In the grand scheme of his work life, WHAT Greg wants to do is manage a purchasing group. WHY? Obviously, to earn a better paycheck and increase his disposable income. However, Greg had better be prepared to prove to his employer that he is a capable purchasing manager with a framed diploma and some solid experience in his resume. Some interviewing skills won’t hurt either.

We can also look at this a different way. We’ve been talking about decomposing processes or breaking them down. The higher-level process, “Manage Purchasing Group,” can be decomposed into two more detailed or low-level processes, “Complete Business Management Diploma” and “Obtain Purchasing Experience,” as illustrated in the following example.

Manage Purchasing Group

Complete Business Management Diploma Obtain Purchasing Experience

We may also want to add a business rule here that states, “Greg must become a purchasing manager before he can ‘Manage Purchasing Group.’” This could be a constraint and something out of his control, especially if a company’s hiring policy stipulates that he have the job title before he gets the job. Other companies may not have a purchasing manager in charge of things but rather a procurement supervisor or a purchasing team lead. And in some cases, companies internally promote their people into management roles rather than hire outsiders. So, don’t get hung up on job titles and rules, just be aware of them.

u Life Rules to Live By

All companies have their own rules – also known as business rules – and ways of doing things, but so do we. We have introduced the concept of Life Rules and will demonstrate how to break the bad ones. The fun is just about to begin. For now, it’s WHAT we do that counts. Process decomposition will allow us to define everything that we do in our lives, but this will also require an understanding of the Life Rules that put constraints on our life processes.

So, let’s get back to identifying the top-level box, the angel process, which Greg needs to start his Life Process Tree. The best way to mobilize Greg’s Life Process Tree is through role-play. I’ll take the role of Greg’s Life Architecture coach, and Greg….well, he’ll be himself. The rest of us will be in the room quietly observing and taking it all in.

Now that I’m Greg’s official Life Architecture coach, I can candidly ask him, “What is it that you do with your life?” I mean, what is that one thing that dictates everything he does? More to the point, what is his purpose in life? Like most people, Greg would find this line of questioning so baffling, he’d be powerless to answer on the spot. No one said that coaching is an exact science.

Someone has to take charge and draw the first box on the whiteboard to break the ice, and ask Greg if this captures everything that he does in life. Did I forget to mention that I need a whiteboard? I’ve never met an architect who doesn’t like to draw boxes. What do you say if we start with Greg’s angel process? This is the top-level process box of Greg’s Life Process Tree.

Live Life

How could Greg ever deny that he lives life? I would continue my interrogation to determine if the process box “Live Life” makes sense and, if in fact, this is the overall thing that Greg does assuming I had to give it a single label. I’m sure he would agree as would anyone else who is alive. This is no different than drawing a single box for an organization, which we would label “Manage Organization.” Every organization has to manage itself in order to deliver business value or benefits to its customers.

u Manage Your Life; Don’t Let Others Do it For You

Rather than say “Manage Life,” I would argue that we don’t just manage our life, we live our life while we manage our life’s activities. Thus, managing our life is a part of living our life. Some people believe that they don’t manage their life and that other people manage it for them. I can think of a few examples such as our kids, prisoners, psychiatric patients, and recovering drug addicts who are under the authority or management of others. But even they have to manage their own life activities to some extent. No one’s life is on auto-pilot. If I were a prisoner, I’d want to manage my own release from jail. Manage your own life and don’t let anyone else do it for you.

Like most people, Greg has his own life and only one lifetime to live it. As Apple’s Steve Jobs pointed out, “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” It would be ludicrous to say that Greg lives someone else’s life unless he’s schizophrenic. A motivational speaker once said, “If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.” I don’t think I’d want my life delegated to someone else. You can delegate many things in life, but one thing you can’t delegate is being yourself.

Since Greg’s intent is to be himself and live his own life, I’d qualify his top-level box as “Live My Life.” So, let’s just assume that “Live Life” means his own life. However, that doesn’t mean that Greg isn’t a part of other people’s lives or doesn’t influence others. It just means that he has control of the one and only life that belongs to him – his own.

Now that Greg has carefully attached his angel process atop his Life Process Tree, he is ready to decompose or break it down into the many other processes or things that he does and are important in his life. I don’t necessarily want Greg to start with the most important things in his life and then work down to those things that are less important to him. He can’t be assured of what’s important in his life until he identifies all his processes and begins to understand their relationships and aggregate value.

At this point of his Life Architecture journey, Greg must assess WHAT he does in his life today before he considers WHAT he aspires to do in the future. Otherwise, how can he measure the gap between what he has and what he wants? We established the fact that our future is derived from our past. It is imperative that Greg focus on the present before he tackles an unknown future, or worse, repeats the same past mistakes.

u History Doesn’t Have to Repeat Itself

We’ve all heard the expression “History repeats itself.” After all, WWII followed WWI two decades later. How could mankind repeat the same disastrous mistakes knowing the devastation of war? Didn’t we learn that world wars kill millions of people and devastate entire cities? “If anything in this life is certain, if history has taught us anything, it’s that you can kill anyone” was an insightful observation from someone who was all too familiar with wars and the mafia. Maybe history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes, according to Mark Twain. History plays out in cycles, but though the events and dates are different, the outcomes are similar. History is this abundant resource of patterns to help us repeat good history and stop bad history from repeating. It’s a way to get our bearings in a moment like the present one, where we’re not really sure what’s going on. History teaches us only what to expect. A politically-astute college buddy argued that history is a guidepost. “It is not where we want to be, but it points to our trajectory and encourages us to do better. Without it we lose our way. Disparate interests then begin to tear our society apart.” Let’s avoid repetition.

I wish world leaders would get their disparate interests and bearings straight. I’d say they forgot to do a process tree before they jumped into WWII. Politicians seem to have a history of being stuck in the past. It was the renowned postmodern architect Frank Gehry who said, “You can learn from the past but you can’t continue to be in the past; history is not a substitute for imagination.” We appraise our past so that we can avoid the same mistakes, and use our imaginations to conceive a brilliant future.

You don’t have to be a discerning world leader with imagination to appreciate that things don’t change unless we do something different. However, a little imagination goes a long way. The lesson shared by a pessimistic but perceptive economist kind of hits home:

Economist: Our country is headed for an economic depression.

Reporter: How do you know?

Economist: History repeats itself. The conditions now are just like the conditions before the Great Depression.

Although we may be aware of past conditions, we need to be imaginative and prepared to do something different to prevent another Great Depression. It was the Spanish philosopher George Santayana who said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” It seems to be a recurring theme and natural phenomenon corroborating the fact that people don’t learn from their past. The German philosopher Friedrich Hegel said, “We learn from history that we do not learn from history.” Facts do not make history. At the end, the victor writes history. The American novelist Thomas Pynchon wrote, “Our history is an aggregate of last moments,” while Napoleon admitted that “history is a pack of lies agreed upon.”

u Leading an Unpredictable Life

The vintage of history is forever repeating – like they say, “Same old vines, same old wines.” Wine tasting could be a thing of the past if we keep drinking grapes from the same vines. While the world continues to repeat the past, we follow suit. Greg is no exception. He has relied on the same predictable processes and repeated some mistakes to get him into much the same domestic predicament. Greg’s life has been predictable, and it may be time to sample some other wines. Although we all share predictable life events – such as starting school, going through puberty and retiring from work – we don’t have to follow the same predictable processes and repeat the same mistakes. Greg’s life is about to turn a new leaf and, hopefully, will be as unpredictable as the weather but as exhilarating as a bright sunny day.

Greg has had his problems with relationships, specifically those with women – two ex-wives to be exact. The first was a tall beautiful blonde followed by a short cute brunette, not that the order mattered much. The problem obviously wasn’t with their physical appearance, but rather their unanticipated and undisclosed expectations of Greg. Their expectations mirrored an ideal husband, which unfortunately included Greg. Greg just wasn’t as motivated as he was physically alluring to the opposite sex. I’m just telling you the way it is.

I do know that Greg wants to get married again one day, unaware that history is ready to repeat itself if he’s not careful. He continues to be cursed by his good looks and seductive dance moves. If a potential wife #3 does come onto the dance floor, Greg is well advised to dance less and talk more. A little more intimacy up-front could prove valuable in the long run. It’s in his best interest to fully understand what she wants out of life, especially if she’s in the market for a husband. Just as important, he should understand what he wants from her as a life partner and their life together.

Greg has this Cinderella dream of meeting that perfect woman at the King’s Head on a romantic starry Saturday night. It would be a shame for her to lose her shoe at the strike of midnight and get away before Greg gets a chance to see if she’s the one. I’d hate for Greg to put the shoe on the wrong foot only to find out later that she wasn’t a good fit. Sorry, I shouldn’t be dwelling on the WHERE, WHEN, and HOW. Let’s just focus on the WHAT. What do you think of the following as the first branch of Greg’s Life Process Tree to represent his quest for the perfect life partner?

This would be an ideal process branch, assuming that Cinderella existed outside of fairy tales and was willing to give up her prince. What if she did exist but her name wasn’t Cinderella? That would definitely be an awkward situation if one day she found Greg’s Life Process Tree and demanded to know who Cinderella was. Since Cinderella doesn’t exist and Greg has no ambition to be a prince, we have to be a little more realistic about a process box depicting his romantic ambitions.

As sure as Romeo loved Juliet, there is someone out there for Greg. It’s just a matter of time before he finds the perfect dance partner who can dance to the same tune. The following process branch may have a real possibility of achieving the romance Greg so much desires, but he has to find a partner who can keep up with the same dance step and wants to keep dancing with him.

Romantic Relationship Live Life

This just may be the thing that Greg needs if his goal is to keep searching for a romantic relationship without actually landing one. Maybe he just needs to relax and stay in a romantic relationship without actually getting married. However, if he doesn’t get a commitment from someone that he loves and loves him back, he may never have that happily-ever-after security blanket that he thinks married life can give him. If Greg was truly happily-ever-after married and indeed content with his relationship, he would be applauding the following branch in his Life Process Tree right now.

Find Cinderella

Live Life

I’m sure that this is where Greg would like to be one day. But, he’s not there yet. Maybe he should have thought about nurturing his marriage while he was still married and had the chance. It’s not clear whether Greg and his wife could have worked things out. We’ll never know how serious they were to save their marriage and nurture what they already had as a couple.

It was evident that Greg had a laborious marriage – “laborious” being the operative word, or rather required adjective. This means that his marriage demanded a lot of time and effort. Greg and his wife weren’t capable of developing a healthy relationship and honoring a mutual partnership. If Greg was still married and committed to stay married, he may have changed the wording of his process box to “Nurture Laborious Marriage.” It almost sounds like an oxymoron. I wish that one day Greg may enter a nurturing marriage.

u Nouns and Adjectives Can Make or Break a Process

Adjectives are sometimes required to add a little more meaning to a noun, give it specific context, or just spice it up. While I enjoy life, someone else may enjoy retirement life – “retirement” being the distinguishing adjective when we name a process. Someone may argue that it’s not a retirement life but a retirement pastime. As you can see, nouns and adjectives can make or break a process. Adjectives add flavor to a bland noun. There’s a difference between a good book and an excellent book. How much of a difference? Everything is relative in between good and excellent. I’ve learned to qualify processes as accurately as possible in order to give them a superlative meaning. The danger is that if we come up with the wrong process name, we’re assured to have the wrong meaning. And I’d be reading good books that never quite made the bestseller list.

It’s next to impossible to assess a process, let alone fix it, if we don’t understand the intended meaning or purpose of that process. This is where adjectives are our best friends. How are we expected to fix a process if it is not named properly or qualified by the right adjective? It’s like a doctor prescribing antidepressant drugs without taking the time to properly diagnose the problem or severity of the depression. And if it is something else, the good doc better prescribe a drug with the right adjective to deal with the real problem and avoid a potential malpractice suit.

Although adjectives are important, it is the noun that we better get right before we decide whether it is good, bad, or in between. The noun is center stage to our processes because there is a difference between a marriage and a relationship. A marriage is a legally binding contract

Nurture Marriage

recognized by the church and state, while we can have a relationship anytime and anywhere, and walk away from one just as fast without signing documents and involving lawyers. I admit, there are exceptions and loopholes. I’m actually aware of some relationships that are better than most marriages.

Now that we have established that nouns and adjectives are important, we cannot ignore that verbs are as important and probably a lot trickier. We need to pick the right verbs in order to take the right actions and accomplish specific goals. It’s important that we use verbs that mean exactly what it is that we do and want to do in life, or at least as specific as we can articulate to describe what we do.

u The Right Verb to Take the Right Action

A slight change of a verb can make us head in a different direction. We can change the intent of our actions with the verbs we choose. If we don’t choose the right verbs, we won’t take the right actions. So, why did we single out the verb “nurture” when we got on the topic of Greg’s marriage earlier? This is the first word that comes to mind when we think of what it is that we should do in our own marriages. My personal dilemma is that my marriage vows have assigned several responsibilities to me. While it is difficult to find the one word that encompasses everything that I do in my marriage, I chose the verb “nurture” which describes the most important things that I do such as feed, protect, support, and encourage. These are all words that the dictionary identifies as part of the definition of the word “nurture.” By nurturing my marriage, I’m assured to take the right actions. My wife will agree that this is the reason we’re still married.

I know that “feed” sounds rather antiquated, but at the same time, my wife is at home with the kids while I bring home the paycheck to feed and financially support the family. I admit that we couldn’t feed the family unless she prepared and cooked the food. And sometimes we order a pizza or take the family out for a bite to give my wife a break. I’m known to make breakfast on weekends on occasion. I also protect, support, and encourage my family both in and outside the kitchen. If I can do all these things well, I’ve done a pretty good job as a nurturing husband and father.

There is still a distinction between a nurturing husband or partner, and a nurturing father. I support and encourage my wife differently than I do my children. I support and encourage her as my friend, my partner, my wife, and other roles she plays that my children do not. I’m grateful that she reciprocates with nurturing support and tender encouragement. She likes me the way I am even when sometimes I don’t like me the way I am.

Our marriage is bound by WHAT we do. HOW we do things in our marriage are mere details. The HOWs are the activities we are involved in everyday of our married lives. For example, my wife and I take part in various activities to achieve the process of nurturing our marriage. We do things with our kids, we visit family and friends, and we spend quality time with each other. We share our thoughts and feelings, and we always reflect on the day before we go to sleep. We operate a 24hour chat line which always ends with “I love you.” As a nurturing couple, we discuss and negotiate everything we do as a family. This makes our marriage a positive and nurturing relationship.

A man deeply in love with his wife once said, “I love her because she belongs to me. And I love her because she doesn’t.” I feel my wife belongs in my life while she has her own freedom. This is why we’re still together, and I look forward to a long happy honeymoon. Happy wife, happy life. She’s awesome and makes life better in every way. A father once asked a son with a broken heart, “How do you know you love her?” He replied, “Because nothing makes sense without her.” That kind of sums it up for me.

u Building a Large Vocabulary

I’m on a mission to build a large vocabulary list as I search for the right words to label my life process boxes. “A large vocabulary is like an artist having a big palette of colors. We don’t have to use all the colors in a single painting, but it helps to be able to find just the right shade when we need it” was a befitting analogy I found on www.wordsmith.org. We need to choose the right verbs so that we can take the right actions. This requires good vocabulary and a commitment to find the right words, whether they’re verbs, nouns, or adjectives. “Nothing is so healing as the realization that you have come upon the right word.” We’re here to come up with the right words to describe our lives.

This all comes back to the one idea that we talked about earlier called “clarity,” and ensuring that we are crystal clear in our understanding of the things that we do in life. Believe me, I’ve done more than my share of drawing process boxes while attempting to land on the perfect words to describe them. The ability to choose the right words to describe processes in the most exact terms takes patience and practice. Some words have a multitude of synonyms. It’s the similarities and differences in the meaning of these words and their synonyms that drive us crazy.

A foreigner struggling with English once told me that “English is a language without rules, or with rules which can be easily broken.” It just may be that he didn’t get the same opportunity to take English classes in school like the rest of us, and master his synonyms and the proper adjectives and adverbs to qualify them. I apologize for conjuring up some uneventful childhood memories. The bright side is that you already know all this stuff. I’m just doing a little refresher course, that’s all. It’s not easy to describe ourselves with words – almost as difficult as describing a fleeing burglar wearing a mask. The use of words is ever so important when it comes to creating our Life Architectures.

There are times I believe that one has to be an English professor, or better yet, an expressive writer to describe things eloquently. An outlaw in a Jesse James western was the atypical character when he said, “You can hide things in vocabulary.” I’d say outlaws are good at hiding behind words, not to mention hiding from the law. However, hiding behind the wrong words is a selfdefeating pursuit when it comes to getting in touch with who we are and what we want.

Greg will continue to search for the right words as he discovers himself and what he wants out of life. I have deviated a bit to help you understand what Greg feels is missing in his life, starting with romance. As a result of his priority to find someone, his Life Process Tree so far has one defining branch.

Search

Does Greg have the most accurate verb to describe his ambition to connect with a compatible woman? It doesn’t matter much whether it’s at the King’s Head, work, the fitness club, or even the world junior hockey championships in Sweden. It’s about meeting someone and creating a spark. Love is sure to follow. Greg considered the following process branch by focusing on this connection concept.

Live Life

Connect with Compatible Woman

Although the word “connect” has merit, it seems too vague to describe the nature of his desired relationship. Greg also connects with friends, but that doesn’t mean that he has a romantic relationship with them. Herein lies the problem. The verb must be very specific and cognizant of the motive behind Greg’s actions. What is Greg trying to achieve? He must ask the right questions before he addresses what he does today to meet someone and what he wants from a relationship. Greg has a poor track record in this department, and the time has come to get serious, honest, and deliberate about what he wants to do.

As Greg contemplates the right verb, it’s apparent he has to reconsider the word “search” and see if it aligns with his personal motives. This is where www.dictionary.com comes in handy. It’s an online dictionary which allows us to compare words and pinpoint one that has the best meaning. I routinely plug in a word and then click “Synonyms.” If there’s a word that I like in the synonym list, I click it followed by clicking “Definitions.” I repeat this process until I find the best definition. The website even provides several examples with the word used in a sentence. Whoever thought an online dictionary would help Greg find romance.

u A Dictionary to Find the Right Words

A dictionary is a powerful tool in helping us find the right word, typically starting with a word that is close but not quite the one we’re looking for. As a consultant hired to define organizational processes, I have developed an essential skill for conceiving well-articulated process names. Once I’m satisfied with my word selection, I solicit consensus from the people who have a stake in the process. This is especially important if we need to design a common process that represents the collective actions of many people performing similar work in an organization. If the people that are engaged in the process don’t all agree, then the process is wrong and open to interpretation. You have no idea how many verbs and adjectives I have evaluated to find just the right ones to describe processes to others in clear and concise terms. As a life architect, I use a dictionary to select the best verbs and adjectives, and sometimes nouns, as I help others flesh out their Life Process Trees.

Greg has been relentless in his search for a romantic and reliable relationship. Some call it resilience, but resiliency is getting knocked down and being able to get right back up. I’m not sure Greg has picked himself up from all those bad relationships. He still hasn’t found that one person during his relentless search. Here are some synonyms for the word “search” found in the dictionary:

chase, examination, exploration, fishing expedition, frisking, going-over, hunt, inquest, inquiry, inspection, investigation, legwork, perquisition, pursual, pursuance, pursuing, pursuit, quest, research, rummage, scrutiny, shakedown, wild-goose chase, witch hunt

Before I formally inquired about Greg’s life processes and what he was actually doing in his quest for the woman that he so desperately wanted in his life, I thought that he was on a wild-goose chase. As you can see, “wild-goose chase” is a synonym of the word “search.” There was no rhyme or reason to Greg’s approach for meeting women, that is, until I learned more about his ulterior motives for a relationship. His feelings, reasons, and intentions toward the opposite sex go much deeper than we could possibly know.

This inner emotion was reason to eliminate the word “wild-goose chase” as Greg became more observant and methodical in his search. He joined the new wave of singles seeking relationships via matchmaking websites such as www.eHarmony.com. After checking out the site to better understand its pretences and what it had to offer its clients, Greg determined that its matchmaking algorithm had its sights beyond just dating – specifically, long-term relationships based on compatibility.

When you visit the www.eHarmony.com home page, you can click “Why eHarmony” at the bottom of the page to better understand its mandate and what the site aims to achieve for its clients:

eHarmony is More than Just Dating

At eHarmony, we deliver more than just dates. Our patented Compatibility Matching System® narrows the field from millions of single men or women and matches you with a highly select group of compatible singles -- singles who have been prescreened on 29 Dimensions™ of personality: scientific predictors of long-term relationship success. Why spend hours browsing through personal ads and searching online when you don’t have to? It’s our goal at eHarmony to match you with the best possible person for you and we are eager to provide you with the best dating experience that we possibly can.

If Greg was on a wild-goose chase, he definitely wouldn’t be sharing his personal information on some online dating site with strangers, let alone one that wants to get to know him better than he knows himself. I’m sure Greg had stepped out of his comfort zone when he took a membership with eHarmony. He probably felt that he had put his neck on the line by exposing his inner self for the sake of love. This was necessary to match him up against the 29 personality dimensions of its eHarmony female membership. I didn’t even know that human beings had that many personality dimensions.

Greg’s search for a mutually agreeable relationship based on compatibility with personality and life desires seemed to be a logical alternative and worth a shot, although he never did reel in that fish. It may be that Greg never went on a “fishing expedition” or on the “hunt” for a woman, both

of which are also in the synonym list for the word “search.” I can’t envision Greg poised on a bar stool at the King’s Head like a hawk about to dive down to the dance floor and bury his claws into a defenseless female prey. I know him well enough to understand that he doesn’t take advantage of vulnerable and desperate women.

“Rummage,” another extraneous synonym, is passé because Greg is not out there to fetch a onenight stand with the best prospect of the night, nor is he interested in bragging rights. We can also rule out words like “quest” and “research” because he’s not on an investigative mission that requires rigorous analysis and preparation before he goes out on a date. He has never been one to study, although I suggest that he do some homework before he jumps into yet another rash relationship.

I personally thought that the word “befriend” might be a good approach for Greg. Maybe he should change his approach and develop a friendship with a girl and see where it goes before he gets too serious. Sometimes we get fooled by first impressions, which can turn out to be risky propositions. It’s easy to get into the wrong relationship quickly, but not so easy to get out. Greg has a tainted philosophy that a relationship must start as boyfriend-girlfriend from the get-go.

This reminds me of a sports announcer commenting on a close hockey game and the fact that the losing team played a good game. He explained that they had a lot to be proud of based on their strong effort. His co-host jokingly responded, “It’s like being with a hot girl but she’s only a friend.” However, some friendships can lead to great romantic relationships, even with hot girls. It’s too bad Greg’s friendships with women never amounted to anything.

There were times I was convinced that the correct verb was “explore,” but realized that “search” was more appropriate because Greg was not necessarily trying to discover how to fit into a new relationship. Rather, he was in search of a life partner who was ready to embrace his idealistic vision of a relationship and a future together. Whoever he met would take him “as is.” It would be a final sale and there were no returns. He was out there simply searching for someone compatible in the long term.

I know this all sounds somewhat academic after kicking around all these verbs and referencing dictionaries. I’m sure Greg has had his fill after considering possible verbs that align to actions he needs to take in order to find his long-term life partner. Greg is searching to fill a void in his life and is on a mission to find someone he thought he had found both times he got married. As they say, once you open your door to one person, anyone can come in. Hopefully, this time, the right one will walk in. Greg’s in search of a woman who possesses certain qualities and, most of all, loves him for who he is. Ironically, www.eHarmony.com also uses the word “search” in finding someone who is a match in terms of its 29 personality dimensions.

u Is It a Verb or Noun Dilemma?

Although it may not be obvious, Greg’s verb dilemma has been a result of the confusion he has felt for some time. He must get in touch with his inner desires and ask himself, “What am I searching for, a woman or a relationship?” They’re pretty well the same noun in his mind with one distinction – being with a woman doesn’t necessarily require a relationship, while being in a congenial relationship requires an affable woman. Thus, since Greg wants both, he’ll have to settle on the noun called “relationship.” Maybe Greg’s verb dilemma was instigated by a noun dilemma.

History points out that Greg has trouble handling long-term relationships. This may very well explain the short-term nature of his past love affairs. Regardless, it has been a while since he has led the carefree lifestyle of a bachelor. If he were in a party mode, he’d be searching for more than one woman – and the wilder, the better. This would imply that he’s not ready to settle down and have a serious relationship, while the branch on Greg’s Life Process Tree would take the following twist.

Live Life

Meet Wild Women

I’d say that this is a twisted branch for a guy who considers himself a family man. I think that Greg is a little too mature and exhausted to play the field at this point in his life. He’s been ready to settle down with someone compatible for some time now. He’s focused on finding an affectionate lady who has the same interests and is ready for a serious relationship. Therefore, we’ll stick to the word “relationship” only because Greg is interested in a single, serious, long-term relationship, and not managing several recyclable temporary relationships that aren’t going anywhere.

Greg wants that one woman who can be his life companion, every day of the week for the rest of his life. “You know what I discovered? It’s not who you want to spend Friday night with, it’s who you want to spend all day Saturday with.” The guy who said this must have been referring to Greg. Although romance is a big part of it, Greg desires a meaningful relationship that stands the test of time. He is searching for love, meaning, and longevity in a relationship, and a partner who will give him that. He has decided that the following process branch describes his intentions perfectly.

Live Life

Search for Meaningful Partner Relationship

It seems odd that Greg would identify the process “Search for Meaningful Partner Relationship” as the first branch in his Life Process Tree. Although this may not seem to be a life-enhancing process in Greg’s life, it is one that is important to him and at the forefront of his life after two failed marriages. The fact that he divorced twice has had much impact on his life, as well as the direction of his future. This process branch will effectively enable his other life processes in a more positive and passionate manner.

There’s more to this exercise than consulting a thesaurus for the right words. We need to develop an awareness of our desired future. We can’t count on historical trends and fate to reveal a bright future. History would rather repeat past mistakes than pave a righteous path to move forward. We owe it to ourselves to evaluate our circumstances, ambitions, and desires on their own merits, and find the near-absolute words to describe each process in our Life Process Tree. There is a word out there for everything that we do now and desire to do in the future.

Greg is on the warpath to come up with some accurate words to describe his life today, while he builds a new vocabulary to describe his future. He is in an exploratory phase of his life as he finds himself alone in pursuit of a new life. Life Architecture may hold some answers and allow him to assess his life now and into the future. Now that he is divorced, Greg is hopeful that the grass is greener on the other side, or at least green enough for a brighter future.

Sometimes I feel that my life has been an uneventful walk in the park compared to Greg’s enduring drama. I believe that I have nailed a few things the first time. Whether it is my family, neighborhood, career, or sports activities, it seems that things haven’t changed much – same wife, same address, same work, and I still play squash with the same hip. Come to think of it, I still have my ’87 ’Vette direct from the factory. I’m either an astute life architect or very lucky. However, this doesn’t mean that my life can’t get better or use more vacations.

u Are You Leading a Conscious Existence?

Our conscious mind thinks it’s in control, but it’s really our subconscious mind that is in control. It is our subconscious mind that is the emotional part of our brains. It stores our deep feelings and instincts, where they live undisturbed and unanalyzed. We’re not always in touch with our subconsciousness and don’t appreciate the root of our desires and obstacles in life. This may explain why so many of us drift through life without purpose and direction. We start with one thing in mind and then, without consciously intending to do so, end up somewhere we never expected. It seems so easy to settle. If there was only a way to add some of that subconsciousness to our conscious existence. The truth be told, I never lived, I only existed subconsciously. I heard a layman’s version: “All these years, you’ve lived, but you’ve never had a life.” For my whole life, I didn’t even know I existed, at least not in a state of full consciousness. I had no concept of Life Architecture until I started to explore the possibility of a conscious existence. Is there any other way to live life?

Life Architecture allows us to consciously find balance in life between family, career, and our personal aspirations. It’s not always easy to find that balance as we sacrifice one part of our lives for another and priorities begin to disrupt our lifestyle. Many of us don’t know how to attain balance, yet alone practice it. This is a difficult endeavor as we’re guided by greed and ambition, and steered by fear.

Life can be an invigorating journey although maintaining balance is a demanding process. I’m not sure I’d have the ambition nor energy to do it again, while Greg is doing it for the third time. Greg has taken on his third mortgage and a third career. He may not marry and have kids a third time, but it’s never too late to start over. He has decided to gamble one more time. If there was a

time to roll the dice, this was it. It’s only gambling when the results are unknown. In Greg’s case, I’d say it’s not a gamble if he has found a way to win.

u Is Life a Gamble or a Risk?

I want you to understand the difference between a gamble and a risk. With a gamble, we don’t know the outcome. A risk is calculated. We weigh the odds; we make a choice. This time, it isn’t going to be a game of blackjack, just more work as Greg takes a calculated risk. I’m not sure if he knows it, but he’s a busy man about to get busier – hopefully, busier in a good way. Greg has enough in his life to keep him busy with kids to raise from two past marriages. When you add another woman into this equation, the outcome is at least two and maybe three mutually exclusive events. It’s going to be a challenge building a meaningful relationship with a new partner, raising kids, and keeping peace with antagonistic ex-wives. Let’s hope the third one’s the charm and she likes kids, especially Greg’s.

How do I say this diplomatically? Greg’s home life has been less than ideal. His past marriages have had more speed bumps than the parking lot at Walmart. This can be a problem, especially when you hit an over-sized bump and damage your car. As for Greg’s marriages, things have been in a state of upheaval for some time. I’m sure that once Greg gets his home life together, it will have a profoundly positive effect on the rest of his life. But first, Greg will have to reassess the life processes that rely on his relationships with others, especially processes that he shares with a life partner.

u Enabling Processes to Get to Where You Want

It’s inevitable that Greg fix up his relationship processes before he can enact other processes to fulfill his life desires. In business, we call these “enabling” processes because they impact or enable other processes – ideally, more efficiently and effectively. We have already referred to Greg’s “Search for a Meaningful Partner Relationship” as an enabling process. Greg is well aware that his happiness and future rely on a solid, two-way relationship with someone who can accommodate him. This will enable the rest of his life processes to fall into place. A life partner could share in his love of family, nature, sports, music, and so on. Greg’s love affair with sports is another romance that this special woman will have to accept as a team player.

It’s no coincidence that Greg met both of his ex-wives on a co-ed baseball team. Sports have always been an integral part of his life. Many of the things that we do in our lives are inter-connected. Our lifestyles and circumstances dictate our actions and the things we do in life. This includes who we meet, where and how we meet them. It was inevitable that Greg would meet someone who could swing a baseball bat.

I admit, there are life processes that are out of our control, or occur outside of our daily living routine. When a wealthy businessman hires a call girl to be his escort for several business and social functions in the movie Pretty Woman, he never imagines falling in love. True love has been known to influence our choices. Love does not blind us from choices; the choices are clear. It blinds us from the consequences of those choices. Hopefully, this one works out for the businessman and his pretty woman. I assume things worked out and business took a backseat to love.

Life is full of surprises. We can only manage and mitigate surprises as best as we can, while we spend quality time on the things that are important in our lives – and in our control. I’ve learned that choice isn’t the same as having control. I have a weed-infested lawn while Greg takes pride in his manicured lawn. I’d rather spend the day on the golf course where the lawn is manicured for me. The only thing we have control over is our attitude and our actions, and possibly our weeds.

On a serious note, golf can be associated with the fine art of living and refining one’s social status. If only I could play golf as well as I drink beer on the clubhouse veranda afterward. You know what they say, “Golf and sex are the only two things you don’t have to be good at to enjoy.” I’ve included golf in my Life Architecture, not only as a source of peace and stress relief and a way to socialize with friends, but as a venue to do business. After all, Life Architecture focuses on doing what we love while being able to afford it.

Regardless of Greg’s desires toward golf and gardens, we will be leveraging Life Architecture to help him define what he is doing today and why. He will continue to decompose, or break down, his life and develop a current Life Blueprint based on his current existence. This will enable him to map out a future as he develops his future Life Blueprint. And of course, Greg will need a Life Roadmap to get him there as he confronts the pressures of the present and the uncertainty of his future.

From Present to Future

What life processes are important in Greg’s life today? What does he spend his time on? What does he waste his time on? Greg’s focus seems to be on what he spends his time on in the present and not what he wants to spend his time on in the future. With the help of Life Architecture, his future will begin to unfold before his eyes.

What we do know is that there are other aspects to Greg’s life: Family, Work, Leisure, Education, Physical (Health), Intellectual, or other variations of the life classifications we discussed earlier. Greg is about to expand his Life Process Tree by adding a few more branches as illustrated in the following diagram. I’m sure that you’re well familiar with the first branch of his tree and how he got there.

Greg’s Life Process Tree Branches

These are the processes that occupy Greg’s life today. However, there are reasons these processes are important to him. Let’s summarize the importance of the main processes in Greg’s Life Process Tree.

Branch 1: Search for Meaningful Partner Relationship

I have asked this one question more than I can remember: why is Greg still single? This same question was asked of a teenager named Josh by a girl in some movie about adolescence. Josh was surprisingly insulted by this question and decided to find the reason for his singleness. He tracked down all the girls that he had tried to date and asked them straight up: “What went wrong?” The short answer was that he didn’t have what it takes to make a good boyfriend. Maybe it’s too late to go around asking his ex-wives what went wrong, but Greg feels that he couldn’t spark a meaningful relationship to make a good husband.

We already talked about the importance of Greg’s desire to have a long-term life partner to share his life. So, the search continues for a meaningful relationship abundant with romance. I think we all sympathize with his situation. However, it’s important to understand that his life partner will influence other processes in his life. Greg is looking for someone who can influence and intimately share in many aspects of his life. He also wants a life partner who is not going to change her mind midstream through the relationship because she’s after some career guy.

Branch 2: Raise Family

Whoever strolls into Greg’s life must be someone who accepts his kids. Even more important is that she supports Greg in the parenting of his two youngest daughters, especially with a joint custody arrangement hanging over his head. His oldest daughter from his first marriage has completed university and is now an independent young adult. I’m sure he’d be touched if the “woman to be” in his life one day strove to develop a binding friendship with his oldest daughter.

Greg is close to his daughters and the last thing he wants is someone in his life who is not interested in making them a part of her life. Equally devastating would be a scenario where his daughters reject Greg’s new life partner. I can’t help but make an analogy to the movie Step Mom with Julia Roberts. As the new woman in the life of a divorced father, Julia does everything that she can to earn his children’s love and respect. This proves to be unequivocally impossible when his eldest daughter despises her soon-to-be stepmother for coming into their lives and destroying any hope of her divorced parents getting back together again. And to add fuel to the fire, the ex-wife’s jealousy sabotages any dreams of one big happy family.

Hopefully, Greg won’t have meddling ex-wives or others interfering with his long-awaited life partner or search process. It is important that he find someone who accepts and wants to become part of his children’s lives. He believes that this could be someone who has raised children of her own and is willing to at least help do it again, or even add her own children to the mix. If he cannot find a willing partner, he’ll have to accept the possibility that he won’t be able to attain a balanced and fulfilling family life. Abraham Lincoln once said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” A life partner unwilling to share the lives of Greg’s children will result in a divided household that is sure to collapse.

Branch 3: Work to Earn a Living

What’s wrong with the same old job, same old routine, and same old paycheck? Greg is comfortable with things the way they are. It’s both ex-wives who were discontent with his dress code and earning power. However, it gets more exhausting, both emotionally and financially, each time he separates from a wife and seals the divorce papers. After two failed marriages, Greg feels drained and apprehensive about married life. However, Greg must start again and secure the standard of living that he has been accustomed to.

From a financial perspective, Greg has been hit with unplanned financial obligations, namely child support and alimony. If he wants to maintain a consistent standard of living, he’ll have to earn more to get what he already had when he was married. He should thank his dad for lending him the down payment for his new bachelor pad while he gets his life in order.

Greg still had unfinished business while making arrangements with his ex-wife as to how they were going to divide their assets, including their family house. At one point, they had decided to sell the house and allocate the sales proceeds. But then they agreed that she would keep and re-mortgage the house so that he could recover his down payment to pay back his dad. Divorces are complicated matters and a few domestic battles are fought to end the war.

So, how was Greg going to make ends meet? We know that he was a school bus driver in a previous life. This job alone wasn’t enough to afford him the earning power to meet his financial obligations. He decided to take a second part-time job as a custodian of an apartment building. He was never one to be afraid of work, but instinctively worked harder than smarter. Regardless, the guy who owned the maintenance and cleaning company was impressed with Greg’s work ethic and hired him full-time as a maintenance supervisor. Greg felt it was time to park the school bus after his supervisor position afforded him the earning power to comfortably pay his bills.

Branch 4: Train for New Career

Training for a new career is now a thing of the past. That went out the door at about the same time as the marriage. Greg had no ambition to become a production accountant working in the oil patch. This was his ex-wife’s idea after she decided to give up hairdressing to become a land administrator for an oil company. She insisted that he go back to school with her, and together they would conquer the white-collar world. If his ex-wife could get rid of her basement beauty salon, there was no reason that Greg couldn’t trade in his school bus for a classroom desk.

The plan was to embark on a fast-track career training program and get better jobs after a year. It sounded like a great idea in theory – almost romantic if it weren’t for the studying part. When one of Greg’s baseball buddies suggested that he could get him into production accounting once he had his diploma, this was his cue to enroll in a production accounting certification program. After graduating a year later, his buddy never came through with the job. Unfortunately for Greg, the economy was in a tailspin and the job market had dried up.

Greg, however, showed no signs of discouragement. He later told me that he had no interest in becoming a production accountant and only did it to appease his ex-wife. He really meant that he wanted to stop all the arguments about finances, not to mention the emotional bullying. He confessed that his ex compared him to all his friends with university

educations and made him feel inadequate. As a husband and father, he felt this was a slap in the face by the woman he loved. It wasn’t easy being married to someone who thought of him as a marginal breadwinner and a man without a position in life.

I don’t mean to deviate from Greg, but his ex-wife may have had her own insecurities and misunderstandings. Like many people, she was trying to find herself and later joined a community church support group in search of her own meaning of life and God. I applaud her for seeking answers to her own life dilemmas. I’m not sure if she became a born-again Christian, but she had managed to make her own meaningful discoveries and seemed content.

At the end, Greg got tired of doing the impossible for the ungrateful. At least that’s the way he saw it. It’s unfortunate that Greg and his ex never grew together nor achieved a mutual understanding. I’m personally disappointed that they never had the opportunity to architect their lives as a couple. Hopefully, they’ll get that chance with someone else one day.

Branch 5: Enjoy Leisure Time

I don’t know anyone who doesn’t enjoy leisure time except for a full-time Xerox technician I know who delivers newspapers before work and pizza in the evenings and weekends. And to top it off, his wife works as an office manager with a respectable income. This workaholic would work all night and rent out his bed if his wife wasn’t in it. The extra money may not change his life, but he believes that he’s going to live forever. This is definitely a guy who’s setting himself up for regret. Unlike a 99-year-old person, Greg has no intent to live to be a 100.

Greg may have mastered the art of making the most of his leisure time if it were not for his ex-wives. He now has other priorities and takes pleasure in spending quality time with his kids. And when he’s not doing that or the dishes, he’s watching or doing sports. When there’s no baseball or hockey on the tube, football and basketball will do, followed by every other sport. Brad’s regular invites to watch the UFC fights on a Saturday night have become a welcomed interlude to be with friends.

Greg has always been a great athlete since he could hold a ball. Just the mention of the word “sports” sends goose bumps throughout his body. Even with a hip replacement, he never wasted any time finding a sport that would be easier on his hip. He now plays competitive racquetball, which has become a big part of his present leisure time and something he’ll probably do for the rest of his life. I will miss our intense squash battles and his competitive spirit, and always regret not having bragging rights.

When Greg decides to relax and wind down from all the sports, he’ll retire to his favorite pub, the King’s Head, on a Friday or Saturday night where a local rock band fills the dance floor with pub patrons. He has always loved his music and enters his Utopia every time there’s a good band playing classic rock. You know that he’s had a good night when a girl accepts a dance proposal to his favorite song. And of course the cherry on top is when she engages in some good conversation afterward.

I look forward to Greg’s occasional phone call inviting the high school guys to see a band we listened to as teens. It’s not so much about the music as seeing the gang again. Although I didn’t care much for heavy metal, I’ll never forget the excitement on stage while we attracted attention on the dance floor playing invisible guitars. I think that Greg misses those wonder years and hasn’t truly grown up. I hope he never does. However, I do hope that he restructures his life off stage.

Greg has always been a quiet, unassuming and patient individual, except when it comes to his music. Music makes him feel “born to be alive.” It’s no wonder Patrick Hernandez’s reached number one on the US Disco charts with that song. Greg enjoys being alive with the simple things in life. Good music and beers with friends after a baseball game is about as good as it gets. His summer vacations are ideally spent with his family at a favorite campground or his parents’ cottage near the lake – that is, until they divorced and eventually sold the property. I’m sure there are other natural retreats that he’ll be exploring with his beautiful girls.

Branch 6: Lose Weight & Stay Fit

Do you remember when I told you that Greg was the good-looking guy who got all the girls, or more accurately, the guy who the girls asked to dance? Well, after Greg got married, he developed an appetite for Thanksgiving turkey and Christmas ham. This not only contorted his boyish figure slightly, it made the rest of us realize that he had the ability to age with the rest of us.

Greg was the disciplined member of the wolf pack who regularly worked out and rarely missed his racquetball drop-in league every week. This ritual sadly took a backseat as things at home digressed. He went from tan and fit to being pale and miserable. Greg’s wife at the time took the rank of commander-in-chief and he soon had to succumb to other priorities, including going to school to become an office guy. I felt a false sense of reality when visualizing Greg in a suit working in some office tower. The fact that some married women feel that it is their marital right to start a career counselling office out of the home goes against marriage protocol. It’s unfortunate that their husbands end up as miserable clients.

After his second separation, Greg decided to restore the athletic body of the young man whom all the girls had once asked to dance. He had joined the local fitness club and it felt so good acclimatizing to the wide selection of fitness machines and lifting those weights again. He was overjoyed to get back into competitive racquetball after his hip surgery. He started to feel good about himself, both the way he looked and the way he felt. He was eating right and only drank socially when he met up with friends. Greg’s transformation reminds me of a quote: “If you want to feel good about yourself, you’ve got to do things that you can be proud of.” Regrettably, he never thought much about changing his mental and emotional being.

It was apparent that Greg had regained a lot of the confidence that he was stripped of through the course of two marriages. No one should have the authority to put you down, strip you of your confidence, or tell you that you’re not good enough or that you’re a lesser person because of your choices in life. My friend Steve from Milwaukee jokingly tells his girlfriend, “I refuse to be considered good for nothing; at least I can be used as a bad example.” We were not put on this earth to spend our time trying to please someone else. We were born to be ourselves and to be accepted for who we are. That means we have to enjoy our own lives, and not comply with the image of someone else.

It’s ironic how much better Greg is doing now that he’s not trying to meet his ex-wife’s expectations, specifically her image of what she thought he should be. I am not saying that Greg has it all together, but he is now in control of his life, both on and off the racquetball court. For the first time in a long time, he may now be in a better position to evaluate where he wants to go.

Branch 7: Maintain Family Life with Parents & Siblings

Although I don’t see Greg as someone who has an intimate relationship with his family, he seems to have a special bond with his parents and siblings. His parents divorced some time ago in their early retirement years. I always thought the world of his mom and dad, and found them to be the ideal couple as well as good parents. I was surprised when this perception later led to misconception. Sometimes seeing things through the eyes of a child distorts the realities of adulthood.

I always felt that Greg went the extra mile to include his parents in his life, maybe as a result of problems in his marital life. He had high hopes that his parents would be the loving grandparents who would regularly visit and spend time with their grandchildren. But sadly, they had their own problems and were less than able to meet Greg’s expectations. His younger brother and only sister also had their own personal issues that kept them away. The fact that his mom and siblings lived elsewhere created further family rift.

Greg’s older brother was the more rational one and someone he could count on. Unfortunately, he lived across the country where his dental practice rarely allowed him to visit. At the end, Greg did what he could to include his parents and siblings in his life. Although he had his own family commitments, he was a devoted son when his father needed his help with errands and personal affairs. Now that his father has passed away, the concept of family has lost some meaning for him.

I am mystified and feel deceived by how much of that family unity Greg had as a child is now an illusion. His childhood is now in the past while he holds the family memories dear to his heart. I see Greg as a loving son, brother, and father. I’m sure one day he’ll be a great husband or partner.

And that, my friends, was my debut as a biographer. Now that we’ve had a chance to understand some of Greg’s history and assess his current life, we have a better appreciation of his life challenges and aspirations. Greg has since developed a much deeper understanding of his current life processes to enable him to decompose or break down his Life Process Tree.

u Greg’s Life Process Tree

It’s time to decorate Greg’s Christmas tree with ornaments and lights, and make a grand spectacle when everyone arrives home on Christmas Day. He will diligently hang all his current life processes on his Life Process Tree. This is the current Life Blueprint representing his life today. I assure you that by the time Greg is finished, he’ll be in the holiday spirit flaunting a gold-trimmed sparkling angel on top of his tree with all its beautifully decorated branches. He’ll be poised to negotiate a new lease on life. However, he still has to hang some future life processes and even get rid of ones that don’t interest him anymore. He may also change processes around to get his tree to look just the way he wants it. This will reflect the future Life Blueprint of his life in accordance with the way he wants to live in the future.

Before we unveil Greg’s Life Process Tree, I must briefly interrupt this lesson with a time revelation. We tend to divide our lives in terms of a past, present, and future. Albert Einstein said, “The distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” We don’t

always have a sense of where one begins and the other ends. After all, how far into the future is the future? We trust that time is linear and that it proceeds uniformly into infinity; at least that’s how we common folk see it.

The distinction between past, present, and future is a matter of interpretation. The interpretation of the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu may have significance for those embarking on architecting their lives:

If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.

This may explain why many of us are depressed. How many times has someone told me that I live in the past? I’ve always been rather nostalgic and fond of history. I guess this means that a part of me lives in the past, although I like to think that I live in the present as I plan my future. Yesterday, today and tomorrow are not always consecutive and there is some overlap as we move through time. Whenever I phone family overseas, they’re always eight hours ahead of me. If I want to catch them at home early in the morning, I usually call them before midnight my time the day before. My present is their future, and their present is my past. If only I could figure out a way to play the stock market with this advantage.

Someone expressed an awkward but rather fitting analogy: “Time is like driving a car.” As we pass by something, we see it and experience it. This is the present. We then look in the rear-view mirror to see what we have already seen and passed by. This is the past. We continue to drive and see something ahead of us but can’t quite make it out. This is the future. And when we get there, the future becomes the present. As we keep driving and look in the rear-view mirror again, the future is now in the past as another future awaits us.

Many of us still remember the lyrics of the legendary reggae artist Bob Marley: “Life is one big road with lots of signs.” The teacher quoting Marley at my son’s high school graduation ceremony was trying to tell us to pay attention to the signs as the graduating class embarks on new careers and unveils a bright future. “Read them all and don’t sit by the side of the road and watch life go by. Keep driving. Hope starts the next leg of our journey.” The message was clear – pay attention to the signs leading to our future. After graduating myself, I must have missed some along the way and never bothered to look for them.

It was the dead girl in the movie Snow Cake who had left behind her scrapbook with a personal interpretation of the different phases of life:

“The past is only a memory

The future a fantasy

It’s only in the present that we truly live”

What I would do to get my hands on that scrapbook and get to know her eccentricity and find clues to truly living in the present. The sooner we learn that your true self lives in the present, the sooner we can live an abundant life in the present. The motivational speaker Jim Rohn persuaded us to live in our present. “Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present.” It may be that we truly live in the present when our fantasies become a reality. This is a reality where we don’t make excuses and make the most of our lives.

Life Architecture is geared to transform our current desires into our future realities, and is committed to creating a reality based on our limitless potential where we become the best version of ourselves.

u Are You Living in the Present or the Current Time?

When does the present stop being the present? The words “present” and “current” can be tricky propositions. Although they both mean that something is happening now, there is an important but subtle difference. “Present” is a noun representing a moment in time – a cessation of movement or a standstill. When we use “current” to suggest time, it is an adjective representing time actually passing. When used as a noun, current is a flow, as in a river. When used as an adjective, it refers to a moving situation, specifically during the present time. I like to tell people that current is an instant of an ongoing activity that we’re in the middle of but not yet finished – like reading a book. I’m not the type of guy who can read a book in one sitting, and every time I pick up that book, I’m in an instant of reading it. I’m currently reading a book until I finish it. Present, on the other hand, is a static moment. Think of it as taking a picture of me reading the same book. By the time I’m finished reading, I’ll no longer be in the present but rather living in the current. I hope you recognize that at present, we’re part of the current discussion pertaining to the topic question: Are you living in the present or the current time? When I asked my editor that question and whether I should use a present or current Life Blueprint, his response was rather self-evident: “If your Life Blueprint is a plan for a changing life, it would be current. If it is a picture capturing a look at life now, it could be present.” This would imply that we need a current Life Blueprint since a present Life Blueprint represents nothing more than a snapshot of a life that is in the past before we have a chance to analyze our current life and where we want to take it. Do you need a present or current Life Blueprint?

I think that we have belabored this present versus current debate. Next time I should be more careful when making a philosophical inquiry about time with my editor who is focused on seeing my book done and in the past. As a former engineer, he likes to take advantage of a current situation and get things done. However, I owe him some gratitude for helping me make the distinction between our present existence and our current situation.

Now that we understand our present lasts only for the moment we’re in it – a snapshot in time similar to a photograph – we can start focusing on our current life. The fact that we’re currently involved in many instances of ongoing activities makes our lives current until we finish what we’re doing. Thus, we’re only stuck in the present until we decide to change our current life for a desired future. A current Life Blueprint represents the time actually passing us now and only remains current until we make an effort to change it for the desired future mapped out in our future Life Blueprint.

Since Greg will be mapping out his desired future in a future Life Blueprint, it only makes sense that he has a Life Blueprint of his current life as a starting point. People tend to live their lives unconsciously and soon life becomes a force of habit in its current state. Greg has bad habits holding him back from living his desired life. And as you know, some habits are hard to break. “They say the chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken. The chains you put around yourself now have enormous consequences as you go through life.” Warren Buffett understood that we had to change our habits outside of our investment portfolios.

So now that we’ve resolved the distinction between current and present, what does Greg’s current Life Process Tree look like? That is, what does it look like before he changes his current situation for the future? Let’s take a sneak preview of Greg’s current Life Process Tree.

Greg’s Current Life Process Tree

As you can see, Greg’s life can be decomposed into further detailed and diverse life processes. The Life Process Tree that Greg has created identifies various process branches – seven to be exact. Each branch has several leaves or process activities that Greg gets involved with in his day-today life, not to mention other infrequent activities such as vacations and wife-induced training courses.

You will notice that one of the branches on Greg’s Life Process Tree is labelled “Train for New Career.” This is a weak branch considering that Greg has very little ambition for a career. Furthermore, since Greg’s divorce, he no longer has the stress of making his ex-wife happy or pursuing career plans that she had made for him. My favorite bosses are my ex-bosses. I’m sure that Greg would agree. This career-driven process to chase a new career has meant the sacrifice of other things that Greg would rather be doing.

Although we sometimes find ourselves sacrificing leisure time for the security of a better future, we’re compelled to go back to our regular and barren routines. However, I’m sure that Greg won’t be going back to an ex-wife or getting side-tracked again by a career path that doesn’t appeal to him. He has decided to throw in the towel and start all over again. This includes throwing out the old stereo and stack of worn-out vinyl LPs that made better coffee tables than music. Greg has realized the world is changing, and that he needs new rules and a new stereo. He’s ready to tackle the digital world and do what he loves.

u The Secret to Life: Do What You Love

My life philosophy is simple: If you sacrifice your life doing something, it should be something that you love and you’re passionate about. It should also be something that you’re able to do well. Many people are unhappy because they’re constantly trying to improve their weaknesses. Rather, they should focus on their strengths. When we identify what we enjoy doing and the activities we’re able to master relatively quickly, we can achieve meaningful success that leads to fulfillment. As one of the most successful investors in the world, Warren Buffett contends that fulfillment must have economic benefit or else it would hardly be worth doing on an empty stomach. Life architects contend that fulfillment is achieved by doing what we love and gives us purpose. This naturally leads to economic benefits. Benefits are a personal choice and, for that matter, it’s our obligation to determine which benefits have value and are important to us. At the end of the day, life is much happier when we do what we love and gives us purpose.

Greg must decide which benefits have value and importance in his life. The benefit of Greg taking on a new career is strictly to enable him to provide more for his family and help himself. At the same time, he has to like what he’s doing. This is a new beginning for Greg, and this time round he’ll be aware of the benefits that he’d like to realize. We can all use a new beginning with the right benefits, but we’ll require a Life Blueprint to get started.

The pivotal steps for creating a Life Blueprint begin by adding the key process branches and a few obvious activities to each branch of our Life Process Tree. The rest will follow naturally and evolve as we begin to understand what we like to spend our time on. By Christmas eve and hopefully sooner, we will have hung all our life activities like ornaments on the branches of a Christmas tree.

The Life Process Tree maps out all the life processes and activities composing our lives. It is a blueprint of everything that we do in life. In essence, the Life Process Tree is a pictorial representation and part of our Life Blueprint. It provides a methodical approach and a visual element to convey understanding and facilitate communication about ourselves. It beats writing a longwinded autobiography, and allows us to describe our lives in a way that most people have never conceived.

So, when we talk about a Life Blueprint, we use a Life Process Tree to depict it. Greg’s Life Process Tree is an integral part of his current Life Blueprint as he uncovers the issues, concerns, problems, and opportunities in his life. We are used to keeping some sort of notes or a diary to capture these life details. As we learn more details about why our life is the way it is, our Life Process Tree takes on its own life meaning.

Representing a Life Blueprint

Life Blueprint

Diary of Life Issues, Concerns, Problems, Opportunities

Life Process Tree

Greg’s Life Process Tree is about to blossom as he decomposes his life processes to better understand their purpose and how they all fit together. The various process branches represent the different areas of Greg’s life while the leaves on each branch are the activities consuming his life. I’m sure he’ll get to the root of some of the issues, concerns, problems, and even opportunities during this decomposition exercise.

As Greg gets a better handle on his current Life Process Tree, he will mould it into what he wants his desired life to look like. We call this his future Life Blueprint and it includes a Life Process Tree of all the processes that will be part of his future. However, Greg can only get to his future by understanding his current situation. His aim is to change his life by adding and improving processes that make him feel elated and grateful, and detach those that have left him bitter and dejected. Maybe it’s time to pull the weeds and plant the seeds to cultivate a ravishing life.

u Is There a Magic Formula?

Harry Houdini was the most famous magician and escape artist that has ever lived. He had a magic formula for his daring and sensational escape acts. Even Houdini denied that these were illusions. Like Houdini, we have to unlock the handcuffs that have held us back in life for what seems to be an eternity. Why is it always the last key that unlocks everything? I guess like all great escapes, everything begins with a setup, including an escape from our present life. Our escape starts with a current Life Blueprint, which captures our current state of affairs. It identifies the issues, problems, and opportunities that we encounter in life. We become desperate to resolve our problems and take advantage of opportunities, but we have difficulty in executing. We don’t seem to have the mental prowess and strong will that Houdini had when he performed his great escapes. He could foresee each escape before he performed it. We must also be able to foresee our desired future, which we map out in a future Life Blueprint. This represents our life as we would like to live it. And to get us there, we need a Life Roadmap to help us navigate down the right path and make the necessary changes to get from our current to future desired life. We just need a magic formula to put it all together for us.

The ABCs of the magic formula are rather elementary and straightforward. We start with where we are today, and end with what we want in the future. And of course, we follow a roadmap to get there. The constituent parts of the magic formula include a current Life Blueprint, a Future Life Blueprint, and a Life Roadmap. Mathematically speaking, we need a current Life Blueprint and a Life Roadmap to actualize our future Life Blueprint.

The Magic Formula

Current Life Blueprint Future Life Blueprint Life Roadmap

We need to be in possession of both our current and future Life Blueprints in order to define the gaps between where we are today and where we want to go. These blueprints together allow us to assess and measure the gaps, and determine the effort required and obstacles to overcome to achieve our desired future. As we say in the consulting world, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” We can now develop a believable roadmap that we can quantify, and one that gets results.

u Seeing the Forest for the Trees

I’m sure that we’ve all heard about the proverbial “forest for the trees,” which implies that we can’t always see what’s in front of us. I’ve been accused early in my career of focusing on the details but not being able to see the big picture. I may have had all the facts but couldn’t assemble them in a meaningful and communicative way. If someone accuses us of not seeing the forest for the trees, we’re guilty of not seeing the whole situation clearly because we’re lost in the details. Sometimes, we’re just too stubborn or emotionally involved to know better.

This is where a Life Process Tree comes in handy and helps us evaluate our lives in the grand scheme of things. If we evaluate our lives by looking at one process at a time, we may be limited by our inability to see the big picture. We don’t always realize that processes on a process branch have a common purpose and depend on the processes of other branches. These process branches together make up our process tree, while the process trees of all the people in our lives make up the forest. As life architects, we rely on two process trees – one representing our current life and the other as a segue into our future life.

I figure by the time Greg develops a future Life Blueprint, he will have covered off all his life processes in regard to his family, work, and leisure life. For now, Greg is in search of meaning in his relationships, and it’s just a matter of time before he finds someone to share in his newly-conceived life processes. On the flip side, Greg will also be active and involved in the life processes of his new life partner. After all, she’ll have her own life ambitions and desires. If she’s the right one, there will likely be overlap between their trees. Greg’s tree will include his own distinct processes, which will grant him the independence he had lost during marriage. After all, compatible couples offer each other space and independence.

u Don’t Go Back to the Future

As Greg’s Life Architecture coach, I’m here to help Greg solve the magic formula and move forward. It’s obvious Marty McFly didn’t solve the formula when he went back to the future. I admit that the movie was a little far-fetched. In Back to the Future, Marty is a teenager who is accidentally sent back in time, and must make sure that his teen-aged parents fall in love all over again in order to save his own existence. I think we all agree that it’s a bad idea to design a future Life Blueprint that puts you back in time. Unfortunately, Marty trusted a nutty scientist with a time-traveling DeLorean – a distinctive stainless steel sports car from the early 1980s featuring gull-wing doors. Marty never imagined himself as the test driver of a time machine put together in a garage, let alone ending up as a matchmaker to get his parents together again. Not in his wildest dreams did he think that he’d be evading his teen-aged mother who had the hots for him.

There is a Life Architecture lesson in all of this – don’t go backward. Get your future Life Blueprint together if you want to control your destiny. Otherwise, you just might have to rely on a faulty time-traveling GPS bolted on to the dash of a souped-up iconic DeLorean to get somewhere, and probably end up in the wrong place.

It was one of those quirky quote sites that I read, “Life is like a puzzle. Only if you fit the pieces to the right places, you will see the beauty of it.” I’d say life is more like the process of building a puzzle. We fit every piece together to create who we are, what we do, how we feel. Now that Greg has gathered the pieces of his life puzzle and neatly organized them in his current Life Process Tree, he’ll be positioned to recompose his life processes in a much preferred arrangement. He will remove, rename, rearrange, and introduce new processes to create a future Life Process Tree depicting his desired future.

u My Apologies

We could have plunked Greg’s entire Life Process Tree on one page without explaining the thought process and reasoning to develop his tree. This would have saved us a lot of time and effort, not to mention a few natural trees to print this book. Thank God for eBooks. However, this exercise was necessary in order to get an appreciation of how to structure a Life Process Tree. In Greg’s case, we were able to see WHAT he does and WHY. I’m sure that you’re already thinking about how Greg can start changing his life. Just hold that thought. It’s important that Greg realizes for himself WHAT he wants in life before he resolves HOW to make those changes.

Life Architecture teaches you how to assess your own life by giving you the tools and knowledge to get started. This brings me to a famous Chinese proverb: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” I’m sure that we’ve all heard it before, however, we don’t always appreciate its important message: If you help a man, he’ll be dependent on you; if you teach a man to help himself, he’ll be independent forever. There’s no reason that you cannot be your own life architect.

Your life will be changing and evolving until the day you die. “You always have to realize that you’re constantly in the state of becoming” as Bob Dylan puts it. It’s up to you to steer life in the right direction by being proactive about creating a life you love instead of living the one you think you’re stuck with. It’s people who make enjoying their lives a priority who capitalize on their life journeys. A blueprint of your future, otherwise known as a future Life Blueprint, defines where you are going. You may need to break some rules to get there. Before Greg completes his future Life Blueprint, he also has some onerous and unwieldy rules to break.

CHAPTER 8

Breaking the Rules

It was the business titan Ross Perot during his 1988 presidential candidacy who said, “War has rules, mud wrestling has rules – politics has no rules.” I’m sure there’s some truth to Perot’s political insights. Someone once said that politics and crime are the same thing – professions without rules. The press is full of corrupt politicians and unscrupulous individuals who become targets for late night talk show hosts as they take cheap shots for comic relief. Maybe it serves them right for breaking the rules and getting caught. As the “fastest, richest Texan” in a cover story by Fortune magazine, I’m sure Ross Perot had to break some rules of business, and played by his own rules to make his fortune. However, Perot didn’t have to become a politician nor a crime boss to count all his money.

Some rule breakers do whatever it takes to get what they want, even personify God as a way to supersede human abilities. “Larry was not interested in following the rules at school, in the family, or anywhere else,” according to the biographer of Oracle’s Larry Ellison. You have got to know that there’s a good story there when the book is entitled The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison. It just may be that when you become too rich and powerful, there’s a temptation to be God. It’s ironic that the filthy rich guys seem to pride themselves on breaking the rules or, better yet, making their own. It’s almost like following the rules is for common folk.

There are men of power and money who don’t know the rules, or don’t much care for them. Julius Caesar had broken all the rules and felt he was entitled to make his own rules after being pronounced the dictator of the Roman Republic. Such men have an obsessive need for power. Their self-centeredness and arrogance works against the common good and eventually alienates them from the public. They are imbued with false reasoning and pride. It was the talented Mr. Ripley who captured the essence of their thinking when he said, “I always thought it would be better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody.”

As much as we’re attracted to their indomitable character, we get hoodwinked by their façade. They convince us that their success is a reflection of their good nature and humble beginnings. We are taken by their charm and sympathize with their stories. We are duped into judging them for their storytelling, forgetting that they had to take advantage of their lucky breaks and possibly break some rules to get there. We fall in love with them and turn a blind eye and forgive them for breaking the rules. And when we love, we forgive. In essence, we accept them for being a “fake somebody.”

Sometimes there’s no way around the rules, unless of course you are a politician or think you’re God. There are rules in politics, business, school, and even at home. They’re written in rental car contracts, enforced as city bylaws, and politely verbalized by the owner of an ice cream parlor who refuses to replace strawberries with chocolate syrup on our banana split, even when we’re allergic to strawberries. Rules are rules, and they seem to haunt us everywhere we go. There are times I feel that I need an exorcist to expel them.

u The Bureaucracy Bandwagon

We’re all victims of the rules we live by. Just think of all the rules plaguing us that don’t make sense, but yet we follow them unconditionally. We follow them because they’ve always been there and are forced on us. We do things the same old way because that’s the way they’ve always been done. We know we can do a better job without the constraint of rules but we’re obligated to follow them. In government, we call it bureaucracy and anyone who pays taxes and requires services from the government has jumped on the bureaucracy bandwagon. Bureaucracy by definition is an excessively complicated administrative procedure with its authoritarian power structures, suffocating rules, excessive red tape, and toxic politicking. The only guys breaking the rules are those in power. Bureaucracy prevents the rest of us from breaking and changing rules. We seem to accept bureaucracy as a way of life, with the exception of a few adventurous individuals who are always trying to beat the system and the taxman. Bureaucracy is a wrench in the cog wheel forcing its processes to a dead stop.

Some of us are better at breaking rules while others follow them as if they wrote them. Some even get away with breaking rules. Then there are those who get caught and pay the price. Jail is the ultimate price for breaking rules, typically passed by the House and Senate as laws. Laws are established to ground us as a society and maintain peace and order. But which rules within the law are hindering us from living a happy and meaningful life? We’re not here to break rules that help us beat traffic violations and avert criminal offenses, but rather rules that deprive us of life without doing harm to society.

Some people abandon society altogether and contemplate life in its purest form, while they unlock the secrets of living a desired life, like the monk who sold his Ferrari in Robin Sharma’s book. In his quest for a happy and meaningful life, the monk shares a profound revelation: “Start living out of your imagination, not your memory.” I wish I could describe Life Architecture in the poetic words of a monk. Monks are more profound and deliberate with when it comes to life philosophies. Although we may admire their wisdom and envy their simple and docile way of life, don’t forget that we live in a busy and complex world. Ideally, we architect our own lives to achieve our dreams without leaving mainstream society for a monastic life.

While reality and complexity impose significant constraints on our lives, we are going to start living out of our imagination. We are going to take all those wonderful ideas forged in our imagination and develop a Life Blueprint representing our desired future life. Our imagination will dictate a future where our dreams and reality come together.

u Making Your Dreams Come True

While we live in our present-day reality, we dream of a place that we never imagined could be real – a place where our reality and dreams become one world. I read a reminiscent quote: “The possibility of stepping into a higher plane is quite real for everyone. It requires no force or effort or sacrifice. It involves little more than changing our ideas about what is normal.” It was an adventurous older woman who had stepped into a higher plane by seeking a relationship with a younger man. Offering advice to a friend in search of a normal relationship, she said, “Normal is the halfway point between what you want and what you can get.” It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that drives us, while Life Architecture allows us to get there by design. In reality, our effort and motivation determine whether we make our dreams come true, or at least achieve something normal between what we want and what we can get. When we interpret our dreams, we can realize our realities. Life Architecture is the reality of realizing them.

Rock climbers make dreams come true by conquering the highest peaks in the world. In the documentary The Summit, the audience gets a dose of reality of the dilemma faced by a climber. “There are so many reasons to turn around, and only a couple of reasons to continue.” These gutsy gallivanters go beyond the limits of reason and live a life by design while they ignore their fear and risks. This may explain why those who ascend to mountain peaks are half in love with themselves and half in love with oblivion. Regardless, their success depends on the planning and preparation of each rock-climbing expedition with the hope of reaching the top and coming back alive.

An old alpinist best described the sentiments of a climber when he said, “Success is fulfilling the dream, chasing it; sometimes you dream too big, sometimes you don’t dream big enough, sometimes you dream just right.” They may dream about reaching the top, but their success to ascend a mountain peak takes the right preparation, tools and mindset. Their ability to plan and mitigate the risks allows them to succeed. I believe dreaming right is just the reality that we’re after to achieve our own success.

I’m still in awe after watching a National Geographic documentary called Free Solo. I try to put my head into the mindset it takes to climb a 3200-foot vertical rock formation without a rope and safety gear. Apparently, it takes the courage and grip of Alex Honnold who’s the first to scale Yosemite’s El Capitan. A fellow climber analogized it best: “There’s no margin for error. Imagine an Olympic-gold-medal-level athletic achievement that if you don’t get that gold medal, you’re going to die.” It takes courage and fearlessness to make it to the top of El Capitan. As Sir Winston Churchill puts it, “Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision.”

u Breaking the Rules to Achieve Perfection

Someone very familiar with free soloing once said, “If you’re seeking perfection, free soloing is as close as you can get.” Free soloing takes a precisely calibrated mindset, acute concentration, and unwavering confidence. Alex Honnold’s uncanny ability to control his fear and focus on perfectly executing his climb resulted in a breathtaking choreography up the monolithic El Capitan. Honnold also broke all the rules to achieve perfection. The notion of rules is contradictory to the very idea of free soloing. In this ruthlessly unforgiving sport, there really aren’t any rules, written or otherwise. Climbing without ropes goes against the rules of mountain safety, not to mention human logic. The only rule that can’t be broken is the immutable, unyielding rule of gravity. Honnold cheated that one, too.

So how are we going to achieve our own perfection and make our dreams come true? One possibility is to architect our lives by transforming our present day reality into a future one – one that takes our dreams into account. Life Architecture is no longer a theoretical notion but rather a practical paradigm, which just happens to be a means to a conscious and premeditated future. Architecturally speaking, we leverage our current Life Blueprint and transform it into a future Life Blueprint capturing our desired life ambitions.

Greg is about to transform his life. This doesn’t mean that once he completes his future Life Blueprint that his imagination can no longer evolve or he can no longer change his future vision. Rather, Greg will continually assess and perfect his life. And as he becomes wiser and more experienced, he will tweak his future Life Blueprint to reflect new desires and challenges. Nobody gets excited about opening the same Christmas present twice.

u How Much Do You Want to Change?

There is no such thing as a static future. Our lives are in a constant state of flux as the world is changing and we with it. The road we take can quickly change direction as we try to accommodate our evolving needs and desires. These needs and desires are also influenced by the people who have meaning and interest in our lives. Change, and the amount of change, are personal choices. You should be asking yourself, “How much of my life do I want to change?” Maybe the more practical questions are the following: What’s wrong with my life and what do I need to change to make it better? This is going to take deep thought and some soul searching. And when you’re ready, you have to ask yourself: Am I prepared to make a radical change now to realize a better future?

Whether we make small changes or a radical change, we can control change in a contrived and methodical manner. We take the appropriate steps in the proper order at the right time to influence the change we want to make. And sometimes, timing is everything and we do nothing as we wait for the sun, earth, and moon to align and form a syzygy. Other times, we look for a break in life to enact change. Some call it luck. However, luck’s best friend is preparation. The famous French biologist Louis Pasteur said, “Chance favors only the prepared mind.”

We all prepare for the future in our own idiosyncratic and fickle ways as we’re faced with various challenges and opportunities in life. A few of us have learned to embrace or make the most of our opportunities. Our foresight to anticipate and deal with change gives us an advantage in planning our future. A Life Blueprint is a viable planning tool similar to blueprints used by organizations for future planning. It allows us to tackle life’s challenges and leverage opportunities as we make our way toward a desired future. Some of us are just better at planning than others, especially with a blueprint in hand.

When we make the decision to take the lead role in our lives, everything changes. Our attitude and motivation are geared for change. We feel empowered to realize a better future whether we develop our careers, build lasting relationships, spend quality leisure time, focus on health, make retirement a possibility, or just live life to the fullest. We strive for the good times while we mitigate the bad. We seize the day so that tomorrow may be better. Dusko Radovic, a famous children’s book writer and poet, said, “Each new day is either a reward or a punishment for what we did yesterday.” Maybe Dusko’s reward was winning the hearts and minds of the children he wrote for every day of his life.

u Opportunities Don’t Knock on Doors

A better future doesn’t come without challenges in life. Human instinct is to overcome challenges while we overlook opportunities. We expect an opportunity to knock on our door and shout, “Here I am, come and get me!” Some believe that an opportunity will open the door and let itself in, and maybe even crack open a beer and sit next to us on the couch. As a technology geek, I wish life were more like a mobile app where everything is automatically installed for us with digitized opportunities on the screen and a future we’re excited about. All we have to do is select an opportunity that appeals to us. The problem is that we don’t always know what to do with an opportunity, assuming we’re capable of identifying one. Doing nothing saves ourselves a whole lot of time, trouble, and worry as we focus on a static existence and unfulfilling life.

That’s not the way to live life. We’re just bears hibernating in a cave. If we’re in hibernation mode, we’re not about to wake up anytime soon and we’re not going anywhere. Some of us are fine with a slow-paced life while others want to live life to the fullest. When it comes to Life Architecture, there’s no one-size-fits-all to fulfill our personal goals and desires. Otherwise, we’d all be presented with the same opportunities and end up with a carbon copy of the same future. It just so happens that we’re all unique individuals who can use a personal blueprint to custom build and mold our own future. Greg is determined to develop his future with the aid of a future Life Blueprint that lays the foundation for change as his life continues to unfold into his golden years.

I remember when Ann, a family friend as long as I can remember, entered her golden years. Her life journey started in a quaint Adriatic coastal village where her family had lived for centuries. Most of its inhabitants have since left or passed on while the beauty of its surroundings remains in Ann’s heart. This is a place where Ann had spent her childhood and always yearned to return one day. She now cherishes the memories of once living in a village that she still refers to as home.

Ann’s daughter Joyce had updated me not too long ago that her mother was back home “having a good visit with everyone and sounds happy to be just hanging about, which is how life should be when you reach your golden years.” After explaining that we all need some golden years in our life, Joyce acknowledged, “You are absolutely right about the golden years being at all times and for all ages.” Joyce, who by the way spells her name “JOYce,” tells me that her mission is to bring JOY to her family and others.

This made me think about my golden years. Why do we have to wait for the golden years to live a golden life? Come to think of it, why can’t I just hang out and cherish some downtime before my pension kicks in? I’d give my right arm to savor homemade wine and reminisce about life as it once was with a few remaining villagers. I feel like I’m lost in my own mind as I try to find a way to settle into stillness where the beauty and serenity of a country meadow relieves the stress of city life.

u The Golden Years Rule

We should be so lucky as to have the luxury to live our lives at any moment, any place. This would mean that we live by the Golden Years Rule allowing us to fulfill our timeless happiness and make our lives meaningful, regardless of whether we are playing, working, eating, or just being. Funerals and hangovers may ruin the day, but we eventually rebound, console each other, and move on. Your ability to move on is going to determine the quality of the rest of your life more than anything else. As my dear mother used to say, “Everything will endure time but us.” While insured assets – houses, cars, boats, home entertainment systems – provide status and self-indulgence in our lives, there will come a time when we will not be around to enjoy them. It’s love, friendship, excitement, laughter, learning, confidence, nature, special moments, and other positive life experiences that create our happiness and give our lives meaning. As for those insured assets, there’s always a high bidder on eBay who is more than happy to take them off our heir’s hands after we’re gone.

As society burdens us with financial responsibilities, we rely on money to take care of the necessities and a few luxuries in life. Diamonds may be a girl’s best friend, but money is a friend to all of us. Money puts food in our stomachs and a roof over our heads. It’s hard to travel the world if we can’t afford the flight and accommodations. I don’t want to beat this one to death, but many of us fall into the trap of generating money, which ultimately becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy at the expense of living.

Many people come here for the American dream. Their whole life becomes centered on money. A recent immigrant tried to explain the difference between the country he left and the one he immigrated to. “You live to work, we work to live.” I don’t think you can live anywhere without a paycheck. He now lives to work two jobs and can’t find time for a vacation. Any extra money is spent on buying rental properties. I’m sure his children will get a good inheritance one day.

It’s unfortunate that humanity has fallen into the money trap and deprived itself of living. My mother reminded me on several occasions that work will be waiting for us tomorrow. Many of us have forgotten what it is to live life. We sacrifice life for the false security that money brings us. Our hardearned dollar is measured by the growth of our bank balance, but rarely creates happiness. At the end, our happiness isn’t worth the paper that our founding fathers are printed on, unless we’re the inheritors spending it. I think back to the sorry day when we gave up our childhood to become adults. People would do well to pick up on my mom’s keen sense of practical perspective.

Greg reminds me of a man on a mission as he attempts to define a better life with a practical perspective. And none of this is going to require a production accounting book or self-serving rules established by ex-wives. It’s just going to take desire for a balanced life.

u Finding a Balance Between Rules and Living

After a life-changing revelation and appreciation for living in accordance with the Golden Years Rule, it became apparent that I had to break the very rules that we’re expected to follow but prevent us from living our lives. These are the same rules that control what we do in our daily lives and how we do it. If we are to live “out of our imagination” as Sharma so delicately puts it, we have to get rid of personal and societal rules that our subconscious has been trained to follow without consequence. Ideally, there must be a fine balance between rules and living.

I had the pleasure to work for a consulting firm that specialized in helping companies break rules in order to become more efficient and effective. The principals of the firm, the darling twin sisters I mentioned in Chapter 5, were the first to introduce me to what they coined “rule-busting.” It reminds me of that Ghostbusters symbol with a circle and diagonal line going through the word “Rules.”

Life Rules

And please, don’t read the word “Rules” as a verb. It’s “Life Rules” where “Life” is the adjective and “Rules” is the noun. Only kings, governments, and CEOs rule. The rest of us follow rules. Just so there isn’t any confusion, I felt compelled to artistically craft the following logo.

Rules of Life

This doesn’t leave much room for misinterpretation. I can imagine Steve McQueen wearing this as a lapel pin on his leather jacket. McQueen was known as “The King of Cool” and no one was quite sure whether he was a rebel or an actor. Whoever he was, he was described as a “man who pushed the boundaries, broke the rules, and drove through life on his own terms.” McQueen broke rules that everyone else had to follow while he controlled his destiny. “I don’t do rules; I don’t obey them…I live for myself and I answer to nobody.” This pretty well defines who Steve McQueen was and how he lived his life.

Anything can happen in Hollywood where there are actors who play the part, and then those who live it. Even Steve McQueen admitted, “I didn’t know if I was an actor who raced or a racer who acted.” McQueen’s dream was to race cars and motorcycles on and off the screen. “A man becomes what he dreams…in love, in life, and right to the end and dying” were the sentiments of an actor describing his rebel side.

Rebels like Steve McQueen seem to live in the moment and ignore the consequences. It’s in the moment that they lose all humanity. I like what Vin Diesel, an ex-con and street racer in the movie The Fast and the Furious, said, “I live my life a quarter mile at a time. Nothing else matters. For those ten seconds or less, I’m free.” It just may be that rebels and street racers attain their freedom by living on the edge while chasing their dreams. When you’re pushing the edge, eventually you reach it or die trying.

Theo Fleury was a rebel of another sort with a destiny on and off the ice. Fleury became a professional hockey hero who had to overcome many obstacles, including the fact that he was only 5’ 6” and 180 lbs. Despite his size, he was a ferocious and physical player. A sports journalist once wrote, “Grit and determination were his calling cards, even though he had the speed and skill to twice break the 100-point barrier.” That’s hockey jargon. Fleury also faced his own demons in life being sexually abused by his coach as a young hockey player.

Theo Fleury miraculously conquered these obstacles and beat the odds, becoming a hockey superstar. However, his demons would eventually catch up to him as he went into a tailspin before hitting rock bottom, even contemplating suicide. According to his documentary, he remembers putting a gun in his mouth before making a decision to live or die. At that moment, he chose to live and admitted, “I’ve no fuckin’ clue how to live life on life’s terms.” Suicidal people don’t want to kill themselves; they want to kill their pain. Fleury’s rock-bottom world was controlled by drugs, alcohol, and an inner anger that consumed him. This was his way to deal with the pain.

Today, Theo Fleury is on top again embarking on a new life. My own son still brags about golfing with Fleury and his son. I have never met Fleury but I know his story too well. I’m a big fan and commend him on his decision to live and figure out life on his own terms. He’s defined new rules and processes that have given him purpose and self-respect as he rebuilds his life. He’ll always be a rebel and there will never be convention with Theoren Fleury, only controversy and survival his way. I’m sure everything will work out now that he doesn’t have coaches and managers to contend with, while he calls the shots by his rules.

u Rules Come with a Price

There comes a time when we realize that we’ve been following the rules only to pay a price. And if we continue to follow rules, we end up paying a greater price. At least those were the recollections of a recovering alcoholic and lawyer in the movie The Trials of Cate McCall. Cate finally breaks down in defeat. “I put a man in prison for eleven years because I followed the rules. I just let a murderer walk because I followed the rules. And now I lost my kid because I followed the

rules. You know what, fuck the rules! Fuck you and fuck the fucking rules!” Apparently, Cate followed the rules and paid dearly for it. We may be compelled to follow the rules, but let’s consider what’s at stake.

Sometimes we must break rules to do what’s best for us, which also has a price. We just have to figure our which rules to break and what price we’re willing to pay to break them. People around us break rules to get ahead, or at least remain relevant. If we’re not getting ahead, we’re not breaking the right rules. When we break the right rules, we create value in our lives and in the lives of others; when we break or follow the wrong rules, we stand to lose a lot.

Rules are meant to establish the limits of what we can and cannot do, whether we follow rules at work, in school, at the poker table, or in our cars. Our appreciation or criticism of the rules make parking violations and tax assessments popular discussion topics in this modern day. Whoever said “There are two things in life we cannot avoid – death and taxes” was well aware of the somewhat cockamamie demands made by society and the rules it imposes. Society chastises us for breaking the rules, as being wrong or unlawful. Rules aren’t right or wrong, people are.

u It’s Time to Bust Some Rules

We are going to bust all those unnecessary Life Rules that don’t make sense or hinder us from living the good life that we’ve been talking about. We’ve been held hostage by following unnecessary rules and indoctrinated to accept them as mandatory during the course of our lives. Although these rules may have disciplined us from a very young age, the same rules are determined to constrain us until the day we die. They have been inbred into our very being. We have become dominated by these rules and, as a result, developed a false sense of reality. In essence, these rules are self-induced “control mechanisms” that we follow blindly – until now. Wasn’t it the Swedish pop supergroup ABBA that had a hit song about a fool playing by the rules and the winner taking it all? I’m guessing the winner played by his own rules.

Most of us don’t know any other way of living, nor have we developed the open-mindedness to challenge the way that we live our lives. We follow rules as if life is a prison sentence while we prove to be model prisoners in the hope of being released early for good behavior. Then there are those reckless individuals who break laws and end up in prison deservingly. Breaking rules and breaking laws are two different approaches to life, each with its own consequences.

Life can be a complicated proposition and enduring process. Sometimes I wish life was simpler, like it was during the cowboy era. I recently visited a national historic site dedicated to ranching in the Wild West when I turned to my friend and said, “These were the good old days when life wasn’t so complicated.” Being an engineer, he was quick to point out that life has always been complicated. “We just trade one complication for another.” Although ranching was a hard life defined by a laborious survival process, these complications have since been replaced by other complications. Sometimes I wonder how the cowboy would fare in a modern economy demanding to produce bigger, faster-growing cattle using hormones, steroids, and other technological advancements.

No matter where we are and when, there must be a better way to deal with the complications of life. Complications are a part of reality while we live in a world bound by rules that hold us back. If we were only so bold to break those rules and change our lives. It’s not always easy to get the nerve to break rules. But once we start the exercise of breaking rules, it’ll become more natural. We will learn to weigh various outcomes as we confirm what we can and cannot do to create the

life that we want for ourselves. We will start to develop a sense of what is possible. Our imagination will begin to merge with our reality. We will feel the confidence required to unveil our new life processes, and remove unnecessary constraints or the rules that have held us back.

The comedian George Carlin seemed to have his own views on life, and the comedy stage was one place he could share his obscure truths. Someone pointed out that frustration leads to comedy. “I think people should be allowed to do anything they want. We haven’t tried that for a while. Maybe this time it’ll work.” Carlin shared such optimism to overcome his own frustrations with life. We were never quite sure if he was joking. Most comedians go up on stage and tell us some pretty corny stuff for a laugh. But Carlin would bare the truth, and killed all the rules when it came to comedy. I’m sure his candid appeal had more merit than his crafty delivery.

u Getting the Nerve to Break Rules

I’ll never forget the time that the curious George Carlin stood in a concert hall filled to capacity. As everybody anticipated some wisecrack dialogue, he just stared at the audience. I think he was chewing gum to offset the expression of curiosity on his face. The anticipation became more and more unbearable until people broke out in laughter. The laughter overtook their anticipation but Carlin kept staring. After scanning the concert hall from side-to-side and studying his audience, he walked off the stage without muttering a word. That was the show that broke the rules of comedy.

I’m sure that George Carlin never attempted that routine again, but that day he made us laugh wondering why. That was the day Carlin broke all the rules of comedy and left everyone with curiosity. It was a comedian from the 1920s who said, “No price is too high to pay for a good laugh.” I imagine that Carlin thought about the possibility of being booed and heckled, but took a risk that paid off and got a good laugh.

Rules are made to restrict our actions and influence our conduct, either individually or collectively as a group. This is especially true of employees who are expected to follow the rules of the company, both written and unwritten. During my consulting career, I’ve learned that many things in a company are done poorly or not done at all because people follow rules that don’t make sense. Companies refer to these as operational rules, corporate policy, rules of conduct, and the list goes on. We simply call them business rules because they establish the boundaries within which to operate a business. So, what are business rules and what do they have to do with our lives?

What is a Business Rule?

A business rule puts a constraint on the business potential of an organization. This potential cannot be achieved as a result of conformance to corporate standards, policies, and commonly accepted behavior in the workplace. It exercises influence on our behavior and limits our performance as we conduct the business of the organization that we work for.

Then...What is a Life Rule?

A life rule, like a business rule, puts a constraint on our life potential, which cannot be achieved as a result of conformance to the norms of society and its expectations. It exercises influence on our behavior and limits our way of life, otherwise known as our lifestyle.

Rules are nothing more than constraints imposed on us in both the workplace and our personal lives, sometimes for unknown reasons. There are rules coming out of our yin-yang, for lack of a better word. I can’t even go fishing without a license applicable to a specific type of fish for a specific lake during a specific seasonal period. And when I reel it in, I have to worry about quotas, never mind having enough for lunch.

Someone felt a duty one day to save the fish and changed the rules to do so. More than a few maverick fishermen have broken the rules and emptied a lake. All of a sudden, we’re all sport fishermen, with the exception of a few poachers who disrespect nature and rules altogether. There are consequences for breaking rules, and it’s just a matter of time before their insatiable hobby and licenses are suspended. I’ve never been much of an outdoorsman but I always look forward to a fishing trip to the fish market.

At times I feel that I need a license just to step into my office. As employees and contractors, we agree to abide by work policies formalized and governed by a dysfunctional HR group. “I’m too old to be governed by the fear of dumb people” was a sentiment shared by a newsroom director in the political drama television series The News Room. I’m not accusing people of being dumb, but their policies and rules are not always sensible. Unfortunately, deviating from work policies can get us reprimanded or even fired. We’re expected to be model corporate citizens who don’t break company rules. Ironically, corporate executives often break rules for their own self-interests.

Although we have a moral obligation to follow the rules, we should use some good judgement in regard to what rules we follow and how we follow them. Mr. Knebel used his judgement when he asked a student to roll up his sleeves before a biology test only to find cheat notes. Rather than follow the rules and report him to the principal, the teacher had him write the test with his sleeves buttoned down. As punishment, the student had to develop a mock test for the next unit. Thanks to a teacher’s good judgement, the student not only learned his lesson but got a much better grade on the next test.

I remember a former student talking about his favorite teacher in high school. Mr. Weinberger was a German immigrant who understood school protocol but didn’t let it stand in his way or the way of his students. He was a little more moderate than other teachers when it came to school rules. “You have rules, and then you have a whole ton of fun within those rules” was the lesson learned. Mr. W’s students never forgot the fact that rules never spoiled their fun nor their learning. “I like having fun when I’m having fun. I don’t like being told when to have fun.” These were kindred sentiments of a rock climber who founded his own rules and brand of fun, which included hanging off a cliff.

I admire the bold and the brave who take stuffy old rules and give them the “Midas touch,” or should I say the Knebel-Weinberger teaching touch, to effect successful outcomes. People are more apt to follow the rules when there’s something in it for them. Organizations seem to be too preoccupied with their past while they enforce outdated rules to get people to do what they believe is best for business. It’s regrettable executives don’t always know what’s happening in their organizations to understand there are some detrimental rules that do more harm than good. As a consultant, I’ve been privy to suboptimal rules and other constraints that curtail corporate performance. People are indoctrinated to follow bad rules, or don’t follow the rules they should.

u Enforcing Rules Through Governance

Public and private organizations alike refer to the enforcement of rules as governance. Executives and senior staff are hired to govern organizational activities by sanctioning rules and ensuring they are followed. Governance and business rules are inextricably linked. As an organization becomes more proficient at enforcing good rules and eliminating bad ones, the more astute it becomes in conducting its business in a rapidly changing and ever more complex and regulated world. We also have to become more astute in running our lives.

As individuals living in a comparative world of change and complexity, we are encouraged to govern our lives by the Life Rules that we have designed for ourselves. While many rules in our lives have moral and legal implications, others are less binding. Some are not rules at all but a set of norms and guidelines imposed on us by society. These pertain to the common beliefs and values of our society rather than rules that are accepted as a de facto standard.

The only thing standing between us and adopting good rules is a set of beliefs and thinking that presently governs our lives. It’s time to change all that. It’s time to bust some Life Rules! It’s our choice as citizens of society to abide by the rules that we’re obligated to follow like everyone else. We also have a choice to remove and change the ones that have been obstructing our life goals while we create new rules that are required to actually realize our dreams. However, I hope that this qualifies as being responsible citizens. Regardless, we’ll be taking responsibility for our lives.

In Chapter 5, a table was presented outlining the Life Rules that Greg feels compelled to follow. I can think of a few more Life Rules, but let’s assess some of the key Life Rules that affect Greg’s life today. We’ll use the following symbols for fun to identify which Life Rules Greg should keep, break, or change.

Keep, Break, or Change LIFE RULES

Keep means it is a rule that we cannot break or we should keep it because it enhances our lives

Break means it is a rule that we can break or remove

Change means it is a rule that we cannot break but we can slightly adjust, vigorously modify, or possibly introduce a new one

Greg has to make some decisions here. So, which rules should he keep? Which rules should he break? And which rules should he change so that he’s not hindered in his quest for a new life? I’m sure that he’ll keep the good rules around. The following table outlines the Life Rules that Greg has decided to revisit or break altogether. Two columns have been added to the table from Chapter 5 to indicate which life rule is breakable, and whether Greg should keep, break, or change it.

Which Rules Should Greg Break?

Life Rule

Family

Should we keep it, break it or change it? Is it breakable?

Work

Leisure

My children will live with me every other week

I cannot negotiate directly with my ex-wife in matters concerning the well-being of our children and finances

I must have a life partner to fulfill my emotional, physical, and intellectual needs

I must work two jobs to earn a living

I must pursue an education to get a better job

I must go out on the town on weekends, including my favorite pub, to release stress at the beat of a good band and meet women

I must play the sports that are a big part of my lifenamely hockey, baseball, and squash - to fulfill my competitive nature

I must regularly watch sports on the air, follow sports news, and attend sporting events with friends to fulfill my professional sports interests

I must regularly explore the outdoors, take my kids camping and hiking, and retreat to the family cabin for relaxation

I am not capable or smart enough to go to college or another post-secondary institution to land a “real” career

I am too old to go to school for a better job opportunity

I must get an education to meet the expectations of the woman in my life

I must work out (exercise) to feel healthy and good about myself

I must follow a strict diet to keep trim and feel healthy

I must grow as an individual through personal life experiences and learning from mistakes in both my personal and work life

I must follow the news channel, as well as watch stimulation and educational documentaries, to keep abreast of current events in the world

Greg’s rules fall into six different areas of his life – Family, Work, Leisure, Education, Physical (Health), and Intellectual. Interestingly, all these rules are breakable. The fact that they are breakable offers opportunities, and gives Greg the flexibility to make many changes in his life.

In the last column of the table, Greg has reached a verdict as to which rules he is going to keep, break, or change. There are, of course, some rules that are in Greg’s favor and would have negative implications if they were to be broken. This will become clearer as Greg continues his Life Architecture journey. Greg should be asking himself whether he is ready and willing to break or change his Life Rules.

Greg’s Life Rules have been so ingrained into his psyche over time that they are now part of his being. I’m sure that he never thought about breaking rules that are sacred to him, nor would he know how even if he wanted to. This may be attributed to the way that we’ve been conditioned to think – a habitual outcome of a parentally-sponsored conditioning process from the time we were children.

Greg has never been a big fan of change. Sometimes I wonder if he might still be married had he made changes. Breaking rules is like breaking a finger – you can still function but you have to adjust. Although your range of motion is limited for a short time, with some exercise your range of flexion and extension will return to normal or close to it. Greg believes that getting rid of some of these rules is more like removing a nasty wart on his finger. He doesn’t have to make drastic changes that disrupt his life, but rather moderate and controlled changes to get his life on the right track.

There are people in much worse circumstances than Greg whose lives are so screwed up that life feels more like a ruptured appendix. They work very hard to overcome hardships, give up altogether, or look ahead for a miracle. I admit, in Greg’s case, there are a few things that are ruptured and it’s time to stop the bleeding. I promise that he won’t need the help of a surgeon to achieve a successful outcome. He’ll do just fine with the right Life Architecture coach by his side.

Greg must first put things in perspective and believe in himself before he starts making changes. Most of the rules that he addictively follows are self-inflicted and it’s time to get rid of the bad drug habit. Some rules are more restrictive than others, and change can be a dramatic experience. Greg will be dissolving the budding little warts before removing the big nasty ones that have infested his life for some time. Even in baseball, you have to hit a few singles before you hit a home run to win the game. Greg may have to hit a few singles before he hits that home run out of the park.

u Greg’s 16 Life Rules

Greg has been a slave to innumerable Life Rules, which continue to proliferate in all aspects of his life and may be just as contagious as warts. However, he will focus on the 16 Life Rules that are most inhibiting in his life. It seems preposterous and somewhat of an anomaly that all 16 Life Rules, which Greg has identified, can be broken. It’s rather ironical that he never thought that he could break any of his Life Rules, whereas all 16 are breakable. It’s also about time that someone drew attention to this universal phenomenon and vigorously exposed it.

So, which Life Rules should Greg keep for old times’ sake that make life worth living, break because they’ve been shackled to his ankle like a ball and chain and have kept him prisoner, or change because they have merit with a little adjustment required? We can spend a lot of time analyzing Greg’s Life Rules inventory, but we’re going to cut to the chase and briefly examine his new life rule declarations. In the following table, Greg has rationalized these new Life Rules in support of a future Life Blueprint.

Greg’s New Life Rules

Life Classification

Original Life Rule

My children will live with me every other week

Family

I cannot negotiate directly with my ex-wife in matters concerning the well-being of our children and finances

Should we keep it, break it or change it?

New Life Rule Declaration

I will keep this rule. This rule has already been decided by the courts as part of a custody arrangement between my ex-wife and me. We’re both in agreement with this arrangement.

I will change my tactic and accommodate my ex-wife in matters involving our children. We will work through our lawyers to define the parameters of joint custody. I’ll also respect and do a few favors for her in exchange for “extra” and “unscheduled” time with the children.

I must have a life partner to fulfill my emotional, physical, and intellectual needs

I must work two jobs to earn a living

Work

I must pursue an education to get a better job

I must go out on the town on weekends, including my favorite pub, to release stress at the beat of a good band and meet women

I must play the sports that are a big part of my life - namely hockey, baseball, and squash - to fulfill my competitive nature

Leisure

I must regularly watch sports on the air, follow sports news, and attend sporting events with friends to fulfill my professional sports interests

I must regularly explore the outdoors, take my kids camping and hiking, and retreat to the family cabin for relaxation

I will change from a “love at first sight” to a “mutually get to know” philosophy. I will try different dating agencies, develop my social network, and give myself time to meet the right person whose needs I will fulfill as well.

I will break this rule and work one job that allows me to earn a comfortable living, while it offers me the flexibility to accommodate my children on days they are with me.

I will break this rule because I do not aspire to have a career. I’d rather have a job that provides me a comfortable income and reduces my stress, but yet is challenging and fulfilling.

I will change this rule to expand and develop my social circles – including singles clubs, neighborhood pubs, country bars, sports socials and more – where I’ll possibly meet my life partner. The King’s Head is a casual outlet which provides music and relaxation.

I will change this rule because I can no longer play certain sports like hockey and squash after having a hip replacement. I will replace squash with racquetball since it has less impact on my hip. This will be an easy transition since I played competitive racquetball in the past. I will continue to play in a mixed softball league.

I will keep this rule. I’ve been a sports enthusiast since I can remember and enjoy debating with the best of them. I’m devoted to pro sports, and attending football and hockey games just makes it real and keeps me current.

I will change this rule because I also want to see the rest of the world and do things that I’ve always dreamed about. I want to travel to far off places, take up boating & snowmobiling, go deep sea fishing, and do the things I’ve always wanted to try but never had the time or money.

Should we keep it, break it or change it? Original Life Rule Life Classification New Life Rule Declaration

I am not capable or smart enough to go to college or another post-secondary institution to land a “real” career

Education

I am too old to go to school for a better job opportunity

I must get an education to meet the expectations of the woman in my life

Physical (Health)

Intellectual

I must work out (exercise) to feel healthy and good about myself

I must follow a strict diet to keep trim and feel healthy

I must grow as an individual through personal life experiences and learning from mistakes in both my personal and work life

I must follow the news channel, as well as watch stimulation and educational documentaries, to keep abreast of current events in the world

I will break this rule because I’m as intelligent as the next guy, but don’t desire an office job. Besides, I did go back to school and got my production accounting diploma. (Greg had confused hard work with intelligence. In high school, he focused on sports and did enough to get by while career friends studied and made school a priority.)

I will break this rule because age has nothing to do with an education. I will go back to trade school and get my building maintenance certificate. After working in property management for the past several years, I’d like to use this experience and pursue a better paying job as a building maintenance supervisor. This will provide the financial foundation I need.

I will break this rule because what I do to earn a living is my choice. This time, my life partner has to accept me for who I am. I’m not the glitzy guy to chase money and climb corporate ladders. I’m a simple guy who wants to be a good father and life partner to someone who deserves me.

I will keep this rule. I have always worked out and been a health nut. This is more important now that I’m older.

I will change this rule at this stage of my life. I need to eat healthy and in moderation as a middle-aged man past his prime, rather than adhere to a past strict diet and consume protein supplements to build muscle.

I will change this rule to proactively develop my life and interpersonal skills, while I consciously excel in both my personal and work life. I’m on a mission to build a new life and invest in myself through self-development courses, seminars, books, professional associations, etc.

I will change this rule to participate in discussions about current events, community affairs, and other intellectually-inclined topics rather than sit on the sidelines. I may even attend a political rally or community meeting. I will search out best sellers and recommended readings on psychology, philosophy, and a few history topics. Although I’m only a regular guy, I want to have the knowledge and confidence to step into a crowded room.

Why do we want to round up all the rules influencing our lives only to scrutinize which ones to break? To start with, we should be aware of the rules hindering us. This is our opportunity to become conscious of what we’re doing and why. And just maybe we can figure out where we want to go and what we need to do to get there. It’s time to live life consciously and deliberately. I’m just trying to wake you up from a half-baked reality. As a coach, I believe it’s my job to wake people up and help them find their purpose.

u Successful People Break Rules

I don’t like to generalize, but a high percentage of successful people consciously break rules. I’m sure that they ask themselves questions such as the following: How do I get ahead in business, how do I balance a great career with family, what do I need to do to have a comfortable retirement, how do I get to a place of satisfaction? Many will tell you that they have a plan or exploit opportunities, and sometimes even get lucky. People who are successful take advantage of everything that life has to offer, and break rules diligently or at least bend them enough to get what they want. I think Life Architecture is full of compromises.

I’ve never met Robin Sharma. It’s on my to-do list. Sharma just may be the master rule breaker of all time, most notably for his book Family Wisdom which sold over a million copies when most publishers couldn’t see it as a bestseller. I’m sure Sharma ignored the naysayers and publishers whose job it is to understand their readership. They failed to read the market and the fact that Sharma wasn’t promoting just another book but rather a life philosophy with a great story to go with it. He wanted the world to know that “a life well lived is all about reaching for your highest and your best,” and the public was ready to receive his message. Sharma not only broke the rules of publishing, but became a world-renowned public speaker as a result of his life-inspiring books.

Ironically, Sharma’s monk broke the rules when he sold his Ferrari. He did it to free himself from society. It intrigues me that the guys who break rules are the same guys who desperately want something. They find a way to break rules to get what they want, and after awhile, breaking rules becomes second nature to them. It’s apparent that the benefits outweigh the costs. As for risk, they ask themselves a simple question: What’s the worst thing that’s going to happen to me? If there are no casualties or detention hall, they just go for it!

u Breaking Rules Never Won Anyone a Popularity Contest

Breaking rules goes against the very grain of what society teaches us. Although we may be prepared to break rules, we have to live among those who blindly follow rules, whether they’re warranted or lack legitimacy. Sometimes, in order to break rules, we conspire with others who are willing to break rules with us. I don’t remember anyone winning a popularity contest by breaking rules unless they were in a gang. There are often times when we break rules without others knowing. And my favorite rules to break? Unwritten rules of course. I find it much easier to break rules when they’re not written down or out of print. But again, I’m not here to win a popularity contest.

The reality is that most people won’t break rules no matter how insignificant or ridiculous they are. This makes it tougher for the rest of us, especially if they’re monitoring and watching us. We must take extra care what rules we break, while we time their execution. No one wants to be caught by a surveillance camera. We instinctively become masterful negotiators by forming close relationships with those who endorse our rule-breaking habits. Savvy rule breakers were most likely politicians in a past life.

We all have a bag of tricks but need to build personal relationships to make things happen. I’ll usually grab a coffee or lunch with a work colleague to break the ice before I break the rules. I’m perpetually building relationships and testing the limits to see how far I can go and how people will react. Besides, I can’t always break rules without engaging others. It’s much easier breaking

rules when they don’t impact anybody but you. However, sometimes we may have to break rules that affect the masses, especially if we’re trying to effect change in an organization.

u Living In a Forgiving World

We live in a very forgiving world. It is one where we try to get away with things. And a lot of times, we do. We make an excuse, omit a fact, tell a little white lie, or fabricate an entire story. Sometimes we’ll tell a truth nobody wants to hear, especially when we have a good reason or no choice. We live in a world where we defy rules to overcome obstacles and get what we want. At the end of the day, we get away with it only because people are ready to forgive and forget. In some cases, they don’t even care that we don’t follow the rules, as long as no one gets hurt. However, when we cross paths with unforgiving people, we may end up breaking more rules to compensate for their unforgivingness.

Well, at least I thought it was a forgiving world until a feisty old Irishman priding himself on his project management skills begged to differ on this point. Don’t you just hate it when you write a book and some guy comes out from left field to change your outlook? I must agree, Eugene makes a good point on this whole concept of forgiveness. This will help us when we go around breaking rules. The first to benefit from forgiveness is the one who forgives, not the forgiven. The ability to forgive is going to determine the quality of the rest of our lives more than anything else.

After working with Eugene on a couple of delicate IT projects and watching him struggle to overcome project bureaucracy only to eventually be punted by an unforgiving manager, I can sympathize with his concern and integrity. It’s a pity that sometimes those who call the shots are blinded by their own prejudices and inadequacies. It reminds me of J. Jonah Jameson, the editor of the Daily Bugle, who resents Spiderman out of sheer jealousy and is more interested in running a smear campaign than acknowledging Spiderman’s crime-fighting triumphs to keep the city safe.

Eugene was accustomed to challenging the establishment and breaking rules for the good of mankind. He did so methodically and meticulously. That made Eugene somewhat of a “mensch” –someone who’s responsible, disciplined, and whom you can count on. Eugene worked hard to do good and refused to put up with people’s incompetence and insecurities. “I try to be what I want. Those who are what others want them to be, don’t protest.” You can always count on Eugene to make a stand and protest, and fight for what he believes in, regardless of whether he loses.

u Are You a Mensch?

I’m trying to think of who I know willing to take a stand and do something? Captain Steve Trevor comes to mind. I like something Trevor tells Wonder Woman: “If you see something wrong happening in the world, you can either do nothing, or you can do something. And I already tried nothing.” Sometimes the only wrong decision is to do nothing. We tend to sit back and expect a miracle. When we sit back, we don’t make a difference in our lives or the lives of others. In the words of Eugene: “I don’t mind losing. You just have to show up.” Showing up is the first step to being responsible, disciplined, and someone whom people can count on.

Before losing his job, Eugene proclaimed his dismay for the company’s project management practices. He felt he had to break rules to ensure his own projects were delivered successfully.

He took it personally when he wasn’t allowed to be successful, especially after making a commitment to his business stakeholders who had entrusted him to deliver a new system. He didn’t believe people outside of business stakeholder positions should approve his project charters. This only extended timelines and created unnecessary overhead, not to mention missed deadlines. But Eugene dug his own grave when he didn’t care what his less than competent boss thought. So, the boss lady turfed both him and his practical ideas. This was a form of totalitarianism which reduced project managers to subservient faceless masses.

The fact that he was prevented from doing his job was a reflection of the corporate culture and management’s inability to do something about it. Although the company was unwilling to forgive Eugene for his ethics and commitment to his clients, I don’t think Eugene ever forgave the company for letting down their clients. I’m convinced that it was Eugene’s boss who was unforgiving, while Eugene was guilty of not supporting her private agenda and ego. The irony is that Eugene didn’t get a chance to stay a little longer because the boss lady left the company soon after for missing her own performance targets, probably as a result of firing competent project managers.

Eugene was quite adamant about his philosophy. “Screw the damn paycheck and follow your moral principles.” Simply put, follow your own path wherever it takes you. In Eugene’s case, it took him to the poorhouse. My advice to take the money and run fell on deaf ears. I’m sure he considered my advice borderline insulting although a little diplomacy hasn’t hurt anyone. As consultants, we have only our reputations and once we accept failure, word gets around – so does failure. Who wants to live life as a failure? I know Eugene doesn’t. He’d rather be ejected than dejected. Either way, Eugene couldn’t be successful. However, losing the paycheck hurt, even with a wife who sold home appliances for a living.

u Dare to Be Different in a Finicky World

After all the knockdowns over the years, Eugene has realized that human nature is finicky and we live in a finicky world. Sure, the world can be forgiving, but it can also be resentful. Or, perhaps I should say that people can be resentful. Often failure is the accepted norm. And when it comes to guys who challenge the norm, there is no mercy for them. Eugene summarized it best: “You can fail provided that you fail like everyone else, basically, doing it their way – the standard way, the accepted way. When you fail, you’re no different than they are. But when you succeed, boy, that pisses them off.” I’ve worked with some average-performing and envious coworkers, and can relate to behavior where politics and game playing are more important than delivering. Come to think of it, I don’t remember anyone getting fired for not delivering, but only for losing the petty games as in Eugene’s case. Eugene explains, “If you dare to be different and do it your way, even if you are successful, you will meet resentment and the rewards will certainly be less than the rewards for failing like everyone else. It’s because you didn’t comply. You dared to be different. And the system doesn’t like that.” In a nutshell, those who fail like everyone else are rewarded, while those who succeed on their own virtues are presumed outcasts and sent home.

It seems a little backward to me. Are you willing to stand up for something you believe in? Do you dare to be different? “Be careful, because they don’t like it. They’ll resent it,” says Eugene. When you’re different, they don’t necessarily like you, nor do they dislike you. They’re just afraid of you. Sooner or later, “different” scares people. I think Eugene scared off a few people by taking a stand. He’ll tell you to take a stand and do it your way. When you do it your way, you take responsibility for your life. And the best part is that you get to experience life on your own terms with the integrity of your mind.

u Nothing is More Sacred Than the Integrity of Your Mind

The famous American author, philosopher and lecturer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, said, “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” This quote implies that the only thing that holds us back from reaching our potential is the vitality of our mind. It also implies that we shouldn’t allow others to make decisions for us or prevent us from making decisions we feel are honest and honorable. Emerson believed that having integrity is the absolute goal of human existence. When “nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind,” all values, principles, and morals become the essence of one’s inner core.

André Gide, a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, said, “It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.” Although unemployed, Eugene has no problem living with himself. He blames it on integrity and relies on his moral judgement to guide him through life. He has the moral compass we discussed in Chapter 6. However, success comes at a price, sometimes by sacrificing our integrity and the truth. We are continuously driven by our motive to appeal to the masses, or to achieve something that is at the core of our ambitions whether it be power, fame, wealth, and so on. We are willing to ignore our values, for at least a short time, in the hope that people will like us. Unfortunately, we live in a society that awards us for success, regardless of how we achieve it. And we’ll do anything to succeed, even if it means throwing our integrity and the truth under the bus. God, how can we live with this truth hidden in our hearts?

It was the once-popular comedian Bill Cosby who said, “I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” Eugene knew that all too well and failed to please two opposing audiences – the guys who told him how to do it and those who just wanted it done. The fact that he had three decades of experience helping organizations implement information technology and deliver business solutions was irrelevant. Eugene was aware of the fact that if he was forced to follow the wrong protocol, he would fail miserably. Success had become a conflict of interest.

Herman Melville was uncompromising when it came to his writing. “It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” Melville’s novel Moby Dick was a commercial failure and out of print during his death in 1891, but during the 20th century, its reputation as a Great American Novel was resurrected. His unique narrative prose was later recognized and Moby Dick would become the greatest book of the sea ever written. It was Melville’s literary conduct that eventually led to his immortality. I hope Eugene doesn’t have to wait so long to become famous.

People like Eugene represent what’s right in this world and are guided by principles of integrity to do the right thing. He’s not interested in what others think or believe, especially people like his ex-boss who refuse to have their illusions destroyed and seem quite content living a lie. These are the same people who are living in an illusion based on someone else’s beliefs. Eugene once advised me, “Don’t follow them into the abyss; stay aloof and rise above it. Let it be. Stay true to yourself and have tranquility within.” The message was simple: Take control of your life and forget everybody else’s disillusions.

u Don’t Let Others Push You Around

It’s the righteous adversary in a documentary called The Push who’s manipulated into doing the wrong thing but stands up to extreme peer pressure. In fact, he’s part of an experiment to

see whether or not an ordinary person could be psychologically coerced into justifying the killing of another human being. By doing the moral thing and refusing to commit murder, he assures us, “When certain situations present themselves, do think about it before you act upon it and think, ‘What am I doing?’” The narrator explains the human tendency to follow the masses and succumb to peer pressure. “It’s like we’re handed someone else’s script of how to live, but to carry out their beliefs and achieve their ambitions. But by understanding this, understanding how we can be manipulated, we can be stronger, we can say no.” Sometimes saying no makes it easier to live with ourselves. If you don’t like the script, you can always be the director of your own movie. And the only one you have to please is yourself!

In the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the suave but whimsical teenager who takes the day off from school has life pretty well figured out and isn’t about to wait for immortality – or the principal’s blessing. Ferris Bueller advises us that “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” However, we do have to take responsibility for our actions. After destroying his father’s prized Ferrari, Ferris’s buddy Cameron has to face the music and take responsibility. “I gotta take a stand. I gotta take a stand against him. I am not gonna sit on my ass as the events that affect me unfold to determine the course of my life. I’m gonna take a stand. I’m gonna defend it. Right or wrong, I’m gonna defend it.”

Winners take a stand. They do things their own way and don’t let others push them around or hold them back. They don’t carry resentment because they live by their principles and always try to do the right thing. They operate of their own accord. According to the intern in a De Niro flick, “You’re never wrong for doing the right thing.” Winners achieve the right things that those resentful souls never could on account of poor attitude, character flaws, and lack of tenacity.

u Doing the Right Thing

Attitude, character, and tenacity compose the ethical hallmark of an individual. Doing the right thing always, even when no one is looking, takes tenacity and courage to be true to oneself. Such people are confident within themselves for they make decisions by which they live. They believe we shouldn’t allow others to do our thinking for us. That is not to suggest they do not listen to the opinions of others, but that having considered such opinions, they make a decision and take responsibility for their decision and resulting actions. This implies that another trait of ethical conduct is being prepared to listen to the opinions of others and to seek to understand their positions. Not to listen and consider differing opinions is the result of prejudice or a closed mind. And there is truly nothing as wasted as an open mind.

Leading organizations that genuinely want to make change for the better appreciate open-mindedness and go-getters like Eugene. And why wouldn’t they appreciate someone who’s committed to do the right things for their shareholders. Unfortunately, many companies have become accustomed to people who are too afraid and incapable of raising the bar. These people live the lives of timid mediocrity, fooling themselves that they are happy. They have bought into what Friedrich Nietzsche described as the religion of comfortableness where mediocrity has become an accepted norm, and even rewarded.

This is where the Eugenes of the world break the rules and wreak havoc. They don’t tolerate mediocrity. It’s against the very fabric of who they are, and they’ll fight it to the bitter end. You do know the difference between mediocrity and greatness, don’t you? The simple answer is fighting for it. Eugene will tell you that it’s fighting against mediocrity. Mediocrity is a natural tendency

and it doesn’t take much to get there. It happens naturally. But if you want to make it beyond mediocrity, then you’re going to have to develop the courage to fight for it.

u Eugene’s Eulogy

“Mediocrity is where they, the majority, live. I don’t like it. It’s not where I want to be. Anyone can be a fair-weather sailor. I’m an all-weather sailor. When push comes to shove, can you handle it? It comes down to endurance and tenacity. Tenacity requires vision. You have to have a goal, a target. More so, you have to have direction because the end state can change. Expect it to. The right direction will get you close. Your original target will then be a waypoint* en route to the future. This type of philosophy gives your life and life’s work an extensible Life Architecture. There is no real end. It proceeds as part of a continuum. Life is like that, as we experience it.”

* Typically a navigator will identify some recognizable waypoints, such as a mountain peak or dried-up riverbed, as he travels to his destination. Such waypoints verify his actual course and progress.

Whoever gives Eugene’s eulogy one day should be sure to borrow his profound words. As Eugene was sharing his life philosophies, he identified the only two roads that we can take: the one that everyone else takes, and the one that we make for ourselves and take alone. We formulate the vision to make that road and build the tenacity to take it all the way to the end. We should expect a few roadblocks and detours, but we will adapt and conquer. Whoever said “A person often meets adversity on the road he took to avoid it” was well aware of the ongoing construction signs.

We have all heard stories of successful people who have achieved the unthinkable. Such superhuman achievements are about raising the bar. Successful individuals ignore resentment and reject the status quo. They deliberately break rules and adopt unconventional methods to get what they want. These life mavericks do what we can only fantasize as we read their superhuman biographies.

Innovative internet gurus like the young programmer who quit his company to launch Facebook comprise a new breed of business leaders. My daughter’s favorite is the online auctioneering entrepreneur that she used as the topic for her school Powerpoint presentation. His genius to invent eBay removed barriers of buying and selling online by successfully governing a complex set of rules – making payment upfront, delivering merchandise on a timely basis, providing full disclosure on the condition of the merchandise, and so on – allowing the auction website to selfregulate within its own convoluted boundaries.

There’s no end to the modern internet craze and the people who strive to make our lives easier. When I think of online shopping, I can’t but think of the Amazon guy who started out of a garage with his online bookstore to become one of the world’s largest internet retailers. I suspect his parents’ garage is now used to park a couple of Tesla sedans. These inventors and business magnates continue to change our world in ways that we never dreamed of. An inventor once said, “That’s what people do – discover then destroy.” Hopefully, they discover how to improve people’s lives while they destroy carbon emissions.

u Breaking Conventional Wisdom

There are innovators and rule breakers in every corner of the world, including the corner I live in where a couple of disgruntled online poker players became frustrated with the internet’s inability to manage poker payment transactions. They broke the rules and started their own

company to alleviate their frustrations and those of the guys on the other side of the poker table. Success, coincidentally, seems to follow the rule breakers. These are the game changers who couldn’t have dreamed their success without eliminating certain obstacles and introducing new ideas in a market that we didn’t know existed. They are willing to break the rules of conventional wisdom, not to mention the rules of conventional business. I’m sure a lot of people thought that they were fools until the world embraced their ideas with enthusiasm and turned them into billionaires overnight.

Many successful entrepreneurs break rules and challenge traditional business thinking in order to take advantage of an opportunity. These people are no different in their personal lives. Their success comes from doing things that are uncomfortable or seem too risky by others. “You have to understand that the only way you can succeed is through making decisions – good ones or bad ones” was one entrepreneur’s stance. I think of all the famous actors who made the decision to chase their Hollywood dreams and risked everything.

I’m not sure why I attribute risk to Hollywood. Maybe it’s the fact that so many rich and famous actors risked everything they had to get there. Many of them started with nothing and ended up with everything they could have dreamed of, including being appreciated. One of the Ringling brothers said, “Nothing so discourages a performer as an utter lack of appreciation.” I have no doubt that Hollywood and the moviegoing public appreciate their perils, fortunes, and blockbuster performances. The public has an appetite for these kind of “rise and fall” narratives.

The zany daredevil Super Dave Osbourne was quite familiar with risk. “Risks are one thing, insanity is another. You’ve gotta take risks or you’ll go nowhere.” He became a comedian and pretended to do stunts that go disastrously awry and result in the appearance of grievous bodily injury. He stayed away from dangerous stunts altogether since it wasn’t worth the risk. Unlike Super Dave, we can’t hide behind a comedy act to avoid risks. Sometimes we have to take calculated risks, only after we have weighed the odds and confirmed the reward is worth the risk.

Ernest Hemingway appraised the significance of risk when he said, “The only value we have as human beings is the risks we are willing to take.” Mastering life is about balancing risk and reward. Many investors use a risk/reward ratio to compare the expected returns of an investment to the level of risk undertaken. An investment in a Life Architecture can reap a rewarding life while moderating the risks. Before we take risks, however, we must evaluate the boundaries of our comfort zone in order to manage them.

u Stepping Outside Your Comfort Zone

Our comfort zone keeps us safely confined within the reality we’ve created for ourselves based on our limiting false beliefs. Some of us go through life hoping to safely make it to death. We accept what’s familiar, while we dislike change. So, we push the familiar until it starts working against us. If we are to rid ourselves of limiting subconscious beliefs that have restricted our progress, we must step outside of our comfort zone. I tell people that have gotten too comfortable and stuck in their lives that they don’t have to be uncomfortable forever, only as long as it takes to get something done, at which time they can step right back into their comfort zone and relax. We don’t have to be actors to step out of our comfort zone. We live in two opposing worlds – one where all we’re really doing is being comfortable; the other where we’re trying to get ahead by being self-sufficient, transitioning to survival mode, and constantly seeking to reach our limits. We’re expected to step up while we step out of our comfort zone when we’re

least ready. We temporarily leave our comfort zone to make a few things happen in the time it takes to do something life-changing that we’ve mapped out in our future Life Blueprint. When Michelangelo was painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the movie The Agony and the Ecstacy, Pope Julius II asked, “When will you make an end?” to which Michelangelo responded, “When I am finished!” I rather think of our lives as masterpieces. The thing that tests us the most is the time it takes to get something done the way it needs to be. It may very well be that we’re stuck in our current Life Blueprint because we got a little too comfortable and lazy, we lack confidence, or we just don’t know better. It was Alexander Suvorov, the last Generalissimo of the Russian Empire, who warned us against comfort: “The more comfort, the less courage there is.” Just because something is hard to do doesn’t mean that we can’t do it. We just need a little less comfort and more courage. Our lives unfold in proportion to our courage. I’m not sure how many of us have achieved something big, new, or worthwhile from within our comfort zone, but sometimes we have to find the courage to step outside our comfort zone and risk ridicule and failure to get what we want. Stepping outside of our comfort zone is a sort of detoxification from getting too comfortable.

Once we decide to step outside our comfort zone, and outside the comfort zones of others, we are under the scrutiny of public opinion. This is when we can do extraordinary things which others can only hope for. It takes a great leap of faith to step outside our comfort zone, which others may consider irresponsible or selfish, until we succeed of course, and then we’re brilliant! Watching someone else take initiative and step out of their comfort zone can be quite upsetting to someone who’s spent a lifetime building a solid case for why they can’t. As long as we stay inside the familiar, risk-free comfort zone of our present reality, we’ll stay asleep while we can only dream of what we could have done.

“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone,” according to an author who had Conversations with God. I’m sure Neale Donald Walsh stepped out of his comfort zone, or story as he calls it, when he wrote his book. By stepping out of our comfort zone, we gain the freedom to remove obstacles and conquer fears that have held us back, whether overcoming a spiritual struggle or making an impression on the world. Fears not faced become our limits.

Boris Becker mastered the grammar of the game and made an ever-lasting impression on the tennis world when he became the youngest ever Grand Slam singles champion at seventeen years of age. Becker’s tenet had always been that “you can prevent losing if you go out of your comfort zone.” A sports enthusiast once said that Boris can make even the best, better. His relentless efforts to be the best meant that he had to put his fears aside and focus on the game.

We continue to live a small life because we’re afraid. I have always believed that we have to choose a moment in our lives, even one, to not be afraid. So, why not choose that moment now? If you’re afraid of doing something, do it anyway and I promise you that your confidence will soar. And it will keep soaring as you eliminate your fears one by one. Pretty soon you’ll have the confidence of a daredevil, and you won’t need a motorcycle to get it. Don’t let your fears pin you down.

One of the greatest daredevils of all time, Evel Knievel, stepped out of his comfort zone every time he did a motorcycle jump. He admitted, “Anybody can jump a motorcycle. The trouble begins when you try to land it.” He could hardly breathe and faced his own fears while he tried to settle his butterflies. He couldn’t wait to get his jump over with, ideally without falling, so that he could breathe again. Knievel’s son credits his father’s beliefs in his own abilities to have an affect on his own life, basically to get the nerve to go through with his jumps.

u I Dare You, Go Above Your Nerve

It was the American poet Emily Dickinson who poetically wrote “If your Nerve, deny you – Go above your Nerve.” I dare you, go above your nerve. Fight the urge to remain complacent or silent about any differences you feel in your heart. Yes, I said fight it. Otherwise, you’ve given up before you’ve even started. You’re using your fears and insecurities as excuses and in a way that society has intended them to be used. Society has the expectation that you will become complacent and follow. “Someone who believes in everything scares me even more than somebody who believes in nothing” was a well-founded observation by an academic who took an anti-establishment stance. I suggest that you develop the courage and get the nerve to stand up against societal norms and chase your own aspirations. You’ll feel liberated while your personal intuition is revitalized. Rise above the tainted thoughts and preconceived opinions you’ve formed without doing the due diligence on what it is that you want from life. We are on this earth for a brief time. Don’t you think it’s time to take control of our life rather than have others control it?

Everyone has fears, insecurities, and doubts. Even the pop diva Lady Gaga alluded to her own feelings of perplexity while overcoming them to become a superstar. “You have the freedom to pull the superstar out of yourself that you were born to be. We are all born superstars.” I have a tough time believing Lady Gaga had any inner discord when I see her wearing those outlandish costumes in her “out-there” music videos. Many superstars start out as regular people who craft their own super stardom by conquering their fears and insecurities.

People fear what they don’t understand. We must make a conscious effort to conquer our fears and insecurities before they incapacitate us. Sometimes we’re forced to get past our fears. And once we’ve made the commitment, there’s no going back. A Wall Street whistleblower determined to take down a reputable investment firm for fraud, and fearing for his life, summarized it best: “You’ve reached the point of no return where you can’t stop. The easiest way out is forward. You can’t go back because you left too much risk on the table.”

I’m sure that Knievel would have postponed his jump over a record thirteen buses at London’s Wembley Stadium if he could have, especially when he didn’t get his gear box from New Jersey in time to make the jump. A professional skateboarder, Mike Vallely, puts Knievel’s dilemma in perspective: “When you walk the plank, you don’t turn around and walk back. When you walk the plank, you jump, for better or worse. Sometimes you find out when you jump off the plank, maybe it’s not as bad as you thought it would be.” In Knievel’s case, it was bad enough to land him in the hospital. He had a job to do and ignored his fears.

When fear is near, it’s human nature to crawl into our comfort zone and avoid it altogether. However, we don’t always have a choice but to step out of our comfort zone. We’ve all heard stories of the hero who rescues an accident victim from a burning car not knowing if he’ll escape the explosion. I was recently forced out of my comfort zone when my wife handed me her purse at the mall while she tried on a new dress. Most of us reluctantly leave our comfort zone knowing that it won’t last forever. We jump out and come right back in as we fulfill our missions and goals. It’s always a relief to return to a place of comfort, unless of course we’re having too much fun being uncomfortable.

u Shy Away from Shyness

Our success as human beings requires us to get the nerve and step out of our comfort zone when it means making a difference in our lives. Sometimes shyness prevents us from stepping outside that comfort zone. Other times, we’re pressured to do something that we’ve never done before, or we simply lack the confidence. Successful people will tell us that success depends on how well we handle pressure. After all, they achieve their greatest success while out of their comfort zone. As for shyness, that shy person inside should be told to butt out and stay out of our comfort zone!

I wish my kids weren’t so shy. I hope that they’ve recognized all the sacrifices and times I vacated my comfort zone to make their lives easier and happier. Even my daughter’s principal got tired of me telling the teachers how to do their jobs. Although I despised writing daily emails to the school about homework assignments and tests, I had to step in and help my daughter, who was coping with a learning disability, achieve better grades. How do I expect to convince my kids to step out of their comfort zone if I’m not willing to step out of mine? It’s all a part of growing up and showing them that overcoming shyness and discomfort can get us things that we otherwise can’t, including better grades.

Greg also has a challenge with shyness. He’s the last guy to be the center of attention unless he’s with his friends. If Greg wants something more than a conventional life, he has to remove barriers that have hindered his success and happiness, including his shyness. He must step outside his comfort zone and stop taking mercy on himself for his dire state of affairs. The time has come to put the past behind him, while he breaks some rules to gain the freedom and confidence to move forward. He will dictate his own rules and say, “I am the rules.” Greg has been driven by compulsiveness rather than logic and reason. This time around, Greg’s rules will be a little less compulsive and more logical.

u No More Mercy Rules

In order to remove barriers, we have to break certain rules in life. This puts the onus on us to break rules that hold us back, or we’ll continue to be held back and stay there. I call these “mercy rules” because we take mercy on ourselves and accept our life just the way it is, yet there is no mercy for those who don’t help themselves. We follow these mercy rules as if they’re an ordinance from the Almighty. Contrarily, we must break these rules mercilessly to create our own success and happiness. Our lives depend on it and that is the reality we must accept. It’s time to stop following rules that have no mercy on us.

Just to be clear, when I say mercy rules, I don’t refer to rules that break laws or do injustice to others. I’m talking about breaking rules that perpetrate an injustice to ourselves. These are rules that have held us back in our personal lives and prevent us from taking action. They interfere with our present while they continue to suppress our future. We follow them but fail to challenge them. We take mercy on rules that don’t take mercy on us.

True freedom lies in being free of rules. And to be free, we must break rules that are breakable and constrain us without mercy. I’ll be the first to admit that we cannot be free of all rules. We must follow employment rules at work. We must pay taxes in accordance with tax rules. We must travel by the rules and regulations of government customs agencies. Rules are imposed on us by a higher authority in a regulated society that expects us to conform to its standards.

Society imposes rules that we’re expected, but not necessarily compelled, to follow. Do you remember the golf course that wouldn’t let my son drive the golf cart because he didn’t have his driver’s license? I had to come up with my own golf cart rule just to make the kid happy and golf a memorable experience. I also took his safety needs into account, as well as the safety of others. My point is that my son had the capabilities and maturity to drive a golf cart, so I let him drive a golf cart. Although no one transcends societal norms, we can certainly break rules for the right reasons.

Some of us just get lucky and retire from rules altogether. What I would give to be the lucky guy who just won the big lottery. It would give me eight hours of my life back every day to do whatever I want. I wonder how many of us have entertained the idea of skipping work whenever we felt like it. I had this dream to escape employment rules and work under my own terms. As a consultant, I now keep my own hours and work from home when I want. I even have a boardroom table at Starbucks. Whether it’s intent or luck, we can all break no-mercy rules holding us back.

I remember being trapped in a life that wasn’t about to take any mercy on me. I couldn’t see what I was supposed to see. “We can only see what we see but cannot see beyond what we see because we are restricted to see what we are meant to see.” At least someone recognized my dilemma. I got tired of missing opportunities, making mistakes, and asking too many questions on account of not seeing things in front of me. I was ready to undo a few past mistakes I had made in life and act on some upcoming opportunities.

u Taking Inventory of Your Life

It was time to take inventory of my life, especially the life processes that I was tired of doing like commuting two hours downtown and back every day. However, I figured out that taking the train to work was cheaper and faster. I flipped a stale life process called “Take Train to Work” to “Do Work on Train.” This has redefined my life, affording me time that I thought I never had, including time to finish my work, write this book, or even play the accordion should I decide to make a career change. This may sound a little bizarre, but I don’t do as much work at work anymore. We’re allowed to break rules when and where we can, but first let’s take inventory of all our desired future processes. We will recalculate a lot of rules during our lifetime, but not always without repercussions.

It was a high school senior in some adolescent movie that my kids were watching who throws his duffle bag out the bedroom window and can’t quite figure out how to sneak his guitar case past his mother. When his sister asks him where he’s going, he tells her that he’s crossing the ocean to play at a London music festival with his band. While she interrogates him about missing school, he informs her that no one cares about trigonometry. “When you want to chase your dreams, sometimes you got to break the rules” were the words of a worldly brother.

It’s funny how teenagers seem to get away with things while the rest of us are expected to be civilized and follow the rules. I like something that a middle-aged John Travolta said when he tried talking his buddies into taking a road trip: “Yah, a road trip. Just us. No rules. No Tootsie Rolls. Just us, the wind, the road to the Pacific. You know, we camp out for a week whenever we want, wherever we want. That’s freedom, Man!” He convinced his gang of suburban Wild Hogs to pack it all in for Harleys and the open road.

A movie critic once said that if you gave an extremely bright teenager a bag of unfamiliar herbs to smoke and sixty million dollars or so to play with, Wild Hogs would be the cinematic outcome.

According to the box office, it was money well spent. We’re all looking for freedom, even if it’s in the movies. I think we all need a diversion from society and rules. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to postpone our commitments and responsibilities. Some of us have families and jobs. At the end, we achieve our own success by conscientiously breaking and adapting rules to our situations.

I’ve been somewhat of an aficionado of classic westerns and war movies where rules, coincidentally, seem to be ignored. This may also explain why I’m amused by Jeep-mounted M60 machine guns. I always wondered how the suicidal gunner in the back of the Jeep could hit a moving enemy target as he’s erratically being bounced around. This is probably the same reason the enemy hasn’t shot him. It’s a tough proposition shooting something on steady ground, let alone while driving on rough terrain. But with a little practice and perhaps a good scope, it can be done.

u Jeep-mounted Life Architecture

Life Architecture reminds me of a Jeep-mounted machine gun and soldier bouncing up and down attempting to hit a distant and moving target. Life can be a rough ride as we strive for a better future in an uncertain and unstable present. Life Architecture provides a clear and wide angle scope allowing us to zero in on our future life targets as we take control of an uncertain and chaotic present. Then we finally reach that moment when we’re ready to take control, and that’s when we know it’s time to make a change and rid ourselves of a few enemies.

If you’ve never driven a Jeep or 4x4 vehicle on rough terrain, you don’t know what you’re missing. We have a rough road ahead of us but don’t worry, this Jeep has an automatic transmission. Part of the exercise is to do some off-roading before we figure out our target life and take the steady road to get us there. If we’re constantly running around being too busy with life to figure out what it is that we want, we’ll never hit the right targets. Even worse, we’ll end up being enemy targets.

For now, it’s time to park the Jeep, discover our life desires before we unveil our target future, and then get right back behind the wheel and drive toward a future that we aim to eventually hit. I promise that our off-roading experience will become smooth highway driving once our Life Architecture blueprints and roadmap are completed. Dealing with the present and trying to articulate what we want in the future is not always an easy task. Life is continually moving and shifting as we attempt to reach our target life. Greg will have to search deep inside himself and express what he truly wants out of life. In the next chapter, Greg will develop a future Life Blueprint. Let’s see what kind of targets he needs to hit as he prepares to stay one step ahead of the life he once had.

9

Recomposing Greg’s Life: What Does the Future Look Like?

A Pentagon military analyst was speaking about President Obama’s strategy regarding the war in Afghanistan. He said that the problem faced by the American government was the fact that there is no target state. In other words, how do the Americans know what they need to achieve as a new or target state when they have no idea what it should look like? Sir Winston Churchill learned a valuable and related lesson from past wartime blunders: “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.”

It is staggering that the Afghan war has gone on as long as it has, and as this military analyst correctly predicted, “Our military troops will be there a lot longer because nobody knows what the right time is to get out.” I saw this as a recursive war. And to muddy the waters, the Americans were not at war with a country but rather with terrorist factions that were fighting to steal a country, which eventually forced the Americans out. It’s no wonder why there can never be a target state while outside political interests take priority. I’m only sorry that so many young soldiers had to die. There is some truth to the saying “War is young men dying, and old men talking.”

As the project manager at work was comparing the dire straits of his organization to the Afghan war and apprised us of the Pentagon news broadcast, we were deliberating a presentation that he was about to give the steering committee. He was about to break the bad news to the client and explain that their business processes were broken, and it would require dedicated management support to re-engineer them for future purposes. The message was déjà vu and one that I’ve been dealing with over the past couple of decades of my career. It felt like the Afghan war but the battlefield was now the office. No one had a clue what the target processes looked like.

Even household chores have a defined process, which I can attest to as a husband and father responsible for sharing chores around the house. It’s the usual Tuesday evening ritual when my wife politely reminds me to take out the garbage before it’s picked up the next morning. The nice thing about garbage is that once you’ve disposed of it in the alley and put the lid on, somebody else is responsible for taking it away. An empty garbage bin is the target state, and I know it’s going to repeat every week as household duty calls.

Unfortunately, many clients expect us consultants to dispose of their garbage. Without any warning or additional compensation, it’s our job to haul it to the city dump and separate recyclable items from stuff that you’d be too afraid of touching with your bare hands. The worst part is that I’m not always sure what to dispose of and how to separate it. If the client is oblivious of the target state, how am I expected to know? They have no idea what to salvage or leverage, while they dispose of assets at discounted prices that no longer support corporate strategy.

In all honesty, I don’t get paid enough to be part of an organizational task force modelled after a military combat unit suffering from low morale and heat stroke listening to politically-inspired

rock over satellite radio while headquarters makes up its mind. It reminds me of the mobile army surgical hospitals, otherwise known as MASH units, deployed during the Korean War. A television series of the same name actually lasted longer than the war itself. It too had troubles working toward a target state so it had to make it up as the show went on. Obviously, it ended without a target state and no winners.

As a consultant, I regularly find it a challenge to get a company’s affairs in order, especially one that works in silos and where employees have difficulty working as an integrated team. While the project manager interested in the Afghan war continued to share his company’s pain points, he explained, “The biggest problems that we see in this company are the gaps between our operational processes.” I interpreted this as the processes being siloed just as much as its people. Their processes didn’t flow together nor did they have a current state, never mind a target one.

The observant project manager should have also mentioned that not only were their business processes disconnected, they were all-around bad processes. It was apparent that his company’s processes were both inefficient and ineffective in some very key areas of the business. Not to be disrespectful, the project manager’s comb-over turned out to be more effective than the processes in his organization; it at least lasted the day without incident.

u Bad Processes Mean Bad Business

After dealing with some bad processes in companies, being told by my wife to take the garbage out doesn’t seem so bad. At least there’s a process and it works. There’s also a target state. The process is completed and the problem is solved as soon as I return through the back door. Organizational processes have a tendency of being vague and informal. Other times, they are tedious and too complicated to get things done or have any benefit. Individuals performing them sometimes overcomplicate things. Regardless, organizations are more apt to leave their bad processes alone than improve them.

It seems that whenever I’m on a new consulting engagement tasked to tackle a process problem, we get into a debate about the best approach to resolve it. I don’t seem to have this problem at home. There’s only one way to take the garbage out and it’s usually bagged for me. This is a standard and repeatable process, which can be adopted by anyone who has garbage and an outdoor garbage bin.

I find it somewhat tiresome having the same argument with people. It becomes an exercise in futility while strong personalities refuse to follow a proven approach to define what their company’s future needs to look like. Furthermore, their arrogance is compounded by a lack of experience and good judgement. Sometimes dealing with certain individuals can be more than what we have bargained for. I like something the famous American entertainer Dean Martin once said: “Good judgement comes from experience. And experience? Well, that comes from poor judgement.”

If only these companies had the management aptitude to marry their internal subject matter experts with outside specialists like me providing the methodology, case studies of business challenges and strategies, and possibly an industry reference model to develop an initial vision. We’ve talked about Enterprise Architecture in Chapter 1 as an effective methodology used by organizations to address their business challenges and optimize the relationships between processes, work activities, people, systems, and data.

u In the Midst of a Debilitating Process Pandemic

I must add that there’s a debilitating process pandemic among organizations. Organizations, in general, have poor connectivity between their processes. I suppose this is what makes organizations unorganized. Organizations are only human, right? Of course they are, they’re run by people. And there will always be process disconnects as long as there are people and broken processes. It’s no secret that organizations have to fix their processes before they can connect them properly and make them work together. The last thing we want to do is connect a bunch of processes that are broken. So, let’s fix the processes and then worry about connecting them. It’s time to conquer this debilitating process pandemic by streamlining process relationships and ensuring their concerted execution.

What does all this talk about process disconnects and fixing processes mean for Greg? In the last couple of chapters, Greg was diligent in creating a Life Blueprint reflecting his life today and identified all the rules preventing him from moving on to a desired life. I’m sure he has realized that life is chaotic at times and there is hardly any rhyme or reason with regard to how things are being done. There’s no sense of process dependencies, priorities, or being able to do things better – let alone improve life on a larger scale.

Life’s turbulence and distractions have transformed Greg into somewhat of a robot. He doesn’t acknowledge his fate, nor is he capable of doing so. Life can be alienating as we mindlessly trudge through its uncharted territory. It’s no wonder that we feel lost at times. Greg continues to do things subconsciously as life’s responsibilities and expectations pile up. He cannot move on because everything he does is controlled by a robotic mentality. It was just a matter of time that he would rust and come to a grinding halt. Greg didn’t have a plan except to start all over after his divorce. His objective was to keep up the same routine that he’s always had.

Greg is not alone. Many people don’t have a plan when it comes to their lives. They have become passive spectators in their own lives as they watch life unfold. Their desires and priorities are sacrificed for the sanctity of insanity and inability to move forward.

u Insanity is Doing the Same Thing Over and Over Again

It was the satirical Charlie Chaplin, a famous actor from the era of silent film, who asked his friend Albert, “The reason they all love me is ‘cause they understand everything I do, and the reason they love you is that they don’t understand anything you do. Can you explain that?” Albert Einstein explained that “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Many of us want something different in life but yet we’re unwilling to change our habits and do what needs to be done to get it. We seem to live a life in which people think instead of do. We can’t live the same old life and expect a different result. It sounds like perpetual schizophrenia to me. A certain mindset can get us into trouble, while the same mindset can’t get us out. We must change our mindset to resolve our problems. Maybe it was this mindset that allowed Einstein to overcome insanity in the scientific world and come up with the “theory of relativity.” By embracing change, we embrace opportunities. Insanity is not changing one’s mindset to move forward. Someone once said, “There’s only one person who can navigate the storm. And that’s the person who created the storm.”

Many people are unwilling to try something different. Stubbornness has become a tradition. We refuse to change and continue to do things the same way because we’ve been conditioned to do so. To change is to change our mindset. If you want to live a life you’ve never lived, it’s likely you’ll

have to do things you’ve never done before. You probably got to where you are by doing whatever it is you’re doing, so if you’re not happy with your present situation, you need to do something different by making a significant shift and creating some tangible results. And just maybe someday, you’ll even surprise yourself that you’re behind all this. Better yet, you get to be you.

It’s not your fault that you are where you are. It’s your fault if you stay there. The foundation of our present situation is our past and all the life circumstances that have invaded our lives. Some of this baggage has been passed down through generations of our family, like the family coat of arms above our fireplace mantle or a debilitating physical or personality trait we contend with every day of our lives. Sometimes we have to fine-tune our lives; other times we’re in need of a major overhaul. It’s just a matter of knowing what to do and when.

We have become so entangled in our thinking that we don’t know how to resolve our problems or take advantage of the opportunities in front of us. We are controlled by some lame, limiting, and false subconscious beliefs that we’ve been dragging around without even realizing it. Somewhere I read, “If I get your problem, I’ll solve it; if you get my problem, you’ll solve it.” It’s a good thing that Greg is talking to a Life Architecture coach. He has since recognized his own insanity and has started to focus on achieving what’s possible. Maybe it’s time the rest of us overcome insanity by asking ourselves “What’s possible?” without worrying about the things we can’t change.

Albert Einstein advised, “If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.” Greg should set some goals as he consciously works toward achieving a desired outcome and better life. For the time being, he is pursuing a relationship with his kids. Although he seems to have the father part down well in hand, he doesn’t quite know how sharing the kids with his ex-wife is going to work. This definitely requires some new life processes. Now that he doesn’t answer to his wife, he’s eager to get back to doing the things that he so much enjoys, mainly sports and other leisurely activities. He’ll also have to secure a better job to afford him a better life. All of Greg’s life processes are in a state of disarray with no thought of how they all need to come together.

u Manicuring Your Life

It is evident that Greg’s perception of life is much different than what we see from the outside. While Greg is down in the weeds preoccupied with his daily routine, he takes no heed of the unsightly yard around his house. Even worse, he doesn’t see his life as a whole. He’s too busy dealing with immediate circumstances while specific issues and problems are dealt with in isolation of each other and everything else in his life. That’s like pulling a single weed along the walkway as you’re making your way to the house without paying attention to the unsightliness of the entire lawn. You become oblivious to your own surroundings because it’s always been weed-infested. It would take too much effort to match your neighbor’s park-like surroundings, probably because you have this preconceived notion that they all have green thumbs. You wouldn’t know how to eradicate all the weeds on your lawn even if the neighbor hand-delivered instructions with a “how-to” video and bottle of wine. Besides, you have probably given up and graciously accepted last place in the neighborhood. It’s too bad that you don’t see that the neighbors across the street and next to you despise you and your weed-infested lawn. We all despise those who make the rest of us look bad. It’s too bad Greg can’t get one of those satellites in outer space that takes photos at regular intervals and sends them to a research center for analysis – specifically one that collects data about his life processes. He’s in denial and seems to be immune to the proliferation of noxious weeds that may be infringing on his comfort zone.

As Greg’s Life Architecture coach, it’s my obligation to help him kill the weeds and manicure his life. He can manicure his lawn himself.

It is obvious that Greg not only has life processes that need fixing, but there is loose coupling between them that needs tightening. Now, how do I say this nicely without sounding like an arrogant consultant who has life all figured out? I’m not sure because no one has it all figured out. To me, speaking as a consultant and friend, Greg’s life processes lack structure with little or no relation to each other. However, it’s obvious that Greg can do things a lot better and in a way that will make him happier.

What Greg is missing is a future Life Blueprint complete with an index of newly-adopted Life Rules. This blueprint is ideally based on a new set of Life Rules to consciously take him to a higher level of living and satisfaction. “The door to opportunity is labelled ‘PUSH’” was a cute motivational poster I came across at the office. The past is gone and all Greg has to do is hit the reset button and take the initiative to begin a Life Architecture.

What is Greg Missing?

1

A future Life Blueprint

2

A set of new Life Rules

3

A push

A bartender once told a customer down on his luck, “Life will start for you when you start it for yourself.” Bartenders always know what to say to guys drowning on whiskey. If he doesn’t start soon, he’ll hit rock bottom and never know what’s missing or waiting for him. Nobody should live that way, wondering what life might be like in the future. We should become obsessed with the prospect of a better life, whether we’re driven by hunger, madness, liquor, or just plain desire. It’s about time we stop looking at life as a series of checklist items, and start becoming a decisionmaker who knows what he or she wants and goes after it.

u Who Do You Want To Become?

A drug addict talking to a friend says, “You think this is who I wanted to be? Man…I get so mad, I want to fight the whole world. You got any idea what that feels like?” to which his friend responds, “I do. But I decided to fight the feeling instead because I figured the world would win.” Sometimes it’s those feelings that stop us from moving forward. In the comedy Sex Ed, a friend tells her male virgin friend, “Stop thinking about whether or not you’ve had sex, and start thinking about what you need to do to become the man you want to be. The man you want to be isn’t just someone who fucked a woman. It’s someone who knows what he wants and goes after it. Ask yourself, who’s the man I want to be?” I’m sure once he figures that out, he’ll get everything he wants, including sex, and be a better man for it. Do you know who you want to become, or don’t want to end up? Answering the question may be a good place to start.

This notion of getting started reminds me of living in a haunted house. People won’t leave until they’ve been evicted by supernatural forces. They’re not quite ready to move or can’t afford another place. Greg, like those spooked occupants living with ghosts, wouldn’t know when to make

a move until it’s too late. It never fails, the longer they stay in the house, the worse it gets. And if they left right away, there probably wouldn’t be haunted house movies. I’d avoid all the drama and run for the hills at the first sign of a creaky door opening on its own. Some of us are just plain stubborn or don’t have a clue what to do.

Greg has seen a lot of rain and gone through a lot of pain to get to this point in life, and I don’t want him to quit now because he doesn’t know how to architect his life. This is the creative part that architects take pleasure in while the rest of us…well, we just avoid our future altogether and live for the moment. Now that he’s curious, Greg is about to discover his creative side. A famous architect once said, “Your creativity starts with whether you’re curious or not.”

While a future Life Blueprint allows us to understand what we want out of life, it is our Life Rules that remove obstacles to realize our vision. Greg had no concept of Life Rules nor the fact that he had the power to break what he thought to be inviolable rules, and formulate new savvy ones to change his life. Some of the rules he followed were the culprits for being stuck in life processes that were not very well thought out, let alone planned. A future Life Blueprint with a new set of rules will empower Greg to step into his desired future.

u Failing to Plan is Planning for Failure

A senior manager at a local energy company focused on improving organizational processes said, “Failing to plan is planning for failure.” His experience was that companies unthinkingly stack the deck for failure from the start. The company not only crafted a competitive future blueprint, but improvised some new business rules with the purpose of reforming its practices for modern economic times. In fact, this was part of a master plan to aggressively penetrate the market with a new set of rules. The processes we perform in life and the rules we follow kind of work the same way.

As you know, a Life Blueprint is where we go to find all of our life processes. However, a future Life Blueprint without a set of new Life Rule applicable to a desired future is not all that useful. How many times have I plugged in an address into my GPS only to find that the maps haven’t been updated and I had no idea how to get to an interview or where to pick up my date? An hour late for a date is not what I’d call a good first impression. As luck would have it, I got the girl but not the job. Although we can all use good directions to find our way, we need to rethink the rules to improve our lives.

Even interviewing and dating have rules. When it comes to interviews, always show up on time. That will at least put you on par with everyone else. Secondly, familiarize yourself with the company. I never go into an interview without reading the annual report. You should see the look on their faces when I tell them their actuals are neck and neck with the annual report’s forecasts. I wish dating were as straightforward as interviews. To start with, don’t be someone you’re not and be honest about your feelings. Just those two rules will give you a chance at a compatible relationship. Now, if you’re just out for a fling, you’re probably better off without rules.

u Empowering You to Win the Game of Life

Sometimes we need to be empowered to get what we want. Empowerment is the means to enable, permit, or authorize us to accomplish something that we otherwise may not have been able to before. Money empowers one to live a life of comfort and luxury. This is why wealthy people buy whatever they want and never have to worry

about money. They see luxury as an acquired habit, abundance as the norm, and freedom as an entitlement. Most of us can only dream of such empowerment. Life Rules can also empower us to enable the processes that we have defined in our future Life Blueprint. They empower us to take appropriate actions and achieve desired results, including wealth. Life Rules empower us to win the game of life and be happy.

Are you empowered to make decisions? We’ve heard of employees being empowered in the workplace. They make decisions without being restricted by a bureaucratic process or micromanaged by an insecure manager. Competent managers tend to break their own rules by empowering employees to make decisions without formal approval. I’m of the school that believes managers should be held accountable and approve key strategic decisions, but not everyday operational decisions that employees are more than capable of handling.

As parents, we do our best to empower our children to do better in school like the time I took my son shopping in search of the perfect calculator for math class. This gizmo would be easy to use but functional enough to handle any kind of math problem thrown at an eighth grader. My objective was to empower my son to confidently tackle math with the right tools. On the flip side, I also remember empowering my daughter by teaching her the theory behind solving a problem without a calculator. Those were the demanding years of parenting when we did what we could to get our kids to do well in school.

In this chapter, we are going to figure out how to empower Greg to live his desired life. The objective is to enrich his life by changing the rules by which he plays the game of life. Greg is going to contemplate all the rules that he has just “busted” and the new rules that he’ll replace the old ones with. These new Life Rules will be part of his future Life Blueprint as he makes a genuine effort to get to where he wants to be.

Think of it as driving in an unfamiliar city, and it’s only a matter of time before you take the wrong turn or hit a traffic jam. I usually grab a map from the car rental agency and ask the agent to highlight the best route with his pen. If he’s really good, he’ll tell me where to bypass traffic congestion and construction, and even avoid tolls. A GPS can’t always give me that intelligence, or the rules to optimize my trip, although they’re getting more sophisticated. I still take solace in human contact, and God forbid that a bridge is closed and I have to swim across.

I recall the book The Ropes to Skip and the Ropes to Know from my university days, which was required reading for one of my business classes. The title intrigued me as I often wondered if I learned the right rules in business and skipped the wrong ones, not to mention gotten a better grade on my final, had I read the book. There are rules of discipline and then there are rules of empowerment. I’ve skipped a few ropes in my life and jumped through a lot of hoops to get where I am.

u The Ropes to Skip and the Ropes to Know

As individuals, we should not be expected to follow rules because that’s the way things have always been done. Some rules are as old as time, while others have been habituated since birth. Many rules are meaningless and undeserving. Don’t you remember the one about not talking to strangers? Who thought that one day talking to strangers would be a big part of our life and success. This may be why the famous playwright Arthur Miller cautioned us to “never fight fair with a stranger.” It is in our favor to know which rules to skip and which ones will empower us.

My life has benefited both personally and professionally by surrounding myself with all kinds of people who improve my life – people I know and those who I need to get to know. This was definitely a rope to know. Modern wisdom dictates, “If you want to be successful, surround yourself with successful people.” A member of our university alumni, who prided himself on his own success, said, “Hang out with some crazy people. You are the average of the five people you hang out with most. So if you can hang out with some creative and successful people from time to time, that can really help you out.” Or, if you’re a fan of Dilbert, you may “surround yourself with losers” just to make yourself look good. Unfortunately, perception only goes so far and it’s a matter of time before you’re exposed for who you really are, and hopefully, you’re not a fake or a flake.

Sometimes I wonder if super successful people want to hang out with the rest of us. It may be in your best interest to figure out a way to offer successful people something they need or want. This may be my motive for getting into consulting. I have something to offer my successful clients as a business consultant in return for a contract. And we all know that contracts mean good money. It is in my best interest to do good work to promote my reputation in the industry and get more contracts. These kinds of relationships make for good partnerships.

I have to admit, relationships are never easy. Some clients have a big chip on their shoulder and expect consultants to accommodate their idiosyncrasies if the relationship is to go anywhere. How many times have I come into a company that has requested my help with their organizational transformation project when someone kindly reminds me that they have a plan? Then why am I there? And if they have a plan, why haven’t they executed it? Execution is where companies seem to hesitate and do their best procrastination. Sometimes I feel consultants are brought in to validate their plans and give them a little push to execute.

u Everybody Has a Plan Until They Get Punched in the Face

Everybody seems to be keen to present a plan but they don’t always know what to do with it. I think Mike Tyson may have had first-hand experience when he said, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.” Besides being the youngest boxer to win a heavyweight title, Tyson was born a puncher. “Punches are not made, they are born” was an observation shared by a Tyson fan. But even born punchers get punched in the face when they let their guard down. Regardless, we seem to appreciate good planning only after we get punched in the face.

How many times have we been told that we need a plan to achieve our goals? Most of us claim to have plans or at least some direction to move forward. We take pride in planning our lives. However, without proper execution, we risk losing control of our destiny. It’s all in the execution and timing. I’ve heard someone say that before, probably an ex-girlfriend who dumped me because I couldn’t commit to a long-term relationship. This usually requires an engagement ring and wedding plan. A plan without timely execution isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. The ability to execute helps us achieve a desired purpose and the realization of what used to be only a vision. The plan may not always result in a precise outcome, but it brings us closer to our intended reality. A future Life Blueprint represents a planned reality of the desired life that we so desperately seek.

Many unforeseeable events in life can influence the execution of our plans. It was a deputy in a western movie who said, “Life has a way of making the foreseeable that which never happens, and the unforeseeable that which your life becomes.” We all know that things don’t always go

according to plan, so we have to be prepared to change our plans. I’d say we need the right kind of plan to start with, namely a future Life Blueprint, which we can tweak as we encounter change. Without such a plan, we’re at the mercy of whatever the unpredictable future hands us.

Executing a plan is a lot like playing chess. Although we don’t have a definitive opening move, we have a few favorites instigating our opponents to react in kind. We just have to play within the confines of the rules like the fact that no two pieces can occupy the same square at the same time and each piece is restricted to a pattern of movement. As the other player counters our move, we begin to develop a strategy in anticipation of his next moves and look for a way to beat him. Our future Life Blueprint provides an opening move, as well as the moves to live our life the way we want to.

Companies take great pride in developing blueprints to identify their business processes and define the rules supporting their business strategy. As individuals, we lack such a blueprint and the rules to guide our future direction. Whether we’re a management team hired to run a company, or an individual trying to get a handle on life, there are some intrinsic similarities. With a blueprint and a good bearing on what rules to consider and how to apply them, we’ll have substantial influence on our future life processes. Those bold enough to undertake Life Architecture and create a future Life Blueprint have admitted that breaking rules and adapting new ones have liberated them. This is a conscious admission that they are in control of their lives, and a set of new Life Rules has given them a new lease on life.

u The Present is the Foundation, the Future the Creation

We’re merely exploring a newly-discovered Life Architecture paradigm in hope of changing our lives forever. However, we may need to let go of some outdated beliefs and ideas about life in order to enjoy it. We can’t allow old paradigms to hold us hostage in the present. Our present life is only a foundation for the future, while we create a future where we realize our potential. A future Life Blueprint is a vision and plan of the future we want to create. However, plans are meaningless unless we’re willing to take action and set things in motion. Sometimes it’s as easy as going to Vegas for some fun. All you have to do is book a flight and go.

I promised my wife that I was taking her to Vegas for our 10th year anniversary and that we’d invite all our friends and get married again by Elvis. Unfortunately, I never kept my promise. Today, I regret not having that memory. I still think about it, even after another ten years have passed. Ironically, it was as simple as booking the flights in advance, checking out the Elvis wedding packages, and then hopping on a plane. It didn’t matter who showed up as long as me, my wife, and Elvis were at the altar. I feel like time is getting away on me, yet I have so much to do. This has taught me that a plan is irrelevant if we don’t set it in motion. The only thing left to do is get those memories back. There’s always a 20th.

It all comes down to having a plan and doing something with it. This is how companies get started. We call a newly-created company a “startup.” A startup begins with a great business idea, but all too often, that’s where it ends. Ideas have to be transformed into future products and services, and made available to fulfill consumer needs. In order to successfully take a product from concept to market requires an understanding of consumer demands and a plan to deliver the packaged goods to the doorstep.

I look at Greg’s life as a potential startup as he creates his own vision of a desired future and finds the courage to execute his plan to move forward with his new life. Until now, Greg’s life can be summed up as static and contrived. He has not taken any steps to enrich his life. Sure, his life has certain elements of family, work, and leisure, but these happen to be unplanned derivatives of a haphazard daily routine. Greg hasn’t been able to properly capitalize on these areas of his life simply because they happen on their own or get decided with little foresight the night before or the same day.

I apologize for being so hard on Greg. I just want this startup to get off the ground without a hitch. Greg has made a few mistakes in the past. The breakup of his family is at the forefront of his fears, worries, and uncertainty. He’s focused on developing a closer relationship with his girls now that he has to share them with his ex-wife. He feels that he never developed the lasting bond with his wife and kids one would expect of a close-knit family. These are changing times for Greg, and he has to learn to be a different kind of person and dad.

Work has been an area of Greg’s life that has been less than idealistic. It is basically a paycheck with no compensation for his dedication and hard work. Greg always had a great work ethic devoid of recognition. However, he has become somewhat of a follower and work has never been a place where he could feel good about himself. His managers usually take him for granted. They never get a chance to realize his potential only because Greg never promotes himself. No one gives us an opportunity unless we pursue it ourselves.

As for his free time and love of sports, Greg has been on the periphery watching from a distance lately, either on TV or in a stadium depending on life circumstances and the pandemic of the day. Life is not a spectator sport, and it’s up to Greg and the rest of us to get out of our seats and onto the field. “You can either take charge and fight your way through it, or you can continue to be a pansy ass spectator” was a life observation made by a villain who seemed to be taking charge of everybody’s life in a thriller I watched recently. This doesn’t mean that Greg has to be a player. I often wondered why Greg never coached with all his experience and gracious demeanor. He has so much to offer as a coach on his girls’ little league and soccer teams. This may have been a golden opportunity to bond and spend more time with them.

Greg has never given himself enough credit for what he is capable of in his marriage, work, and leisure life. Sometimes we all need a push or a wake-up call before we decide to do something meaningful with our lives. Greg’s wake-up call may just be that he’s finally had enough. He has a chance to start all over again. I’m counting on Greg becoming a successful startup and getting his Life Architecture on the rails.

u Significant Emotional Event

Have you heard of something called a “significant emotional event?” A significant emotional event is simply a wake-up call. We seem to be in this normal mode of living until something dramatic happens in our lives, and then “bang!” we decide to change. A high-pressure seminar speaker who wanted my money said that there are only two ways to change – emotional impact and spaced repetition. I’d equate emotional impact to a wake-up call, while spaced repetition is something that we repetitively think about over time until we convince ourselves to finally change and do something about it. Who are we kidding, this guy was just trying to persuade me to give him money. This is when I realized that I was at the wrong seminar. You could

say this was my wake-up call to leave, although the speaker did make sense about emotional impact and spaced repetition as motives for change. Change can be triggered by a significant emotional event, usually in the form of trauma, personal loss, or a dilemma in our lives. Whatever, whenever, and wherever it is, we must remain level-headed and take immediate action if we want to make change.

It was an astronaut stranded on Mars who shared his sentiments. “At some point, everything’s gonna go south on you and you’re going to say, this is it. This is how I end. Now you can either accept that, or you can get to work. That’s all it is. You just begin. You do the math. You solve one problem and you solve the next one, and then the next. And If you solve enough problems, you get to come home.” In the movie The Martian, I’d say that this qualifies as a significant emotional event.

Society has conditioned us to install a self-imposed status quo. We’re not always willing to change until some life-changing event motivates us. Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, described his life-changing experience in outer space when he put his thumb up and shut one eye blotting out planet Earth. He realized how small our world really was and the insignificance of mankind in context of the universe. That moment was an emotionally significant event for Armstrong, and allowed him to appreciate that his small step on the moon was a universal leap for mankind.

The American novelist and author of Little Women, Louisa May Alcott, may have had her own wake-up call without embarking on a space voyage when she said, “Painful as it may be, a significant emotional event can be the catalyst for choosing a direction that serves us and those around us more effectively.” Poverty made it necessary for Alcott to go to work at an early age as a teacher, seamstress, governess, domestic helper, and writer. Something like this changes you but it doesn’t reduce you. Alcott fought for change her whole life as an abolitionist and feminist.

I think many of us would agree that we fall into a routine and life passes by while we operate on autopilot. It usually takes a significant emotional event to change our lives. Many parents can relate to the emptiness of their kids leaving for college or simply moving out. This can be a significant emotional event for both the kids and the parents. Such a change may be exacerbated by a decision to downsize after the kids are gone.

Although transitioning from caretaker to empty nester may be perceived as positive change, we are also faced with tragic events throughout our lifetime such as sickness, divorce, layoffs, natural disasters, and the list goes on. A dire situation can disrupt our ordinary autopilot existence and call for radical change. We tend to panic as we figure out how we’re going to spend the rest of our days. Sometimes it’s our own unhappiness that motivates change.

We eventually realize that we’re leading a life without purpose or meaning, or one that can use a new beginning. We believe that if we don’t change something soon, we’ll regret it for the rest of our lives. In Chapter 5, we talked about regrets and making change to get past those harrowing regrets. Of course, this means breaking rules and traditions, and sometimes the feelings of others. Although we can’t always break from tradition, we can deviate from senseless routines and mitigate their impact on our lives.

u The Moment of Truth

When we are ready to admit “This is not the life that I want to lead” is the moment we are ready to make genuine change. This is the moment of truth. We’ve recognized that there is something more to our lives. We’ve outgrown the life that we’re leading today, whether it be predictable and mundane, or just counter to the very fabric of who we are. There’s no point fooling ourselves any longer.

It’s kind of like an individual coming out of the closet, or a struggling writer who has just stormed out of a restaurant and admits defeat to his wife and the world.

Writer’s Wife: “What is the matter with you?”

Writer: “How the fuck do you end up here? I mean I look at my life. I look at your life. I look at his life. I look at my father’s life. I look at everybody’s life and I don’t have a fuckin’ clue why anybody winds up where they do! I don’t know! I don’t know! I don’t know!”

Wife: “You don’t have to know…It’s OK, you don’t have to know. There’s so much time, Rory.”

Writer: “I’m talking about my fucking life here.”

Wife: “What about your life?”

Writer: “It’s not right! Nothing’s right!”

Wife: “Rory, how’s that supposed to make me feel? How’s that supposed to make me feel?”

Writer: “I’m not who I thought I was, OK? I’m not. And I’m terrified that I never will be.”

We should all be apprehensive about a life that we don’t have control over. Ironically, the young writer eventually attains fame after publishing the next great American novel. There’s only one catch – he didn’t write it. As his past returns to haunt him, he’s confronted by the novel’s true author and learns that the price of stealing another man’s words brings unbearable pain and regret. You’ll just have to watch The Words to find out the movie climax.

We can’t live in the shadow of someone without sacrificing our own future. It always comes back to being true to oneself, and we don’t have to succumb to a significant emotional event to trigger a wake-up call. This sounds more like a conscious confession that we want something better for ourselves but we’re not quite ready. Remember, one day you will wake up and there won’t be any more time to do the things you’ve always wanted. The worst excuse is not being ready. It’s a terrible thing in life to wait until we’re ready. Who knows if we’ll ever be ready, and even if we are, we won’t know what to do.

u Choosing How to Live

Joan Baez, an American folk singer, said, “We don’t get to choose how we’re going to die or when. We only get to choose how we’re going to live now.” What would you do differently if you knew you had only a short time to live? I have news for you: You don’t have all the time in the

world, but you still have time. We’re here until we’re not. So, are you acting as if you have all the time in the world? It’s time to appreciate the beauty and fragility of life, and keeping it top-ofmind just might inspire us to enjoy, appreciate, and take advantage of each precious day. This means making changes today so that we live a better life tomorrow. Life is short and we should eat our dessert first. Every man dies, but not every man lives. A biographer once asserted, “The good die unluckily, the bad die unhappily.” I think we all want to die happily, or at least live a long and happy life.

Two best friends sitting on a park bench were comparing notes. “One day you’ll keel over. You’ll be cooking and you just keel over. That’s how it ends. For now, you just gotta make the most of it.” That was easy for her to say – her husband did all the cooking. Not everyone is so lucky to be in a perfect relationship. Maybe there’s truth to the saying “Who you choose, chooses your whole life.” We may not always make the right choices in life, but we can make the most of them. Life is a one-time deal, so why waste it or throw it away on the wrong choice?

As a child, I thought I was special. Even the adults would constantly remind me how special I was. I had all these ideas about myself and where I was going. But then I grew up and realized I was just like everyone else. We all have opportunities and choices to make in life. I’m sure we also have problems and may have done some not so great things in the past. Some of us may still be doing them. But, we can do good for ourselves and others by the choices we make. We can start living a phenomenal life that we never knew we had. We have the choice to be influential in many facets of our lives. There are moments I ask myself whether I’m getting the most out of my life. Are you getting the most out of your life?

A psychologist was hired to help Harold get the most out of life, while overcoming his obsession with death. I concede with the psychologist’s professional opinion that once we recognize the problem, we’re halfway to its solution. I was intrigued by his simple line of questioning to diagnose the problem. “Tell me Harold, what do you do for fun? What activity gives you a different sense of enjoyment from the others? What do you find fulfilling? What gives you that special satisfaction?” Harold replies, “I go to funerals.” I guess that’s one way to have fun. That’s also where he meets Maude, the love of his life and almost fifty years his senior, who teaches him how to live life to its fullest. Harold and Maude was a 1971 romantic comedy that developed into a cult following for good reason.

In order to live life to the fullest, we must make good decisions. There are three questions you need to consider when making decisions about your life:

1 What is it you want to be, do, or have in life?

2 Will this lead you to the life you desire?

3 Will this negatively impact anyone else?

This brings me to a convenient self-assessment exercise called “Are You Grabbing as Much Out of Life as You Can?” I accidentally discovered this sui generis self-assessment technique and realized that it was an effective means of understanding what we’re “doing” and “not doing” in relation to what we “want to” and “don’t want to” do. We can use a Personal Behavioral Assessment Matrix divided into quadrants to help us determine what it is that we want out of life.

Personal Behavioral Assessment Matrix

3

2

4

“When you make a decision, kid, make it carefully. Know what you truly want. Consider every possible consequence or you’ll wind up at 59 wondering what the hell happened.” Maybe if Ernest Hemingway had a matrix to better understand his needs and wants, he wouldn’t be giving others advice about how to live their lives. As Papa in a movie about his days in Cuba, Hemingway’s character is forthright about missing the opportunity to live his life more wholesomely, and without regrets. I sometimes wonder if his regrets were the reason for his early departure.

No one said life is perfect. Sometimes we have to focus on the good things. The mother in the movie Wild had the right mindset when she explained to her children that they were the outcome of an abusive ex-husband, and the reason she didn’t regret her past. “Do I regret marrying an abusive alcoholic asshole? No. Not for one second. ‘Cause I got you. And your brother. See how it works? It isn’t easy, but it’s worth it. And there’s gonna be a lot worse days than this, honey. And you can let them kill you…but I don’t know. I want to live.” Their mother had consciously embraced the positive remnants from her past, most notably her children, as a foundation for her future.

It was only years later that her daughter would cherish a mother’s words. “There’s a sunrise and a sunset every day, and you can choose to be there for it. You can put yourself in the way of beauty.” We all have a choice to sleep in or wake up to the beauty of the sunrise and savor every waking moment of our lives. This is much easier to do when we know what we want.

This is as good a time as any to answer some personal behavioral questions and get to know ourselves. The questions below have been designed to help us determine what we want out of life. As life architects, it’s our duty to assess whether we’re spending time on the things that we want to do. These are the things that make us happy and give us a sense of satisfaction. 1

Personal Behavioral Questions

What are you doing in your life that you want to?

2

What are you not doing in your life that you want to?

Square u

3

What are you doing in your life that you don’t want to?

4

What are you not doing in your life that you don’t want to?

What are you doing in your life that you want to?

Are you passionately learning how to trade stocks? Dating someone you’re interested in? Planting flora in your brand-new greenhouse? Playing squash? Volunteering for an organization you like? Doing a job you love and work that matters? In other words, what are you doing that gives you satisfaction and gratification?

Square v

What are you not doing in your life that you want to?

Are you interested in making time for exercise and cooking healthy meals? Traveling? Joining a choir or band? Spending more time with your family? Writing a book about life? Starting your own business? Going back to school or getting certified to boost your career? Meeting new friends? Specifically, what are the things you want to be doing in life that you’re not?

Square w What are you doing in your life that you don’t want to?

Are you driving to and from work two hours a day? Constantly snacking? Arguing with your spouse? Smoking? Living a virtual life on Facebook? Working a dead-end job? Putting up with a miserable boss? Hanging out with the wrong kind of people? Skipping church? Missing your kid’s soccer practices? In explicit terms, what is happening in your life that you wish wasn’t?

Square x What are you not doing in your life that you don’t want to?

OK, I realize this is a double-negative. However, it’s still an important question because it identifies all the things you’d rather not be doing and are successfully keeping out of your life. Have you ditched drugs because it’s bad for you and you don’t want to destroy your life? Prevented heated arguments with your mother-in-law and have since made peace with the world? Not moving because you like the neighbors and the neighborhood? Forgone a partnership opportunity in the firm in exchange for time with the family? Thus, what have you refrained from doing because you just don’t care to do it anymore or have better things to do? 1

I urge you to do this exercise once you’re ready to pursue a better life. You owe it to yourself to get to know yourself better. In the meantime, our friend Greg is going to fill out his Personal Behavioral Assessment Matrix. Once he’s done, we’ll see if we can make some sense as to what Greg wants to do and doesn’t want to do in life. On the flip side, we’ll also see what he’s doing and not doing to pursue happiness and make things happen.

u Are You Grabbing as Much Out of Life as You Can?

In the movie Dead Poets Society, English professor John Keating inspires in his students a love of poetry and teaches them to overcome their reluctance to make changes in their lives. His lesson to seize the day and make life extraordinary is his true inspiration. Are you seizing the day or grabbing as much out of life as you can? Well, you won’t know until you do this exercise. You will notice that the answers in Squares 1 & 4 identify “what’s right with your life” and should remain. This is what gives you happiness and satisfaction. These are the things that you enjoy doing today and want to exploit in the future. The answers in Squares 2 & 3 are rather selfdefeating and identify “what’s wrong with your life” and should be corrected. This should help identify where you may have wondered off the path of righteousness in order to fulfill your desires. Your priorities may be neglected for a reason and if you continue to ignore them, you may just end up with those nasty regrets. So, start doing the things that you want to do, and stop doing those that you disdain. Don’t wait for life, make life happen.

Is Greg grabbing as much out of life as he can? I think we all believe that he can grab a lot more. As a carefree bachelor in the romantic comedy About a Boy, the English actor Hugh Grant says, “My life is made up of units of time. Buying a CD, two units. Eating lunch, three units. Exercising, two units.” That kind of sums up Greg’s life. So, what has stopped Greg from grabbing more? Maybe his reluctance is a remnant of his childhood convictions. We were taught from a very young age that its bad manners to just go grab something you want without asking. No one ever mentioned that we were entitled to grab a better life for ourselves. Greg was just being polite and following the rules, until now.

Greg has filled out his own Personal Behavioral Assessment Matrix to see how far off he is from the path that he wants to take in life. He’s got a good idea of what he wants and doesn’t want in life. What’s Greg doing or not doing to get what he wants?

Greg’s Personal Behavioral Assessment Matrix

1

What is Greg doing in his life that he wants to?

2

What is Greg not doing in his life that he wants to?

3 4

What is Greg doing in his life that he doesn’t want to?

What is Greg not doing in his life that he doesn’t want to?

At first glance, it seems that there are more wrong things with Greg’s life than right. I think you’ll agree that Greg is “not doing the things that he wants to” and “doing the things that he doesn’t want to” as listed by a number of activities in Squares 2 & 3, respectively. However, Greg does seem preoccupied with “doing the things that he wants to” in Square 1. He’s also “not doing the things that he doesn’t want to” in Square 4, including certain sports that he doesn’t do anymore due to health reasons.

I’d like to let you in on a little secret. Greg already had a good hunch as to what he “wanted to do” and “didn’t want to do.” He also had a clue as to which Life Rules were holding him back and which ones would help him break through the barriers. This undoubtedly created the awareness that he needed to understand the possibilities in his life. It’s a good thing that he did all that rule-busting back in Chapter 8.

Sometimes we get stuck in life and believe that’s the way it has to be. We abide by the “law of inertia,” which states that an object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction – unless acted upon by an external force. Our lives seem to be at rest because we stubbornly resist a change in motion. And when we make our move, life may pop out of gear forcing us to go in the wrong direction. We brainwash ourselves into following some parochial life rulebook that doesn’t exist. In other words, we’ve been conditioned to follow rules that we don’t have to. This is a reasonable premise for breaking rules.

By cementing the rules that he is now going to live by, Greg will be in a much better position to complete this exercise and decide what he “wants,” “doesn’t want,” “is doing,” and “isn’t doing.” This will allow Greg to validate his needs based on inner desires rather than perceived obstacles. It has reinforced what he probably knew all along and has allowed him to reach some of the same conclusions, as well as new ones of course.

Greg has never ceased to indulge in some of the activities that he has enjoyed since he can remember, above all his sports. His wives were less than enthusiastic with his obsession and labor of love, and even less enthused with friends dropping by for a Saturday night game on TV. This was not typical of married life nor conducive to a Saturday night romance by any stretch. Sometimes typical can be a curse. It just may be that Greg’s marriages were missing a common set of rules, while Greg and his past wives followed their own.

As Greg selfishly indulged in personal interests, he failed to please his matrimonial partners. However, the sacrifice was far greater than what he had bargained for, and contradicted the very nature of being a family man. He had even gone back to school to become a production accountant and pursued a downtown job to appease his wife at the time. When that failed, he fell back to being who he was when they first got married. And she had a hard time dealing with that. She felt this was a step backward. In the meantime, Greg had lost all sense of balance between his life interests and marital expectations.

u Building a Life Slow and Steady

What is the lesson here? Simply, don’t set yourself up for failure by not doing what you want to do. You can never be happy doing something else. I used to think that the world was made for me and I worried that people thought of me as a failure or nonconforming when I didn’t meet their expectations, that is, until I made my own world where I could be happy doing what I wanted to do. Don’t tackle everything you don’t like about your life at once. It’s unreasonable and overwhelming to deploy an overly ambitious plan and overhaul your life within a short time frame. That’s not necessary or healthy or even possible. Find the little things that you love in life and build on them. One day, you’ll be doing the big things that you love in a way you never thought possible. Start slow and steady until you end with a big bang!

I would be more inclined to focus on fixing a single behavior that can improve our lives. Doing just one thing differently may be the catalyst that sets the chain of events in motion to make an improvement. Sometimes that one thing can be as simple as positive thinking, Our thoughts can have enormous power as we transform simple ideas into bold actions. The Canadian Olympic gold medalist Mark Tewksbury said that being aware of how our thoughts transform into action is a crucial step in creating a winning mindset. “A thought can be positive, negative or neutral. You have the power to transform negative thoughts into something positive or neutralize it. We can’t control outside influences but we can control how we approach them by understanding that it all begins with thoughts.” Positive thinking builds our confidence and relationships with others.

In Greg’s case, it was his wife at the time who liked to do the thinking for him, positive and otherwise. She thought it would be good for Greg to pursue a corporate career. Although her intention was to attain socioeconomic status, it did more to boost her ego. After two failed marriages, Greg realized these were frivolous intentions and the time had come for a meaningful life. This would require a compatible partner to share his life, and everything would blossom from there. Such an alliance would be a catalyst to attain purpose and meaning in life. The days of meeting up with a career wife at a downtown food court for a lunchtime interlude were over.

Greg has to keep in mind that everything we do in life is a process, including the processes we share with others. I’m sure that he is open to some new life processes that include a life partner who wants to spend a meaningful and eternal lifetime with him. Greg reserves the right to change his processes once she enters his life. But for now, he has to focus on those processes with the people already in his life and closest to him – friends, children, parents and siblings.

Life Architecture allows us to come to terms with our raison d’etre. We all have a reason for being and sometimes we have to act the way we feel. In retrospect, we’ve been distracted while trying to balance life’s responsibilities with the needs of others, sometimes ignoring our own. We have sacrificed some of the things that we enjoy and want for ourselves, such as those things in Square 2 of the Personal Behavioral Assessment Matrix that we’re not doing but want to do. It’s a lot easier taking care of others after we’ve taken care of ourselves.

What calls to you? What is something that you enjoy but haven’t had time for lately? What is something that you’ve always wanted to try but circumstances have prevented you from doing it? I’d say your number one compelling reason to do these things is that you want to live your life, and do what you like rather than regret doing what you don’t like.

u Greg’s Future Process Tree

In Chapter 7, Greg focused on understanding his life as it exists today. He developed a Life Process Tree representing the current snapshot of his life. He now needs a future Life Process Tree representing a future snapshot of his life. This will be part of his future Life Blueprint defining the way he wants to live his life going forward. This also means that Greg has a new set of Life Rules to live by after eliminating those which have been holding him back. All this rule-busting took place back in Chapter 8. Greg has been able to acquire a better understanding of what he wants to do but is not doing unless he breaks some rules. He has also completed a Personal Behavioral Assessment Matrix to figure out if he’s grabbing as much out of life as he can.

Greg has transformed his current Life Process Tree to reflect all the things that he desires to do in his life. Remember, this is largely possible as a result of Greg’s new Life Rules guiding his transformation efforts. As newcomers to Life Architecture, we will get a chance to interpret the transformation that Greg has made, and how it has materialized into a future Life Process Tree.

A Life Process Tree familiar to all of us will shortly be unveiled for the second time. This is the current Life Process Tree that Greg had developed earlier. In this version, however, we’ll illustrate Greg’s modifications to his current Life Process Tree that will, ultimately, become his future Life Process Tree. You’ll note that the modifications to his current Life Process Tree will be denoted with the following set of symbols.

Symbol Set for Modifications

Xidentifies the processes that Greg will be eliminating from his life.

CHANGE identifies any changed process underneath each original process to be eliminated. A changed process replaces an original process.

NEW identifies new processes that Greg is eager to introduce into his life.

A renowned information technology research firm known as Gartner came up with this notion of TIME, which stands for [T]olerate, [I]nvest, [M]igrate, [E]liminate. In other words, we can tolerate our old computer systems, invest more money in existing systems to improve them, migrate to new systems with better features, or just eliminate them altogether. This is an effective way to articulate the future system landscape of an organization.

It’s time to tolerate, invest, migrate, or eliminate each process in our current Life Process Tree. We can just keep and tolerate the same old processes that we do now, we can change them for the better, we can introduce fresh new processes, and we can eliminate tired old processes that don’t add much value to our lives. And with that, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Greg’s future Life Process Tree and ask you to take a moment to explore the changes that Greg wants to make in his life. This is the picture all of us need to paint for ourselves in order to visualize the life transformation awaiting us.

Tree (With Future Life Modifications)

dad died shortly after Greg completed his Current Life Blueprint

Regular Skype Interactions with Mom, Siblings & Kids Due to Distance

Reunions, Birthdays & Holiday Festivities

As you can see, Greg is determined to introduce many changes in his life. Greg’s old life is in the past where it belongs, while he aspires to the dream life that he has always wanted. In her hit single Girls Just Want to Have Fun, Cyndi Lauper refers to her adolescence and being carefree. I’ll never forget the lyrics: “My mother says, ‘When you gonna live your life right?’…My father yells, ‘What you gonna do with your life?’” I’m afraid that an adolescent girl having fun is not quite what Greg had in mind, but he can do what he wants to do and choose who he does it with, while he has fun at the same time.

Although Greg has gone through a couple of failed marriages, he has to be careful and selective about who he ends up with. He’s committed to build meaningful relationships with his kids, parents, siblings, friends, and life partner one day. He wants to enjoy the people most important to him. And the best way to do that is to do meaningful and fun things with them. He may also find it rewarding to invest in relationships with the people that he works and indulges in sports with on regular occasions.

u Investing In Your Relationships

We earlier reached the conclusion that life is an investment. This implies that we must invest in our relationships. We must work on our relationships and keep them fresh by maintaining their priority and longevity. Otherwise, our relationships sour and it’s too late to be friends again. Life without family and friends can get pretty lonely. We shouldn’t neglect the people we love. The good news is that family and good friends stick by us even when we don’t always reciprocate in kind. Sometimes the burden is on us to keep the relationship alive. This is ever so important in our business relationships, especially as consultants who are dependent on leads and others hiring us. We must continuously develop relationships to support ourselves in good times and bad. I make a point of inviting work colleagues for regular coffees, business lunches, drinks after work, and professional events. I also take them to the odd hockey game when my family cancels on me. The relationships that we forge with people ensure both our personal and business success, with family and friends being our greatest source of happiness.

Greg is at a point in his life where he wants to start feeling good about himself. This means building relationships with people who are important to him; he wants to be a part of and contribute to their lives. He also wants economic stability and is motivated to work hard to become successful in his job. Hopefully, one day, management will recognize his potential and the value that he provides to his company.

Although Greg would like to find work that gives him a sense of fulfillment, he’s realized that investing time in personal relationships is more fulfilling and gives his life purpose. I once heard that life takes a bit of time and a lot of relationship. Greg is eager to develop intimate relationships with family and close friends as a means of an enduring happiness. This will be his focus in creating a future for himself. And let’s not forget his love of sports. He craves that feeling of being an athlete. Although his hockey days are over, he is willing to train hard to play competitive racquetball. Greg lives for competition and tournaments while he is still a big kid at heart. He has overcome the setbacks of a hip replacement and has since acquired a mental toughness.

I can’t expect you to understand why Greg wants to do certain things in his life, and how he has made decisions and landed his choices. After all, you weren’t there when Greg decided to architect, or while he was architecting, his life. Greg has identified the future life modifications he will be applying to his current Life Blueprint. I’m sure these are open to interpretation and will become more apparent as he develops his future Life Blueprint.

I have summarized Greg’s reasoning in the following table according to each modified branch of his Life Process Tree, illustrated in the previous diagram. I’m confident that we will all be able to relate to Greg as he makes sense of his life. This is much easier when you understand one’s reasons, beliefs, and desires.

Life

Process

Tree

Branch

1

7 Engage in Romantic Relationship Maintain Family Life with Parents & Siblings Raise Family Work to Support New Life Train for New Career Enjoy Leisure Time Lose Weight & Stay Fit

2

3

4

5

6

Greg’s Future Life Modifications

Description of Future Life Modification

This process is renamed from “Search for Romantic Relationship” to “Engage in Romantic Relationship.” Greg has been searching for a life partner who will fall in love with him and accept his children. He should consider other avenues to meet someone in the same boat as him, that is, willing to grow and enjoy life as a couple. The caveat is that they love each other for who they are, rather than to satisfy improbable criteria on a wish list. Once they find each other, they can plan and develop a life of togetherness.

This is probably the only process that will remain somewhat of a constant in Greg’s life. However, now that he’s divorced, it is important that Greg includes his life partner in both his and his children’s lives. Greg also has to take the initiative to develop a friendship with his ex-wife as they make joint decisions in the best interest of their children. This means that they will also respect and accommodate each other’s separate lives.

This process is renamed from “Work to Earn a Living” to “Work to Support New Life.” Greg has to sustain a new life that provides for his family while supporting his leisure activities and an enriching family lifestyle. Although he’s not interested in a career, he needs a job that affords him a good income, benefits, flexibility, and a positive work environment. Greg also wants to improve his work skills, develop other sources of income through investments, and initiate a retirement plan.

This process has been eliminated altogether. Greg is not interested in a career but a job that gives him the lifestyle he seeks. He had attempted to pursue a new career path as a production accountant and learned that this just isn’t for him. Greg is a humble individual and is not defined by a career. However, he does want to pursue a better paying job in his present field of work as a building maintenance supervisor.

This is the big prize for Greg. Greg is pursuing a quality of life that comes with a diversity of things that he enjoys in life and making his family a part of it. Greg is on a mission to do things that he’s only dreamed of doing. This includes competing in sports like baseball & racquetball, going to sporting events, camping, hiking, fishing, boating, snowmobiling, traveling, and trying new things that he hasn’t done. But most important, he wants his kids and life partner alongside him and nothing is going to stop him.

Wouldn’t we all like to be in shape and have a figure to match. Greg has always taken his body seriously, specifically his weight and fitness. However, Greg weighed the most that he’s ever weighed before his divorce. He has since gone back to healthy foods and the old health club where he has shed thirty pounds to match his high school weight. I’m sure that even college girls give him a second look.

Family has always been an important part of Greg’s fabric since childhood. Due to his parents’ divorce and the relocation of his mother and siblings to other parts of the country, much of the family life and dynamics that he remembers have gone stale. His father’s death has created a much larger void in his life. As a result, Greg has taken the onus to revive his family life with his mother and siblings. This includes rebuilding personal relationships with all of them through regular communication and visits.

The changes that Greg intends to make are going to take time to gel as existing processes are modified or eliminated, and new processes are unveiled. But with the proper roadmap and some motivation, Greg should have no problem realizing a life that fits him like a glove. Maybe we’ve been wearing those loose mittens we got for Christmas too long and the reason it’s been difficult to get a good grip on life. Whoever thought life could come in a perfect shape and size?

So, without further ado, here is Greg’s future Life Process Tree stripped of all the confusing corrective markings that we had overlaid on his current Life Process Tree earlier. This is what I call a clean slate. This is Greg’s clean slate and opportunity to start over without prejudice. I’m not sure that Greg can wipe the slate entirely clean and ignore the past, but he can definitely put the past in perspective and start over again knowing what he’s gone through and where he wants to go.

Greg’s Future Life Process Tree

Work in a Supervisor Role that Provides Good Income, Benefits, Flexibility & Positive Work Environment

with Ex-wife in Order to Provide Common Parental Guidance Fulfill Child Support & Alimony Demands

Maintain Standard of Living (existing prior to divorce)

Enroll in Toastmasters & Other Personal Development Programs to Build Confidence & Communication Skills

Broaden Investment Horizons & Evaluate Investment Funds & Real Estate as Extra Income Sources Seek Professional Services & Develop a Retirement Plan with Life Partner

Spend Quality Time with Children

Relax & Enjoy Live Music at Neighborhood Pub Watch Sports, Movies & Favorite Sitcoms on TV

Play Racquetball (recreational/ competitive) Socialize with Close Friends & Their Families Regularly Go Camping for Family Getaways

Go Fishing & Boating with Friends & Family (day trips)

Rent Beach House in Tropics Every February (may include friends)

Attend Live & Televised Sporting Events with Friends

Develop Man Cave or Sports Bar in Basement to Watch Sports with Friends

Engage in Habitual Romantic Walks & Talks with Life Partner

Communicate with Mom & Siblings Regularly

Visit Mom & Siblings in Okanagan Valley 3-4 Times Annually

Facilitate Regular Skype Interactions with Mom, Siblings & Kids Due to Distance

Organize Family Reunions, Birthdays & Holiday Festivities

Develop Relationship with Mom & Siblings: Discuss Deteriorating Family Dynamics Since Parents’ Divorce (and possible resolutions)

This is Greg’s future Life Blueprint defining the way he consciously wants to live his life moving forward. Maybe it’s more appropriate to call it his “conscious” Life Blueprint for a future destiny, but I’m sure that consciousness is an inherent part of any life assessment. The idea of architecting our lives is a novice and daring experiment for most people. The Life Blueprint allows us to go from reactive to proactive as we focus on priorities that matter most while considering all possibilities.

Greg has consciously developed a blueprint of his life processes, similar to the genetic blueprint where four chemical bases of DNA are arranged in various combinations to create the genomes, or the inheritable traits, of all living things. But rather than use a DNA model resembling a long ladder twisted into a spiral, we use a Life Process Tree to model a set of interrelated processes.

u Can You Clone Someone?

It’s one thing to model the genomes that make us who we are, from the way we look to which hand we write with, but another to take a snapshot of future processes that define all the things that we want to do in life. Regardless of whether we model the composition of our genetic makeup or the decomposition of our life processes, we are capturing information in the form of genetic code or process relationships, respectively. I wonder if this means that we can clone somebody by duplicating a DNA sequence and life processes. That would make a clone identical in both form and function. Only a sci-fi movie producer could have such a wild imagination. A deranged geneticist in the movie The Reconstruction of William Zero embarks on a reckless project to create a better version of himself. The geneticist, actually his clone, explains to his wife, “I wanted to disappear…but I realized that I was stuck with myself…but with this body, these memories, and it felt like jail.” I’m sure this also meant he was stuck with the same processes.

We’re not here to clone Greg but rather help him break out of an imprisoned existence and make a better version of his life, which is captured in his future Life Blueprint. There’s no reason that he should be stuck with a self or a life that he no longer relishes. Greg is a unique individual with distinct life processes to fulfill his life ambitions. Frankly, cloning life processes wouldn’t achieve his ambitions. Greg owes it to himself to adopt a life that instills pride and joy, and make his life more of what he wants it to be in a conscious and contrived manner. This will allow him to be in control of his destiny as he sets a new life in motion. His subconscious mind will affirm the conscious decisions he makes, and produce a stimulus that gives him the sensation that conveys “Now this is more like it!”

The study of psychology dictates that the subconscious is the part of our consciousness that is not in focal but rather peripheral awareness. The Secret and other books about pseudoscientific laws of attraction are premised on the notion that if we believe in something, it’ll automatically happen. Many purveyors of self-help materials evangelize psychological ideas without theoretical basis. Dr. Wayne Dyer, a qualified psychologist and author of bestsellers on the practical psychology of self-discovery and personal growth, rightfully tells us there are many ways to get the things that we want for ourselves in our lives. “But basically, it all begins with how we choose to think. As you think, so shall you be.” We can’t just let our subconscious mind do the thinking for us. We have to make conscious decisions relative to our situations and the realities we live in. It’s pretty well up to us to take positive action and make things happen.

u Your Reality is Created by Your Consciousness

It’s our conscious mind that creates reality. We spend a lifetime creating our present reality based on our limiting beliefs. This may explain why we are still stuck in our lives and can’t create the reality we want for ourselves. It was a psychologist and expert on consciousness who said that it is actually very empowering to think that we live in a physical world that hasn’t happened yet, and it is our consciousness that is reaching into the world of probability and bringing it into existence. Somehow, we’re oblivious to the subconscious beliefs that control our lives and block us from manifesting a desired reality. And when we are aware, we don’t do anything because it causes pain or we just lack confidence in ourselves. The first step to ridding ourselves of limiting subconscious beliefs is to become aware of them. This makes it easier to remove obstacles, including the rules that restrict life’s progression. Ironically, most of us have become quite masterful at following rules. These beliefs and rules can be very hard to change since they have been a part of our identity as long as we can remember. Our subconscious mind is bound by our beliefs and the rules bestowed on us by society. A Life Blueprint is a conscious effort to rewire or eliminate those beliefs and rules, and that’s when everything changes for us. There’s nothing more invigorating than watching your reality transform into one that’s a perfect expression of you.

It just so happens that Greg’s future Life Blueprint has been a conscious effort to design a desired future. This represents his destination in life – his rock, his true north, his end game. Every time Greg makes a decision, he will ask himself, “Which option will get me closer to the life in my future blueprint?” and choose the best course of action. And when he is confused or feels lost, he can refer to his blueprint and remind himself where he’s heading. This will help Greg clearly identify what he wants and where he’s going.

When we have a Life Blueprint, we have a good idea where we’re headed and are more likely to arrive. We may not know our exact destination since some undefined or partially defined boxes can still be found on our future Life Blueprint, but we’ll get all the details filled out in time as we travel toward our destination. It’ll eventually all fall into place just like the periodic table of elements.

It was the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev who created his own version of the periodic table of elements, which also predicted the properties of eight elements yet to be discovered. He left eight unlabelled boxes on his table and believed that it comprised the complete list of basic building blocks of matter in nature. Despite many scientific skeptics, Mendeleev was proven correct after the unknown elements were later discovered, fitting perfectly into the missing boxes.

Our future Life Blueprint is a periodic table of life processes to be completed by its owner, who is still figuring out where he or she wants to go. I’m counting on you to be that person. Who better than you knows your own future and which pieces are missing? It is your responsibility to understand what value you want to derive from your life. In the next chapter, Greg will assess the value of his life and how to add value in the future. It’s common sense that we must value something before we can endeavor to achieve it.

Chapter 10

Putting a Value on Greg’s Life: What is the Value of life?

That may very well depend on whose life we’re talking about. It also depends on what we mean by value. I recently stumbled upon a human life value calculator which calculates our personal financial value. It estimates the future financial contributions that we will make in our lifetime to the people we support. Practically speaking, our economic value is measured in relation to the value that we provide our dependents.

Life insurance companies use human life value calculators to calculate the financial loss our family would incur if we were to die today. Ironically, if we don’t have dependents, the calculator will not generate results. We only seem to have value when we have something to offer others, especially those who are counting on us for alimony, child support, or an inheritance. Breadwinners are valued customers when it comes to taking out insurance policies. There’s something morally wrong with this picture.

I’d be so bold as to say that our lives have more than economic value. I personally provide more than just money to my family. I provide companionship to my wife, mentoring to my children, friendship to my friends, consulting to my clients, leadership to my heritage society, accommodations to my neighbor’s cats, and the list goes on. I also provide value to myself, and that is the happiness and joy I feel every waking moment of the life I have architected for myself. I’ve done what I could and do what I can, and not necessarily what I should.

u Should We or Could We?

It was a minister at a funeral who asked the question: “What is the sum total of your life?” The deceased was a dear friend of my parents. The minister went on to say, “She has done for Christ what she could.” She did what she could rather than what she should. She was always taking care of others. She always took that extra step to do what she could do. She even hosted a baby shower for the new minister’s wife because she could, although there were others much closer to the family who should have taken charge but didn’t. She taught us the difference between should and could. The minister continued to preach and advised us, “We can carry on from there.” I think we should all carry on and do what we can for each other – to be there for each other and learn from each other. As the minister said, “You can learn anything from anyone.” When I come to think of it, I’ve learned something from everyone. I hope to continue to create more value in my life, not because I should do more, but because I could do more.

What value would Life Architecture and this book have if we could not realize the future value of an architected life? If we were to stop here, I’m not sure I’d be able to call myself a life architect. I’d be more like a junior draftsman leaving a bunch of incomplete design blueprints behind before the client had a chance to vet their authenticity and adequacy to achieve reality. Like an old boss of mine used to say, “Anyone can draw a pretty picture.”

Good ol’ boss Bob was all about getting results from his team. I still remember Bob’s moment of truth as we participated in our regular Monday morning round-table status report of the previous week’s accomplishments. No sooner had I started my routine with “I worked on…” before Bob interjected, “I don’t care what you worked on, I want to know what you got done.” After all, this was the boss’s forum to table problems and make decisions as a team. This definitely set a precedent and motivated us all to “get things done” rather than “work on something” without delivering value. Let’s face it, people don’t care until their boss cares.

It was the famous management consulting guru Peter Drucker who said, “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” Bob was both a competent manager and leader. He mentored us as individuals, and gave the introverts time to think and process so they could also be heard. He helped us help each other under his leadership. Sometimes I wonder if Bob was a Freemason whose beliefs were based on brotherly love, relief and truth as a way to make good men better. Regardless, I learned an important lesson: Leadership is not about being the best; leadership is about making everyone else better. Thanks to Bob, doing the right things and doing things right have become a force of habit. To this day, I’m still paranoid about handing in a status report with incomplete tasks and no results.

u Progress is Getting Things Done

Our progress is a measure of getting things done. The more progress we make, the more we get done. Someone wanting to build a house isn’t going to get anywhere by pinning a set of architecture blueprints on the wall for others to admire. A process is required by which he can take those blueprints and make them a reality, more specifically, building a house that is granted an occupancy permit upon completion. I am guilty of paying for architecture blueprints for a house that I never built. Until I engage both an architect and builder, I can only continue to dream about it. It’s time to make my dreams an overdue reality. Progress is hardly a picture on the wall unless you’re an artist.

Not being a house architect or an artist, I had to find an accomplished residential architect who could translate my vision into a detailed architecture blueprint. I would also engage a master builder to build my dream home based on a good balance of functional and design requirements. Instead, our dream house had been in the dream stage for quite some time, and it was only a matter of kick starting the building process to realize our dreams. Regrettably, this was one of the few dangling life ambitions in my future Life Blueprint collecting dust and awaiting action.

Sometimes I feel that I lacked the confidence to take on a monumental process, specifically building my dream house. I wonder if anyone noticed, most notably my wife and kids. I empathize with Hannibal the cannibal in a moment of weakness when he said, “Now I’m sorry to think that I might no longer enjoy your full confidence.” How can anyone have confidence in us when we don’t have confidence in ourselves? Confidence is taking action.

We can all realize our dreams, whether it is to build a dream house, travel the world, or go to our waterfront cottage whenever we feel like it. It’s really up to us to initiate action by taking the next steps. Unfortunately, we don’t always take the right steps. Do you know your next step? Someone once said, “Your entire life leads to the next step.” That’s a long time to start a new life. We take many next steps, but only the right ones lead to the place that we want to go. Priority and timing will help us get there before time expires.

It just may be that we’re victims of procrastination. “How you do anything is how you do everything” was an observation by a teacher. Procrastination is the paralysis of life and a form of selfsabotage that’s readily available. How many times have we put something on the back burner because we heard a voice in our head? Or, how many opportunities have we forgone because we didn’t recognize them or were to lazy to act on them? These voices and behaviors are deepseated defense mechanisms that have been planted by our parents and society since we were children, and to this day, they continue to dictate our actions or lack thereof. If there’s one thing I learned as a parent, the hardest thing about parenting is knowing when not to.

I admit that I’m guilty of procrastination. There’s not much value in watching my house plans sit on a shelf collecting dust. The value in those plans won’t be realized until I actually use them to build a house. Realistically, I won’t realize the full value until my house is built and I’m actually living in it. However, there is a chain of events, known as a “value chain,” that add value along the way.

u A Value Chain to Add Value

A value chain is a chain of value-generating activities. Activities are completed in a specific order, each adding value as we go on to the next activity. Only when we complete all the activities do we get the full value of the entire chain. It’s like going to a buffet. We don’t get the full value until we’ve walked the length of the buffet table and sampled everything that appeals to our taste buds. I would never think twice about stopping halfway and missing the grand finale – the succulent juicy roast beef cooked to perfection and delicately carved by the gentleman in a big white chef’s hat at the end of the table. A value chain can be used to show how value is added in building a house, running a business, or even living our lives. Life is a chain of life activities, otherwise referred to as life stages.

The term “value chain” is a business term first introduced by Michael Porter, a Harvard university professor, who identified a set of interrelated generic activities common to a wide range of companies in various industries. These activities represent a full spectrum of business operations required for the design, manufacture, delivery, and support of products sold by a company. This is a pattern predominant in companies that make and sell products.

The value chain is typically used to identify the business processes directly involved in adding value to a company. These processes are arranged in a chronological and prioritized sequence to illustrate how value is derived in a company. Companies have been using Porter’s Primary Value Chain for several decades to build competitive advantage through value realization.

Upon closer evaluation, this is a high-level model demonstrating how a manufacturing company receives raw materials as input, adds value by converting raw materials into finished goods, and finally puts consumer products into the hands of its customers with services to support them. According to Porter, there are key activities and resources to coordinate in order to deploy the process boxes in the model: Inbound Logistics, Operations, Outbound Logistics, Marketing & Sales, and Service. However, it takes more than just drawing boxes to rake in the profits.

Companies work diligently to foster the processes and activities required to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Sometimes they take their cue from top-performing competitors in the industry as a benchmark of excellence, while they try to formalize and operationalize an optimized chain of value-adding activities. The value chain represents the activities by which a company matures business practices and increases its shareholder value. In addition to organizational efficiencies, companies pride themselves on value creation through organizational effectiveness.

In a similar context, a value chain can be used in our personal lives to help us understand how we can derive value through the different stages of our lives. We foster life-enhancing activities to secure our happiness and passion for living. In a sense, we create value through our own personal efficiencies and effectiveness.

When I’m ready to build a house one day, I expect to effectively work my way through the different stages of the building process with great efficiency and without a glitch from the time I conceptualize the house I want to build until it is physically built and ready for occupancy. There are priorities to consider, and a prevailing order in which things need to get done, as I execute my building plans. It is in my best interest to take the appropriate steps that add value as I go through the building process. The following is a value chain of activities for building my house, or for that matter, any house.

Value Chain for Building a House

I’m no award-winning custom home builder, but I have committed to follow a proven and prescribed building process if I’m to optimize the value chain for building a house. Not only do I have to satisfy my family with a design that we all agree on, but I also have to make sure that I meet the city planning department’s building codes. If that’s not enough, I also have to abide by the architectural controls set forth by the development’s design committee. Since I bought the lot some time ago, the evaluation and selection of a house site is one less thing that I have to worry about.

After I get a good handle on the building codes and architecture controls, I can sit down with my architect to complete a conceptual design of my new house. This will be much easier to do after we’ve familiarized ourselves with the city and development building requirements. It would be one sorry state of affairs to pay for ranch-style house plans only to learn that the architecture controls set forth by the developer allow only 2-storey houses. I’d be out at least ten grand for unwarranted architecture work.

As you can see, there is some value in understanding building codes and architecture controls. If we refer back to the value chain for building a house, this is the second activity in the chain that adds value. There are priorities and an order in which things need to get done. Unfortunately, I won’t realize any real value for all my efforts and money spent until the house is built and I’m having a beer on my deck with the next-door neighbor.

You may be wondering why I’m doing a conceptual design for this house, the third activity in the value chain. Simply, a conceptual design is invaluable by allowing me to conceive an idea on paper and solicit feedback pertaining to scope, dimensions, design, function, and other architectural considerations before we start building. Once we have agreed on the conceptual design, I can be assured that I’m building something that is both architecturally compliant and aesthetically gratifying. I can then continue to instruct the architect to complete detailed plans, engage a builder to prepare a budget, and then enter into a building contract.

The purpose of a value chain is to demonstrate the increasing value derived as we go through the different activities in the chain. More and more value is accumulated along the way until we’ve realized the full value of a constructed house at the end. The value chain for building a house in the following model illustrates the value that is derived in each and every activity of the building process.

Value Derived During House Building Process

A L U E

We don’t have to build a house to recognize the benefits of a value chain. A value chain can be used for anything we do in life that involves a process or consists of a series of activities to accomplish something. Our life is a series of stages from the time we are born to the day we die. And during our lifetimes, we derive value throughout the various stages of our lives as we try to achieve happiness and reach our goals. This is better known as a Life Value Chain.

You’re probably asking whether or not Greg has a Life Value Chain. Of course he does, and it’s probably a lot like yours. They may not be identical but I’m sure there are overpowering similarities. And I bet that they have nothing to do with developing a competitive advantage or creating shareholder value. So, here it is, a Life Value Chain for the human race depicting the six stages of life.

Value Chain for the Human Race

1 2 3 4 5 6

Now, think about your life. We’re born and live with our parents until it’s time to fly the coop. Mom and dad suddenly become empty nesters while we’re building our own nest. We get a job, start a business, or continue our schooling. Over the next little while, we’re working to make ends meet, developing our business or focusing on a career. If we’re not all that entrepreneurial or academic, we may work for a retail store, restaurant, factory, or other establishment looking for low-skilled labor. This is kind of life in a nutshell. Every stage of life has a start and finish line. When we cross the finish line of one stage, there’s a start line for the next stage.

As we venture out on our own, we start to cultivate our personal well-being, family, and relationships with others. We fall in love, get married, and start a family. Of course, we add friends and relatives to the mix. Our kids grow up and we focus on retirement. If we don’t have dependents, we may be in a much better position to retire earlier. Some of us may decide to keep working and avoid those retirement years altogether. At the end, we become so old that it’s time for someone else to take care of us. The world seems to be a homogenized space and far too predictable.

u The Retirement Riddle

Old age and retirement are inevitable. I think it would be nice to have the choice to retire early. Unfortunately, some of us can’t afford to retire. A hefty inheritance or a lucky break in life just isn’t in the cards. We spend our whole life trying to recognize our lucky breaks only after they’re gone. A self-made millionaire once said, “When you don’t earn the breaks, you don’t get the breaks.” He solved the early retirement riddle, which is nothing more than a basic equation, and retired early.

Your motivation + Your money’s purpose = Your chances of getting free

Let’s assume that you have all the motivation in the world to call it quits. At least now you have one variable of the equation in the bag. It’s no surprise that many of us desperately want out. The other variable deals with your money’s purpose. Is your money working for you or are you working for it? If your money is making money for you, you’re in good shape. Otherwise, you’ll probably be celebrating your 60th birthday sitting in a cubicle somewhere.

An old university friend, now a university professor, summarized the typical sequence of life events. We start life by being dependent on others, typically our parents. We then become independent as we leave for college or a job. We later become interdependent as we develop strong relationships with our family, work colleagues, and people we share interests. We finally get too old to take care of ourselves and become dependent on others. Thus, our lives can be summarized in terms of four distinct phases:

1 Starting with dependence

2 Growing into independence

3 Developing into interdependence

4 Ending with dependence again

I wish that I could just stay interdependent forever. Everything has a beginning and end, just like a Life Value Chain.

u Assigning Value to Your Life

What do we get at the end of our lives besides a gold watch? What value do our lives hold for us when we don’t know why we’re here? Why are we working and doing chores every day of our lives if we don’t have a defined purpose? These are some deep questions. We all go through life trying to define our happiness, while some of us who are privileged take advantage of our birthright. What kind of value do you want to get out of your life? Is it money? Do you want to become an aristocrat defined by privilege and material assets, or do you just want to make as much money as you can without all the fanfare? Maybe you want to become a famous actor, musician, or singer. Or it just may be that you want to get your PhD and curtail the impacts of solar radiation and the greenhouse effect. This would definitely have humanitarian value for all of mankind. You may even get a Nobel Prize out of it, not to mention the dignity and respect of your academic peers. On the other hand, you may want nothing more than to be a good Samaritan regardless of the good you do for others. I wish Maslow were still around for a coffee chat.

I remember attending a play about a famous WWI soldier who was actually a woman disguised as a man. Sergeant Savic may be the most-decorated female soldier in the history of warfare, and the only woman to be awarded the French Legion of Honor not once but twice. After the war, she retired in seclusion and dedicated her life to saving orphans and helping others. It’s odd that history remembers kings, not soldiers. The play was powerful and emotional. The actress was able to convey her feelings of what held value for Sergeant Savic in life. Her performance motivated us to want to do more for humanity.

The value that we derive from our lives varies for each of us. Not all of us want to aspire to greatness. Some of us just want a happy and humble life without the nuisance of wealth, prestige, or fame – and all the headaches they bring. It’s hard to believe there are people who are comfortable in their own skin. I don’t know how many times I’ve been to the King’s Head Pub with Greg and met musicians who aren’t rich or famous, but are happy playing their music. Although they’d be elated to make the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, they’re content just playing music and performing in front of an audience.

We all desire to amplify our happiness as we go through the various life stages of our Life Value Chain. Greg is no exception. However, he could care less about running a business or having a career that makes him lots of money. He just wants a job that pays the bills, not to mention one

that will afford him leisure and quality time with his family, especially time he spends with his daughters. Greg’s success isn’t measured by how much money he makes or how many racquetball tournaments he wins, but rather how much his daughters want him in their lives.

If we look at the second life stage of the Life Value Chain labelled “Get a Job, Start a Business, or Prepare for a Career,” Greg is fine with just getting a job. His happiness is not defined by money but rather derived from the simple things in life that he gets from his family, friends, sports, music and nature, probably in that order. Greg’s Life Value Chain is one stage shorter than most people we know, as illustrated in the following model.

Greg’s Life Value Chain

XWe’re all unique individuals with some variation of a Life Value Chain. I’m sure there are people who never knew their parents. The first life stage of their Life Value Chain labelled “Live with Parents” has been replaced with an orphanage, foster care, or guardians. And those who adopt children also adopt their pasts. These kids come with blank pages, unlike newborns who leave the hospital with biological parents. There are also underprivileged children who grow up on the street without parents, or whose parents perish in war. Missing that part of the Life Value Chain certainly puts one in a precarious position. No one said growing up was going to be easy. Someone who grew up on the streets and lucky to be alive said, “Growing up was worse than a near-death experience.”

There are people in this world who choose not to have a family. They’re content living in a bachelor suite or without someone telling them to drop the toilet seat when they’re done. Some couples are career people and have no interest in kids. Unlike Greg, their businesses and careers take priority while raising a family is the last thing that they want to do. They’re less inclined to focus on family relationships. Whether you call it selfishness or something else, this is a lifestyle choice. They see family and raising kids as a sacrifice of their personal time, money and, more importantly, independence.

u Life is an Overlapping Matter

Who says life has to happen this way? If life unfolded in a straight line or near-linear fashion, we wouldn’t be human. We couldn’t chew gum while reading a book. A waitress couldn’t take our order until the previous table was served, and never mind cleaning up after customers on their way out. We may as well be institutionalized and pretend that we’re going through grade school again. Once I finished grade twelve, I couldn’t wait to do things my way, nonsequentially that is. If there was a way to skip grades without being a genius, I would have done it. It became even more important to multi-task and keep up with life after high school. In college, a typical

scenario included some serious studies, a means of subsistence via part-time jobs, succumbing to girlfriend demands, committing to sports teams, giving time to academic clubs, participating in regular frat parties, and so on. I did them all haphazardly, and probably in reverse priority from what my parents had in mind. Those were the long-awaited early days of separation from our parents. Although the various stages of life in the Life Value Chain have a prescribed sequence of natural progression, many of these can overlap. In other words, we can do things at the same time. As human beings, we love to multi-task. And some of us are pretty damn good at it, with the exception of a two-timing boyfriend who has double-booked his dates.

Each stage of life has an intrinsic value, whether it is measured financially, intellectually, spiritually, or whatever has importance and meaning for us. Early on in the Life Value Chain, during our childhood, we are in less control and more dependent on our parents or guardians. As we get older and wiser, we begin to take control of our lives and try to forge our destinies. We invent our own version of a Life Value Chain based on our personal life aspirations and circumstances.

Since various life stages may overlap, we can transform the Life Value Chain to better illustrate the consecutive nature of our personal lives. When we multi-task, we get more things done during the day, in a year, or even a lifetime. However, the value that we attach to each life stage and the degree of overlap is unique to each individual. Although the Life Value Chain has a standard set of life stages that follow a prescribed order, we adapt to get the desired value that we seek during our lifetimes.

As individuals, we interpret value differently. Thus, we all have distinct Life Value Chains representing our personal value propositions. The following diagram illustrates a possible scenario of how these life stages can overlap as value is derived throughout the Life Value Chain.

Life Value Chain (Overlapping Life Stages)

In this Life Value Chain example, we see that a teenager or young adult can get a part-time job during high school or college, while still living with the parents. Let’s call this “Overlap #1.” This individual can also decide to work full-time while living with the folks. This may be a great way to save money if we don’t mind sacrificing our independence.

Similarly, an individual does not need an established business or career before he or she gets into an adult relationship, gets married, and even starts raising a family. This is identified as “Overlap #2.” Life can be full of surprises, as we all know. Just ask a teenage single mother who is raising a child, going to school, and working part-time while living with her folks.

The sequence, overlap, and even duration of these life stages are different for everybody. These life stages all vary depending on our life circumstances and what is important to us. The first life stage, “Live with Parents,” is typically 18 years of our lives. This is the magic age at which time many teenagers are deemed legal adults and move out to go to college or decide to live on their own. There are exceptions, of course, to every rule.

My friend Mike is still holding on to his mother’s apron, so to speak. He is forty something, never married, and still lives with his parents. In Mike’s case, there may be some truth to the saying “Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.” I see a lot of advantages living at home, especially if we’re used to mom’s home cooking. I don’t see Mike moving out any time soon. I can’t speak for his parents.

This implies that Mike’s first stage of life with the parents has surpassed the 18-year threshold and nearing half a century long. And the life stage that includes marriage and raising a family just isn’t in the cards. A wife and kids are unwarranted life choices as far as Mike is concerned. I’m sure this would also interfere with his squash league. I’ve provoked Mike on a few occasions by kindly inquiring about a wedding in Mexico. I don’t believe I’ll be taking a formal beach vacation in a tux any time soon.

Mike is definitely a different cat. He recently completed his MBA while developing his engineering consulting practice. His academic prowess is impressive and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s entertaining the idea of doing his PhD now that he’s acquired a business acumen to complement his technical expertise. In academic terms, Mike has taken a major in career with a minor in family. All this is happening while living with the folks. As you can see in the following Life Value Chain, the life stage labelled “Develop Business or Establish Career” overlaps with the entire “Live with Parents” stage. It must feel like going through grade school all over again.

XMike’s Life Value Chain

Mike is over 40 years of age and has been living with his parents his entire life

If Mike’s parents live into their 90s, Mike may be living with them during his retirement years

Mike has changed careers and gone back to school as he continues to pursue his career aspirations, and he’s still unsure if he’s landed the right profession

You will see that Mike’s Life Value Chain is much different than Greg’s. Like Mike, Greg used to major in career, specifically a sports career, and minor in family. He has since turned things around to become a great dad. While Greg couldn’t give two hoots about a career, this is an important part of Mike’s life. Mike is focused on his career and has no interest in relationships. Mike and Greg are distinct individuals with opposing needs and ambitions. I rather think of them as two magnetic charges at the opposite ends of a magnet.

We have purposely left out the one life stage in Mike’s Life Value Chain that is most important to Greg, namely “Cultivate Personal Well-being, Family & Human Relationships.” Although Mike comes across as a very affable and outgoing individual in a crowded room, he is the archetypical introvert. He knows a lot of people, but has few close friends. “I don’t think people can have a lot of friends. I mean, it’s difficult. The most important thing in life is to have good friends, not lots of friends” were the sentiments of an introverted teenager looking to make a friend in a psychological thriller.

Although Mike has been living with his parents from day one, he has changed careers and gone back to school on a few occasions without worrying about dependents. He’s had the freedom to chase his dreams and career aspirations. By the looks of things, the only time he’ll be living a truly solitary existence is when he retires, assuming his parents have passed on. However, if his parents do live into their eighties, at least he’ll have someone to retire with.

Now that we have agreed that Mike’s and Greg’s Life Value Chains are unequivocally opposite, I think you’ll find that the value they derive from their respective chain is also different. So, what’s important to Mike that Greg finds meaningless? It is obvious that Mike values his independence and is determined to develop his career. This gives him self-worth and maybe even some prestige amongst his friends and business colleagues. Mike gets satisfaction from his intellectual and academic standing in society.

Overlap

Greg is the quintessential inverse of this equation. Greg’s focus is his family. He yearns for companionship and the love of his children. He desires a life partner to share his life fully, as well as the life of his kids. He doesn’t care about a career, or whether others see him as a modest laborer rather than a white collar achiever. Greg simply wants to make a comfortable living so that he can enjoy a happy home life.

If I were to put Mike’s and Greg’s Life Value Chains side by side, we would immediately appreciate how different they really are. Someone might even say that they’re as different as night and day. They presumably begin by deriving similar value as children growing up with parental guidance. But as adults, they take divergent roads in life, and as a result, their life value propositions are contradistinctive.

The following diagram represents a typical Life Value Chain and the intrinsic value derived from each stage of life, not necessarily accounting for our individualistic differences. As individuals, we allocate more value to certain life stages than others.

Value Derived During Your Life

V A L U E

What is the value that Greg wants to get out of life? What is Mike’s life value proposition? We’ve seen and heard enough to know that they’re incongruent. Let’s ignore life stages 1 & 6 for a moment when it comes to these two gentlemen. Both Greg and Mike have lived through their childhood while under the wing of their parents. Similarly, in their old age, they will have someone or a facility care for them, depending on their health. It appears that the beginning and end of our lives are out of our control and left to fate.

If we focus on everything in between, it’s obvious that Mike is more inclined to derive value from life stages 2 & 3, while Greg will squeeze all he can from life stages 4 & 5. Maybe it just means that Mike did all his life work up front. Many career people make big sacrifices early in their lives. Mike could end up alone one day if he doesn’t consider a life outside his career. Anyhow, I’ve asked both Greg and Mike to summarize their value propositions. In other words, this is what Greg and Mike live for. 1

Greg’s Value Proposition:

“I live for my family and friends. When I’m not putting in my eight-to-five work hours, I’m around the people who mean the most to me. I want to be the best dad in the world to my daughters. I desire a life partner to share all the beauty life has to offer. I enjoy casual outings to the pub with my friends where we can watch the game and cheer for our favorite team. Sometimes, I just like to relax and dance to the beat of a good band. And when I get a chance, I want to connect with my folks, brothers, and sister. I feel alive after a good workout and a good sweat on the court. I love the outdoors and want to go to the mountains as often as I can with friends who enjoy nature as much as I do. I want to enjoy my leisure time even more when I retire one day.”

Mike’s Value Proposition:

“My parents came from Hong Kong so that I could have a better life. I’ve worked hard to become an engineer, and later earned an MBA to open more doors and take advantage of other opportunities. Besides, I like school and expanding my knowledge. After my company went through layoffs, I was determined to make it on my own and started my own engineering consulting firm. I feel good when a client comes to me for advice and needs my help to resolve a difficult problem. I feel even better when I solve it for them. I aim to be the best consultant in the electrical utility industry. I want to learn and work as long as I’m able. Life is about being the best that you can be.”

u All Kinds of People Make the World Go Round

A drug dealer apprised a bartender that “there are two kinds of men in this world – those who drink and those who pour.” The problem with this distinction is that those who pour must be the ones who don’t drink. I would expect that a bartender must drink to know what to pour. The “two kinds of men in this world” didn’t include women. It was a women who didn’t drink that distinguished two kinds of people in the world – those chasing pleasure and those running from pain. She believed that people drink to escape their pain. Some people live for pain, like the drug dealer who drinks his sorrows away at a bar. It might make more sense to distinguish people according to the following three types:

1 Those who make things happen

2 Those who watch things happen

3 Those who say, “What happened?”

This may be an oversimplified breakdown of people in this world, although I’m sure we can put most people into one of these buckets. As a professional, I see people as glossy, frugal, or working class. The “glossy professional” is the guy who is well educated, makes more money than he’s worth, and likes to show off the fruits of his labor. These are the guys in an Armani suit who drive out of an indoor downtown parking garage in a Ferrari. Then you have the “frugal profes-

sional” who probably has more education than he needs and is only interested in being good at what he does. Money is secondary to doing good work. He lives in a modest suburban neighborhood and drives a reliable car with no sunroof. This is definitely Mike, except for the fact that he still lives with his parents. Last, there is the “working class individual.” You already guessed that this is Greg. This type of individual treats work as a job rather than a career. The only value he derives from his job is having a comfortable work environment and making enough money to pay the bills. He typically enjoys the simple things in life.

“It takes all kinds of people to make up the world – and they’re all here” was a rather insightful remark by a farmer whose kids were destined for the big city. Maybe that’s why he lived on the farm and didn’t have to put up with everybody. People come from all walks of life. Just look around you. We mingle with all kinds of people who have different personalities, attitudes, and mental capacities – including friends, family, work colleagues, and strangers. They all claim to have a purpose in life, or at least seem to have a meager existence. Regardless, we all have an opportunity for a higher purpose and a better life.

While we all have a purpose in life, from getting rich to being loved, we also value different things in life. As a social political activist, Gloria Steinem recognized what was important to people by their spending habits. “We can tell our values by looking at our checkbook stubs.” This pretty much tells us what value we put on our values. The guy who takes a weekend trip to Vegas in his Ferrari definitely has different values than the guy who flies economy class to Zambia for three weeks to help Habitat for Humanity build homes for the poor. I’ll bet their checkbooks are hardly correlated.

Our life choices and the value we assign to our lives are reflected in the various stages of our Life Value Chain. We are compelled to enhance life’s value and realize the benefits through the actions we take, whether we are motivated financially, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, or physically. Thus, actions are based on the choices we make, while value is derived from the actions we take. And our abilities influence the choices we make. It was a Paralympics champion who said, “You’re not disabled by the disabilities you have, you are able by the abilities you have.”

u Using a Life Value Chain to Anchor Your Life

Even a captain orders his seafaring crew to drop the anchor at the end of a heavy chain to prevent the ship from drifting away. A Life Value Chain can anchor our life and prevent it from drifting away before we reach our end destination. The Life Value Chain represents the different life stages of our lives from the day we are born until the day we die. The Life Process Tree that we learned about back in Chapter 3 is used to collect all the processes that make up our lives. These life processes make up the various life stages in our Life Value Chain. This implies that our personal life processes can be anchored underneath one of the six life stages of our Life Value Chain. After all, the value that we derive in each stage of life depends on the processes we have defined and the effort we dedicate to them.

Some life stages are more meaningful to us than others depending on life circumstances and personal ambitions. As a result, we all have varying life processes that map into each of the life stages of the Life Value Chain. If you remember Greg’s Life Process Tree from the last chapter, there are six main life processes – also referred to as process branches – that occupy Greg’s life today.

Greg’s 6 main Life Processes

Greg is determined to raise his kids and spend quality time with them and others close to him. Quality time doesn’t mean quantity time and watching his kids from the bleachers. Greg isn’t about to outsource his kids to outsiders, especially those without a vested interest in their wellbeing. He’s not some automaker outsourcing its stereos to audio equipment manufacturers.

Intimate interactions with family and friends are important to Greg. I’m not sure how Greg would fare in a pandemic world of social distancing and online collaboration. It’s to be expected that many of Greg’s life processes map to the fourth stage of the Life Value Chain, namely “Cultivate Personal Well-being, Family & Human Relationships.”

Life Value Chain (Stage 4)

Greg has resolved himself to being a committed father, caring son and brother, good friend, and ideal co-worker. His primary concern is his kids and he feels obligated to prepare them for adulthood, while helping them develop the life skills and capabilities to reach their goals. This is a natural extension of his own architecture journey in helping himself reach his own goals and attain a better life.

The fact that Greg didn’t go to college doesn’t mean that he wants his kids to follow in his footsteps. On the contrary, he expects them to architect their own lives just as he’s architecting his. His architecture experience and dedication to his daughters may be the impetus for the development of the life processes they’ll need to succeed in life. And this just may require the college education he neglected himself. Greg’s investment in his kids is the critical success factor in achieving his own happiness.

u Education is Life

According to John Dewey, an American philosopher best known for educational reform, “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” An education helps open doors to a lot of opportunities in both work and different areas of our lives. A good education allows us to develop personally, socially, and economically. It helps us to acquire new skills and knowledge that will impact our development in life. Dewey believed that learning by doing was the best approach, and experience was key. Experience is necessary to add emotional belief to intellectual understanding. Greg is a big supporter of Dewey’s philosophical movement known as pragmatism, and learning through practical experience. However, Greg needs some formal education to develop his capabilities as a building maintenance professional. This will be especially important if he wants to become a building maintenance supervisor one day – a career that will make him happy and allow him to support his family and lifestyle.

We’re all aware of the fact that Greg has no interest to invest in his own business or career. Thus, in reference to Greg’s Life Process Tree earlier, he has no life processes mapped to the “Develop Business or Establish Career” stage although he understands that he’ll have to do some training to get a better job. Greg’s six main life processes are anchored to the appropriate life stages of the Life Value Chain as illustrated in the following diagram.

Greg’s Life Value Chain & Underlying Life Processes

XGreg plans to do some of the same things when he retires

You will notice that a combination of three processes shows up twice in the diagram. This means that Greg will be doing some of the same things when he retires as he does today, namely, enjoy his leisure time, stay fit to regulate his weight and manage overall health, and maintain precious family ties. These have always been and remain to be Greg’s lifelong ambitions. Someone once said, “Life is twelve notes, and then the octave repeats itself.”

Greg sees retirement as a time when he will be surrounded by his kids, family, and friends. He’s focused on his health and intends to continue to be active with sports and outdoor activities. He contemplates his retirement years as a reflection of the things that he enjoys today. It may seem like déjà vu, but Greg is set on continuing with his new life routine in later years although he’ll be a little older and wiser. I suspect he’ll do his darnedest to live a youthful life to the end.

Maybe Greg should start thinking about old age before he gets there unprepared. The last life stage in his Life Value Chain is labelled “Live out Old Age with Proper Medical Care.” Greg may be in the hands of caregivers one day, assuming that he has the money set aside for his grand finale. He understands that he must prepare for retirement and can’t rely on others to arrange for his care or take care of him when the time comes. In the meantime, Greg intends to enjoy the things he loves to do as long as his health serves him well.

We don’t retire from the things we love to do; we only retire from things that don’t interest us anymore. At a press conference to announce his retirement from professional basketball, Michael Jordan said, “The word ‘retired’ means you can do anything you want from this day on.” So, Michael decided to chase his childhood dream to play baseball, although he would later return to the game of basketball where he belonged and reaped greater value from life.

u Reaping the Value From Each Stage of Life

In case you have forgotten, we have already established the fact that the processes in our Life Process Tree make up everything we do in each life stage of the Life Value Chain. Just think of the Life Value Chain as a life cycle comprising a series of stages from the time we are born until we die. The Life Value Chain illustrates the course of our existence in the grand scheme of life. And all the processes in the Life Process Tree are the things that we do to reap value from each stage of life.

It’s evident that most of Greg’s life processes are focused on the “Cultivating Personal Well-being, Family & Human Relationships” life stage. Greg didn’t map any processes to the “Live with Parents” stage since he is now an independent adult. As an adolescent, Greg paid little or no attention to life details while he lived with his parents. This is now all in the past and it’s time to move on. Our friend Mike, on the other hand, continues to live with his parents and many of his life processes are mapped to the “Live with Parents” stage. At the present, Greg doesn’t know what awaits him, especially without parents to guide him. Whatever it is, he needs to prepare for his future.

As we embark on our own life journeys, our passage through a continuum of life stages is as unique as our fingerprints. Some people take longer than others to derive personal value from various stages of life like the guy with a “hat trick.” What’s a hat trick? A hat trick is the scoring of three goals in a hockey game by one player. Although it generally refers to three successes of the same kind, especially consecutive ones within a limited period, I’m not talking about hockey. This is the guy on marriage #3 raising kids again with a much younger wife. He’ll definitely be doing this longer than most of us, and probably needs more than one Life Value Chain. I’m sure one chain will do it unless he’s leading a double life with multiple partners at the same time.

u Only You Can Add Value to Your Life

Life is different for everybody. We all have unique situations and deal with personal circumstances in life, some planned while others just happen without our approval. Regardless, life is a process in itself that requires a lifetime to complete. How we add value along the way is our prerogative as we pursue our dreams with passion and perseverance. Passion allows us to be truly in the present moment of happiness, while perseverance perpetuates it. The complexities of life are continually recalibrating our Life Value Chain as demanding careers, family responsibilities, and unexpected events deprive us of the time and effort to understand what’s important in life. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if we’re wasting our time or going in the right direction as we pursue something better. The Life Value Chain defines the potential value we derive from each stage of life. We have the opportunity to consciously live in the moment of each stage of our life until one day it vanishes. The more time we spend in the moment, the richer our lives will become.

I was at a Starbucks minding my own business when a voice behind me mentioned that the vanishing point was the key to life. Naturally, I proceeded to Wikipedia for a definition. “In graphical perspective, a vanishing point is a point in the image plane where the projections (or drawings) of a set of parallel lines in space intersect.” Any reading beyond this got into mathematical theorems and formulas. After plugging the words “vanishing point” in Google, I got a long list of results for a movie of the same title. It’s funny how there seems to be a movie about everything these days.

In retrospect, the guy behind me knew more about the vanishing point than what I could find on the internet. And here I had pretty well stopped everything I was doing to evaluate a possible life theory that I may had overlooked, but how was I to challenge the outlandish theories of strangers in a public place? That’s when it hit me. The vanishing point of our life on earth is death. This is infinitive if we don’t know when we’re going to die.

The vanishing point is a matter of perception, or the reality that we choose for ourselves. It can be extended into the future simply by taking care of our health and giving up motorcycle racing. Most of us follow what seems to be a natural and passive emergence into an unplanned future, when we have the ability to transform our unplanned future into a deliberate and desired one.

u What Does the Vanishing Point Have to Do With Life?

I’d say it has everything to do with life if it vanishes before we actually get a chance to live our desired life. The vanishing point is the living portion of our life that intersects with a plane of reality which we will simply refer to as death or an afterlife – depending on whose vantage point we take. Basically, life vanishes one day, and both death and the afterlife are eternal no matter how you look at it. Since I’m no God or expert on reincarnation, I’ll stick to the life in front of us. We live in the present and for the future as part of a life continuum which comes to an end or vanishes one day. Our past, present, and future become realities that define our lifelong journeys. What happens after that is up for debate. Now, what would happen if we could exchange the life that we had for one we desire somewhere out in the future? Thus, our present, or how we live our life today, would cease to exist at some point until we’re ready to live a desired future life. Such ambition takes some serious soul searching and planning, like what we’ve been talking about in this book. Our life as it exists today would vanish during our lifetime, and a new desired life would emerge in its place. We all have a chance to live in a desired future reality that we haven’t yet tapped into. This is where our present reality intersects with the reality that we never knew existed.

For some of us, the only thing moving forward in our lives is our age, with the anticipation of a modest government pension. Life is a timespan based on a counting system known as a calendar with no special meaning attached to it except to measure time passed by and forecast the time ahead of us. We have been accustomed to living an obscure life, not always with the proper guidance. And that’s hardly the way to live life. I wish life had fewer television sets and more New Years parties with friends. Unfortunately, the value of our lives is vanishing before we get a chance to know that there’s something better out there for us.

A winemaker from Napa Valley reflected on her dream to own a vineyard one day. “You only get one shot on the planet and I just thought, if not now, when are you going to do this? As time, every year goes by you know, you just have to dive in and do it, as otherwise the moment has passed and you won’t have another chance. And that did it, I was just really determined.” I think that we need to take the future into our own hands in order to add value to our lives.

Sometimes I wish that I was the proud owner of a famous wine label, but then again I’m much better at drinking wine. It was a wine connoisseur who said, “People spend too much time tasting wine; not enough time drinking it.” I’m glad someone understands me and the fact that I have a different future and value chain in mind. I’m sure the Harvard professor Michael Porter would have agreed that our Life Value Chain provides little value if we don’t bother to identify a desired future we believe adds value to our lives. Companies, like the ones Porter discussed in his business classes, are constantly adding value to their products and services in order to satisfy customers. Otherwise, they would have vanished a long time ago.

In the previous chapter, we learned how to develop a Future Life Blueprint that represents our desired future. By living a desired life, we unleash our passions as we fulfill the life processes in our Future Life Blueprint. We derive benefits along the way that add value to our lives. In the next chapter, Greg is going to identify the benefits he wants to derive during his lifetime – benefits that add value to his life.

CHAPTER 11

Realizing the Benefits of Greg’s Life: How to Get There

It was a government official advocating children’s rights who said, “I can guarantee right now that there’s a 14-year-old kid out there taking his first drink of alcohol or sucking on his first joint, and he’s on his way to prison. That’s his road map.” He was trying to tell us that there was a better alternative. “But if you save that kid, show that kid there’s a better future out there, get him into a trade, get him into a course, show him a work site, show him there’s a better future in terms of getting a house, a job, going on vacation, buying a truck, then you’ve done your job.” Those are some worthwhile benefits for anyone.

We also have to find a better alternative. Otherwise, we’ve architected a life without any chance of realization – just like my dream house never had a chance to be built while its blueprints lay on a shelf collecting dust. How we get there and make it a reality is the prize. Sometimes we just have to stop making excuses and inventing ways to fool ourselves. A business consultant helping a struggling bar owner get his business back on track once said, “I don’t embrace excuses; I only embrace solutions.” Apparently, the bar owner blamed his staff for his own lack of management. It must be the same guy who told his son that you only need three things in life: somewhere to live, something to eat, and someone to blame.

Architecting our lives is taking ownership of our actions and embracing solutions. So, what is the solution and how do we get there? I mean, how do we make that desirable future happen? I think we all agree that we need a plan. If we look up the dictionary definition, a plan is a scheme or method of acting, doing, proceeding, making, etc., developed in advance. Its usefulness implies that we have to do more than put it down on paper, otherwise we forget about it. We have to make the plan happen in order to realize the benefits. A plan should help us avoid fooling ourselves.

We’ve all heard of battle plans either from history class or some veteran who made it back. Going into battle without a plan would most likely result in fatal losses. The better the plan, the better chance of succeeding and meeting one’s expectations. I’ve never worked for the Pentagon but based on the size of their pentagonal complex and the number of people working there, I’d say they do a lot of planning and have the resources to exceed expectations.

The Pentagon isn’t the only entity with big plans. A friend complained about his sister’s kids and the fact they all had big plans that lacked substance. They all had run-of-the-mill jobs but little ambition. Actually, they all had serious issues and some couldn’t hold a job. Big plans were about all they had. He told me that his niece was planning to go to med school but yet she couldn’t get through high school. “The first sign of a lazy person is big plans” was a conclusion he made about people with little ambition but big plans.

I don’t want us to have big plans, so big that we can’t achieve our desired outcome. I don’t expect most of us to get into professional sports or promoted to President & CEO of a multinational

company. I encourage the few overachievers who may be natural athletes or have political savvy to go for it. For others, I believe getting into med school or any school is quite attainable if that’s something they truly want and are prepared to work hard for. We all have certain ambitions and capabilities, but many of us don’t have a plan that we can believe in, let alone execute.

u Your Life Roadmap is Your Plan of Action

Now that we have our Life Blueprints in hand, we need a plan of action to get us from our current life to the one in our future Life Blueprint. This plan of action takes the form of a Life Roadmap to guide us toward the realization of a desired future. A retiring manager boasted about “living the dream” once he retired. He had already designed a desired future for his golden years, although it wasn’t certain he had a Life Roadmap to fully live the dream. Don’t worry, I’m not about to overwhelm you with a how-to life manual that would have about as much value as an 8-track or cassette tape. This is how we played music before the internet era. Instead, we’re going to take a proven organizational method that pinpoints a beginning and an end with a set of required action steps in between, linked together in a logical order that we can accomplish painlessly. It factors in our personal needs, desires, capabilities, and motivation. This also means we’ll develop some missing capabilities that we’ve been ignoring or didn’t realize we needed. But most of all, we’ll be determined to achieve our dreams because we now know what we need to do. Without a Life Roadmap, our future Life Blueprint is a pipe dream not worth the paper it’s written on.

The Plumbing Made Easy book that my wife picked up at a thrift store for five bucks was certainly a steal. It rarely leaves the magazine rack next to the toilet. I remember flipping through it when I had coinciding plumbing problems, specifically a sink that I couldn’t unclog and a dripping humidifier that I didn’t know how to tackle. However, I figured it would be easier to call a plumber if I wanted the job done right with minimal collateral damage and long-term peace of mind. By the way, the plumber broke his electric eel trying to unclog the sink. Boy, did I call that one right! This wasn’t a cheap service call and I learned that even good plumbers have to put up a fight to fix the pipe.

Life is pretty much the same. We have to put up a good fight to get to where we want to go. Unfortunately, there is no Life Roadmap in the magazine rack to guide our future. And even if there was, it would be geared toward the masses and ignore our personal needs. This means it’s up to us to develop a personal Life Roadmap, which is customized for each of us. This roadmap takes into account our personal ambitions and capabilities so that we are sure to meet up with our desired future reality one day.

A Life Roadmap created to deliver an unattainable future Life Blueprint will certainly fail, and is probably the reason we have so many aspiring and unemployed Hollywood actors. It’s a shame there’s no script to guide them in life as it does on the silver screen. It was the Hollywood film director Joseph Mankiewicz who said, “The difference between life and the movies is that a script has to make sense, and life doesn’t.” This may explain why no one hands us a script to play the leading role in our own lives. I would like nothing more than for us all to become Academy Award winners in life.

There’s a lot at stake here, basically our lives. The Germans also had a lot at stake when they tried to conquer Russia during Operation Barbarossa but underestimated the harshness of Siberian winters. Regrettably, they sacrificed the lives of their soldiers, many who had frozen to death on the Eastern Front. By defeating the Russians, the Third Reich had a chance to take control of Europe. Historians claim that Hitler’s winter blunder cost them the war. I guess this is what they mean by “dress for success,” and the Germans will be sure to wear Canadian parkas and Sorel winter boots next time there’s a war.

It’s in our best interest to dress right for the occasion with a purpose and action plan in hand. We can take control of our lives with a Life Roadmap primed to take us directly to where we want to go. Many things will undoubtedly get in the way, including a few Siberian winters, but I’m sure we’ll survive. Sometimes we’re our own worst enemy, allowing our fears to stop or slow us down. But we must forge ahead with confidence in ourselves, and a roadmap of course that makes sense and can get us there.

We’ve all learned that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. I wish the things that we do in life were that linear. Sometimes doubt, ego, superstition, insecurities, and other personal obstacles in life deflect that straight line and put us off course. Even with a Life Roadmap, we sometimes look for an excuse to fold it and put it away before we get off course.

Personal Obstacles in Life

Insecurities Obstacles

These obstacles are only the tip of the iceberg. It was a cabin boy who told a tale of his adventure at sea. “Trust gave way to doubt; hope to blind superstition.” The crew’s excitement and purpose diminished as they ventured further and further into the open waters without fulfilling their mission. Things don’t always go by plan as there is always some obstacle that interrupts, or even worse, sinks us. Our goals and plans are set aside while dreams are shattered without giving it much thought. Maybe it’s time that we’re honest with ourselves about our commitments, and ask why our desired outcomes in life are stuck in a low priority queue and take so long to achieve.

The biggest culprit is the guy that we imitate on the couch called procrastination. In the words of comedian Russell Peters, “We almost self-sabotage our personal life.” We simply sit back and wait for tomorrow. Tomorrow comes and goes, and we’re still sitting. This doesn’t benefit us or anybody else. It’s time to cancel the extra cable channels and get some benefits out of life. Tomorrow can begin today.

u There is Value But Then There Are Benefits

The definition of value is relative worth, merit, or importance. Most of us assign some kind of worth, merit, or importance to our lives. We’ve already addressed the topic of value in the previous chapter when we talked about the Life Value Chain. Simply, we derive value from each stage of life. However, it’s the finer benefits we realize along the way that fulfill each stage of our lives. We increase value by realizing certain benefits until we ultimately reach our goals.

Many of us are familiar with Noah’s dilemma. Noah is the biblical wonder who built the ark and saved specimens of each species of animal from the great flood. It was Noah’s calling to save God’s creatures so that all could benefit from his grand plan and hard labor. I’m sure that Noah had to realize a lot of benefits along the way before he could save the day – and the animals.

Noah didn’t build his ark overnight. There was an entire process with many activities required to build an ark and move all the animals inside before the Almighty unleashed the mighty rains. There were materials to collect, structural design to assess, construction to expedite, torrential rains to account for, animals to organize, and on and on. There was a prescribed order of work activities and sequence of events that took place. There was also a deadline. Noah had an aggressive timeline to build an ark that would withstand forty days of flooding and keep his furry and feathered tenants happy.

I hate to judge a man, especially a man of God, but Noah was a rookie when it came to building arks. After all, this was his first ark, and just the sheer magnitude of it would pose a challenge to the best of them. I’m sure that Noah had to rethink and change some things around before he got the great ark built and ready for tenancy. It’s not like he had a how-to book with instructions and guidelines on buoyancy. I’m sure that divinity had something to do with it.

Remember, this was not just any old ark, but one of great consequence and worthy of mention in the Bible. Noah learned that one has to realize many benefits along the way to accomplish great things. I assume that he also realized he was the chosen one whose duty was to serve God. Most companies are serious about benefits and their duty to serve shareholders. They are continuously optimizing business benefits in order to meet customer demands and increase profits.

u Life Benefits Realization

We use a term in business called “Benefits Realization” to understand the benefits that a company wants to attain before considering changes to the way it does business. This change is triggered by a company’s motivation to improve its competitive advantage or create shareholder value. For example, if an oil company drills a test well and strikes oil, the benefit is a higher share price assuming that the well has the potential to produce a lot of oil. As individuals, it only seems natural that we can realize life benefits. We’ll call it “Life Benefits Realization” just to differentiate it from business benefits. We all have the opportunity to realize benefits in life. And as we consciously understand how to realize benefits in our lives, we will be in a better position to change the way we live.

Before Greg sets out to change his life, he needs to understand the benefits in doing so. He has to connect the dots, specifically the outcomes that he needs to achieve, in the order required to realize those benefits. A man preparing for the apocalypse in the movie The Tomorrow Man said, “All you have to do is learn to connect the dots and get ready. I just want to be ready.” Greg has to get ready, too. Just because Greg has a future Life Blueprint doesn’t mean that his new life is just going to miraculously appear on its own. A Life Roadmap laying out realizable benefits and required outcomes en route to his future Life Blueprint is the ticket!

Greg is a lot like Noah. He’s a first-timer but on a mission to build a new life rather than an ark. Greg is at a point where he knows what it is that he wants to do with his life as he reflects on his future Life Blueprint, but he can use some help on how to go about it. As Greg develops his Life Roadmap, he will get a fine sense of the benefits that he will need to realize and what it’s going to take to unfold the future that he has mapped out for himself.

Greg will most likely need to realize some smaller benefits along the way before he can realize the big ones. This means that he will need to prioritize his outcomes and determine a timeline for all those things that he wants to do to realize his dreams and ambitions. Remember, it’s all connected and a schedule formally gets the ball rolling in the right direction. Some things are just too important to leave to chance.

u Don’t Leave Your Life to Chance

I’ve had more than my share of life and work learning experiences to realize the importance of a roadmap and leaving nothing to chance. Many of us believe that a supreme being in heaven will take care of us. All we have to do is say a little prayer and all our dreams will come true. It was Denzel Washington as the good guy in an action movie who said, “When you pray for rain, you gotta deal with the mud too.” I guess it wouldn’t be an action movie if there wasn’t any mud to deal with. We can’t wait to get our prayers answered or for opportunities to come along. We must take control of our lives and create our opportunities. Failure to take action is why things more or less stay the same throughout our lifetime. We seem to spend more time hoping for something better to happen than making it happen. We abstain from taking responsibility to change or direct things in a more contrived manner that would truly benefit us, as well as those around us. Finding the real purpose of our lives is too important to leave to chance. Our growth, by its very nature, is a result of the challenges we overcome and opportunities we take. As we deliberately seek to find our way in this world, we must confront the hardships and struggles in our lives. And with some confidence and fortitude, we can take oppression and rephrase it as growth.

If there’s only one thing that you take away from this book, it’s not to leave anything to chance –especially your life. When we take chances, we’re not quite sure what we’re doing and bound to make a few wrong assumptions. “When we don’t understand, we turn to our assumptions” was a well-founded quote from the movie Finding Forrester. Sean Connery plays the character of William Forrester, a famous and eccentric writer who retreats into a reclusive life after publishing a book regarded as a literary masterpiece. However, Forrester’s life takes a turn when he befriends and mentors a black teenager with the potential to be a writer.

Forrester explains to his young protégé, Jamal, that the purpose for making assumptions is to formulate an understanding, which may not always have common grounding with others in the literary world. Assumptions can be a dangerous proposition when we make decisions based on the wrong ones. The road ahead can be an uncertain one, but we must make assumptions to deal with the uncertainties.

You’ve already guessed that somewhere in this plot someone makes the wrong assumption. I’d say Forrester is to blame when he gives Jamal some of his personal essays to rewrite, with the condition that he never share his work. Jamal enters a writing contest at a prestigious private high school and uses a particular piece of Forrester’s as a basis for his own essay, not realizing it was one of Forrester’s few published works. He is accused of plagiarism and ends up getting expelled from school.

Forrester is angry with Jamal for breaking a promise and losing his trust. Jamal fails to understand that Forrester gave him his essays to help develop his writing skills. He never understood Forrester’s motive for sharing his work and assumed the essays to be unpublished works. Jamal made an assumption in contradiction to Forrester’s expectations that almost cost him his future. The lesson learned is that bad assumptions lead to bad judgements. As for trust, it’s hard to come by but easy to lose.

u Don’t Do Business with [Some] Friends

How many times have we heard that we shouldn’t do business with friends and family? I’d say that there’s a lot of truth to that, although there are exceptions. I invested a lot of money with a colleague who lost it all. The following Christmas, I got a check in the mail for the whole amount. When I inquired where the money came from, he said, “I told you it was a sure thing. Just deposit the damn check and don’t ask questions.” I hope he didn’t steal it to pay me back. There are a few people with character in this world. This is probably why we’re no longer colleagues but rather great friends. I guess we’re not all cut from the same cloth. I’ll never forget that awkward moment when my best friend in high school pleaded for a substantial sum of money to close a deal on an acquisition of another company, while a non-refundable deposit had already been paid. Apparently, I was the only one able to save the day and meet his deadline – that afternoon to be exact. There was nothing to worry about. His business partner would be cashing in her life insurance policy in the next month and my bank account would be smiling again. I never did get that check for Christmas. Over the years, our friendship soured to say the least. I’m now in the business of not making bad loans.

How many times has judgement been clouded by friendship? My error in judgement was the fact that I felt obligated to help a friend. Friends do anything for each other, right? They also tell the truth. “Friends, they tell each other things – things that parents don’t know” was a felicitous remark made by a childhood friend. Sadly, my friend forgot to tell me the truth about how he was going to pay me back. Yet, the truth is the easiest thing to remember. He was a little too desperate to let truth get in the way of his business aspirations.

I sometimes rewind that day and hope I’ll get a different outcome. It’s obvious that I didn’t ask the right questions upfront. Actually, I didn’t get any straight answers because I was asking the wrong questions, and it was too late to start asking the right questions. The insurance policy went stale and my friend went dark on me. That’s when we can’t find someone to ask the questions. To sum it up, I didn’t ask the right questions before I handed over the money and assumed he would do the right thing.

See, when we ask the right questions, the answers are a lot easier to get. The first thing I should have asked was “What happens if your partner’s insurance money doesn’t come through?” followed by “What is your backup plan to pay me back and how long will it take?” Also, without insulting him, I should have asked, “What happens if you and your partner break up?” There were more questions of course, but this was a good start. The moral of the story is that you have to ask the right questions to get the right answers. And if you’re not sure that you’re asking the right questions, ask yourself one thing: Has anything I’ve done made my life better?

When it comes to helping friends, we often make the wrong assumptions. It was apparent my assumption that my friend was good for it turned out to be the wrong one. The facts were irrelevant while emotion influenced my decision. Someone once said, “Facts are part of life; emotions are life.” When it comes to friendships and emotions, facts are the first thing to get thrown out. My friend was in no position to pay me back, and my act of good faith caused hardship for both of us. I can’t even begin to tell you about the stress and problems that this caused for everyone. I could have lost it all. I put myself at risk and became an enemy of the taxman. I now cringe every time a friend asks me for money. I’ve since learned to scrutinize my assumptions and recognize mutual benefits, as well as the reality of realizing them.

u Realizing a Realizable Reality

Many people are blind to reality and see only what they want to see. We’re not always willing to embrace the reality we live in and end up outcasts. It’s in our best interest to decipher that reality and get to the truth, sooner than later. Before we can begin to realize benefits in life, we must come to terms with our ability to realize them. We make assumptions where we lack understanding, and ask discerning questions to help us make decisions. When we make sound decisions based on the right assumptions, we can take the appropriate actions to realize our desired reality. The way I see it, you have two choices: You can either accept reality as it is, or create it as you wish it to be along with the benefits that go with it.

I still remember going to a lecture after work. The presenter was Larry DeBoever, a world renowned enterprise architect. DeBoever argued that we must make harmonized decisions based on common assumptions. This is where we elicit key facts to help us determine if our decisions are the right ones based on the underlying risks and impacts. Hence, the word “harmonized” was fitting since all the facts work together in order to make a decision, which was based on common assumptions.

It was apparent my assumptions had no common basis when I lent money to a high school friend. A common assumption is that a loan agreement must be in place when lending money. The agreement outlines all the terms and conditions for repayment, and formalizes responsibilities and expectations. In regard to my friend, my mistake was letting the sanctity of friendship override any written agreements, while our friendship proved to be too convenient for him.

I had a suspicion my friend would not be able to meet his obligation to pay me back in a reasonable and agreed upon time frame. It’s a shame that honest people don’t suspect dishonesty. My friend may have been an honest man, but he was in a desperate situation when I became his bank. The world can be a cruel place to honest men. I was careless when I chose to ignore reality for the sake of friendship. I have learned that honesty takes a backseat with friends in desperation. Friendship isn’t all that pragmatic when it comes to making sound decisions. I think William Shakespeare must have learned that lesson when he wrote, “Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.”

Sometimes I wish I had the discipline of Vito Corleone, the don of the Corleone crime family in the movie The Godfather, who prided himself on being careful and reasonable. “I spend my life trying not to be careless.” Success in the mafia depends on trust, where betrayal can put you six feet under or land you in prison. The real-life New York City crime boss John Gotti said, “Never trust anyone who hasn’t done time. That’s where men are made.” Sammy the Bull became Sammy the Rat when he testified against Gotti to save his own skin. Poor Sammy had never been in prison and wasn’t about to start now.

So, what do friendship and trust have to do with benefits realization? It was obvious that my friend received the benefit of an interest-free loan with no obligation to pay it back. I, on the other hand, didn’t realize any benefits that added value to my life. However, I did learn that the only people who can deceive you completely are people you trust completely. I’m lucky our friendship didn’t land me in jail. I remember reading about a guy who did jail time for a friend. Apparently, a prisoner serving a one-year jail sentence had switched with a visiting friend who served the remaining two-thirds of his sentence. I have no clue what assumptions and harmonized decisions were made, but it was the quintessential friendship. This will be another book, probably by a guy who doesn’t lend money to friends.

All joking aside, Larry DeBoever gave a great lecture that day with some very good lessons. We have to identify common assumptions to make harmonized decisions. This will put us in a better position to understand the reality of the benefits that we are about to reap. We have to know ourselves and what we want out of life. The end game is knowing what the benefits are and how they fulfill our lives.

u Benefits Come in All Shapes and Sizes

A benefit is an outcome of importance or value which we can usually measure. It can be an economic benefit, humanitarian benefit, personal satisfaction benefit, and the list goes on. When I say it is a something which we can measure, it means that we have more of something than we had before we realized the benefit. When we have an economic benefit, we may have received more money to buy something that we’ve wanted for some time, like that new sports car or luxurious home in the country. A humanitarian benefit may be helping poor families in third world countries build houses for themselves. My friend Mike goes to Zambia every spring with his Habitat for Humanity volunteer group to build concrete block houses for the poor. A personal satisfaction benefit is putting our children through private school and giving them a chance to go to an Ivy League university where they can one day launch a distinguished career. I’ve always dreamed of having a Harvard graduate in the family.

We realize all kinds of benefits in life. Payday was one that I personally looked forward to from the time I got my first real paycheck. The direct deposit spoiled that a little bit, but, regardless, it always turned out to be a sunshiny day, especially when it landed on a Friday. I remember being this young, single, ambitious, on-his-way-up career man right out of university who would one day afford the lifestyle of the guys in the movies. But for the moment, the pay stub that landed on my desk meant three things: which night club, what time, and who’s coming? That pay stub was a direct outcome or benefit of getting my first white-collar job.

Although some benefits come with good behavior and a little luck, others are contrived or happen through a conscious effort. I think of it as planning with purpose and ingenuity. As an ambitious young man, I decided that I wanted more money to buy the new-generation Corvette to go with the disco night club scene. It was a simple formula: More money equals more fun. More money was definitely a benefit for a young professional on his way up. And I could measure that benefit by the amount of money I was making to have fun. I had made up my mind that I no longer wanted to be well-off – I just wanted to be rich. This motivated me to put together a good resume and find a capable recruiter.

u Optimizing Your Life Investment

Life is the most important investment that we can make. The good news is that we don’t need an investment advisor to help us maximize our potential and add value to our lives. We just need an approach to help us attain the desired benefits to optimize our investment and ensure our happiness. Life Benefits Realization provides an approach to understand WHAT benefits we want and WHAT actions are required to realize them. As with any approach that helps us get anywhere, it helps to have personal goals and objectives as we pursue opportunities and improve our lives.

Benefits realization may be new to you, but it’s quite easy to start realizing benefits once you have a future Life Blueprint in hand. Greg is going to take his future Life Blueprint and validate everything that he’s mapped out for a long-awaited Utopian life. He will also figure out what benefits

he’s going to get out of it. Life is a journey where we hope to realize personal benefits along the way, and there’s no point doing something if we don’t know the end result.

We often hear stories of people who have disappeared into the abyss or wandered off to chase their dreams. Many people find a better life, while others would have been better off staying on the beaten path. Most of these adventurous nomads have one thing in common – a lust for life and a desire for a better future. We have to give them credit for being proactive and taking risks. However, taking risks without having a plan is like being blindfolded – we don’t know where we’re going until we bump into something and hurt ourselves. Life Benefits Realization is about realizing benefits in a logical and preconceived order, and knowing what actions to take.

u Believing is Realizing

A barrier for most people is that we don’t always believe in ourselves and our ability to realize a better future. When someone asks me what’s a major discovery about myself and my life, I say it’s the ability to reason and the confidence to think for myself. It’s time to think for ourselves and discover our own purpose and desires in life. Timothy Leary, the infamous American psychologist of the Counterculture Era of the 1960s, said, “The proper study of a human being is yourself.” You just may need to start with yourself to get to know yourself better. Once you know yourself, you can build your confidence and plan to move forward. This is when you will start to believe and realize the life you desire, and develop a sense of entitlement for what can be.

Although a future Life Blueprint is a plan that maps out our future, it’s getting there that seems to be a roadblock. We need a decisive and reliable personal roadmap to help us achieve the results that we’re after, and chain them together in some logical order to get us there. Sometimes we have to achieve a whole string of intermediate results to get that bigger end result. Businessmen refer to these intermediate results as milestones. The ultimate result is the future that we are so diligently trying to make for ourselves.

We use the words “result” and “chain” as business nomenclature when describing benefits. Just like a business, we’re going to chain together all the results that we need to achieve before we attain a specific life benefit. This is possible with a roadmap that we call a “Benefits Results Chain,” or simply a “Results Chain,” in business. I’m sure you’ve already figured out that there must be a Life Results Chain for people who want to architect their lives.

u A Results Chain to Realize Benefits

The Results Chain illustrates how specific results (also known as outcomes) lead to a benefit. Sometimes a single result is a benefit, but typically more than one result is required to realize a benefit. In essence, we’re chaining together all the results that we need to achieve in order to realize desired benefits in our lives. This is where a Life Results Chain can help us determine the priority and order of results as we strive to realize certain life benefits. Why do we need to chain results? Certain results in our lives cannot be achieved until other intermediate results have been achieved. Consequently, we need to take specific actions in a prescribed order to achieve each result in the chain. Sometimes, one or more actions are required to achieve a specific result.

This actually sounds a lot more complicated than it really is. You’ll see how easy it is when Greg creates a Life Results Chain to realize the desired benefits in his own life. The good news is that we’re not the first or last to undertake a benefits realization process; organizations have been

doing it for years. There’s a cost to not producing results, which many organizations have found out the hard way. I hope that we don’t have to go down that path as we leverage the Life Results Chain and identify the results and associated actions required to realize our desired life benefits.

Before Greg can create his own Life Results Chain, he must familiarize himself with the symbols used in this technique of realizing benefits. There are three key symbols used in a Life Results Chain. They all have a place and purpose, and directional lines to link them together in the proper order.

Life Results Chain Symbols

Symbol Description

Name

Action Initiative that achieves a specific Result

Result Outcome of an Action

Assumption*

Possible condition impacting or prohibiting the achievement of a Result

*Assumptions presume risk will be managed. This means that we replace Assumptions with Actions which minimize risk. Thus, an Assumption might be a statement about dependencies required to get something done, important decisions to move forward, limitations to overcome, or unknowns to deal with.

When describing results, actions, and assumptions, we should use words that best articulate the symbols in our Life Results Chain:

n Action

Start with a verb in present tense. These are all the things that we have to do to achieve the results that we’re after.

Example: Enroll in Building Maintenance Certification Program

n Result

Use words that imply a past tense. This way we focus on the actions that we have to take to get it done. Results are the done part.

Example: Building Maintenance Certification Training Completed

n Assumption

Use words that identify a condition impacting the result. There’s always a hitch so let’s understand and deal with it.

Example: Building Maintenance Certification Program Must be Taken at an Accredited Educational Institution

u The Moment That We’ve Been Waiting For

I wish this is where I could surprise you with a winning lottery ticket and be done with it, but Greg’s Life Results Chain will have to do. Besides, isn’t a great life like winning the lottery and worth waiting for? I’m sure that you’ll have that moment one day, I mean a great life. Hopefully, you’ll also win the lottery to give you more choices in life and remove some of those obstacles a little quicker. Never settle until you’re happy. And don’t wait for the lottery. The moment that we’ve been waiting for is now and we’re going to start doing something about our life with or without our lottery winnings. Greg is in the same boat, and as far as he’s concerned, making a little more money to have fun will be better than winning the lottery. He’ll appreciate his achievements while he plans out the life ahead of him. There’s no better feeling in the world than accomplishing something on your own.

We’ve had a chance to learn a lot about Greg during his Life Architecture journey. He has shared his deepest desires and cast a future Life Blueprint to get a sense of the direction he should be heading. All that he has to do now is get there. Greg will develop some key Life Results Chains in order to make the necessary life changes and start living the life he has mapped out for himself in his blueprint. All these Life Results Chains together are in fact the Life Roadmap to Greg’s future.

Let’s assume that Greg is on a mission to develop a Life Results Chain for each of the branches in his future Life Process Tree. Since Greg’s work seems to be a major point of contention and at the core of his financial woes, I would recommend that he start by creating a Life Results Chain for the “Work to Support New Life” process branch depicted in his future Life Process Tree.

The 6 Branches of Greg’s Life Process Tree

Many things in Greg’s life depend on his ability to make a living and support his new life. Thus, the third process branch seems to be a logical place to start. Everything else will start to fall into place and flow from here on in allowing Greg to devote himself to his other process branches. I like something my editor once told me: “As to making a living, if you get along well with people, are intelligent and hard-working, ready to take chances, the living comes.”

Do you remember back in Chapter 9 when Greg was creating his future Life Blueprint and identified a bunch of work activities to support his new life? Don’t worry, I don’t expect you to remember all the intricate details, especially Greg’s courageous quest and the activities required to move his life forward. The following diagram conveniently lists the activities we saw earlier under the “Work to Support New Life” process branch of Greg’s future Life Process Tree.

“Work to Support New Life” Process Branch

Work in a Supervisor Role that Provides

Fulfill Child Support & Alimony Demands

Maintain Standard of Living (existing prior to divorce)

Enroll in Toastmasters & Other Personal Development Programs to Build Confidence & Communication Skills

Broaden Investment Horizons & Evaluate Investment Funds & Real Estate as Extra Income Sources

Seek Professional Services & Develop a Retirement Plan with Life Partner

Greg’s Work Activities

The work activities in Greg’s future Life Process Tree need to be translated into the results that he wants to achieve and corresponding actions that he’ll have to take to achieve them. Greg will begin by identifying all his results, starting with the end result. We also refer to this as the final outcome of a Life Results Chain. Thus, Greg has to come up with an end result and work backward to get his Life Results Chain started.

Any guess what Greg’s end result or final outcome is for the “Work to Support New Life” process branch? It’s apparent that Greg needs the financial means to support his new life ambitions. Once he identifies the end result, he can work backward to determine how he will get there. What do you think of the following as the end result that Greg needs to achieve in order to start meeting the financial obligations of his new life?

This may be fitting considering that Greg needs a good income to support the diverse life ambitions he’s captured in his future Life Process Tree, namely romance, family, leisure time, fitness, and lifestyle. For now, Greg will focus on his work process branch. Sometimes we need money to donate at a fundraising gala, or at least a few bucks to get out of the parking lot.

Can you think of any intermediate results that are key enablers of Greg’s end result? What I’m really trying to drive home here is the fact that certain results need to be achieved beforehand and are critical to reaching the end result. I think we all know that Greg needs a good paying job to support his new life ambitions as illustrated in the following diagram.

A job as a building maintenance supervisor would definitely contribute to Greg’s new life ambitions. This is a key intermediate result while Greg is determined to keep working backward and uncover more intermediate results. If we focus on this key intermediate result just for a moment, Greg needs to ask himself, “What do I need to do to get hired as a building maintenance supervisor?”

Greg isn’t presently qualified as a building maintenance supervisor. Furthermore, he lacks the interpersonal and communication skills to pass the interview. I’m afraid that tight jeans and a low-buttoned shirt aren’t going to impress anyone except the clientele at his favorite dance pub. Greg has a couple of intermediate results to achieve before he has a real chance to get hired for such a job as illustrated in the following diagram.

I don’t want to sound like a mother hen and keep reminding Greg, but he must continue to work backward in a logical order to ensure that he gets what he wants. Before Greg can be “Qualified as Building Maintenance Supervisor,” there are two other preceding intermediate results that he must achieve to meet these qualifications as illustrated in the following diagram.

This implies that the two results, “Building Maintenance Training Completed with Certification” and “Building Maintenance Experience Developed in All Facets of Operations,” contribute to the greater result of “Qualified as Building Maintenance Supervisor.” I’m sure most of us would agree that a certification with experience is a good precursor to qualifying for the job.

Greg recognizes that his job alone may not be adequate to financially support his new life ambitions. He’s well aware of his financial obligations and the fact that he wants a fulfilling lifestyle. A divorce and other setbacks have taken a toll on Greg, but he’s prepared to live with the consequences. The big arrow in the following diagram tells us that Greg is not quite done. He must further develop his financial capabilities to support his new life ambitions.

What do I need to get quali

do I need to get hired?

Once Greg is hired as a Building Maintenance Supervisor, what other intermediate results are required to achieve his end result?

Greg is beginning to realize that there are some more consequential results that need to replace that big arrow. Need I remind Greg that he must keep working backward? I’m sure that it’s sunk in by now. Greg has determined that there are four intermediate results pertaining to his financial obligations and aspirations that directly contribute to his end result of “New Life Ambitions Supported Financially” as illustrated in the following diagram.

So, let’s think about this. Greg figures that the only way he can meet his new life ambitions is by achieving enough earning power to fulfill his financial obligations and aspirations. I’m afraid that there are going to be a lot of bills to pay, and Greg will need more than a job to cover them as described in the following table.

Greg’s Financial Obligations & Aspirations

Obligation/Aspiration Description

1. Standard of Living

2. Child Support & Alimony Payments

3. Leisure Time

4. Retirement

Same standard of living as life prior to divorce

Extra income to support children and ex-wife as bounded by divorce

Extra income to afford enjoyment of newlyconceived leisure activities (identified in Process Branch #4 of Greg’s Future Life Process Tree)

Adequate savings to support life ambitions during retirement as forecasted in retirement savings plan

These obligations and aspirations are characteristic of a caring father and responsible individual such as Greg. Furthermore, I’d say that they describe someone who wants to live life and make the most of it. Greg is beginning to see all the possibilities, as well as his role in life. The question he should be asking himself is the following: How am I going to pay for everything? Greg has identified two additional intermediate results pertaining to his ability to pay for the financial obligations and aspirations that he wants to fulfill as illustrated in the following diagram.

How am I going to pay for everything?

Greg has realized that he needs more than a single source of income to make his new life ambitions a reality – a full-time job as a building maintenance supervisor plus extra sources of income

to complement his salary. He has done some research and concluded that the salary range for a building maintenance supervisor is anywhere from $60K to $75K annually. This should cover the standard of living he had prior to his divorce, as well as his monthly child support and alimony obligations. “You know, they say money can’t buy love; it turns out you just have to wait till the end for the check to come” was a divorced man’s satirical remark and true in Greg’s case. Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure makes misery easier to live with. So you better afford your own brand of misery.

If Greg wants to relish all those leisure activities that he has identified in Process Branch #4 of his Life Process Tree, “Enjoy Leisure Time,” he will need an extra source of income, whether it is investments, a second job, or even an inheritance. I’d be opposed to sitting around and waiting for an inheritance. I’ve seen old aunts outlive grandchildren. Whatever this extra source of income, it will also contribute to Greg’s retirement.

Greg is now in a position to join the two separate chains of his Life Results Chain together to complete the full chain of results as illustrated in the following diagram. You will notice that Greg decided to work his Life Results Chain backward from two separate results rather than solely from the end result, the other being the key intermediate result. We all know that we can’t have two end results in the same chain. The numbers denote the order in which Greg identified all the outcomes in his full chain of results.

Greg’s Full Chain of Results

Sometimes life feels like a demolition derby as we ram into other cars and hightail it in reverse to avoid being casualties. I think of the slacker who takes it easy in high school and later decides to go to college. This typically requires high school upgrading in order to meet college admission requirements. Upgrading school grades is definitely a demolition derby approach to life as we hightail it back to school to learn what we should have learned before our high school prom. Although this approach adds at least one more intermediate result to our Life Results Chain, we eventually get into college and land ourselves a career job.

If you don’t already know it, the world isn’t perfect. Actually, it can be harsh and unfair at times. Sometimes we have to be pragmatic and break rules to get what we want. Ironically, Greg broke the rules of a results chain when he didn’t exactly work backward starting with the end result. He took two key results, worked each one backward, and then joined them together. It was just easier that way and seemed more natural working the chain backward. Never let rules get in the way of your creativity. When you’re cut off from your creativity, you lose your sense of self.

Greg could have indeed worked his way in a fluid backward sequence starting with the end result. He would have most likely achieved a similar result, without the gluing and pasting. Sometimes it feels natural to take a couple of key results, work them backward, and then experiment with the naming, order, and connection of the remaining results or outcomes. Life isn’t an exact science, so why should chaining results be any different?

Do what feels right to you. Your Life Results Chain should be as unique as you are. In Greg’s case, he knew that getting a job as a building maintenance supervisor was critical and a key result, although the end result was to financially support his new life ambitions. Both results were logical starting points and intuitively easier for Greg to come up with the rest of the results he needed to achieve once he had a couple of key results in place.

u The End is the Beginning

What this implies is that we start at the end, and end at the beginning. I know this sounds unconventional, maybe even a little backward, in how we go about planning our lives. However, if we know the future end result we want to achieve, we should be able to logically work our way back to the beginning – right here and now. If I were an academic, I’d say that we’re using a combination of inductive and abductive reasoning by working backward from a desired end result through our observations and experiences. A Life Results Chain helps us determine all the preceding intermediate results in reverse chronological order. In any case, we’re guaranteed to end up at the beginning of the chain as we string out all the results and their dependencies in a prioritized and logical order.

An underlying principle of the Life Results Chain is that we must begin at the end – starting with the end result or final outcome. It just doesn’t work if we start at the beginning without having any idea of the prize or end result we want to achieve. It’s only reasonable that we know what we want before we can initiate the right actions to get there. This means that we have to pinpoint the end result of what it is we want. It may seem awkward to work backward at first, but it’s a logical modus operandi for identifying results, dependencies, and priorities. This allows us to identify all the intermediate results and determine how each result contributes to subsequent results. And don’t forget, a result may contribute to one or more subsequent results until we reach the end result.

Once we have all our results in place, it’s a matter of taking the appropriate actions from beginning to end. Here’s your chance to be an action hero. Greg has figured out what results he has to achieve with regard to his work and in support of his new life. Now comes the execution part. Greg has assumptions to make and actions to take. He’s identified four assumptions in his Life Results Chain that will dictate his actions as illustrated in the following diagram.

These assumptions represent constraints. Greg needs to consider these constraints in determining actions required to successfully achieve the end result, namely “New Life Ambitions Supported Financially.” In fact, assumptions dictate the type of actions that are required to be successful. Greg has done some homework and belabored what it would take to achieve each result. He has come up with the assumptions he believes will make him successful as identified in his Life Results Chain. Greg’s reasons for making these assumptions are paraphrased in the following table.

Greg’s Assumptions

Assumption Description

Assumption #1

Assumption #2

Assumption #3

Assumption #4

In order to qualify as a building maintenance supervisor, Greg must become certified as a Building Maintenance Professional while he chalks up enough experience accredited by an industry-governing body.

Greg has calculated that he needs to earn at least $60K to maintain his standard of living prior to his divorce, and to fulfill his legal financial obligations to pay child support and alimony to his ex-wife.

When Greg is offered a job position, he will need to negotiate his salary based on occupational employment statistics. This will be easier knowing that the average salary for a Building Maintenance Supervisor in his area is $63,500.

Greg has realized that a building maintenance supervisor job will not cover the cost of his new life ambitions. A financial planner estimates that Greg needs an extra source of income that pays him an additional $6000+ annually for his leisurely activities and a good retirement down the road.

One assumption that Greg has failed to identify is that his future life partner may be earning an income. However, he can’t bet that hand until she enters his life. If Greg does happen to meet someone with money or an income, he can worry less later about finding extra income sources. He may even favor more unpaid vacations in the future, assuming that there’s an extra paycheck to pay for it.

Greg may one day decide to ease up on some of his income earning actions, but for now, he has laid out his course of action to achieve the end result of his Life Results Chain as illustrated in the following diagram. This represents Process Branch #3, namely the “Work to Support New Life” process branch, of Greg’s future Life Process Tree. Thus, Greg’s new approach to work will allow him to play as much as his heart desires.

That’s it, just six straightforward well-calculated actions to achieve Greg’s desired results. The only measure of an action is its consequence – or result as we call it here. Thus, the actions we take produce measurable results. I suspect Greg is going to have all the money he needs to make his perfect life come true.

It may seem nonessential at first but had Greg decided to forgo a Life Results Chain, he could not have come up with the “right” actions without understanding the results that he needs to achieve beforehand. By the way, more than a single action may be required to achieve a single result. Greg’s explanation of the various actions awaiting his execution are paraphrased in the following table.

Greg’s Actions

Action Description

Action #1

Certif ication

Action #2

Experience

Action #3

Self-Development

Greg will enroll in a building maintenance certification program offered at the local college, namely Mount Royal College, and complete the course requirements to earn his Building Maintenance Professional designation.

Greg will continue to acquire work experience at Ariva Towers as a building site maintenance lead, and attain experience in all aspects of maintenance operations.

Greg will embark on self-development training to improve his chances of passing the interviews, and manage people effectively once promoted into a supervisory role. Greg will also become a better father, spouse, friend, and all-round human being by developing his interpersonal and communication skills.

Action #4

Supervisor Job

Action #5

Extra Source of Income

Action #6

Retirement Plan

Greg will apply with reputable property management companies that offer a good salary, benefits, and flexible work environment. However, Greg would like to remain at Strategic Group if he can secure a building maintenance supervisor position. This company is known for treating their people well and giving them the opportunity to grow.

Greg will evaluate and consider several viable investment opportunities providing an extra source of income to achieve his new life ambitions financially. This includes mutual funds and other managed funds, dividend-based stocks, bonds, and even land development projects. Why land development projects? Greg has a few friends in that business who have done exceptionally well for themselves, and have offered him an opportunity to make some money alongside their investments.

Greg is keen to initiate a retirement plan for the first time in his life. Greg will work with a reputable financial planner from Investors Group to help him devise and manage a retirement plan, which will be integrated with Greg’s company and government pensions, insurance policies, and investment portfolio. Greg will participate in many different retirement-geared programs including Registered Retirement Savings Plans, Registered Income Funds, Tax-free Saving Accounts, and more.

I must congratulate Greg now that he has identified all the results and associated actions he must initiate to achieve the life benefits most important to him. He’s also made some reasonable assumptions. Overall, I think Greg is on the right track as he forges ahead with a Life Roadmap that takes him to his desired destination. Someone once told me it’s not the destination that is important but the people we meet and the lessons we learn along the way. I wish Greg has a wonderful experience on his journey as he meets good people and learns valuable lessons.

As Greg embarks on his journey, he must decide whether he wants to continue with a Life Results Chain for any of the remaining five process branches in his Life Process Tree. I urge Greg to give these process branches a shot. I don’t believe that they’ll be as rigorous as the first one, while he gets an appreciation of all the possible benefits. That’s the beauty of Life Architecture – you can architect life as much as you want. Sometimes a reno is far more practical and cheaper than building an entire house.

Life Architecture allows us to see life in terms of what is good, bad, and possible before we make possibilities become realities. This is Greg’s opportunity to make a better life by realizing benefits that he never thought were possible. Greg is on a mission to realize the benefits leading to his desired end result. Until we put our results down on paper and in the order that they need to occur, we don’t always understand what actions we need to take or when. Each Life Results Chain lays out an orchestrated set of actions to achieve all the results leading to a life benefit. A Life Roadmap is a compilation of all our Life Results Chains.

u The Life Roadmap is the Magic Formula

The Magic Formula from Chapter 7 is the foundation of Life Architecture. It has three LifeArchitecture components as illustrated below.

The Magic Formula implies that we need a current Life Blueprint and a Life Roadmap to realize the future defined in our future Life Blueprint. Once we have A and B, we can get to C. But first, we have to solve for B to know where we are and where we want to go before we can devise a plan to get us there.

The Life Roadmap is a plan that transforms our current life into a desired future. Many Life Results Chains compose a Life Roadmap. And trust me, we will need more than one Life Results Chain to define all our ambitious results and the required actions to achieve them. I’m confident you’ll create more results chains once you realize some life benefits and see the value.

Nobody expects you to create a Life Results Chain for every possible scenario of your life. You should use a results chain only when and where it makes sense as you consider the finer details of your results and actions. The effort it takes to assess the what-ifs and how-comes of our fast-food appetite is hardly worth our time. Just read the Surgeon General’s report of fast food. Besides, I’d

Current Life Blueprint Future Life Blueprint Life Roadmap

like you to digest one results chain at a time as you begin to understand its impact on your life before going onto the next chain. This deserves some thought on your part before you jump in and start drawing a bunch of pretty pictures.

Most of us have some idea of our desired life results before we start chaining them together. However, it’s only when we link all our results that we get a much better idea and clearer picture of our future. This is our cue to consider the many actions required to achieve all the results in the chain, not to mention the assumptions to make them achievable. Are you committed and ready to take some or all of these actions?

u Making Contributions to Your Life

What you contribute and why is the focus of a Life Results Chain. What are you doing to contribute in building a successful life? Let’s get one thing straight about the Life Results Chain – it’s not a directional flow model but rather a model of contributions. A chain of results represents contributions that are made from one result to the next in a calculated and prescribed order. Every time we take action to achieve a result, it contributes to or helps us achieve a subsequent result. All these results build on each other until we achieve the end result and realize a life benefit.

It’s normal to experience some stage fright before we get to our end result. But once we get there, it’s like winning an Oscar and ascending to the podium. And we all know that Oscar winners are proud of their achievements by realizing stardom for their outstanding performances. Ironically, some people are shy and their acceptance speeches are not as polished as their performances. They would rather be in the coffin than give a eulogy at a funeral.

I understand that Life Architecture and taking formal action to realize benefits is all new to us, but it’s imperative that we develop the courage to take advantage of this one and only life. We take baby steps to achieve all the intermediate results leading to an end result called an ultimate life. By taking baby steps, we’re assured to get across the frozen lake without falling through the ice. And there are a lot of things to consider and evaluate before we make the trek to get across. Sometimes, even going around the lake may be a better option.

This is all the more reason that we need to identify the end result as we chain all the intermediate results necessary to get to our desired destination, while we take every precaution to avoid falling through the ice. At this point, Greg has a clear picture of the logical sequence of results that he has to achieve before he realizes certain life benefits. He’s learned that the intermediate results must occur in a specific order, and collectively achieve the end result or greater benefit.

The key premise to Life Benefits Realization is to start with the end in mind and work backward from there. The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard said, “Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards.” When we start with the end result, we begin to see all the contributing intermediate results along the way. This makes it simpler and more instinctive as we assign the actions we need to take and identify the order in which we need to take them. At the end, life benefits are derived through the achievement of prescribed results by taking the right action at the right time as we live forward.

I must admit that creating a Life Results Chain takes some practice. However, once we’ve done one and got the hang of it, it’s as gratifying as solving a murder mystery. We must understand the value of the results that we are trying to achieve before we rush in. Once we’ve completed a Life Results Chain, we must ask three questions to validate it.

3 Questions to Validate Your Results Chain

It’s good practice to validate our Life Results Chain after we’ve worked our way backward to the beginning. This is our opportunity not only to ask ourselves if it makes sense, but if it is attainable. We scrutinize our ability to optimize our Life Results Chain and realize the life benefits we deserve. We may decide that the benefit is too insignificant to be worthwhile. When we’re satisfied that our Life Results Chain is worthy, we’ll be compelled to say, “That’s it!” This will be the moment that we’re ready to attempt that leg of our life journey.

An insightful work colleague once told me that a results chain enables organizational progress. I truly believe that the Life Results Chain is an enabler of progressive living, maybe even a great life. If someone were to ask me to give a synopsis of a Life Results Chain, it would probably go something like this.

A Life Results Chain Synopsis

“A Life Results Chain enables you to ...understand what benefit is derived from specific results chained together in a prescribed order ...and what actions are required to achieve each result based on key assumptions to ensure success ...until you reach the end result or final outcome. All these Life Results Chains together compose the Life Roadmap to your future.”

When I was a university student back in the day, I never thought much about results or outcomes or what I was going to do after graduation. I had only one end result in mind, and that was to get a university degree, not knowing what came after academia. I had no idea I’d be scratching my head the day after graduation. I wasn’t even sure I had the right degree because I had no inkling of what I wanted to do. The only sure thing was the fact that that piece of paper was the consequence of four years at what seemed to be a hard labor camp. What came after that was a mystery.

In retrospect, my career was left to chance. That was a lot of work to take chances, but I believed I had a better chance in life by going to school without thinking through what it would give me. If I had figured out some results beyond school, maybe I’d be doing something different today. You don’t think I planned to be an enterprise architect, do you? I once read, “There’s more than the here and now and every action you’ve ever taken or didn’t take has had an effect.” And that’s probably the reason I ended up being who and where I am. I should be thankful I didn’t become an architect during the Qin dynasty where architects were usually killed because the emperors of Imperial China didn’t want them to tell their secrets of how to build the wall, and where the secret doors were located.

We all have the potential to live a great life, as long as we derive all the benefits that life has to offer. The potential lies in knowing what we want to do and where we want to go. This requires a Life Roadmap comprising some key Life Results Chains with meaningful results to make the most of the life in front of us. It is our calling to weigh the results that we want to achieve in life. I only wish I would have known about this earlier in my life. Regardless, it’s time to contribute to our own cause now that we have the expertise to create a Life Results Chain.

u How Many Life Results Chains Do You Need to Build a Life?

Here’s a Life Architecture skill testing question for you: how many Life Results Chains do you need to put together a Life Roadmap? Well, I’d say at least one but probably more. We have to determine if each of our process branches in our Life Process Tree requires a Life Results Chain. That depends on several factors. How important is that process in your life? Does it enable you to do other things that are important to you? Are you dealing with a complex situation where there are a lot of results that need to be chained together to unravel the complexity?

Some process branches are straightforward and we may already have a game plan in mind. I don’t think Greg needs a Life Results Chain for his process branch labelled “Lose Weight & Stay Fit.” I’m sure that he already knows what to do without connecting a bunch of results and actions. Believe me, Greg is about as fit as they come. However, the “Work to Support New Life” process is a different story and needs a little more attention. It supports, and makes possible, the “Raise Family” and “Enjoy Leisure Time” process branches, both which are important to Greg.

Blueprints, process trees, results chains, roadmaps…where does it all end? All these architectural constructs can sometimes be confusing. Looking back, the Life Process Tree was initially created as a pictorial representation of our life and is a key part of our future Life Blueprint. We also have a current Life Blueprint if we ever want to go back to our old habits and way of doing things. I’m kidding of course. Similarly, the Life Results Chain was developed as a pictorial representation of all the actions that we take to accomplish a process on a specific process branch in our future Life Process Tree. All these Life Results Chains are part of a Life Roadmap that takes us to our future.

Think of our Life Blueprint and Life Roadmap as file folders to store all those fancy pictures that we’ve drawn and notes captured during our analysis. No one should go through life being organizationally impaired. It’s about time that all Life Architecture enthusiasts start organizing their lives and put all their Life Process Trees, Life Blueprints, Life Results Chains, and the rest of the information that they’ve collected into their respective folders as illustrated in the following diagram.

Organizing Your Life

Life Blueprints

Life Roadmap

Ludwig Boltzmann, an Austrian physicist from the past century, came up with a definition of entropy. In thermodynamics, entropy is a measure of disorder. As entropy increases, things become more disorderly. Reduction of entropy could very well be the key to organizing our lives. If we neatly stacked papers on our desk and then walked away, we’d be surprised to come back and find a mess. Conversely, we’d be even more surprised if a mess turned into a neatly stacked pile. Entropy increases as things get messier. Our Life Architecture folders should help us organize our lives and reduce entropy.

Now that we’re neat and orderly, the only thing left to do is schedule all the actions in our Life Results Chain. A happily retired and successful management consultant once said, “We reap what we sow. Don’t plant the seeds if you’re afraid of the birds.” Our actions and hard work eventually result in desired benefits. However, sometimes we can get stuck in a life in which we think instead of do. In the words of the “Badass” self-help author Jen Sincero, “Our thoughts become our words, our words become our beliefs, our beliefs become our actions, our actions become our habits, and our habits become our realities.” Our future life is a possibility only when we take action and make it a reality.

CHAPTER 12

Scheduling the Future of Greg’s Life: When to Get There

Time is defined as a continuous sequence of existence and events that occur in an irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is often referred to as the fourth dimension, along with the three spatial dimensions. Some believe that time is a fundamental part of the universe. To the rest of us, time is nothing more than a clock on the wall. A good friend and avid watch collector once said, “What is time other than an effort by mankind to control the continuum we call life.”

Without time, society and life as we know it would fall into disarray. Activities and daily routines could no longer be calibrated to the societal reality of schedules and day-timers, and no one would be able to keep appointments. We would all show up to work at the wrong times and payroll would have one heck of a time paying our salaries and wages. Humanity would no longer be able to measure the progression of time from the past through to the present and into the future. This would be like living in one time zone, if not the twilight zone. We would be stuck somewhere between reality and fantasy.

We seem to be suspicious of time – the way it moves on and the way our plans disappear. We regret when time gets away on us before we have a chance to meet our obligations and achieve our goals. The problem is that once the clock starts running, we are at its mercy assuming there is a time limitation. If there was only a way to stop it to buy ourselves more time. We’re preservationists by nature, and its no wonder some of us take up photography. We take pictures to stop time and commit moments to eternity. This is the only way we know how to make time tangible.

Although we measure and account for time, we don’t always take time seriously or respect the time of others. As a group of us was waiting for the IT director, who happened to be a woman, to show up to our planning session, one of the guys made a feeble attempt at humor. “Why do they make women’s watches so small? So they can’t see how late it is.” It was also a lousy attempt at an icebreaker, which just happened to be chauvinistic. The male attendees were rather relieved that the director didn’t walk in until after the laughter died down. Regardless, she was late for her own meeting and didn’t seem to be much in a hurry. The good news was the fact that we were being paid for waiting and making jokes.

“I’m too old to be in a hurry” was the sentiment of a retiree who had recently hung up his gloves. Most of us would love to be in his place, minus the doctor visits and pills that come with old age. The only schedules that old people seem to worry about are their doctor appointments. Absurdly, as we get older, our days get booked with appointments, while errands, commitments, and retirement rituals take up the rest of our time. Sometimes we wish we could go back to work just to free ourselves from appointments and surround ourselves with young people again. I don’t think settling down with other retirees would suit me very well.

Time has a way of getting away on all of us. We all think we have enough time until we don’t. I recall a father describing his daughter’s illness after she had an adverse reaction to a prescribed antibiotic, which sent her into multiple organ failure. “I think everyone is still trying to wrap their arms around what happened because it happened very quickly and time winds up really becoming a nonexistent thing …You don’t know what’s going on in anything besides your immediate concern.” When we’re caught up in daily chaos, time is a scarce commodity while everything seems to be an immediate concern.

We all complain about not having enough time – we don’t have enough of it, waste it, run out of it, or simply don’t do things on time. How many times has someone advised us about time as if they had mastered the concept and felt obligated to help us manage our time better? Time management is even more critical in a society where we are bombarded with decisions that require us to act on them on a timely basis. I came across a study claiming that the average person makes a staggering 35,000 decisions a day. I’m sure most are mundane decisions without even registering that we’re making a choice. Mundane decisions, such as taking a breath and scratching our nose in a meeting, balance the more dramatic ones, including changing jobs and making a purchase.

The amount of time we spend making a decision is not always linked to its importance. I’ve seen people decide on a whim to move to another place, but yet they can’t decide what to make for dinner or what movie to watch. All decisions boil down to a three-step approach:

1 Gather information

2 Evaluate options

3 Make a choice

How we make a decision depends on the deadline, consequences, and information at our finger tips.

Making a decision in a timely manner can sometimes demand more time than we can give it. Someone even came up with the five second rule to transform our life and wrote a book about it. The underlying premise of the 5 Second Rule book is simple: “If you have an instinct to act on a goal, you must physically move within five seconds or your brain will kill it.” If we don’t take immediate action, the decision gets delayed or dropped altogether. The five second rule is a counterargument to the notion that people have a tendency to believe that improving their productivity or efficiency has to include sweeping changes in their lives.

u The 5 Second Rule

Neuroscientists have found that we have about a five-second gap between a stimulus and an appropriate response. “It’s within this gap that you have the power to change your life.” That’s a bold statement and enticing proposition, and probably worth reading The 5 Second Rule. “When you decide to do something, count back 5-4-3-2-1, and immediately take action. The more you do that, the more your brain gets wired for action and the less you’ll fall victim to your mental resistance.” Apparently, the act of counting maintains our focus on the goal or commitment and distracts us from worries, thoughts, and excuses. My initial rebuttal is that we may not always be able to zero in on our goals within those five seconds, let alone come up with goals.

I’m sure the five second rule has merit when we procrastinate to do household chores like mow the lawn or take the garbage out. If I do a slow countdown from five, I can literally be out of the house with a garbage bag in hand. Another five seconds gives me enough time to put the bag in the bin and close the lid. However, at work, where I’m bombarded with unrelated decisions in a short period of time, I just don’t have the time to take all the actions required, never mind resolving the underlying issues in a timely manner. Typically, I delegate actions to others, sometimes within five seconds, which is another time management technique altogether.

I’m more in favor of setting aside and committing to a window of time to accomplish specific tasks in a deliberate and methodic manner to improve our lives. This requires employing a wellthought-out plan for accomplishing our goals and resisting procrastination while maintaining a work-life balance. I’m afraid my brain can’t keep up with five second reactions. Although this may work for others, my Spidy-sense tells me there’s another way to get us all on schedule, which we will be getting into soon.

We can get everything else right, but if we don’t get the timing part of it figured out, it all goes to the toilet. I can’t tell you how many projects I’ve seen fail because the timing was off or we didn’t have enough time. “You can’t change time; time changes you” was the lesson shared by a defeated project manager. Defeat is a tough pill to swallow, and time doesn’t stand still for anyone or any project. Time is a key factor when we have commitments and deadlines to meet. Deadlines create a sense of urgency and motivate action.

A former colleague once asked me how life was treating me after hearing about my departure from a toxic project at work. When I gave him the sob story about people not working as a team and refusing to follow a common process, he said, “You cannot fix their world without them being in alignment and participating in the process. Lead the way with knowledge and ability to encourage their alignment for the improved future. Time is important but timing is critical. When the situation is right, the flow – like turning the tap to allow water to flow – will verify that the timing is right. You can be ready but you cannot cause that initiation of timing.” In hindsight, my timing to leave the project was impeccable.

Timing is Critical & More

No one is an expert when it comes to time, not even Rolex. That’s why they make watches and not time machines. I wish they’d stop procrastinating and make a time machine. I’m sure it would have some practical applications. Until then, we’ll have to rely on our own personal philosophies and strategies when it comes to time. This may explain why employees are sent on time manage -

ment courses. But even then, our lives get so busy before we get sidetracked. We forget everything that we’ve learned about managing our time at work and in our personal lives. Time can be our worst enemy when it comes to completing tasks on our life to-do list.

A good Life Architecture doesn’t ignore time and addresses our time constraints. Everything we do in life has a timeline, whether it is an occupation or avocation. And if we don’t manage our time according to a timeline, we’re inclined to offer some lame excuses. We may even be accused of missing the boat. I don’t want anyone to miss their luxury cruise, especially after all the planning and excitement that awaits us in our lifetime. Life Architecture relies on scheduled results and focused actions.

u Taking Control of Your Life Timeline

Time is a significant component of life. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have clocks and calendars. Rolex would be out of business and investors would have to rely on the sun and moon to get to their next shareholder meeting. Throughout the history of mankind, we’ve spent a lot of time trying to organize the world and coordinate its time zones. We have invented clocks and calendars to manage timelines and keep us all on the same schedule. We also use time to forecast the weather and stock market swings. This got me thinking. Actually, Russell Crowe the actor got me thinking. In the movie The Next Three Days about a woman imprisoned for a murder she didn’t commit, the husband, Russell Crowe, takes matters into his own hands and devises a plan to break his suicidal wife out of prison. He got to the point where he had to take control of the situation if his wife was ever to be free again. “But what part of our life is truly under our control? What if we choose to exist purely in a reality of our own making? Does that render us insane? And if it does, isn’t that better than a life of despair?” Crowe pulled off an insane plan so that he and his family wouldn’t live a life timeline of despair, but rather a reality of his own making.

A timeline is a chronological sequence of activities from past to present and into the future; a timetable is a short-term schedule of specific tasks – with estimated start/end times and durations – required to complete the job at hand or break someone out of prison. Russell Crowe had worked out a timetable with all the tasks and how long they would take to free his wife. He only had a three-day timeframe to execute the escape in this thriller before she got transferred to a far-off maximum security prison.

Life is a timeline driven by timeframes and timetables as we achieve our goals and try to make a better life for ourselves. We’re all born, do a bunch of things in the middle, and then reach that climactic day we’re too dead to celebrate our life accomplishments and enjoy our own funeral. A dying old man giving a toast in the movie Max Rose said, “Here’s to dying. We all start out with a slap on the ass, and then we end up jealous old men, wishing we had what the other guy’s got. But it’s what we do in the middle. And I got mine. Hollywood, big time. Even my old man was impressed.” Beginnings can be rather scary, endings are usually sad, but the middle is the most exciting and counts the most. Life is about the middle. There’s not much we can do about the beginning or end.

A Life Roadmap can help us plan a timeline for the middle. We’ll collect all the actions on our Life Results Chain to build a linear timeline depicting our schedule on a linear plane. Consultants have an obsession to create a linear timeline when presenting important activities, events, and milestones in a prioritized order. Just for fun, let’s put the activities, which we refer to actions, from Greg’s Life Results Chain on a linear timeline as illustrated in the following diagram.

Linear Timeline for Greg’s Life Results Chain

This is a good time for Greg to take a vacation before he starts his new job & initiates Actions #5 & #6 Invest in Mutual Funds & Other Managed Funds, Dividend-based Stocks, Bonds & Land Development Projects Actions to Financially Achieve New Life Ambitions Vacation Work With Reputable Financial Planner from Investors Group to Develop a Retirement Savings Plan

Enroll in & Complete Building Maintenance Certification Program at Mount Royal College

Work for Ariva Towers as Site Maintenance Lead Take Online Self-Development Courses & Seminars, Read Self-Development Books & Join Toastmasters Secure Building Maintenance Supervisor Position Take Online Self-Development Courses & Seminars, Read Self-Development Books & Join Toastmasters (Ongoing)

A linear timeline seems to be a blasé and uninspiring format to convincingly attract an audience. This is probably the reason that boardroom executives take catnaps during annual meetings where bar graphs are used to illustrate past and future achievements. I personally don’t think that anyone should put their lives on the line, or should I say a linear timeline. Everything about it just seems so contrived and regimented to be effective.

In Greg’s case, it doesn’t feel like a natural succession of all the things that he has signed up to do. Rather, it’s a graphical representation of disjointed and straddled actions that don’t necessarily have a connectedness to one another. Furthermore, these actions aren’t granular enough for us to readily go out and take on the world in a precise and commanding manner.

I don’t want you to think that this was all for naught. This timeline does provide some value. It gives us a contextual mapping of the things that Greg has to do, the order of things, as well as when he has to start and end them. These are important elements of any schedule providing an overview of what needs to be done and when. If anything, it’s helped Greg consider a vacation after his studies, and what he needs to focus on when he gets back, including more selfdevelopment as a lifetime initiative to improve his inter-personal and communication skills, not to mention future job prospects.

It’s no coincidence that the first four actions on Greg’s linear timeline end at or about the same time. Greg planned it this way so that he could go on vacation before embarking on a new career. I hope this linear representation of Greg’s timeline gives you a sense of things that he needs to do and when he plans to get them done. It’s important to understand the value of a linear timeline in order to stack it up against a more useful and valuable alternative, something I refer to as a “Life Web.” Life just isn’t as linear as you may think.

u The Life Web

Although life has a beginning and an end, there is much uncertainty and irregularity occupying the space in between. No one plans for events such as sickness or an indefinite visit by a meddling mother-in-law. These are isolated events occurring at unexpected and irregular intervals in time. We can only hope that they don’t last too long. Of course, we don’t mind longawaited baby news or an extended vacation to cheer us up. Things can also occur in reverse order, which may seem unusual and backward to many of us. I’ve attended a couple of shotgun weddings, not to mention a delayed wedding while the newlyweds waited for their kid to turn old enough to be a ring bearer or flower girl. You can’t tell me that everyone follows the same order or routine in life. We all discriminate in our actions and usually take those that are personally convenient. Other actions we’d rather put off or take our sweet old time. Regardless, I have this vision of capturing everything we do in a web earmarking our actions according to the results that we want to achieve. It would be ideal if we could take all our time-sensitive actions and plop them onto a Life Web without being pigeonholed into some two-dimensional linear timeline. It kind of reminds me of a kid giving up crayons and paper for a chance to create a three-dimensional papier-mâché masterpiece to get our attention.

Rather than blindly embrace a linear timeline, we have a chance to capture our life activities in a Life Web contemplative of a life that interweaves our desired results and required actions –including those of others in our lives. Our lives are entangled and we sometimes have to take a winding or zigzag course in life to straighten it out. The Life Web is a simple but effective tool that allows us to see everything on one page as a connected whole. Greg will spin his own Life Web and map out all the actions he’ll undertake in a prioritized and timely manner. The Life Web will

help him figure out how much he can do realistically in a span of time to achieve the final result in his Life Results Chains. Like Spiderman, Greg has developed a spider sense as he rationalizes what he needs to do and when.

Greg has now collected all the actions we saw on his linear timeline earlier – actions originating from the Life Results Chain he developed in the previous chapter. However, he may have a scheduling problem. These actions may be too ambiguous to allow him to take definitive steps toward achieving his end result. He must articulate his actions in specific terms to make the end result a reality. He will break down his actions into finer and discrete action steps that he can take, ideally, at the right times. This will allow him to follow an unequivocal and precisely defined schedule represented by his Life Web. Greg no longer has a reason to procrastinate. The following table identifies all the actions from Greg’s Life Results Chain with the appropriate action steps that he will have to undertake. These action steps represent the tasks to be scheduled in his Life Web.

Greg’s Action Steps on the Life Web

Action (Life Results Chain)

Certification

Enroll in Building Maintenance

Certification Program at Mount Royal College

Action #1

Experience

Work for Ariva Towers as Site Maintenance Lead

Action #2

Self-Development

Take Online SelfDevelopment Courses & Seminars, Read SelfDevelopment Books & Join Toastmasters

Action #3

Supervisor

Job

Apply for Building

Action Steps (Life Web)

1. Contact program coordinator at Mount Royal College about details

2. Submit registration form with payment

3. Buy books & study guides

4. Review program materials prior to start

5. Attend classes & complete assignments

6. Write certification exam

1. Work at Ariva Towers as site lead

2. Solicit supervisor input regarding certification and work assignments to fulfill experience requirements

3. Align work tasks with certification requirements to ensure success

4. Expand responsibilities during certification (for certification qualification as well as to demonstrate leadership qualities to management for future maintenance supervisor roles)

1. Join Toastmasters pubic speaking, and attend & prepare for weekly sessions

2. Take online self-development courses pertaining to interviewing techniques, goal-setting & communication

3. Engage career development coach or professional friend for job search & interview preparation

1. Monitor building maintenance job opportunities

2. Submit job applications for building maintenance supervisor

3. Prepare & interview with property management companies

Supervisor

Job

Apply for Building Maintenance Supervisor Jobs

Action #4

Extra Source of Income

Invest in Mutual Funds & Other Managed Funds, dividend-based Stocks, Bonds & Land Development Projects

Action #5

Retirement Plan

Work with Reputable Financial Planner from Investors Group to Devise & Manage a Retirement Plan

Action #6

1. Monitor building maintenance job opportunities

2. Submit job applications for building maintenance supervisor

3. Prepare & interview with property management companies

4. Follow up with all interviewers

5. Negotiate terms of employment (after job offer is made)

6. Work as building maintenance supervisor

1. Contact investment advisor at personal bank or other institution recommended by a trusted source

2. Evaluate investment vehicles based on risk/reward & long-term growth

3. Invest in funds, stocks & bonds

4. Invest in private land development through development channels & friends

1. Hire a reputable financial planner to define retirement goals & manage a retirement savings plan

2. Meet with financial planner on quarterly basis to review retirement investment performance & new investment opportunities

3. Adjust Retirement Savings Plan (RSP) on annual basis to reflect short-term & long-term goals

Greg has carefully identified all the actions that he needs to take in his Life Results Chain to reach his goal and end result of “New Life Ambitions Supported Financially.” Greg has further decomposed these actions into detailed action steps to make it all happen. He has put these action steps into his Life Web where he can manage schedules and priorities. In other words, all of Greg’s action steps are trapped in his Life Web waiting for him to achieve all the results that he had earlier identified in his Life Results Chain.

The Life Web can get somewhat chaotic so it’s important that we understand how to make sense of it. Before Greg unveils his new Life Web in full form, let’s focus on only one part of his Life Web for financially achieving his new life ambitions. In the following Life Web, we see all the action steps pertaining to “Action #1 – Certification.” Let’s call this the “Certification Radial” of Greg’s Life Web as illustrated in the following diagram.

Certification Radial of Greg’s Life Web

New Life Ambitions Supported Financially

Year 1

Year 2

As you can see in the diagram, Greg has six action steps to complete in order to obtain his certification as a building maintenance supervisor. This will bring him one step closer to getting that supervisor job one day. Greg isn’t committing himself to academic studies or a longterm career path. Rather, he’s pursuing an opportunity to get a super job as a super by next year, pardon the pun.

If you look closely at the six odd shapes representing action steps in the Certification Radial of Greg’s Life Web, you will notice that the first three action steps are tiny dots. These are nothing more than simple, quick administrative activities – phone call for information, online registration, and a dash to the bookstore – allowing Greg to initiate his certification process. I’m sure Greg can also download his books and study guides online. These are quick action steps that Greg has to take before he can begin his certification course work as outlined in the following table.

Greg’s Quick Action Steps

Action Step Description

Action Step #1 Contact Mount Royal College program coordinator (phone call)

Action Step #2 Submit registration form with payment (online)

Action Step #3 Buy books & study guides before classes start (quick trip to bookstore or online download)

The primary action step is actually attending classes and doing the assignments. This comes after the three dots and is represented by the long streak or swash extending from Year 1 all the way to the halfway point of Year 2, conveniently labelled “5. Attend classes & do assignments. ” This is the fifth and most important action step to get certified.

This program will take Greg about nine months to complete on a part-time basis. At the end, Greg will have to write a certification exam, which he’ll have no problem passing with some studying. This is represented by a niblet at the end of the long streak in Year 2 signifying the last action step to get certified, namely “6. Write certification exam.”

Don’t worry, I didn’t forget about the fourth action step on purpose. This is represented by a shorter streak labelled “4. Review program materials” so that Greg can prepare himself before classes begin. Greg decided that a bit of review in the evenings before the first day of class would give him a head start. However, this is optional. It’s just that Greg has been out of school for some time and feels that a bit of review would refresh his memory and help him get back into the swing of things. Greg is looking forward to his certification and eager to do well. His future depends on it.

u Processes Lead to Results, Results Lead to Actions, Actions Lead to Schedules

This is simply the way the world works. We start with a Life Process Tree to collect our life processes. Once the “WHAT we do” and “WHAT we want to do” are arranged systematically on paper or a computer screen, we get excited about getting our processes off the ground. The Life Results Chain identifies all the results that we need to achieve to complete our life processes in a prioritized order. It doesn’t stop there. The Life Results Chain also has this unrivalled ability to define “HOW we want to do it” or the actions required to achieve the results that we’re after. And finally, since we have to carry out these actions and decide “WHEN we want to do it,” the Life Web becomes our life calendar and helps us schedule all the action steps to get things done.

This is the logical progression of a Life Architecture. Greg’s new Life Web is based on that part of his Life Results Chain called “Work to Support New Life,” which in turn is based on Process Branch #3 in his future Life Process Tree.

Process Branch #3 Work To Support New Life

We start with our future process vision, identify the results we want to achieve, and then take the required action steps to get there. Think of Life Architecture as a methodology providing the building blocks to guide us through a life discovery continuum from the time we dream until we realize our dreams.

A Life Discovery Continuum

It’s important that we’re familiar with the building blocks of Life Architecture and its logical progression. The future Life Process Tree, Life Results Chain, and Life Web are the key building blocks as we transform our dreams into reality. Each has its own purpose and is used as a stepping block to the next one. In Chapter 13, we will be talking more about the building blocks of Life Architecture and how it all fits together.

The following illustrates Greg’s complete Life Web in all its glory. The numbers and shading scheme corresponds to the action steps outlined in “Greg’s Action Steps on the Life Web” table, which identify each “Action” in his Life Results Chain and corresponding “Action Steps” in his Life Web. Don’t over study it. I just want you to appreciate the mere dynamics and interaction of everything that is going on. All the action steps in Greg’s Life Web have a purpose and tie back to the actions and results in his Life Results Chain. You will also notice that Greg is taking several actions simultaneously to achieve all the results that he needs to get to the end of his Life Results Chain. It’s important that Greg plan his attack and carry out his tactics in a mindful and timely fashion.

Greg’s Life Web Process Branch #3 - Work to Support New Life

1. financialHireplanner Adjust RSP(annually) Meet financialplanner (quarterly)

4. Follow up with interviewers

3. Invest in funds, stocks & bonds

4. Invest in land dev

6. Work as building maintenance supervisor 1. Contact investadvisor 2.Evaluate investments

5. Negotiate terms

3. Engage career development coach 1. Monitor job opportunities 2. Submit job applications 3. Prepare & interview PM companies

Join Toastmasters

Take online self-development courses

responsibilities

6. Write certification exam

Now that you’ve seen Greg’s new Life Web for Process Branch #3 – “Work to Support New Life,” you may be wondering why we have chosen the web representation of a timeline. It has a lot to do with communication. Besides, we can get his whole life to fit on one page, or at least a few good years of it. The challenge is to be able to communicate an individual’s timeline in a consumable and comprehensible manner. How do we communicate life in a way that captures all the moving pieces? We may just have to adopt an effective visual style, such as the Life Web, to illustrate our individual requirements and unique lifestyles, which include many activities shaping our lives over a prescribed period of time. This is radically different from anything we’ve seen before.

You will notice that Greg’s desired end result “New Life Ambitions Supported Financially” resembles a moon in the top right-hand corner of his Life Web. Greg will have to complete all the action steps in his Life Web before he reaches the moon and be in a position to financially support himself and his life ambitions. I jokingly tell Greg that he will be the first architect to land on the moon. We all have a moon to land on, or shall I say an end result to achieve. I expect that one day Greg will be celebrating his accomplishments, specifically the end result in his Life Web.

u The Life Web on a Radar Screen

As I was studying Greg’s Life Web on my computer screen not too long ago, an enterprise architect of all people walked by and couldn’t help but notice the glaring, brilliant colors and asked me if it was a radar screen. Without a beat, I replied that indeed it was and that the different colored radio frequencies on the screen determined the range, altitude, direction, and speed of all the tasks that we needed to accomplish to get our project over the finish line. He advised that the radio waves on my radar screen must have fried my brain. I love a witty architect with a warped sense of humor. I appreciated his wit and the analogy of a radar screen. Thanks to my enterprise architect colleague, I can better explain the Life Web to navigators and regular people. This is in essence Greg’s radar screen as he navigates and maneuvers his way to a new life.

Greg has shaded the action steps in his Life Web according to the six actions that he identified in his Life Results Chain. Applying contrasting shades of gray provided clarity and distinguished the actions in the various radials of his Life Web. Besides, this will help Greg better understand the order, priorities, and dependencies between all the action steps in his Life Web.

Our lives seem overwhelming at times as we try to work our way through an intricate maze of life challenges and aspirations. Greg has, for this reason, adopted a Life Architecture methodology as a means to achieve the desired end result in his Life Web, without second guessing himself about his future. This allows Greg to foresee his path forward, and more importantly, it gives him a better plan of execution as he monitors his radar screen.

Although we’re not here to conduct an academic assessment of Greg’s Life Web, there are three key symbols that we’ll focus our attention on. All Life Webs use some combination of these symbols to represent the duration of our scheduled action steps. Each radial of Greg’s Life Web has a unique pattern of action steps that vary in duration from making a telephone inquiry to earning a certificate.

Key Symbols in a Life Web

Symbol Description Example

Dot

Short Break

Long Streak

These are quick and sporadic activities to get the ball rolling. They can take minutes, hours, or even a day. Examples include phone calls to obtain information, submitting applications, running errands, and meeting with people. A series of dots may represent preparatory tasks prior to engaging in long-term initiatives, or administrative activities supporting these initiatives.

These activities are continuous in nature with a short timeframe, anywhere from days to weeks or even months. They need to be started on time and definitely have an end or expiry date. Examples include studying for exams, preparing for interviews, evaluating investment opportunities, and taking personal training sessions.

These are long-term initiatives with formal or informal schedules, usually several months if not years. They take commitment and relentless follow-through well into the future. Examples include going to school, enrolling in self-development programs, managing long-term investment projects, and participating in retirement planning until the golden years.

Upon closer inspection of Greg’s Life Web, we can see that his retirement plan is rather sporadic. Actually, his financial planner is quite insistent about meeting every few months. This is depicted by several recurring dots in the “Action #6 – Retirement Plan” radial of Greg’s Life Web. You will notice that Greg’s annual meeting with his financial planner to adjust his Retirement Savings Plan (RSP) is represented by a larger dot (Action Step #3), while recurring quarterly review meetings (Action Step #2) are the smaller dots. Making adjustments to his RSP once a year takes a little more time and effort than reviewing investment performance and new opportunities every quarter. This routine keeps Greg engaged and on top of his retirement planning.

Greg’s other long-term initiatives are continuous and simultaneous in nature such as his employment at Ariva Towers as a site lead while taking on new responsibilities during his certification. This is illustrated by the two long streaks occurring consecutively in the “Action #2 – Experience” radial. This is all happening while Greg is taking classes at Mount Royal College at night and working to gain building maintenance experience during the day. These consecutive action steps tend to be adjacent to each other, rather than following each other in his Life Web.

It’s apparent that Actions #1 (Certification), #2 (Experience), and #3 (Self-Development) all start in Year 1 of Greg’s Life Web. Such immediate actions are required to get certified, bolster Greg’s work

experience, and develop ongoing interpersonal skills, respectively, in preparation for landing a building maintenance supervisor job by Year 2. This is the year that Greg lays the groundwork to get the experience that he needs. He will continue to develop his capabilities in order to earn a better income.

In Year 2, Greg plans to be working as a supervisor while he pursues an extra source of income and invests in his retirement plan – Actions #4 (Supervisor Job), #5 (Extra Source of Income), and #6 (Retirement Plan), respectively. This is a big year for Greg as he graduates, and moves up the ranks and pay scale. Hopefully, he can take that well-deserved vacation before he starts his new job as a supervisor.

In Year 3 and beyond, Greg will continue to work and grow his extra source of income and retirement investments. This is the year that Greg establishes an investment platform and gains the maturity to earn income from several sources on an ongoing basis into the future. I admire his personal growth and ability to realize his financially self-sustaining vision.

With all due respect and fairness to the life architecture mission at hand, Greg has completed a Life Results Chain and Life Web for only one of the key life processes in his future Life Process Tree, namely Process Branch #3 – “Work to Support New Life.” He can choose to architect all or only selected processes that he feels are a priority or critical in his life. At this time, he’s most interested in fixing his work and investment processes so that he can financially support his new life ambitions.

So is Greg done? Did he get the results that he wanted? Greg had a desire, vision, and a plan to design a new life for himself. He also understood the benefits of breaking all those constraining Life Rules to enable him to put his new life processes into effect. Greg made a deliberate point to clearly define all the results that he desired to achieve in life. He then identified all the actions to do that and created a schedule to develop his capabilities and make it all happen in his lifetime.

u Mountains Beyond Mountains

I remember a famous Haitian proverb: “Beyond mountains there are mountains.” It was the title of a book, Mountains Beyond Mountains, that caught my eye at the bookstore as I was sipping my coffee. The proverb means that we all have problems throughout our lifetimes. As we solve one problem, more problems are awaiting us. And as these problems or life challenges come upon us, we work them out in the grand scheme of our Life Web. No matter how many mountains we climb, there are always more mountains to conquer.

Throughout our lifetime, we deal with problems and unexpected circumstances. Our saving grace is being able to enjoy our lives in spite of our problems. We deal with them and we move on. Losing our job today means finding another one tomorrow. And a year from now, it hardly matters. We don’t let our problems consume us as we strive to achieve our desired future. Our success is subject to putting issues and problems in perspective, while we enjoy our lives at the same time.

I once told my lawyer, “Life is about managing problems.” As much as he agreed, he told me that he likes problems because they keep him in business. I believe that he was trying to tell me that we can make problems go away by hiring lawyers. Ironically, I need a lawyer from time to time to resolve certain problems. There always seems to be a dot or streak for him in my Life Web. I need him to make my problems go away, and I understand that we sometimes need help.

Greg has the ability and flexibility to adjust his Life Web as circumstances and priorities change, and take appropriate action steps to develop his capabilities and reach his goals. It would be ludicrous to assume that life is a constant. We, and the world around us, are continuously changing. Change can be a daunting experience and arduous undertaking, but essential for happiness, success, health, and prosperity. It’s more important than ever to be our own change manager as we manage the changes in our lives. While circumstances and priorities change, that’s no excuse to abandon our plans.

We’re not always guaranteed to realize every ambition and desire, but we take pleasure in trying. The prize, of course, is harnessing them to our full potential throughout our lifetime. No one is invincible, but we’re all empowered to excel in the one life that we’ve been granted. I have no doubt that we can all achieve great things, even a sense of humor among a group of stranded tourists caught in a hurricane. I believe greatness lies within every one of us. As I told Greg many times, “I love who you can become.” This requires a positive outlook and the right perspective in life. Having a better outlook can make a tremendous difference, but it’s also important that we manage our expectations.

13

The Building Blocks of Life Architecture

Someone once told me, “Life writes books.” It is the knowledge we gain through life that we can write down on paper. Actually, this someone was a war veteran who wrote his personal wartime memoirs. He believed that my presentation and communication skills were a natural transition into writing. We shared a love of history and he felt that I should write about it. War veterans just can’t get enough of history. To his dismay, I wrote a book about the future instead. The truth be told, I just wanted to write my own ending – one that gave me purpose and happiness.

Life Architecture is about creating our future rather than waiting for it. There are times when we make history, and there are times when history makes us. I want to make history, rather than solicit an honorable mention in someone’s memoirs because I just happened to be around for the battle. I have no aspirations to be the unknown soldier in the back row of an army photo peering through two victorious helmets, especially in a war that could have been avoided. Not to sound like one of those TV evangelists, I believe that we all have the potential to make a difference in our lives with a little initiative – and without going to war. We can effect things in life rather than be affected.

This all sounds a bit like a new self-discovery paradigm to help us take charge of our future, doesn’t it? I don’t need to conceal the fact that we’re breaking new ground. Life Architecture was a blank page in Wikipedia the last time I looked. We’ve demonstrated that Life Architecture is a natural and intuitive process to rationalize our lives. I have you as my witness. If anyone asks, Life Architecture is a structured approach for rationalizing our lives, but more importantly, realizing the future we desire.

u The Future You Desire Starts with a Vision

When I see a person, I see a life – a life with a past, present, and future. I see a life that can be architected. I also see a multitude of life processes in disarray and disrepair, and in need of fixing. My first reaction is to immediately jump in and get a lay of the land by understanding our current life processes. This calls for a current Life Blueprint before we can plan a future worth living. I have this overwhelming urge to lay out all the current life processes and hang them in their rightful place on a Life Process Tree. This provides a solid Life Architecture foundation, which articulates a vision and reveals the changes necessary to consummate the desired life represented by our future Life Blueprint.

I feel a sense of kinship when I’m engaged to unravel the meaning of someone’s life. It’s not easy to come up with our own meaning, let alone someone else’s. A current Life Blueprint captures the meaning or purpose of one’s life. Our meaning and purpose in life is influenced by our past and present life circumstances. This may explain why we tend to scrutinize our past and present to guide us to the future. “It is not down in any map; true places never are” was an insight by the author of a book about an uncharted sea voyage. There is no universal map to guide our life voyage, but we can all have a Life Blueprint pointing us to our true north.

Unless we have a prophetic vision in our dreams, we are likely to articulate our own vision of the future within the confines of a mortal world. This will take some dedication, inner strength, and passion to find a better future. The paradigm of Life Architecture is premised on human thought and proven practices necessary to develop a vision. There are life processes to define, issues and problems to resolve, concerns to address, Life Rules to rationalize, assumptions to make, and opportunities to take. Life Architecture and a little dedication can help us formulate a future Life Blueprint illustrating where we want to go.

Some believers of fate, and more than a few cult members, might argue that Life Architecture is “much ado about nothing.” Maybe that’s why they’re stuck or under the spell of a cult leader. It’s unfortunate that Shakespeare is no longer around to soliloquize our innermost thoughts and help us uncover the meaning of life. Even Shakespeare’s characters struggled with their identities before their tragic demise or exuberant rise. When Alexander the Great took the throne, he said, “In the end, when it’s over all that matters is what you have done.” Maybe the end justifies the means, as long as it has meaning and purpose for us.

Many of us have struggled with the meaning and purpose of life, but yet we look forward to the many adventures we encounter in our lifetime. Indiana Jones believed that life is made up of adventures, but life is the adventure. We must have faith in ourselves that one day we will find meaning and purpose in our lives. “That’s the struggle of life, finding its meaning in the face of mortality” was the dilemma shared by a friend trying to find his own purpose. Life Architecture can help us get through our struggles.

u A Self-Assessment to Realize Your Desires

Architecting our lives hardly seems worth it if we don’t understand what we want out of life. We should develop a sense of what we want and don’t want to do in life before we do anything else. This requires a practical and constructive personal behavioral assessment similar to the Personal Behavioral Assessment Matrix completed by Greg back in Chapter 9. Have you asked yourself, “Am I spending my time on the things that I want to do?” These are the things that make us happy and arouse our spirits.

It’s painful to see people without direction. I can’t help but think about all the unnecessary and artificial rules that we follow. Life isn’t quite as simple as following the Ten Commandments. There is a certain paradox when it comes to the commandments. Some people kill in the name of God, while arrogant executives steal from companies to support their greedy lifestyles. Then there are militant individuals who advocate gun rights as a means to protect themselves without acknowledging that guns lead to violence. Someone once said that guns are for people who don’t have any money, or have too much of it. Unfortunately, that’s the way the world works, but it shouldn’t be that way. We all have an opportunity to do good and make the world a better place.

A Rhodes Scholar by the name of Kent Keith, with a little inspiration from Mother Teresa, came up with the Paradoxical Commandments, which instruct us to break social norms and do good. Although Keith may paint a gloomy picture of humanity, he helps us understand that we can make a difference anyway by repudiating societal expectations. I think it really comes down to using our own judgement to attain personal meaning and satisfaction in life. Sometimes a better life is a matter of playing the game by different rules, norms, and commandments.

The Paradoxical Commandments

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds. Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs. Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them. Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway.

The Paradoxical Commandments teach us to do good in this world, but the paradox is that we’re not always rewarded for doing good. This reminds me of a caption on a mental health poster put out by the state: “Practice kind deeds without the need for acknowledgement.” The late Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, was fond of saying “If it has the potential to do good, then we should do it.” The message is quite simple: when we do good, we’re doing the right thing.

Do good anyway because everything we do matters. “If anything matters, then everything matters” was a firm belief by the guy who told me about the Paradoxical Commandments. Dale

Carnegie believed that doing good is a good way to win friends and influence people. His book How to Win Friends & Influence People, published in 1936, is one of the best-selling books of all time. I’m sure you’ll make more friends and open more doors after reading it.

u Life Principles to Live By

Everyone needs a guiding set of principles. Even architects who design our living accommodations adhere to principles, especially when they build in neighborhoods regulated by architecture controls. The White House is white and my house is made of brick as a result of principles – architectural, political, or otherwise. Life Architecture also requires principles, namely life principles. Everyone appreciates a person of principle. The Paradoxical Commandments are in fact life principles you should live by to become a person of good moral principles. These life principles pre-empt our Life Architecture journey. A principle is a belief or personal postulation that guides our actions and behaviors as we strive for our desired future. I think the Paradoxical Commandments are good life principles, and if you don’t like them, you are free to come up with your own. Personally, one of my driving life principles is “When something in your life is broken, fix it before things get worse.” And don’t follow rules that prevent you from living the life you want, which ironically is a principle.

In Chapter 5, we discussed Life Rules. We also identified the 16 Life Rules that impact and dictate Greg’s life processes. In Chapter 8, Greg also did some rule-busting and came up with a new set of rules to live by in order to improve his life. But his life principles – based on beliefs, values, and inner feelings – stood their ground. Lucky for Greg, his principles are aligned with the Paradoxical Commandments. We can’t easily change the beliefs and values that have always been a part of us. But we can change self-imposed Life Rules to remove obstacles and make our lives better.

The ultimate paradox in life is that we’re expected to follow rules in society, although many of these rules are detrimental to our personal growth and achievements. It’s time to discard these unfavorable rules and expose the limitations they’ve imposed on our lives. We should go on a scavenger hunt for bad rules and do some rule-busting. By breaking obsolescent rules, we can remove the obstacles that have prevented us from reaching our goals and making our dreams come true. When we are aware of our life possibilities and desires, we develop a sense of rules limiting us and can start living according to a new set of rules to make our dreams a reality.

The future can be a scary and unfamiliar place as we do our best to overcome anxiety and face our fears. Deep inside, we’re afraid to change our attitudes, and the promise of a better future falls by the wayside. We’d rather leave the future to fate than commit ourselves to a future we desire. We seem to find comfort in a passive existence as we accept uncertainty. It feels safer to leave things alone and let chance take its course. It’s only after we stop making excuses that we begin to make changes. The problem is, however, that we don’t know how to get to our desired future.

I’ve always been intrigued by what the future could look like, and more so by the possibility that we can shape it. As a Life Architecture coach, I believe there’s no better feeling in the world than helping people visualize future possibilities and understand their value. There’s an air of reverence after a Life Process Tree of our future is unveiled. It just may be the first time someone has seen a picture of a desired future unfold before their very eyes.

u A Value Proposition Affirms What You Want in Life

Value is the worth that we assign to our life. It’s somewhat of a declaration how good we feel about ourselves and our lives. A value proposition is the worth, excellence, usefulness, or importance that we attribute to ourselves during our lifetime. The Life Value Chain helps us appreciate the fact that we derive value from various stages of our lives. It helps us see the big picture of life, including the life stages that are now in the past, as well as those in the present and future. We begin to see how the past has added value to our present and possibly our future. Some people tend to latch on to the past and extend their adolescent life stages well into the future; others separate themselves from the past, particularly if the past has added little value. A few of us still can’t tell the future from the past, so end up living in the past. The Life Value Chain classifies all the things that we did and want to do in a natural succession of our life stages. As they say, there is a time and place for everything in one’s lifetime, and it’s never too late to get value out of our lives.

Some of us have crafted personal agendas to fulfill our aspirations. Others are still trying to figure out what those aspirations are. The purpose of a self-assessment is to understand what we want out of life. As a teen, I couldn’t wait to be of legal age so I could fly the coop and enjoy my independence, while my overzealous friends had their sights on conquering the world. And as we got older, we dreamt of a retirement where we could take it easy and enjoy the fruits of our labor. I’m still baffled by those less ambitious souls stuck in adolescent-adult limbo who can’t seem to put down the video game controller and move on. Our individual life circumstances and aspirations dictate the value that we derive during our lifetimes.

In theory, everyone grows up one day. On the way to work one morning, I heard a radio psychologist say, “Once we take on adult responsibilities, we’re going to have them for life. So, why not take this time, assuming it’s still early enough to do so, and do the things that we couldn’t do before and never will be able to do again?” I wondered what he did for fun before becoming a psychologist and getting a job in radio. I missed the boat a long time ago when my wife moved in but I wouldn’t trade it for the world. “Once we get married and have kids and a long-term employer, we can’t just leave them because something interesting comes along. But in our twenties, we can.”

We’re never quite sure how life is going to turn out. A friend once told me that life is like a Swiss army knife. We don’t always know which attachment to use, but the bottle opener is there if we ever need it. In my case, life is more like a golf bag. I never know which club to use unless I’m in a sand trap. As we all know, life can get complicated and its only a matter of time before we face a dilemma. Life is not always as straightforward as moving out, going to college, landing a career job, getting married, raising a family, and then retiring. There are many twists and turns along the way, not to mention overlaps. By appraising the value of different stages of our lives, we can begin to focus on the desired results and their overall benefits, which are derived during each stage.

Life is too valuable to neglect before it makes its way down some rat hole. It’s easier to get lost than find life’s value and purpose. Maybe it’s our calling in life to simply enjoy it. Life Architecture is just a way to help us understand what gives life value. It’s when we understand the value of life that we start to see the benefits we want to get out of it. We instinctively strive to attain those benefits by taking appropriate actions to achieve desired results.

u A Roadmap to Get You From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be

A Life Roadmap is required to get us to where we want to be and make the right future happen. Thus, we must realize the benefits of a future mapped out in our future Life Blueprint as we discussed earlier. We create a Life Results Chain to better understand the results that we need to achieve and the actions required to realize benefits along the way. We ultimately achieve a desired result at the end of the chain, which fulfills our personal goals. It’s ironic that we’re measured by the results we achieve. I always thought results were numbers and letters on a report card, until I realized that I wasn’t getting the results nor value I wanted out of my life.

The Life Value Chain offers a convenient way to measure and gauge the value that we’d like to extract from the various stages of our lives, while the Life Results Chain articulates the benefits, results, and actions to deliver that value. Simply put, we take the appropriate actions to achieve the results that lead to a desired life benefit. And, as we all know, it takes a whole lot of benefits to add value to the different stages of our lives. All these Life Results Chains compose different parts of our lives – family, romance, work, leisure, health, and so on. I have my own portfolio of Life Results Chains representing the different results that I desire to achieve within different parts and various stages of my life. Together, these results fulfill the future life benefits identified in our Life Roadmap.

A Life Roadmap empowers us to take the necessary actions to attain the desired benefits that add value to our lives. In Chapter 11, we observed Greg as he defined his own Life Roadmap. It was obvious that Greg wanted to make a new life for himself, although he understood that such a life would require the financial resources he doesn’t have today. It’s no wonder Greg decided to start with a Life Results Chain representing a process branch in his future Life Process Tree named “Work to Support New Life.” This spells out the results needed and actions Greg has to take to land himself a higher-paying job as a building maintenance supervisor, develop extra sources of income, and position himself for retirement.

It seems obvious that we want to increase the relative worth of our lives by taking the right actions. However, we can’t just stop here. If we do, we won’t get anywhere. Our future would be left to the mercy of our passive behavior. Behavior has a funny way of distracting us and helping us fall back lazily into a chair. It would be tragic if we got lazy about life. We have to change that behavior. This means stepping outside of our comfort zone and stepping up to do whatever it takes to get the job done. How do we know what behavior is required if we’ve never architected our life before? The first thing we must do is wake up from our dreary and societal existence, and embrace Life Architecture.

There are some learned behaviors influenced by society that seem to get in the way by holding us back. How many times has someone told us to stop procrastinating? We have already talked about what it takes to be a winner – namely, motivation, perseverance, and capabilities – and procrastinating isn’t part of a winning philosophy. Actually, it’s a losing philosophy. John Travolta’s definition of procrastinate in the movie A Love Song for Bobby Long is “to drag one’s ass in such a pathetic manner as to ensure one’s place in life as a loser.” Sometimes we just need a nudge from a parent, friend, teacher, or a Life Architecture coach. Many “nudgers” in life have been influential in shaping our future.

u A Schedule Assures That You Get There

Even with a good roadmap, everything is in the timing, assuming that we got it all planned out properly. We only have this one lifetime to do it, so it’s now or never. There’s no time for procrastination. This calls for a schedule or timeline. A Life Web will do. A schedule assumes that we’re motivated to make the time. I’m sure no one needs another schedule in their life, but this one can change things in a big way, even be life changing. A Life Web is an actionable schedule that pulls all our assertive actions and daring deeds together on one page. There’s no reason that we can’t pull other schedules into our Life Web and integrate our actions as we simplify our lives.

Dynamic organizations dare to be different. They are masters in scheduling the things they need to do to achieve their goals and be on top. How many of us dare to be different? A Life Web provides a simple yet comprehensive view of all the actions we need to take, when to start them, and their expected durations. It was actually by design that Greg created a Life Web with a wide spectrum of vibrant colors to highlight related activities in the Life Web he developed in Chapter 12. The colorful graphics seem to come to life on what resembles a radar screen with radials partitioning correlated action steps across his timeline.

When I examine Greg’s Life Web, I realize that the different parts of his life – family, romance, work, leisure, health, etc. – are in a constant state of flux while he works hard to maintain a balance and sense of normality. Greg aims to balance his life by working enough to afford him quality time with his family. However, earning enough money and keeping ex-wives happy is a never-ending battle. If life was only as easy as taking an antacid to neutralize the acid in our stomachs.

u Life is a Chemistry Experiment

When things get out of hand, we yearn for a life of simplicity, stability, and sanity. We instinctively act to neutralize a bad situation in the hope of getting some peace and quiet in our lives. Sometimes life feels like a chemistry experiment. We activate a neutralizing reaction by getting the right quantities of acidic and basic solutions to react together. I miss the days when our grades were based on balancing a chemical equation. Unfortunately, we were never taught how to balance our lives. There was a time when I actually felt like I was back in a high school lab conducting a chemistry experiment, but without the proper apparatus. Maybe I didn’t start with the proper hypothesis to understand what I was trying to prove. I was motivated to solve an equation for the effort required to add value to my life. The benefits, results, and actions were the reactants and the value was the product. I remember desperately trying to fill in the coefficients to balance a loosely-defined life equation and start making a better life for myself.

The challenge is how do we optimize and balance our lives at the same time? I never expected to give a chemistry lesson after all these years, but it seemed like a good analogy for demonstrating that the right reactants in the right quantities produce change and add value. In the context of Life Architecture, we’re looking to make life changes and add value to our lives. Value is added when many benefits are derived to attain a common goal. A benefit is derived when many results are achieved. And a result is achieved when we take action. Life Architecture provides the means to optimize and balance our lives. It is the catalyst that triggers and accelerates a chemical reaction that creates value in our lives.

The pursuit of value in our lives comes full circle when we become content. I refer to this phenomenon as “The Circle of Life.” I’m not sure that we’re ever ready to stop adding value to our lives. We’re never quite content until we know where we’re going and why we’re doing what we’re doing. And when we do, this becomes an exhilarating and comforting experience. We’re continually inspired to add more value as life circumstances change and new opportunities present themselves.

The Circle of Life

• The personal worth of the various stages of our lives

Value Benefits

• The actions we take to achieve results or outcomes

Actions Results

• The improvements or advantages we seek in our lives

• The multiple outcomes required to derive a benefit

We all take pride in deriving life benefits and getting value for our efforts. That’s why retirees get deserving pensions and gold watches when they retire. The circle of life is actually quite a simple concept. We work hard by taking certain actions, we achieve results for our hard work, and, with a little diplomacy, our hard work is recognized for the results we achieve. A good performance review can also come with the benefit of a promotion, or at least a salary increase. I’m sure companies also appreciate the value they derive from all our hard work. This is the circle of life as it applies to our daily work lives. The circle of life also applies to other aspects of our personal lives as we derive value by fulfilling our goals and dreams.

My Scottish friend Davie probably enjoys life more than anyone I know. He has come full circle more than a few times when it comes to realizing contentment in his own life. He has always lived by the principle: “Enjoy it while you can.” In his humorous demeanor, he turns to me and says, “I thought getting old was gonna take a lot longer than this.” “And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count; it’s the life in your years” were the profound words of President Abraham Lincoln whose years were ironically cut short by an assassin. We never believe we’ll get old, until it happens. Even then, we seem to be in denial. I admire Davie for denying old age. “We don’t stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.” There’s not a day that Davie isn’t at the playground.

Our blueprints, roadmaps, schedules, and so on are the constructs of Life Architecture. The five constructs constituting a Life Architecture are the building blocks that enhance our lives and ultimately give us purpose and happiness.

The 5 Constructs of Life Architecture

Current vs Future Life Blueprint

Life Web

Life Roadmap

Life Results Chain

Life Rules

Personal Behavioral Assessment Matrix

Life Value Chain

u How Do The 5 Constructs Fit Together?

To answer that, let’s consider all the terms next to the constructs in the preceding diagram. A Current Life Blueprint maps out our current situation, which is later transformed into a Future Life Blueprint representing the life we desire. However, we’re not always sure what that desired life is or what it looks like. This is why we identify the Life Rules that have held us back and come up with a new set of life rules for the future. We also develop a Personal Behavioral Assessment Matrix to capture our innermost needs and desires. This might be a good time to understand the value of our lives and perform a litmus test to see where our value proposition sits on a Life Value Chain. If we have a Current Life Blueprint representing our current life and a Future Life Blueprint representing our future life, we need to develop a Life Roadmap to take us from where we are today to where we want to go in the future. A Life Roadmap can be a large undertaking and we may need to break it down into several Life Results Chains, which represent different aspects of our lives. And to make sure we get to our desired life, we need to schedule all the actions in our Life Roadmap on a Life Web to ensure we get there in a reasonable timeframe.

We organize and maintain these constructs in their respective folders for convenience as illustrated in the following diagram. These are all the tools we need to architect and construct our lives.

Organizing Our Life Architecture Constructs

The five constructs – Vision, Self-Assessment, Value Proposition, Plan, and Schedule – represent the building blocks of Life Architecture. These are best organized in separate folders as we architect our lives. It reminds me of my nephew’s new Lego set as he dumps all the colored interlocking plastic bricks and claims exclusive rights to the living room. He diligently follows the instructions while setting the more difficult pieces aside until he finds their rightful place. It’s inevitable that he builds a replica of the Star Wars spaceship on the cover of the Lego box in all its architectural glory.

1

2 Self-Assessment

3

5

I attribute my nephew’s architectural success to Lego’s impeccable instructions with illustrative diagrams that come with each Lego set. However, his interest and passion are the key critical success factors in the building process. This is evident as we observe him meticulously study the instruction booklet and prepare the pieces for assembly before diving into construction. I wouldn’t be surprised if this kid grows up to be an engineer or architect – or possibly a life architect.

u The Lego Bricks of Life

Life Architecture has some similarity to a Lego set. The picture on the cover of the Lego box is comparable to our future Life Blueprint. It’s the cover picture of our future that we desperately seek so that we have an idea of what our life architecture should look like when we’re done. However, the only difference is that my nephew’s Lego box contains all the pieces that are ready to be assembled and instructions to ensure the interlocking bricks match the picture on the box after it’s completed. I wish we were so lucky when it comes to assembling our desired life.

We’ll just have to take a peek into our future Life Blueprint folder for a picture of our future before we start to assemble a future life. It’s important that we have some helpful instructions in our Life Roadmap folder to get us there. Why do you think I’m so keen to get everything organized into folders? Unfortunately, we don’t have a Lego box of bricks to build our future life. We don’t even know what bricks we need or where to find them.

In order to understand our lives better, we need to identify the life processes that make up our life today. This may justify the need for a current Life Blueprint. We leverage our current life processes, the good ones anyhow, to create a future Life Blueprint. The African-American social reformer and abolitionist Frederick Douglass described the past as a foundation for the future. “We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future.” A Life Roadmap is a plan transitioning us from the life represented in our current Life Blueprint to a desired life mapped out for us in the future Life Blueprint. And no plan will get us there unless we devise and follow a schedule. Thus, the Life Web is the last construct in this Life Architecture puzzle.

The five constructs constituting a Life Architecture are the building blocks that add substance to our life and ultimately give our lives purpose. Think of it as a Lego set for adults, mainly those serious life hobbyists who want to construct a better life for themselves. These building blocks provide guidance as we architect our lives.

Why Are the 5 Constructs Important?

Construct 1: Vision

Current Life Blueprint: Defines an individual’s life processes today. This is the first thing we do by creating a current Life Process Tree of all our current life processes. We take note of current life issues, concerns, problems, and opportunities as we begin to understand the current obstacles in our life. All this is part of our current Life Blueprint.

Future Life Blueprint: Defines an individual’s desired life processes in the future. We take our current Life Process Tree and transform it into a future Life Process Tree. As we create our future Life Blueprint, we address future changes required to resolve current life issues, concerns, and problems, while we act on opportunities.

Construct 2: Self-Assessment

Life Rules: Definitions, facts, constraints, and derivations restricting life processes and dictating what individuals can or cannot do. We’re compelled to follow Life Rules that we’re expected to live by although they put limitations on us. Only when we break rules that limit us and introduce new ones that free us are we in a position to participate in our desired future life processes. Our current Life Rules dictate the processes in our current Life Blueprint, while new Life Rules are designed to support the processes in our future Life Blueprint.

Personal Behavioral Assessment Matrix: Self-assessment of personal wants and needs. A Personal Behavioral Assessment Matrix is a method of capturing our innermost needs and desires to help us develop our future Life Blueprint.

Construct 3: Value Proposition

Life Value Chain: Defines a life value proposition or how an individual adds value during various stages of his or her life. The Life Value Chain illustrates the different stages of our life and the value that we assign to each stage.

Construct 4: Plan

Life Results Chain: Defines all the results (or outcomes), assumptions, and actions required to meet our goals and objectives using a Life Results Chain. We achieve multiple results in a single chain before we derive a meaningful life benefit and add value to different stages of our life. Each Life Results Chain provides a meaningful life benefit, and represents a single process branch in our future Life Process Tree.

Life Roadmap: Combines all the Life Results Chains into a single Life Roadmap, which guides us to our desired future. We don’t have to complete a Life Results Chain for each process branch in our future Life Process Tree, but only the important or more complicated ones. In composing our Life Roadmap, we pick and choose which Life Results Chains provide life benefits and add value to our life, not to mention which ones are worthy of our efforts.

Construct 5: Schedule

Life Web: Transposes a future timeline with all the required action steps onto an effective visual Life Schedule resembling a spider web. These action steps represent the detailed instructions required to carry out the actions in our Life Results Chain over a specified time period, usually three years and beyond. The Life Web is a detailed schedule making it possible to execute all the Life Results Chains, each one bounded by a separate radial, composing our Life Roadmap.

I’m sure that we’ve all heard of Christopher Columbus, but how many of us have heard of the egg of Columbus? Columbus’s egg refers to the notion that a brilliant idea or discovery seems simple or easy after the fact. There is a story in which Christopher Columbus, having been told that discovering the Americas was inevitable and no great accomplishment, challenges his critics to make an egg stand upright. After they all give up, Columbus succeeds by slightly crushing the blunt end of an egg on the table to flatten it. His point was that after a deed is done, everybody knows how to do it. Perhaps these critics should have taken to the high seas rather than ridicule Columbus’s discoveries upon his successful return.

u The Practicality of Life Architecture

I don’t claim to be brilliant or to have discovered an age-reversing process. Rather, I have put together the pieces, or architecture constructs, of a life-enhancing approach called Life Architecture. Many argue that Life Architecture already exists in some organizational form or that someone with a PhD will eventually come up with an accredited Life Architecture theoretical model. If you need something, chances are it already exists. But I have yet to find a practical approach to architecting our lives. My intent was to develop a practical Life Architecture for the common man, which by definition makes me a pragmatic life architect.

I think of Life Architecture as somewhat of an architectural feat, with similar challenges to building the dome of the Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral in Florence, given that it was to be even larger than the Pantheon’s dome in Rome and no dome of that size had been built since antiquity. This was a major feat considering that buttresses were forbidden by the city fathers and scaffolding was inadequate. No one had any idea how this dome was to be built, that is, until an architect by the name of Filippo Brunelleschi came along in the mid-15th century. Brunelleschi’s success can be attributed to his technical, mathematical, and practical aptitude. He left behind no building plans or diagrams that detailed the dome’s structure, which even today remains a mystery as how he pulled it off. A mystery is only as good as the story around it.

Life Architecture reminds me of the dome of the Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral only because no one has come up with architecting a life until now. Sure, we all talk about life in terms of changing, improving, re-engineering, counselling, psychological guiding, and psychiatric healing, but it’s rare that someone mentions architecting life unless we have a life architect in the family. I’m sure that my wife and kids got an earful of architecting their lives over the years. I just hope that they’ve been listening enough to architect the life that they desire and deserve.

This brings us to the conclusion of our Life Architecture journey and all it has to offer. Think of this chapter as a synopsis of Life Architecture, or better yet, your cheat sheet for easy reference. Here we described all the constructs – Vision, Self-Assessment, Value Proposition, Plan, and Schedule – required to architect our lives. You should now be in a position to appreciate the reasons and purpose of each construct, and how these constructs are all related in the grand scheme of a well-designed Life Architecture and well-architected life. The devil is in the details. It is up to you to make sense of it all. It was the brash American lieutenant in the movie Inglourious Basterds who said, “You know how you get to Carnegie Hall, don’t ya? Practice.” With a little practice, you’ll be an expert in no time.

CHAPTER 14

Last Words of Wisdom

If anyone had any last words of wisdom, it was the great Chinese philosopher Confucius, who died in 479 BC. Confucius believed that the root to goodness is wisdom, and that we are the lovers of wisdom. We still say “Confucius says” as if his teachings have relevance today. Confucius may not have given us the last words, but he has given us lasting words. “Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated” are words of wisdom that have consumed my own thoughts as I get older and try to work my way out of a complicated life. Confucius’s aim was to create more wisdom in the people because wisdom was the source of peace and harmony. And to achieve wisdom, people had to behave rationally, humanely, and righteously.

Confucius believed that wisdom could be attained in three ways: imitation, experience, and reflection. We all know that the easiest way to attain wisdom is through imitation. We just have to pick the right role model. Experience is probably the toughest proposition because it takes the longest. I’d say reflection is the way to go. It gives us a chance to deal with our questions at our own pace as we search for credible philosophers, books, and other sources to find the answers. I’m sure that Confucius would agree if he were here to experience today’s social media and the internet.

u Knowledge is Not Wisdom

Do you know the difference between knowledge and wisdom? Let me start by saying that knowledge is not the same as wisdom. Now, how do I explain this without hurting anyone’s feelings, especially those who make a living as window cleaners? You know how to clean a window, right? This means that you have the knowledge to perform the task. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll do a great job. You may be good with a squeegee but your brand of soap leaves a film. Wisdom is having perfected the process, and developing the expertise to be an authority on its execution. Window cleaners who call themselves experts, and know what soap to buy, glorify themselves on wisdom. I’m sure that Confucius would have made a wise window cleaner.

Wisdom comprises the knowledge, experience, understanding, and whatever else we need to make the right choices in life. Remember, we’re never wrong to make the right choice or do the right thing. Besides, we have to live with ourselves when we don’t do the right thing. This is why it’s important to put our wisdom to good use and make the right choices. Making the wrong choice can be tragic for us consultants whose reputations depend on our wisdom.

Comedians seem to have this uncanny ability to put life in perspective as if they’re an authority on wisdom. After the “haha” comes the “aha” was one comedian’s humorous insight. It’s ironic that we comprehend a certain reality through their bizarre humor. It was Billy Connolly, the Scottish comedian, who said, “Wisdom is the constant questioning of where you are. And when you stop wanting to know, you’re dead. You’re walking, but you’re dead.” Apparently, this means we need wisdom and a little humor to stay alive.

I remember my kids watching a second-rate movie about zombies. Let me tell you, it’s no life walking around being dead. As living human beings, we shouldn’t give up while we give it our best shot. It was the prisoner in The Shawshank Redemption who probably had the right idea upon his release when he said, “I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living or get busy dying.” I was happy to see the two ex-cons reunited after prison, being busy and enjoying their freedom and living the life of their dreams on a remote beach in Mexico. Sometimes I wish that life was more like a movie script with a beach waiting for us at the end of the plot.

u Living Life as a Vacation

Sometimes life feels like we’re in the back row of a 747 en route to Mexico, and we can’t wait to get off the plane and hightail it to the beach. Even when we land, we can’t believe how long it takes for a full flight to disembark from a plane. We seem to accept our back-row fate knowing that we’ll soon be swimming with the dolphins. And when we return to our jobs, we accept a series of meeting invites knowing that we have a full day ahead of us. The only tropical beach is the one we’ve selected as our screensaver. Maybe the screensaver is a reminder to take another vacation and enjoy life. In fact, we should look at life as a vacation and never give up on our dreams. And you don’t need a beach to be on vacation.

As the backward-aging Benjamin Button in a budding relationship, Brad Pitt deserved a wake-up smack across the head when he said, “I was thinking how nothing lasts. What a shame that is.” His girlfriend, hopeful that their relationship would last, encouraged him in her soft voice, “Some things last.” What we do on this earth can have a profound effect on us and those around us during our lifetime and a long time after we leave. I’m sure Alexander Fleming is still talked about, and many of us wouldn’t be around had he not discovered penicillin.

Who am I to give you any words of wisdom? I’m certainly no Alexander Fleming, and I don’t have any wonder drugs to share with mankind. It was a man of few words who once said, “Don’t you know words ruin everything.” Why ruin a good thing with words? I wouldn’t dream of ruining your Life Architecture journey with words. “But I will promise you this, your favorite story, whatever it might be, was written for one reader” was the closing remark of a writer in the movie 5 to 7. This book was written by the people around me and also for one reader – you.

Words of wisdom come from many exceptional people in our lives. It also comes from the many exceptional books we read and conversations we overhear. The intent of this book is to convey wisdom in measured words, both articulate and comprehensible terms, by introducing an archetypal topic, namely Life Architecture. In the words of Ernest Hemingway, “For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment.” This is a new beginning to attain a well-architected life and measure it by the life we live today.

We feel obligated to conform to society’s rules and others’ expectations, but it’s time to architect our own lives. If only I had the tact of a comedian to open your eyes to the blind life we lead, while Life Architecture opens your eyes to the opportunities that await us. For the record, I’m definitely no comedian. I’m not even a writer. It was the German philosopher Nietzsche who said, “The best author will be the one who is ashamed to become a writer.” I hope this gives me a fighting chance. Although I’m not ashamed to call myself a writer, writing is not my destiny. I’ve learned that writing is damn hard. It was the American writer Maya Angelou who said, “Easy reading is damn hard writing.” This may explain why I chose to be a life architect and not a writer.

u Life Architecture to Embody the Last Words of Wisdom

I did not want to get into all this preamble considering the title of this chapter, and the fact that these were meant to be my closing last words of wisdom. Are we ever going to get to the last words? I really don’t have any words of wisdom for you, last or otherwise. Everything in my life up to this point has been funneled into this wisdom of Life Architecture. And all my teaching wisdom has taken up the preceding chapters. True wisdom would actually be getting you to do what I have preached in this book. Life Architecture itself embodies the last words of wisdom.

Now you understand why this book hasn’t been written overnight. Besides, I don’t claim to be a prolific writer such as Nora Roberts and others on The New York Times Best Seller List who churn them out like a Japanese assembly line. It was in an interview about J.D. Salinger and his book, The Catcher in the Rye, that the subject said, “A book takes the time that it needs and you don’t have a choice about it.” It took J.D. Salinger 10 years to write his book. You have to be a writer to understand that writing is a sacrifice. This book took the best part of my career, and hopefully there’s a lot more time left to architect my life and allow you to do the same.

Time is a precious commodity at my age, or any age for that matter. I want to make amends with my life while I still can. So, here I am writing about it, hoping to share some wisdom on this concept of life. It has become evident that we must tap into our wisdom and find our own way to a desired future life. It’s our personal wisdom that can guide us in our pursuit of a well-designed life. Sometimes I feel like we’re due for a garage sale to rid ourselves of unwanted life processes and insignificant daily activities that have preoccupied us longer than we’d like to admit. And don’t forget to dispose of those obstructive rules dictating our lives.

Life Architecture can best be summarized as the optimization of our life processes. After all, we’re after living life better. All we can do is be consistent, do the best we can, and let nature take its course. I’m holding you accountable to come up with your own words of wisdom and a lifechanging architecture. Whoever thought we’d end up being life architects as we develop and renovate our lives? We have the power to improve our lives, and carve out a life on our own terms as best as we can. It just takes a little motivation and commitment. It’s like that feeling you get when you drop everything and take the kids for ice cream on a hot summer day.

u My Favorite Ice Cream Shoppe

Every day of our lives, we need that one thing to look forward to. My kids and I are excited to end a great day by going to the ice cream capital of the world – My Favorite Ice Cream Shoppe. It creates happiness and builds wonderful relationships, for which my family will gladly provide a reference. I’m sure it also generates great revenue for the owner. Ice cream, especially from My Favorite Ice Cream Shoppe, is the key to happiness as long as we’re all together to enjoy it with each other. All you have to do is look at those smiling faces to know that you’re in the right place.

I believe that our dreams can be deciphered and some sort of reality conceived to make us happy. Happiness begins with an understanding of what we want to do and where we want to go. True happiness is unmoved by worry and uncertainty. When My Favorite Ice Cream Shoppe runs out of my favorite ice cream, maple walnut, I’m keen to try another mouth-watering flavor. Who am I kidding, I’ll just go to another ice cream parlor with my favorite ice cream. I’m not about to sacrifice maple walnut for anyone.

I have a favorite realization in life: we have to be comfortable with our individual identity. “Individual identity” is a term that I picked up from my daughter when she was preparing for her high school social studies diploma exam. Our individual identity represents how we feel, what we think, and what we like to do when we don’t have to answer to anybody else. For existentialist philosophers, “man is essentially an individual, not a member of a species or race; and ethical and religious truth is known through individual existence and decision through subjectivity, not objectivity.”

u What Flavor is Your Identity?

Individual identities are like ice cream flavors. My son usually orders two or three scoops of ice cream that I’ve never heard of atop a chocolate and multi-nut coated waffle cone. I’d sooner give it away than eat it. He’s been described as a shy, gentle, caring individual with a sense of humor that only his closest of friends and the odd teacher have discovered, yet he has a knack for befriending strangers. These are the characteristics that define him as a person. Our individual identity is defined by a set of behaviors, feelings, and motivations unique to each of us. It defines who we are and influences how we live our lives. Thus, our individual identity is the hallmark of a Life Architecture, which of course starts with who we are and what we do. This forms an architecture foundation of our life today, allowing us to build upon and define what we want to do and how to get there.

Greg too has come to terms with his individual identity in order to figure out what kind of future makes sense to him, and what drives his personal desires and ambitions. How we think and feel about our thinking influences how we fulfill our desires and ambitions. Life Architecture is not a one-size-fits-all proposition but is a personal guide exclusive to each of us as we pursue our individual goals and desires. We all have various personal drives – aggressive drives, financial drives, drives to dominate, and even sexual drives. However, it would be a lonely world if all we had was an individual identity without sharing a group identity with others.

A lonely fisherman who had just lost his boat acknowledged, “You know what’s lonely is being around town with a bunch of people that don’t get you.” He felt lonely and isolated among his friends and neighbors. Some abandon civilization altogether and find solitude in nature. Devastated by her mother’s untimely death and wanting to move on after her divorce, Cheryl Strayed set out alone to hike the perilous Pacific Crest Trail. “Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren’t a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I really was.” She admitted that she was lonelier in her real life than she was in the wilderness as she left everything behind to find herself.

u Appreciate and Be Content with the Life You Have

I have yet to read Cheryl Strayed’s bestselling memoir Wild, although the movie was inspirational. I’ll never forget her life lesson at the end as she’s gazing over a bridge toward a green backdrop of mountains. “I knew only that I didn’t need to reach with my bare hands anymore. That seeing the fish beneath the surface of the water was enough. That it was everything. My life, like all lives, mysterious, irrevocable and sacred. So very close. So very present. So very belonging to me. How wild it was to let it be.” Her message was palpable upon completing a grueling 1100-mile trek where loneliness played tricks on the mind. We should not only appreciate the life we have, but find contentment in how we live it. “That my complicated life could be made so simple was astounding.” Strayed conquered the complication and loneliness in her life, and soon after married and had children.

No one should live alone, unless they’ve stolen everybody’s money. The infamous Bernie Madoff, an American fraudster according to Wikipedia, thrived on his reputation as the founder of a successful Wall Street investment firm before his Ponzi scheme became public knowledge. I’m afraid the only ones who get caught are those who don’t love their wives enough and those who run Ponzi schemes. Bernie Madoff lost everything, including his money, family, and friends. It’s hard to have friends when we owe everybody money and can’t pay it back. Although Bernie Madoff lost his reputation and individual identity, he retained his group identity by trading in his Wall Street membership for an internship at the Federal Correctional Institution Butner Medium.

A group identity defines us in terms of what we do and how we behave while interacting with others. “It isn’t what we say or think that defines us, but what we do,” according to the English novelist Jane Austen. I’d say this applies to both our individual and group identities. Chances are that we all belong to various groups, cliques, and organizations. We are expected to work and get along with others by creating a group culture conducive to mutual respect and solidarity. We’re all familiar with the corporate cultures we’ve come to be a part of in the organizations we work for. After work, we strive to be part of a group culture with family and friends where we share love and respect for one another.

Our group identity gives us a sense of belonging. We all have this innate desire to belong as we try to form a bond with others. A woman who finally got it all together after many years of struggle and heartache remembers being an outcast as a child. “I was trying to belong. I was trying to connect. I think no matter how different we are, we’re all trying to do the same thing.” When we’re different, we don’t always know where we fit in or how to communicate, but we know that life isn’t meant to be lived alone.

u The Power of Communication

Communication is a big part of our group identity. And as we all know, groups require a social platform where we can interact and share our philosophies, interests, and thoughts. Communication is a good way to share each other’s perspectives and make sure we’re aligned with our group goals and activities. I’ve learned that communication with my wife and kids is the key to managing expectations, although we can never quite prepare enough as a family to meet everyone’s individual agenda. There’s no such thing as family secrets. After all, secrets create barriers between people. The power of communication is establishing a common ground required to keep us together. We just have to keep talking and listening to one another in order to be a cohesive and empathetic group.

Greg continues to develop his own group identity outside his family. Greg’s group identity is based on his relationships with co-workers at his property management company where a culture of teamwork is promoted every day. Outside of work, he plays shortstop on a mixed baseball team where he is appreciated for his fielding skills and cherished for his friendship. Greg’s desire to be part of a team and form mutual friendships defines his group identity. He has always yearned to belong, whether at work, on a baseball diamond, or with his family. The trick is to think as people around us think and be part of their lives.

It’s not always easy to find people with whom we have something in common. As a consultant, I have to pretend to like everyone I work with, even clients with the personality of the guy who had just locked his keys in the car on the coldest day of the year. Sometimes, we pretend to be someone we’re not, just to be accepted. “I once convinced a woman that I was Kevin Costner, and it worked because I believed it. It has nothing to do with the story” were the unadulterated words of a con man. I guess if you’re committed enough, you can make any story work.

“Just be careful who you pretend to be. I’d hate for you to forget who you are.” This was a mother’s advice to a daughter in the movie John Tucker Must Die. She was trying to tell her daughter to be true to herself, regardless of her group identity and trying to fit in with her friends. I’ll admit, there are often times that being a good consultant means telling my clients something they don’t want to hear.

u Making Things Happen Without a Loaded Gun

I like being who I am. I also like having confidence in myself. “If a person is confident enough in the way they feel, whether it’s an art form or whether it’s just in life, it comes off–you don’t have anything to prove; you can just be what you are.” Clint Eastwood was very much the man he portrayed on the screen. He discriminated people in this world as those with loaded guns (get things done) and those who dig (follow orders). That probably comes from all those tough guy roles he played in Westerns. Apparently, the City of Carmel favored a mayor with a loaded gun, and one who got things done. We often try to put people into a bucket. I see people as those who make things happen and those who say “What’s happening?” It gets rather monotonous when friends call me up to say “What’s happening?” and then expect me to throw the party. However, they’re more than willing to follow my rules and I don’t need a loaded gun. And I can count on them to bring the cold beer.

While we’re making the most of our lives, we owe it to ourselves to recognize our individual identities. Know who you are and what you want. And know where and when you can break rules and realize life benefits. We seem to be shackled by rules, probably because we’ve been institutionalized by society. We’re continuously preoccupied with pursuing memberships in a number of institutions, whether it be a company, government, church, school, club, or a cryptocurrency exchange. Once we’ve been granted membership, we are expected to follow their rules. It seems rather impersonal to follow rules targeting the masses, especially rules that are obsolete and lack purpose. It’s no wonder we let some memberships expire.

Don’t Allow Yourself to Become Institutionalized

We go to school, and we do as the educational charter says.

We go to work, and we do as the corporate policy says.

We go home, and we do as the institution of marriage says. How about one day we live our lives and do as we say?

I was kidding about the “institution of marriage” one. Although marriage is the legal union of a couple as equal partners, try having that relationship at work or school or anywhere else where they have bosses, principals, egos, and org charts. It never fails, whenever I’m on a consulting engagement, I’m handed an org chart where everyone has a job title and a manager above them. They’ve embraced unwritten rules like who to talk to and what to say. This makes it rather difficult to get information from those who have the insight to fix their problems. I’m essentially institutionalized by the same company that hired me.

Our personal lives become institutionalized as well. Even worse, we’re ready to institutionalize our children in the same way, and entrust our schools and others to give them an education. I was guilty of force-feeding academics to my daughter when in fact school was not what she wanted to do. The fact that she had a learning disability didn’t help, nor did the school care to help her. The school system was a mould that defied her personality and aspirations. I was institutionalizing her while she struggled in an environment that didn’t interest her and made her feel inferior.

I had a duty to deinstitutionalize my daughter and offer alternatives that didn’t necessarily mean going to college. This was a personal dilemma since school was a critical part of who I am today. Education has been the cornerstone of my own life success, and without it, I couldn’t imagine other viable opportunities for me or my children. However, this did not mean that formal education was the right thing for my daughter. Nor was it right for the guy who said, “College is a flawed endeavor anyway. It’s all about the past preparing you for the future, without being in the present.”

My job as a father was to create memories and values, and build the character my daughter needed to move forward. I’m not dismissing the value of education, but rather acknowledging that it sometimes comes at the expense of experience and what’s right for us as individuals. The 19-century Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde said, “Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.” I had no right to force my daughter into a life that made sense to me and not her. As her father, all I can do is support and be there for her as she acquires the experience and knowledge to make her dreams come true. As the saying goes, “Experience is the jockey; education is the horse.”

Experience Has It All

When the teacher in the classic movie Teacher’s Pet is deceived by an editor posing as a student from the “school of hard knocks,” she articulates the logic of experience:

“You’re confusing education with schooling. Education is the acquisition of knowledge. The definition of knowledge is knowing, familiarity gained by experience. Wisdom is defined as the possession of experience and knowledge. Now, by being experienced, you therefore have education, you have knowledge, and you have wisdom. You’re brilliant.”

At the end, I had to break some hardened life rules to become a different kind of dad – a dad who mentors his kids to be the best at what is right for them. I had to change as a parent and allow my daughter to grow up her own way and attain her own brilliance. I only had a small window of opportunity to help her reach her potential growing up. When that window closed, it would all be over. My parental duty was to support and help her develop the skills she would need in a life that was hers. This was a lesson I never expected to learn as a parent, or from a guy who spent most of his best years on the tennis court.

Boris Becker credits most of his success to his parents for allowing him to live his life. This may explain why a young tennis prospect had his own apartment in Monte Carlo at the age of fifteen. Monte Carlo was far away from home, not only in distance but also in lifestyle. “His attitude and dreams did not match” was an observation made by a childhood friend. We tend to give up normal life when we’re in the spotlight. Becker didn’t think about a future outside tennis until he started a family. He adopted his parents’ philosophy and saw his kids as having different strengths, weaknesses, and passions. He had no master plan for their lives. “It’s his life and he has a right to decide the same way I had it” was a remark Becker had made in reference to his youngest son.

u Don’t Be the Challenge, Be the Solution

We mentor our children as they grow up and develop skills in life. This is only possible when our kids trust and accept us into their lives. They have to be comfortable with us, not only as parents but as their friends. As parents, we shouldn’t be the challenge, but rather the solution as we help them grow and find their way. There’s a beautiful proverb when it comes to our children: “There are two gifts we can give our children…one is roots, the other wings.” When we’re the solution, our children contemplate our advice and accept us, especially when no one else is there to give them guidance.

I would add that one of the best gifts we can give our kids is the ability to be resilient and deal with adversity. I’m sure that my daughter and I will tag team for a long time to come as she moulds her future and finds her own way in a world of adversity. One day, I hope to be her best friend in the process, and someone who she can trust to help her live life on her own terms. It truly is up to her to grow up and make a difference in her life, maybe even in the world. I will forever remember the words of a contemporary genius who floundered in life but eventually found his way:

“When you grow up, you tend to get told the world is the way that it is, and your life is just a live your life inside the world and try not to bash into the walls too much. But that’s a fairly limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact, and that is, that everything around you, that you call life, was made up by people that are no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. It’s to shake off this erroneous notion that life is just there and you’re just gonna live in it versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it. And once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”

– Ashton Kutcher, as Steve Jobs in the movie Jobs

Steve Jobs’ genius was in giving the world what it wanted, namely technology to help people improve their lives. He may also have been responsible for making Apple a consumer brand and household name. After the board of directors are fired in the movie, an Apple executive asks, “So, what are we gonna do now?” Jobs has the only logical answer to his primordial vision: “We’re gonna put a dent in the universe.” Maybe it was fate that Apple became a stalwart corporate giant.

How much I would love for my children to put a dent in the universe, one big enough to satisfy their desires. I don’t care if they’re misfits, rebels, troublemakers, round pegs in square holes, or anyone else who sees things differently. As parents, we’re biologically programmed to love our children unconditionally. I just wish we were less fond of shallow rules and more critical of the status quo when it comes to our children. Why can’t we just accept them for changing things for the sake of change? “People who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

That’s what Steve Jobs set out to do, and lost his company at one time only to get it back.

I dream that our kids are crazy enough to change the world one day, and their lives while they’re at it. When Evan Almighty, a fictional character, asked “How can we change the world?”, the reply was “One act of random kindness at a time.” Kindness can go a long way. I can think of other ways to change the world: be a good neighbor, stand up for others, pay it forward, be authentic in everything we do. We can change the world when we change ourselves. It’s much easier to effect change when we have a reason and purpose.

Change requires that we first free ourselves from those who institutionalize us. It’s like killing Caesar, everyone’s guilty. We’re all guilty of falling into the institutional trap and taking part in the plot. It’s a form of slavery where we unconditionally accept societal policies and norms. It seems society is always trying to find the mean between feudalism and anarchy. We are forever confined by institutions and their bureaucratic processes. Our careers are outcomes of society while bureaucrats and capitalists control our destinies. The good news is that we no longer have to remain institutionalized, or live according to societal expectations and self-imposed schedules.

u Don’t Live Life on a Schedule

You know you don’t have a life when you take up bird watching and spend most weekends at the bird sanctuary taking photos with an expensive camera. But again, I’m sure bird watchers claim it’s time well spent, while it allows them to escape life’s stresses and schedules. Come to think of it, one of my best friends is a bird watcher. This may explain why he always seems relaxed and less worried about schedules. However, we can’t avoid schedules, appointments, and deadlines, but we can cancel a few and relax expectations on others. Although we may be obligated to punch a time clock in return for a paycheck, we don’t have to attend a block party because the neighbors have no life. Come to think of it, I’ve been to a few good ones so I shouldn’t knock them. Regardless, we need to choose our free time wisely. Actually, we should choose all time wisely – free, work, or otherwise. A future Life Blueprint eliminates or circumvents schedules and encourages living, while a Life Web chronologically maps out the actions that make such living a reality. As our life circumstances change, the Life Web helps us prioritize and reshuffle the actions required to accommodate our target future.

It’s not that I want to get off topic, but have you ever considered being your own boss? I couldn’t wait to get rid of mine. I am my own boss now and manage my own calendar. This has removed past obligations and eliminated uncontrolled schedules that demanded my time but were concocted by others. There comes a time that a man must be the master of his own destiny – and schedule.

My future Life Blueprint has encouraged me to live by being more creative and spontaneous. This may explain my decision to ditch my eight-to-five job and go consulting. I wanted to be in control of my life, which would be defined by on my own priorities and desires. I can now come in late, leave early, take a two-hour lunch, or play a game of squash any time of the day, usually when my knee isn’t sore. I can even take an entire day off to play golf. I’m not saying that we can all do that, but we can do something in life to break the monotony of societal demands and expectations. Are you living a life that meets society’s or your own expectations?

“It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”

– Charles Bukowski, Factotum

I guess that’s one way of looking at life. No one promised us a pain-free life. Charles Bukowski mused on man’s purpose and said, “We are here to drink beer.” As a writer, Bukowski addressed the ordinary lives of poor Americans and the drudgery of work, accusing us of making other people’s dreams come true without considering our own. I hate work, even when someone else is doing it. “Every day’s a grind. Begins to feel like a countdown. This way in the morning, that way at night. And then one day it’s done with.” How would you like to live with such an optimist? This must be the same guy who read Bukowski’s books.

I believe that we’re all capable of making our own dreams come true. The trick is knowing what we want and having a dream. When we realize our ambitions and the truth, we’re in a good position to figure out what it is that we want out of life. The architect Frank Lloyd Wright said, “Truth is life,” which was chiseled in stone above one of his fireplaces for eternal remembrance. Wright was famous for inscribing thought-provoking proverbs in his structures. I believe he was the absolute rationalist in pursuit of truth, which is still reflected in his architecture today.

While on the topic, over the balcony at the entrance of a large drafting room in the Taliesin Fellowship Complex in his beloved state of Wisconsin, Frank Lloyd Wright had inscribed, “What a man does–that he has.” This philosophy may very well have given him the impetus to seek clients with “unspoiled instincts and ideals” in order to build exquisite and timeless structures that no one has outrivaled. We all have choices, but it’s the actions we take that give us the things we seek in life. However, we must first determine what we want and make those a priority.

Priorities allow us to maintain focus. Without priorities, our life tends to change direction faster than we can manage. I recall a childhood story told by a Harvard professor. You may remember him from previous chapters. The good professor doesn’t waver once he sets his priorities. As a young man, his faith prevented him from playing a championship basketball game one Sunday. Although he was the star player and everyone was counting on him, he wouldn’t make an exception. He believed that if we deviated from our priorities, even once, we were sure to repeat and get lost. He attributes his success to having a deep-rooted code of conduct in both his career and family life.

u Life is a Road Called “Priority”

Our priorities dictate which roads in life we take, and what turns to make along the way. It’ll do us good to set some life priorities before we take any road. The various process branches in our Life Process Tree represent the roads while the processes in each branch are things that we want to do along the way. We must determine which parts of our future Life Process Tree we’re going to tackle and in what order. Life is too big and complex to tackle at one time. Thus, since we can’t have everything at once, it becomes a game of priority, timing, and balance. Priorities force us to sacrifice those things that have less meaning in order to find the right balance in our lives, although we must take caution not to sacrifice the things that matter. We must learn to prioritize and balance our lives in a way that impart meaning and optimize value.

Gloria Steinem’s priority was to lead the American feminist movement. In her book, My Life on the Road, Steinem gives an account of her life as a traveler. She shares her many hardships and challenges, which she was not always prepared for. “The road is messy in the way that real life is messy. It leads us out of denial and into reality, out of theory and into practice, out of caution and into action, out of statistics and into stories–in short, out of our heads and into our hearts.” This implies that we naturally transition from a dormant state of thought into active duty when we take a road that brings about change.

Sometimes I think of the many roads that I could have or should have taken in life, whether they be deliberate or emergent. The more I think about which road would have been best, I realize that taking another road means I’d be giving up something on the road I had already taken. But we cannot take all roads. We can only take one road and one turn at a time. We can turn on to a better road along the way, or one that will take us in the right direction. This road is determined by the priorities we establish in our lives. And the best part is more opportunities await that take us on other roads as our priorities change and we fulfill our dreams.

At the end of the road, it’s important that we’re happy with what we have. Personally, what I have has been achieved with great care and by making incrementally better choices during my life. I’d like to think that my wife also did her due diligence when she agreed to marry me. Apparently, this means that I can’t criticize her choices because I’m one of them. I should be honored considering there are so many things that have to happen for two people to meet. Regardless of the mathematics, we all make choices and there’s no going back once we make a decision and commit to it. And until we are fully committed, there will always be some hesitation to move forward.

u Are You Committed or Just Interested?

There’s a difference between commitment and interest. When you’re interested in something, you only do it when convenient like a hobby such as leisure golf, skeet shooting, or recreational marijuana. But when you’re committed, you give everything of yourself to achieve something you desire but may seem out of reach. You accept no excuses and do everything to produce results. In fact, you move forward. I’d say becoming an Olympic athlete or completing a medical degree takes great commitment. In terms of our life, the best way to look at it is simple: Make the commitment it takes to establish a life where you can enjoy your interests and pleasurable pastimes.

Our inability to move forward adversely affects the many facets of our lives, including family, career, leisure, retirement, and others. Some of us can’t imagine a life without family, while others define their lives around a career. Others just want their freedom and give it all up to explore the world. Our choices are influenced by circumstances and the stage of life we’ve entered. Maybe we can have most of the things that we want in life but in varying degrees and during various stages of our lives.

Some people believe in fate. Fate may take some responsibility for making us victims of circumstance – where we live, what we do, whom we marry, and so on. Although we can’t always avoid fate, we can influence our future. It was a wise old gentleman who enlightened me. “The way you think is the way you live.” And the way you do one thing is the way you do everything, right? It has taken me a good part of a lifetime to understand that “your thoughts dictate your life.” It’s only logical that if you change your way of thinking, you change your way of life.

u Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives

It was somewhat of a coincidence that I stumbled upon a book entitled Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives by a life-inspiring monk – one without a license or Ferrari, I might add. He was a man of faith who did as he preached. He believed that our thoughts create our own heaven or hell in this world. Hell was the suffering of being unable to love. I take solace in his profound message as I live each day of my life:

“Our life depends on the kind of thoughts we nurture. If our thoughts are peaceful, calm, meek, and kind, then that is what our life is like. If our attention is turned to the circumstances in which we live, we are drawn into a whirlpool of thoughts and can have neither peace nor tranquility.”

– Elder Thaddeus, Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives

Our lives are manifested by our thoughts and if our thoughts are good, life is good. If our thoughts are quiet and peaceful, life is quiet and peaceful. The good monk tells us that all good things originate from thoughts, and our thoughts and desires shape our lives.

Life doesn’t always go by plan, as many of us know. An unexpected turn of events is very likely in a society where anything can happen. According to Napoleon Hill, it takes a strong mental attitude to overcome life’s surprises and obstacles. The American public was inspired and still is by the words “we become what we think about” in Hill’s self-help book Think and Grow Rich, which has intrigued readers since the 1930s. The philosophy that “you attract things by the way you think, you are the same as your thoughts” attracts positive change and increases our chances to succeed.

If you haven’t followed the teachings of the ancient philosophers, you’re probably missing some critical pieces of the life puzzle. I’ve already touched on some of the ideas of Confucius and Socrates in this book, but there’s one ancient philosopher whom I truly envy – the Buddha. Here’s a guy who harnessed the capabilities of the mind, something life architects can only dream of doing. That’s a feat by any means of the imagination, and no wonder we put the word “the” in front of his name.

u The “The” in Buddha

Unlike other ancient philosophers, the Buddha became a proper noun and title, like the King of England. Thus, if the King of England and the Duke of Wellington can be ordained, it’s only fair that the founder of a world-renowned religion is treated with the same respect. Buddhism is the world’s fourth-largest religion, with over 520 million followers and counting. Most people don’t see Buddhism as a religion in the normal, Western sense because it is not based on the idea of worshipping a creator God. The Buddha, a man who walked the earth in search of life’s meaning, is now a holy icon at the pinnacle of Buddhism. The basic tenets of his teachings are straightforward and practical: nothing is permanent, actions have consequences, and our body, thoughts, and feelings are constantly changing, and void of any lasting essence. The more we realize how everything is impermanent and dependent on many conditions, the healthier a perspective we have on our lives, relationships, possessions, and values – focusing on what truly matters. If we could only eliminate the delusion of self, we would see things as they truly are and our suffering would end, not necessarily illness and old age, but the persistent disappointments and insecurities of life. There’s no basis for a real, separate ego or self. And without an ego, we remove self-centeredness and stop taking things personally. Instead, we cultivate our positive human qualities such as joy, fearlessness, and compassion. When we act with compassion, considering others rather than our own interests, we make the world a better place to live.

I’m fascinated by this idea of impermanence because many of us act like we’re here forever and take everything with us. We seem to be focused on money and hardly have time for a coffee and the tough questions. If everything comes and goes, is there anything that stays? According to Buddhism, the only thing that is always present is the awareness in which all these experiences and phenomena appear – an awareness that is not only timeless but inherently joyful. And to recognize this timeless awareness here and now means to become enlightened, which is the ultimate goal of Buddhism. I would argue that enlightenment should also be the goal in life, regardless if you’re a Buddhist or not.

Western civilization perceives Buddhism as synonymous with meditation. It’s true that the Buddha believed we could gain insight through meditation, allowing us to develop compassion and wisdom. He explained in great detail how we could shape our future through our thoughts, words, and actions. What we do now accumulates good or bad impressions in our mind. And through meditation, we can remove negative impressions already accumulated in our mind from former actions. A friend who had turned to meditation to reduce his blood pressure best described it when he said, “Meditation is absorbing the stillness around you.”

The Buddha realized that all we can know for sure is how we experience the world around us. In fact, it’s our mind that determines what kind of experiences we have and how we acknowledge those experiences. This understanding is the catalyst that gives us great freedom and puts us back in control of our lives. Buddhism inspires us to take responsibility for our own lives, without moralizing, by understanding cause and effect, otherwise known as karma. Karma is one of those “what goes around comes around” arrangements. Just like gravity, the law of karma functions everywhere and all the time. Karma is not fate, but rather what we get back as a result of our actions. Once we see how much suffering comes from our actions, we naturally develop compassion for others.

If the Buddha taught us anything, he taught us that we have the capacity to take control of our lives. His teachings promote the right attitude in order to empower us. Sometimes we have to overcome our egos, personalities, and the blockages in our mind. I’m not sure who said, “Know yourself, and the world is yours,” but this basically supports the Buddha’s philosophy. This lifetime is our opportunity to achieve a self-transformation for a better life. And the best part about all this, according to the Buddha, is that we don’t need a priest or to belong to a higher caste.

u The Buddha in Life Architecture

How does Buddhism apply to Life Architecture? It’s not so much the application but the outcome – the self-transformation for a better life. For the record, I’m not a Buddhist, but a life architect fond of some of the Buddha’s life teachings. Can you imagine how much simpler life would be if we didn’t worry about the car we drove, the house we lived in, or the college we sent our kids to? The Buddhist will tell you that all life is pain because pain comes from always wanting things. The Buddha didn’t even have a regular paying job. Although he conquered death, I’m curious how he would have handled taxes, pandemic restrictions, and other demands in today’s society.

Life has a tendency to be interrupted by reality, whether it be weekend work assignments, lastminute family invitations, and even sickness. However, life events, when expected, are easier to deal with. We constantly juggle schedules and expectations as we respond to the world around us and strive to reach our goals. And when we get a phone call in the middle of the night, we just deal with it and forget our schedules for the time being. Sometimes life feels like a Shakespearean comedy and nothing prepares us for the surprises.

There are times we feel that we’re in control of our lives and everything is perfect. We become complacent and believe things won’t change, until we get that call late at night. A friend advised when life seems to be going too well, we should put a sharp pebble in our shoe to cause a little discomfort as a reminder that things aren’t so perfect. He believes that a subconscious barrier prevents us from dealing with unexpected situations, and acting on opportunities. In some mystic way, that irritating pebble in our shoe makes it rather difficult to be content. We must be prepared for adversity, although nothing can truly prepare us.

My friend John taught me how to handle adversity and was a source of inspiration to all of us. His inspiration is now an epitaph forever ingrained in our memories. Cancer took him away from us as I was writing this book. During his struggle to live, none of the material things people consider success mattered. He was just happy I was there to reminisce about the stalking girlfriend he ducked in a bar after high school, and the grad student in college who had a frozen trout surgically removed. I’ll spare you the details. John and I shared those youthful days when we believed that we were invincible. The laughter was unbearable as we exchanged adolescent evaluations of the cute nurse who had just left the hospital room. It was a joy just to laugh and be together.

What John used to consider success was no longer important when he got sick. Those things meant nothing, while the little things and people in his life meant everything. It’s funny how we forget the little things in life that make us happy. Ivo Andric, a Nobel Prize Laureate in literature from the Balkans, once said, “It’s strange how little it takes to be happy, and even stranger how often that little thing is exactly what we miss.” Even during the times of Ancient Rome, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius was known for his contemplative nature and observations. “Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.”

For John, happiness was not being by himself in a hospital room, and he wasn’t about to die alone. John cherished every second that we spent with him while we cherished him. Feelings of sadness and joy merged as we tried to make the most of our time together. Someone once said that life is a collection of moods. The idea is to have as many good ones as we can, and we sure went through a lot with John before he left us. Although John has left a big void in my life, I fill it with the memories of our time together.

u Being in Touch with Unpredictability

I was listening to a cancer survivor on a radio talk show not too long ago. The interviewer asked him something along the lines of being better able to face death. I’ll never forget his reply: “It’s not so much that I’m more in touch with mortality, but I find I’m more in touch with unpredictability.” He learned that we all have to be ready for anything in life. Life is rarely a bulletproof existence.

I think that my dear mother summarized this life best when she said, “We are only guests here.” She meant guests on this earth. Her message was simply to treat this life for what it is – an existence granted and taken away by the forces of nature or a higher authority. She understood that life is transient and visiting hours will be over one day. Everything on earth is passing, the good with the bad, and we should focus our energy on doing good while taking things as they come. Bad happens on its own and we shouldn’t spend our time worrying about it. Unfortunately, one day we will leave not having all the answers that we had hoped for.

They say that in death, all of life’s questions are answered – probably because we’re not around to ask them. Any unanswered questions die with us or are answered on another existential plane.

When a person dies, we lose a library. I’m not going to get into this God thing with anyone. I just want to make a point that when this life is over, we’ve had our chance to fulfill our destiny. Anything beyond that is a crap shoot. “I’m a man, just like everyone” were the humble words of the Roman gladiator Narcissus. We’re all the same. We’re all guests here on planet Earth and I’ve had the good fortune of getting a deluxe room.

u 4 Basic Ways to Die

There’s not a human being in history who has outlived one’s life. We will all depart in some way, whether it’s sudden death, terminal illness, organ failure, or just plain old frailty. Those are about the only ways I know to exit this grand life of ours, unless we count genocide, torture, and a botched murder or suicide which sooner or later end in death. Life seems to be random and meaningless at times. I believe that one doesn’t fear death as much as suffering. Someone once said, “We’re all gonna die. We can’t be scared of death, we just gotta be scared of the pain it takes to get dead.” I’d like to hang in there as long as possible without suffering. Unfortunately, there’s no solution to man’s fear of death. But let’s not worry about dying for now.

Frailty is a sure sign of longevity as our bodies give up and we die of old age. “If you wear out your body, where are you gonna live?” asked an old friend pursuing longevity. Eventually, we must all take an exit door and say our goodbyes. It’s only a matter of time until Father Time comes for us. Our existence has a timeline, which ironically begins without our consultation and ends without our approval. As grateful guests, all we can do is enjoy ourselves and the people we love to the best of our abilities. We accept death as we accept life. Someone once said, “Death is nature’s way of making room for someone else.”

It was the famous actor Anthony Quinn who claimed to have a full life. “To live life fully, you must always love.” I’m sure that we’d all love to live life fully, or like a king. My friend Davie once shared his father’s noble advice: “Live like a king. Don’t own anything. A king doesn’t even have to carry money.” As far as kings are concerned, anything that can be bought with money is inexpensive. If only I could live the life of a king, then I wouldn’t have to worry about a retirement plan. Davie Sr. explained that “life is like a lease, it all goes to someone else someday” – hopefully not to a king who already has everyone’s share.

I wonder how all those rich guys are going to handle death one day. It won’t be an issue if they end up the richest guys in the cemetery and enjoyed their life as much as their money. And the guy who said that you can’t take it with you probably knew something those with fat Swiss bank accounts didn’t. I’m sure that one day they’ll have an oversized burial plot in the best part of the graveyard with a fancy mausoleum overlooking the downtown skyline.

As Davie puts it, “If you have a lot of money and don’t spend it, you may as well be poor.” The only thing that really matters is how much fun we have. “Do you know what someone who doesn’t have any money has in common with someone with too much money to know what to do with?” rhetorically asked an old man in the popular Netflix Series Squid Game to which he answers, “Living is no fun for either of them.” Apparently, when you have too much money, everything gets boring and there’s no longer any joy in life. You can do as you please and buy whatever you want. I’d say it’s fun when you have someone to love who loves you back. It only gets a tad boring when you don’t have enough money to go on a beach vacation.

Speaking of guys who like money, I remember walking by the local Chamber of Commerce where members meet on business matters and noticed a big sign in the window with the caption: “If

you could invent anything, what would it be?” I blurted to myself “My life.” After the guy walking next to me realized that I was talking to myself, he picked up the pace. How much I wanted to tell the world, not just Greg, that there is a better life out there for all of us. I’ve learned that how much money we make is not the most important thing in the world, but who we spend it with every day is. It’s not about the things we have; it’s about the things we do and being with the people we love. At the end of the day, what makes people remarkable is the life they lived, not the money they made. I realized that money and happiness have a very low correlation.

u Life is an Impermanent Existence

Once we see our wealth as being impermanent and a distraction from the search of absolute values, we will be in a better position to live life in the moment regardless of the price tag of things around us. Understanding that we’re not here forever and the end is near should encourage us to make the big choices in life. Expectations, pride, and fear of embarrassment fall by the wayside and no longer hold us back leaving only what is truly important – something we wanted in our life from the beginning but never got around to it. Now, we have nothing to lose but more time. And that time can be better spent following our hearts instead of wasting the time we have.

It was a pleasure to be Greg’s Life Architecture coach and part of his journey. I hope you have also learned something from this experience. A few years ago, I had no idea that I’d be a life architect or part of a revolutionary paradigm called Life Architecture. Billy the comedian referred to himself when he said, “Stand-up comedy is not a choice you make; it chooses you.” I feel the same way about Life Architecture and becoming a life architect. It started by chance, rather un-architected, but finished by design and with architectural intent. This meant that I’d have to get around some outdated and popular paradigms.

I always believed I’d find my rightful place and life would have mercy on me. On the contrary, mercy is something we’re more apt to see in the movies. “Life is merciless. You have to do everything you can to make it beautiful.” By merciless, Danny was trying to tell us that during our lifetime we are tormented by circumstances. When he shared his life philosophy with the guys at a friend’s BBQ, we interpreted his broken English and immediately latched onto his meaningful words. We could all sympathize with his tormented life as we shared our own stories and thoughts about turning things around.

An attentive wife who happened to overhear our conversation argued that we were over-reacting when we should appreciate the life that we’ve been graced with. After all, how can life be merciless? It just may be that women are more dogmatic about beauty and have a keener eye when it comes to seeing the beauty in life – or, they may simply be in denial. I personally think the guys I was with that night were “glass half empty” thinkers. I’ve since learned that women have better hearing than men, and I’ll be more careful in the future about having conversations within hearing distance.

I would like to believe that we were all put on this earth to relish the beauty bestowed by an immaculate creation. We all see and accept life on different terms. Life isn’t perfect, and probably the reason we fall victim to adverse circumstances and difficulties. This is only exacerbated by our reluctance to deal with them. We either have to change our luck or our disposition. I once heard that a pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

u Confessions of a Life Architect

Some mothers-in-law will never change, including Wes’s. They may be self-centered, delirious, difficult, or just plain nasty. Wes’s mother-in-law’s nasty habits were enough to turn Wes into a pessimist. Who knows, maybe it’s Wes who was unreasonable. I’ve never met his motherin-law so I can’t comment on her habits unless they come in a bottle. Ironically, I’m a beer connoisseur and Nasty Habit is one great beer, unlike some mothers-in-law. However, there are also great mothers-in-law in this world, although most are good but tainted with a slight personality flaw. Those ones can be fixed or dealt with much easier. If you still haven’t clued in, some problems are beyond our control. You can only minimize the negative impact and move on. Besides, a nasty mother-in-law should be our spouse’s problem while we just have to be nice. You can pick your friends, but you can’t pick family. As Robin Williams said in Good Will Hunting, “We need to choose who we let into our weird little worlds.”

Wes’s marriage suffered a final blow after he made peace with his mother-in-law. Apparently, once Wes accepted the old gal back into his life, she reverted back to her old antics. He thought he had closed the door and was at peace with his decision to get along with his only motherin-law. However, he was forced to reinstate his old self-righteous principles. “And I knew just as surely and just as clearly that life is not a work of art and that the moment could not last” were the sentiments of a passionate fisherman in a classic movie about fishing and life’s adversities. Nor did they last for Wes. And to make matters worse, Wes’s wife couldn’t deal with either one of them anymore and crawled back into her shell.

These two ultimate fighters were so busy throwing punches and karate kicks at each other, they forgot about the person in the middle and the one who was hurting most. Wes’s wife was the ultimate loser in this unfortunate crossfire and unable to pick sides. In fact, she was forced to lead separate lives – one life caring for her daughter and husband, and another life sharing her maternal friendship with the woman who brought her into this world. There was no way of overlapping the two.

A recent survey has revealed that overbearing mothers-in-law are to blame for as many as one in five marriage breakdowns. However, Wes continues his fight to be one big happy family, while he wages war with his one and only mother-in-law. After all, war is a contest of wills. Nobody goes to war expecting to lose, but unfortunately, we can’t all be winners. I wish that Wes wasn’t competitive and so damn principled. I don’t think his mother-in-law even knows what principles are. I’ll have to introduce Wes to my friend Casey. The last time that I was at Casey’s place, his mother-inlaw poured us shots before we toasted to her long life. Casey has achieved what Wes cannot even imagine. And believe me, Casey’s mother-in-law is no slouch.

u Transform Yourself into a Warrior

I think the guy on the early morning radio program said it best: “Life isn’t hard, it’s just complicated.” Today, you must be a warrior to handle the pressures and complications of life. It might do us well to read Sun Tzu’s book The Art of War to become true warriors. It also has some hints as to which rules should be accepted as fair and which ones to bend when it comes to our mothers-in-law. Sun Tzu’s success as a warrior was attributed to his intelligence operatives and sophisticated espionage campaigns. We just may need to resort to our own intelligence and espionage tactics to transform ourselves into warriors with the instinct and confidence needed to break down the complexity of life and remove its obstacles. As warriors, it’s our prerogative to be nice to our mother-in-law. Sometimes it’s just best to chill out and let her words fall on deaf ears while we uphold the family peace treaty.

The soft-spoken girl on the American reality television singing competition, The Voice, demonstrated her inner warrior when she admitted, “I can’t hold back. I can’t be afraid. I’ve just got to sing the hardest I’ve ever sung.” She became a warrior and surprised everybody, including herself. So did Coach Hartley’s hockey team when they went from winning hockey games to losing them. I mean they surprised everybody when they lost their “warriorship.” The discouraged coach pulled his team off the ice during practice and confessed, “We lack focus. We got too comfortable.” In a sense, they stopped being warriors. Their dilemma was how to become warriors again.

It was this notion of being a warrior that inspired me to write a book. I got tired of being a civilian, or a pacifist among warriors. The origin of this book may very well be ineluctable fate based on my genetics, job, education, life and work experiences, career mentors, books with life philosophies, and everything else that has persuaded me to take the time to evaluate this thing called life. At the end, I knew that I had to figure it out for myself. I had to become a warrior. This book was somewhat of an architectural feat, in my humble opinion, to help others, including my kids, become warriors.

It’s our responsibility as parents to teach our children to be warriors, and give them the confidence to get on a horse one day and ride into battle. We give them our time and experience as they learn to fend for themselves. If they don’t get that from us, they’re pretty well on their own. We all claim to have control of our lives. “But until you start believing in yourself, you ain’t gonna have a life” was Rocky Balboa’s fatherly advice to his son. Thus, we have to believe in ourselves before we can take control of our lives. I look forward to the day the training wheels are off.

I’ve realized that life is shaped by time and experience long before we believe in ourselves. It was a family friend who awakened us as parents when he said, “Your kids don’t understand your thing until they get to your age. Then they start to realize what you were trying to teach them all along.” This was a timely discovery coming from a guy who coincidentally barbecued the perfect steak on the patio moments before. Sometimes our kids forget that we weren’t always parents. Children can be pretty harsh when it comes to their parents.

The sooner we understand that we’re all wired differently, the sooner we can deal with our own circumstances and the lifestyles we’ve adopted. And as parents, we’ll be able to guide our children in a way that helps them grow as individuals. Our children not only differ from us but also from their siblings. Ironically, it takes a guy who knows how to barbecue a steak to appreciate that our kids aren’t always interested in the same things as us and don’t always behave the way we’d like them to. We can’t push them to be better or more affluent than their peers if that isn’t what they want. It’s amazing what we can learn at a BBQ, and I’ll be sure to attend more in the future.

u Keeping Up With The Joneses

A lot of us get tangled up in trying to keep up with our neighbors, especially the Joneses or anyone who has more of something that we want or feel we deserve. The notion of “keeping up with the Joneses” implies that money defines us. Money is never just money. Money always stands for something, usually for the one thing we’ve never had, or could never buy for the lack of it. It was J. Paul Getty, the American oil tycoon reputed to be the richest man in the world at the time of his death, who defined himself by his net worth and believed that no one is above money. This may explain why his money outlived him and his greed. We develop this obsession to accumulate more and better stuff as a defense mechanism to overcome socio-economic inferiority. It’s a vicious circle and we have somehow managed to pass this obsession on to our children as they’re consumed with material things that hardly make a difference down the road.

Speaking of roads, is there a difference between a Honda and a Rolls Royce? Probably not if mode of transportation is the primary purpose. If it’s about status, we’re better off with a Rolls. However, if we want a Rolls Royce, we better be prepared to pay Rolls Royce prices. Unfortunately for guys like Wes, we can’t trade in our mother-in-law for a Rolls Royce, but we can certainly enjoy her company on the drive back home.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against money. I depend on it like everybody else; I just don’t count it. But without it, we can end up on the street. “No money spoils everything” were the sentiments of a homeless person. Money fixes many things but not everything. “I’m just gonna throw a massive party and that’ll fix it.” The comical Trailer Park Boys just had to figure out a way to pay for the party.

“Come to the funeral, stay for the party” was the last sentence of an obituary written by the deceased. I suspect he left enough money for both the funeral and the party. After the party, the remainder goes to somebody else. I’m not sure if I envy or pity the guy who inherits Warren Buffett’s Berkshire shares after the funeral. On the one hand, he’ll have the opportunity to live in a castle and be chauffeured around in a Rolls Royce; on the other hand, it could be a lonely round trip if there isn’t a joyful, virtuous, and flourishing life in between. It seems like a petty life to me. As for the rest of us, we may not live long enough to surpass the Joneses next door. Besides, comparing ourselves to someone else takes all the fun out of life.

u Don’t Let Money Define You

We can always have more in a material world, but I’m not sure it adds any more meaning to our lives. It was a financial planner who said, “The number one thing that I wish you would stop doing with your money is letting it define you.” Your money, your clothes, your car, the home you live in, the schools you send your kids to – none of those things will define you. However, they will get the Joneses to notice you. Money in and of itself is a medium of financial exchange. It rarely has the influence to buy us love, friendship, health, purpose, passion, and so many other things that give our life meaning. Remember, anything that can be bought is replaceable – love and health, not so much.

I wish for a life of meaning and one with purpose for my children. In the end, it’s their desires and differences that establish meaning and purpose in their lives. I see my own kids as start-up companies with a lot to learn and achieve as they encounter their own obstacles and consider opportunities. And who knows, perhaps my family can become the supreme race of the happiest and well-architected people to walk this earth. A father can always dream, especially one who believes in Life Architecture.

Maybe some day Life Architecture will be replaced by CRISPR – a revolutionary gene-editing technology to manipulate DNA. Let’s not even go there, as this could have the moral and societal implications of intentionally mutating our biological composition to create superhuman beings. I’m not sure we have the celestial wherewithal yet to be playing with nature and controlling evolution. For the time being, we have Life Architecture to manipulate our future while leaving our DNA intact.

This may seem rather selfish and old school, but I want to be the guy in the movie It’s a Wonderful Life who influences the lives of others and turns possibilities into realities. I want a reason to have been born and an obligation to share the knowledge of Life Architecture. My mind is racing as I think about developing Life Architectures to improve our lives. “I feel like my mind just made

a baby” as put by the geeky physicist in the sitcom The Big Bang Theory. I have come to realize that we can architect our lives by architecting the lives of others. Our Life Architectures are interrelated with other Life Architectures. I rather think of it as a bridge connecting two land masses whose purpose is to make it one.

u Grafting Our Lives Together

Our lives intertwine with each other. My Life Process Tree has branches that intertwine with my wife’s tree, as well as those of my children, brother, friends, and others. I perceive the branches of people close to me grafted together. It was a famous novelist of the American Renaissance period who once said, “We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.” Why do I care so much that our humanity is connected to each other? It’s probably because we can’t live without each other.

There are processes on my Life Process Tree that cannot be executed without the people in my life. Therefore, I have included people who have something to add to my life, and I to theirs. My Life Process Tree has been designed with the intent to improve my life processes and those of others, which requires the participation of those who I love and have meaning in my life. In fact, it’s the value we add to each other’s lives that grafts us together and strengthens the branches on our tree. It’s no surprise that a process called “Add Value to Others’ Lives” adorns my Life Process Tree. I’m destined to live a good life with people who mean the most to me as I avoid mistakes I made in the past.

u A General Guiding Principle of Life Architecture

A general guiding principle of Life Architecture stipulates that an understanding of both our past and present determines our ability to understand the future. The symbologist in The Da Vinci Code had this theory about our past being a conduit into our present. “Understanding our past determines actively our ability to understand the present. So, how do we sift truth from belief? How do we write our own histories, personally or culturally, and thereby define ourselves? How do we penetrate years, centuries, of historical distortion to find original truth?” Regardless of who we are and where we come from, we all have a story. We all have a story and battle scars that lead us to where we are today. I was once told that wrinkles mean you laughed, gray hair means you cared, and scars mean you lived. Greg has all three. As a man in search of a better future, he shouldn’t be one to dismiss the influence of his past or present. History can repeat itself if we’re not aware of the present and the events that shaped it.

My purpose as a life architect is to pass on the knowledge to assess and improve our lives. Truth be told, all I did was put it down on paper and explain it. The revolutionary socialist Karl Marx thought the written word had transformative power. I remember a consulting colleague telling me, “You’d be surprised how people need things formalized and written down before they say, ‘I get it!’” I hope you get it. I’ve done the best I could to formalize this thing called Life Architecture and make a book out of it. A publisher once said, “A book isn’t so much written as it is engineered.” I’d say that this book has been architected to help humanity architect their lives.

At the end of the day, only we can define ourselves. The reality is that life doesn’t owe us anything – not happiness, wealth, power, success, or love. We must be ready and willing to create everything for ourselves. We learn, build, and give as part of our life cycle and fulfillment. And the impact we make in life is what others learn from us.

u Learn, Build, and Give

It was the 50th wedding anniversary of what seemed to be ancient family friends. There would be a short church ceremony for the “oldyweds” followed by a luncheon. The minister invited the couple to the altar after regular church service and commended them for their 50-year milestone. They were married as long as I was alive. I still remember the one thing that the minister said to them: “In your lifetime, you learn, build, and give.” As a couple, they learned how to cope with life’s problems and built a life together by raising children and establishing themselves financially. And then, they gave to their family, friends, and community. In fact, they crafted and built a life together in the most noble way I know. This is a noble legacy by any standard.

Everything in life is give and take, but to me, the give is worth the take. The minister’s words resonated with me: learn, build, and give. “This is what life is. This is why we’re here – to connect, to build. We’re here to build something” were the solemn words of a man whose life had been spared in the crime thriller Dead Man Down. He was at a point of rebuilding after everything had gone south and quickly became what would be his undoing. “It wasn’t meant to be this way. You know? We make our plans, sure. But life…life is what happens to you along the way.” I suspect he had lived an emergent life with fresh intentions to be more deliberate about rebuilding a future. I’m sure he’s still learning, and has yet lots to learn about living a deliberate lifestyle.

It doesn’t matter how many steps we take, as long as we deliberately take the steps to get to where we want to go. Sometimes we have to be humble as we learn, build, and give along the way. It takes much courage and faith in ourselves to take the last step. We must hold on to hope and persevere until we get there, and try our best to attain a desired outcome. Bad has a knack of happening on its own. The onus is on you, and you alone, to direct things toward a desired life and future. What you become depends on the decisions you make.

The process of learn-build-give has a lot of relevance to the paradigm of Life Architecture. I’ve learned more than I had ever imagined over the past three decades working with companies and people. I’ve carefully considered and compiled those learnings and built a consulting practice which enables people and their organizations to improve their business processes and workforce dynamics. Now, I’m sharing the fruits of my labor so that others can develop their own Life Architectures.

u Are You Ready for a Change?

As a believer of architecture, it is only appropriate that I share a quote by one of the most famous architects of all time, Frank Lloyd Wright: “The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes.” This is especially true as we endeavor to make our lives better, or the best that we can. Therefore, I’m going to leave you with one question: Do you like the direction in which your life is going? Your answer can change everything or change nothing. I believe that greatness and great architecture lies within every one of us. Are you ready for change?

I’m sure that Tony Robbins would tell you that change is the catalyst. It would be selfish to give any last words of wisdom on the topic of Life Architecture without reference to someone who makes a living transforming people. The last thing I need is some motivational giant knocking on my door challenging my credentials. I’m sure he’s a friendly giant of a man who genuinely wants to help humanity. I recently watched a documentary about one of his Date with Destiny seminars,

and I was attracted to his life philosophies, which I felt held some merit for Life Architecture. I was fascinated by his audience appeal, unorthodox approach, and on-the-spot analytical skills.

Robbins will be the first to ask, “What prevents you from having the life that you deserve?” How many times has Robbins preached that decision-making determines destiny? When is the last time that we stopped everything and thought about what our life was about? Rather than life taking us, maybe it’s time that we take life back. Robbins’ agenda is clearly to get people to drop out of the rat race and own themselves – and their lives. We seem to have accepted a meaningless repetitive routine that leads to an empty and unfulfilling life. It just may be time to get off the gerbil wheel and evaluate the potential of a life we don’t quite understand.

We can begin by asking ourselves the right questions: What do I want to get out of my life that excites me, what am I capable of being and what do I believe I’m capable of doing more or differently, why is it that I let life and circumstances dictate who I am now, what stimulates me to want to take action, what’s holding me back and why, can the why become a why not? The Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw once said, “Some men see things as they are and say ‘why?’ I dream things that never were and say ‘why not?’” We hit a roadblock asking ourselves questions that we’re too afraid to answer in our own presence.

u We Get What We Tolerate

It may be a good idea to write down our questions and take the time to come up with some honest and meaningful answers that will help us make life-changing decisions. Tony Robbins bluntly reminds us that people are afraid to make the tough decisions because they want to make the right decisions, so they make no decisions – which is ironically a decision. And life passes them by so casually and quickly that they don’t realize it because of their inaction and fear of commitment. I think at the end, “we all get what we tolerate” as Robbins puts it. Why do you think I’ve been urging everyone to break rules and tolerate no more than what we have to? This is all the more reason not to tolerate the unreasonable demands and expectations society imposes on us. Don’t be afraid of anything that stands in your way, including rules. I’m sure Tony Robbins would tell you to tolerate any fear of breaking the rules.

The actor and former boxer Mickey Rourke had a reputation for breaking convention and rules that stood in his way. As the tough-guy neighbor named Ashby, he forms a bond with the highschool nerd next door and teaches him valuable life lessons by disregarding societal norms and staying true to himself. Unbeknown to anybody, Ashby is a retired CIA assassin and only has a few months to live. As Ashby’s young protégé leaves the cemetery with his girlfriend, Rourke narrates the end of the final scene with immortal last words in his typical unrefined raspy voice:

“I guess, Eddy, I should say something profound, these being my last words more or less. I got nothin’. Well, I guess…be careful of what and who you believe in. Find someone that you love fiercely, and that loves you back the same way. And you treat them well. And you know it’s of value…Also, you shouldn’t be scared of the world there was. I kind of suspect the world should be scared of you.”

– Mickey Rourke, Ashby

I think the message is to go out there and not be scared of anyone or anything. In the words of the popular US president FDR, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Fear is a distressing emotion that can overtake our thoughts, regardless of whether a threat is real or imagined. A bull rider dismissed his fears on account of it all being in the mind. Maybe it’s best we follow his lead, but stay away from bull riding.

u Dismiss Your Fears

Rather than dwell on fear, we must lead with fortitude to succeed. Cheryl Strayed dismissed her fears when she wandered off into the wilderness. “I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me.” Sometimes fear can be a motivator. It can give us a shot of adrenaline, and force us into a fight or flight response. We must face our fears because our success depends on it. I once read, “Although the first step into anything new can be intimidating, life-changing growth takes place when we feel the fear and uncertainty but take that first step anyway.”

Cheryl Strayed had discovered the power to overcome her fears. “Fear begets fear. Power begets power. I willed myself to beget power. And it wasn’t long before I actually wasn’t afraid.” She never gave up and refused to feel helpless. A film director fascinated by people relentless in their struggles best articulated this behavior when he said, “You have more power than you know as an individual, and do not give up, and do not feel helpless. If something motivates you, get up and try something, you might be surprised.” We all have this power to overcome fear and take action. Someone once said that power is knowing you can do whatever you want and no one can stop you.

There are only two fundamental emotions – love and fear. Every other emotion arises from these – despair, pleasure, surprise, suspicion, gratitude, doubt, and so on. My friend Rick invited me to a life celebration luncheon commemorating his late father for his love and caring. I was inspired by the stories his sons had shared that day. Rick’s oldest brother recalled a neighbor complaining about his kids and their lack of direction. The neighbor asked Rick’s father why his sons were sensible, capable, and had the impetus to secure a better future. Their father called over his oldest son and told the neighbor to ask himself. “Dad showed us how to do it,” he replied. He showed his sons how to overcome their fears, persevere as they pursued their passions, and love those worth loving.

A friend of the family, a retired judge, was next to step up to the podium. Who better to judge than a judge? He described his late friend as someone who had an innate desire to help others, even changing professions to make a difference. “Rescuing wasn’t enough, changing lives was” was the divine lesson shared by an 87-year-old judge. It was that moment I realized that I too wanted to rescue others, and myself. I had no doubt that Rick’s dad was somewhat of a life architect pioneer. I guess we owe it to the judge as otherwise Rick’s pop would have been remembered as just another loving father.

u You Only Go Around Once

Steve McQueen, aka The King of Cool, lived by his own words: “You only go around once in life and I’m going to grab a handful of it.” In that case, we may as well make the most of it.

While The King of Cool was circling the racetrack at lightning speed, Evel Knievel grabbed a handful of public attention by risking his life to jump a canyon. Knievel never made the jump, but the thrill seeker was thrilled to be alive and share his story with us. I still chuckle when I think about Evel Knievel’s vision of an afterlife:

“I want to go to my own kind of heaven, it’s got a canyon there that I can jump across and make safely, it’s got a golf course I can shoot par on every day, buses I can jump easily, it’s got draft beer that doesn’t make you fat, it’s got a lot of beautiful girls and my wife won’t get mad if I go out with any of them, and my kids stay small all their lives. That’s the kind of heaven I want to go to.”

– Evel Knievel, I Am Evel Knievel

I’m sure it would be more meaningful were I a daredevil, although my wife wouldn’t take my extracurricular dating fantasies lightly. However, I do agree with Knievel’s perspective on mortality: “You can be famous for a lot of things. Whatever it is, enjoy it. It don’t last forever.” Knievel taught us that anything worthwhile doesn’t come easy. Doing the right things rather than what’s easy keeps us moving forward until we get what we want. It really is up to us to make the most of it and make sure our lives mean something.

While on the topic of thrill seekers, Mario Andretti once said, “If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough.” I think Andretti – a man who lived on the racetrack to win the Formula One, NASCAR, IndyCar, World Sportscar Championship, among others – was trying to tell us that winners push the envelope. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche would have agreed. “The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life,” he wrote, “is to live dangerously.” After all, as he said, “What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.”

I remember walking by a neon sign in a pub that read: “All I ever wanted is everything.” And don’t forget what happened to the guy who got everything he ever wanted, he lived happily ever after. I think it’s possible to get everything we want, as long as we don’t stop believing in ourselves and don’t abandon our dreams. A famous artist confessed that no artwork is ever finished, just abandoned. Vincent van Gogh passionately pursued painting believing that his vision exceeded his abilities to execute. He eventually became frustrated and abandoned everything, ultimately shooting himself in despair of never being able to put what he saw on canvas. Today, van Gogh is revered as one of the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art.

u Don’t Abandon Your Life

Nobody deserves to be stuck in an abandoned life. It will all work out in the end. If not, it’s not the end. Life is fleeting but somehow we find a way. We must do our best until we are all we can be, or until we don’t know better. If we miss our chance or opportunity, there will be others. It’s not that the things and opportunities we want in life don’t exist yet, but rather that we’re not yet aware of their existence or the fact that we can have them. A Life Architecture opens our eyes to opportunities and gives us a legitimate chance for a better life. It’s up to us to seize the moment. I beg you, don’t abandon your life, and don’t abandon your Life Architecture.

Sometimes I feel that Life Architecture is about as close as we can get to being able to stare into our soul. While Western philosophical tradition neglects the heart and has always been more obsessed with the mind, it is our heart and soul that give us purpose. They stir a sense of eternity within us. The spiritual psychologist Ram Dass once said, “If you’ve identified with your soul when you’re alive, death is just another moment.” Dass didn’t allow the concept of death to stop him from finding his own purpose and fulfilling his life ambitions.

Without purpose, it’s difficult to persuade ourselves that we’re living a rich and fulfilling existence. Many of us feel void of purpose and don’t know where to turn. Sometimes we have to follow our hearts rather than think too hard about where we want to go in life. As the Scottish-American

naturalist John Muir once said, “Who has not felt the urge to throw a loaf of bread and a pound of tea in an old sack and jump over the back fence.” Maybe there’s a purpose out there we can identify with, and we just have to search inside ourselves and beyond our fence.

It was the billionaire media mogul, William Parrish in Meet Joe Black, who declared his one candle wish on his 65th birthday: “That you would have a life as lucky as mine, where you can wake up one morning and say, ‘I don’t want anything more.’” I believe that a man who has lived fully is prepared to die. Theodore Roosevelt was such a man. Grieving for his lost son and wracked with pain from inflammatory rheumatism, Roosevelt replied to a friend who had expressed her sympathy: “Do not sympathize with me. Have you ever known any man who has gotten so much out of life as I have? I have made the very most out of my life.”

I hope Design Your Desired Life has made you a believer – a believer in yourself as you tap into your potential and exploit the possibilities before you. Life Architecture is an opening up of your potential, the sense that you can be fully yourself beyond the boundaries of our society and the world around us. I enjoyed sharing Greg’s pilgrimage as he continues to take advantage of his life and all it has to offer, and with a deliberate purpose. He has transformed himself from the person he was into the person he can and wants to be. I wish Greg a long, rich, and fulfilling life. And as the song goes, “We’re here for a good time, not a long time.”

May the rest of your life be the best of your life, and may you live a long life. This is only possible when you have a peace of mind and control of your destiny. The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be. Roll up your sleeves, put your fears aside, take some risks, and be grateful you’re living on purpose. One day you’ll get up and realize you’re living a life you used to be jealous of. Don’t be afraid of the path; be afraid not to move forward. Just do what’s in your heart and live the life you desire.