Don Quixote. Great novel! It is the story of a 50-year-old man who goes crazy reading adventure stories about chivalry and knights in shining armor. He decides he will become a knight, gets a make-shift helmet and sword, gets on his old horse and rides around the Spanish countryside with his squire Sancho Panza seeking adventures, righting wrongs, and saving damsels in distress. Everyone knows he is completely crazy – he thinks windmills are giants to be slayed. But then he says the most wonderful things.
Don Quixote got me thinking about what great missions I might accomplish in the rest of my life. It inspired me to start a blog about the fictional adventures of Bijonbo — my childhood nickname — a heroic, fictional version of me!
Then I changed course and started posting my Toastmasters speeches in my blog:
1. Wise-Elder-In-Training -- 9/28/2016
In the first Toastmasters speech – The Icebreaker – I explained that my goal was not only to improve my public speaking skills, but I have a special goal in mind. I want to practice talking about the things I've learned so I can help people. So I can give counsel. So I can become a wise elder someday. But I am not a wise elder yet. I am a wise-elder-in-training.
I wrote all of the next three speeches over Christmas break that year. They cover some interpersonal counseling skills I’ve been learning.
2. Turn Conflict into Creativity -- 1/19/2017
3. Non-Violent Communication -- 2/9/2017
4. Motivational Interviewing -- 4/20/2017
The gist of motivational interviewing is you can’t motivate someone else but you can help them find their own motivation.
Then I turned to a practical topic – Investing – based on advice I give to my sons. Buy and hold index funds!
Next I explored wisdom from the ancients – Socrates, Confucius, and The Buddha.
Then I did a work-related speech as practice for making clear business presentations.
Next I brought my guitar to show how I overcome shaky hands when performing or public speaking.
I sent a link to this speech about Truth to the authors of the Pro-Truth Pledge and the Baloney Detection Kit. I asked them to share the link in their social media, which they both did. As a result, this blog post got over 1200 views – which is 12X my previous record!
At long last, this is my 10th and final Toastmasters speech in the Competent Communication manual – and the assignment is to inspire the audience. Now I could give a pre-game pep talk, but it is hard to inspire other people. The enthusiasm doesn’t last. But I can show you, through my examples, how to build and maintain motivation over a life full of meaning. And to see if they same approach will inspire you.
Over the years I've developed a secret point of view that motivates me when work gets frustrating or dull or when my boss acts like a jerk. My secret is to view work as my contribution to society. A vital step is to identify exactly how it makes the world a better place. This gives our day-to day tasks more meaning. For some, it’s obvious. I have a friend who was a nurse at a hospital delivery room. She gets an immediate, first-hand sense of gratification from helping mothers deliver babies. But in our complex economy, it may not be so easy. For example, my work in Purchasing is a few steps removed from the end customer. Yet I can see that my work is part of a system that makes products that meet people’s needs. We negotiate lower prices and control costs with suppliers and, in so doing, we work on behalf of our customers who demand a good value when they buy our products. Now if I took the approach that I am negotiating lower prices to make more profit for my company, it would put me at odds with the supplier who seeks profit through higher prices. But if we both approach the negotiation as together seeking ways to make products at lower cost, then we both win because we are part of a supply chain that meets the needs of more and more customers.
I’m viewing this 10th speech as a capstone project, bringing together themes from all my speeches. It is like my capstone project at Vanderbilt where I wrote my own personal creed. It was a 45-page research paper and I gave an oral defense in front of 3 professors. I won’t cover all the creed statements today except the first and last one: I Value Authenticity – what you see is what you get. And: I believe these statements are provisional and subject to improvement as understanding advances and circumstances change. That’s so I don’t get set in my ways and dogmatic. So far in 7 years I haven’t made any changes … until today!
I’ve learned a few things since then. As Michael Shermer said in his 2015 book The Moral Arc “we can judge actions as right or wrong” by asking “do they increase or decrease the survival and flourishing of individual sentient beings?” You see, across the indifferent universe - life is scarce and precious. There may be some bacteria here and there but intelligent life is rare and amazing. We have the ability to ponder our evolutionary origins, our futures, and the meaning of life. If the survival and flourishing of life is our guide, then the meaning of life is the furthering of life itself. So I am adding that thought to my creed.
We hear a lot about follow your dreams and find your passion. But it always seemed like something was missing -- until I found this chart that pulls it all together.
Do what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. At the intersection of these is your IKIGAI – a Japanese idea that translates, roughly, to life purpose, reason for being, or raison d'être in French. Now we all might not be lucky enough for our career to meet all 4 of these categories, so we might consider adding other projects. That’s why singer-songwriters wait tables in Nashville. In my case, I supplement my professional career by playing in a hobby rock-&-roll band (what I love) and I do volunteer work where I help people overcome addictions and irrational beliefs (what the world needs). So I added “IKIGAI” to my creed and now my updated creed looks like this:
- I value authenticity.
- I believe in protecting and promoting civil liberties both personal and economic.
- I believe choosing action that furthers the survival, flourishing, and evolution of sentient beings is a useful ethical guideline.
- I believe the evolution of cooperation is the source of morality.
- I believe tit-for-tat (cooperate, retaliate, and forgive), which in game theory is the winningest strategy in iterative prisoners dilemma, is useful in everyday life. Fool me, once shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
- I believe in education and life-long learning.
- I believe in the sciences, including physical and social sciences, as our best means of improving the human condition.
- I believe free markets, as emergent complex adaptive systems, are our best means of allocating resources.
- I believe in a limited, transparent government whose only role is to defend civil liberties, protect property rights, and mitigate unwanted market externalities.
- I believe in global free trade in goods, services, and information. To trade is to wage peace.
- I believe in getting into the Flow of life, work, and play, focusing attention on what matters most while staying open to the adjacent possible and connecting the dots.
- I believe in creating art and appreciating beauty.
- I believe in treating others with respect and kindness.
- I believe life’s purpose (IKIGAI) can be found at the intersection of doing what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for.
- I believe these statements are provisional and subject to improvement as understanding advances and circumstances change.
In conclusion, inspiring you with a motivational speech might not be my strong suit. Instead, you can see how I deliberately built a personal philosophy to maintain motivation and to live a life of purpose over the long haul. You see - the meaning of life is the meaning you make. So instead of a pep-talk for inspiration I leave you with this song inspired by Don Quixote…
To dream ... the impossible dream ...
To fight ... the unbeatable foe ...
To bear ... with unbearable sorrow ...
To run ... where the brave dare not go ...
To right ... the unrightable wrong ...
To love ... pure and chaste from afar ...
To try ... when your arms are too weary ...
To reach ... the unreachable star ...
This is my quest, to follow that star ...
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far ...
To fight for the right, without question or pause ...
To be willing to march into Hell, for a Heavenly cause ...
And I know if I'll only be true, to this glorious quest,
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm,
when I'm laid to my rest ...
And the world will be better for this:
That one man, scorned and covered with scars,
Still strove, with his last ounce of courage,
To reach ... the unreachable star ...
-- from 1964 play and 1972 film: Man of La Mancha (aka Don Quixote)
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