In Buddhist monasteries, young monks are often made to practice the art of sutra copying. They’re given handwritten copies of sutras, or religious texts, and are made to copy the words and brushwork of master teachers onto new scrolls and books. These texts are often elaborate and beautifully written, sometimes in Sanskrit. Monks huddle over them and carefully replicate exactly what’s on the page so that the copy is as flawless as the original.

In the Western world, there are similar practices. I remember giving a friend a mezuzah as a housewarming gift once. Mezuzah are tiny scrolls with a portion of the Torah inscribed by hand on them. The scrolls are placed inside a blessed container and hung on the doorway of a house for good fortune or to ward off evil. These mezuzah are meticulously copied by hand, with the belief that an improperly copied one transforms energy into bad luck rather than good luck.

In both examples, there are far more efficient and effective methods to accomplish the same result, a perfectly copied text. Simply take a digital camera or a word processor that can output Sanskrit or Hebrew and start making copies. You could copy the entirety of the Heart Sutra flawlessly just by repeatedly hitting copy / paste on your keyboard. You could mass print mezuzah even at absurdly small font sizes and still have them be perfect copies of scripture.

Of course, that isn’t what’s done. In fact, the respective practitioners of these spiritual practices would find the idea laughable at best and repugnant at worst. Just as there are times when it is wholly appropriate to stop doing what you’ve always done for the sake of tradition, there are also times when it’s vital to dig in and keep the old way intact. In the case of scripture copying, there’s the esoteric argument that only through the human hand can you capture the flavor and energy of the original text, much in the same way that no audio system perfectly replicates the experience of hearing the music performed live.

The more practical reason that these traditions exist is that it’s as much about learning the scriptures by heart as it is replicating data. If you were to hit copy/paste on the sutra, you could mindlessly replicate it without ever learning it. In contrast, monks are forced to learn them word for word, every subtlety and nuance, in order to make a perfect copy by hand.

When it comes to any significant or important practice that you’re doing, whether spiritual or in business, investigate it and question it! Learn why the practice exists as it does and what the underlying reasons for “doing it as it’s always been done” are. Sometimes there may be a valid reason to change the practice and make it more efficient, but sometimes there may be an equally valid reason to leave things exactly as they are.

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Every year since 2006, friends of Chris Brogan put together our three words for the coming year that define what we’re focusing on in the coming year. They’re not goals, but more like rails or guides that help keep us moving in the general correct direction. Here are mine for 2012.

Story

When I look at what I’ve created in the past few years, there’s value in the content. How-to lessons, detailed research, data and techniques, but something’s been missing. Something’s been lacking. On the way home from the dojo one night, I was listening to master teacher Stephen K. Hayes talking about how the deeper lessons of both Buddhism and ninjutsu are transmitted. He said, “We’re going to tell a few stories here, and hopefully this will evoke some stories in your mind of your own. That’s how this training works.” At that moment I realized exactly what has been missing from a lot of my work. In 2012, one of my three words and focus points will be on better learning this skill.

Restoration

One of the more interesting healing classes in World of Warcraft is the restoration druid. Rather than heal with holy powers and flashes of light, the druid uses the powers of nature to restore allies to health. Regrowth, nourish, rejuvenation, lifebloom, swiftmend, tranquility. Here’s what’s powerful about the idea of restoration druid spells on real life: so much of what we’ve done in the past few years has burned everything to the ground. We’ve exhausted our email lists. We’ve tapped out our social networks. We’ve cut staff down to the bone to scrape up a few extra pennies per share on earnings calls. In short, we’ve depleted all of our resources and wondered why our marketing is getting less and less effective. In 2012, one of my study points will be restoration. How do we continue to be effective as marketers while restoring our resources to health?

This extends to personal life as well. When you go all-out, inevitably, something has to suffer. My question to myself is, how can I bring restoration and regrowth to areas of my life other than business?

Compassion

Originally I had chosen something else for the third word, but as I was looking over the years, I thought it’d make 2012 more challenging and interesting to focus on something I’m not good at. Compassion I mean in the Buddhist sense – the ability to see through your own issues and feelings enough to understand what someone else is going through and provide some kind of legitimate help. One of the greatest dangers of social media, particularly as you start to develop any kind of following, is that you tend to attract like-minded people. As a result, you hear less and less about things you disagree with, things that challenge you, things that make you think. When all you hear is how awesome you are (whether you are or not) you face the great danger of your ego overwhelming any good work you’re providing. I have heard in the back of my mind from time to time the ugly, egotistical whisper that says, “this (person/place/thing/task) is below me”. It’s exactly at those moments when compassion can provide a much-needed bitch slap upside the head to bring reality back into the picture.

My task for 2012 is to be more rigorous and more disciplined in my own mind, guarding against that ever-growing danger.

So there you have it, my three words for 2012: story, restoration, compassion. Blog yours and leave a link in the comments!

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Have you ever had a glimpse of the greater you?

Maybe you reacted in an emergency with greater speed, confidence, or strength than you thought possible.

Maybe in a stressful situation you reached inside yourself and found more will to win than you ever knew was there.

Some of these moments may be recent. Some of them may be years or even decades ago, but they were so profound that you can’t forget about them. They recur in dreams and memories, dates and places etched in your mind as firmly as if they were carved in granite.

I remember one moment in the spring of 1999 in my little apartment in Allston, Massachusetts. It wasn’t the best or worst apartment, but it did have a nice front room that faced the morning sun. At that moment, laying on my futon couch, the sun washing in the windows created a moment that was pure magic. I felt completely free of everything, a part of the light and the light a part of me. I don’t remember how long I was in that space. It could have been a moment or an hour. But it was a moment when I learned that true peace lived inside of me, if I had the ability to quiet everything and find it. It was a moment of perfect beauty.

These moments in your life are not accidental. They are not random. Above all else, they are not exceptions to the rule. They reflect the times when circumstances, energy, and our will align to let us tap into our fullest power, our fullest potential. They are the moments of living proof that we can be far more than we think, that life can be far more wonderful and rich than we usually see.

The wonderful secret is this: they’re happening all around you, every day, like flashes of lightning briefly showing the world around you in the dark. These moments of clarity aren’t isolated instances or lucky chances in life because they’re not supposed to be. They are how your life should be the majority of your days. All that you need to do – and it’s simple, but certainly not easy – is look for them.

Take a deep breath, pause for the moment, and ask yourself this: of what is around me right now, what can I truly enjoy? Of what is around me right now, what can I truly act on? Of what is around me, what must I remove from my life?

Do this inventory as many times per day as you can remember, and before long, your life will be composed of these moments, strung together like jewels in a necklace.

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We make reality in our world in three ways: thought, word, and action.

It’s good to think about gratitude, to think about all we have that we might otherwise not. The grateful mind helps shape our view of the world and deepens our appreciation of everything that we have.

It’s good to speak of gratitude, to give voice to the gratitude in our heads. Our words can inspire gratitude in others, a way to brighten the lives around us and remind our collective selves of what we have.

But this is where we often stop. We say our thanks around the dinner table on a certain day of the year, we eat the roasted beast, and call it a day.

Is that thanks enough?

The last piece of the magic puzzle is to take action, to express gratitude through action. If we acknowledge that the society around us, for good or ill, has created the series of actions and sequences that has given rise to the fortune we have (meager or vast), then if we can find a way to contribute back to it, that is acting with gratitude.

Maybe it’s a donation of your time, volunteering towards a worthy cause. Maybe it’s a financial or material donation, giving to others as you’ve been given. Even a small amount, a tiny spark, is enough to start a fire under the right conditions. Maybe it’s the adoption of an animal or the delivery of a dinner to someone who can’t provide for themselves.

Whatever the form is, action completes the process of bringing what’s inside of you out into the world. Action takes intention and spoken commitment and brings it to fruition as something tangible, something that will change your world.

After you express the thought of thanks, after you speak the words of thanks, find a way to commit to the action of thanks and in doing so, give someone else a reason to be thankful as well.

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You might be doing it wrong…

… if you enjoyed my talk about awakening your superhero with the power of social media and then went back to the office and enforced rules about not using social networks at work.

… if you read the latest book from your favorite business author, demanded everyone read it, and then didn’t implement a single idea from it.

… if you watch and are moved by a TED talk about the devastating impact of global warming and then get in your 10 MPG SuperSUV to go to work.

… if you say social media isn’t about numbers of friends and followers, and then keep on checking Twitter Counter.

In Buddhism, there’s a concept called ignorance which isn’t about a lack of knowledge (as the term is generally used) but a willful denial of reality around you. You’re trying to actively ignore things that would otherwise wake you up and make you change for the better.

The antidote to ignorance is mindfulness, or waking the hell up and living in the present, in the here and now, in the reality that’s around you, and acknowledging that what you want may be very different than what you have. The first, simplest step to becoming more aware of what’s around you is to practice living in a mindful manner, with regular routine breaks out of habits to recenter yourself.

For example, take the 10-2-5 time management method that we’ve talked about. Once you’ve gotten the hang of using it, add a little bit of mindful practice to it. At the beginning of each 10 minute stretch (or the end of a 2 minute break, depending on your perspective), take a moment to fix your posture and sit up. Just something as simple as that – add that in.

If you’re responsible for managing people, you can encourage mindfulness in yourself and themselves by giving feedback regularly, routinely, and extremely frequently, rather than waiting for an annual or semi-annual corporate process. If you commit to recentering and refocusing weekly or even daily, you’ll find it’s easier to make changes and get more done. I commit to reviewing my work and the work of my team every Monday and Friday, for example; we look on Mondays at what we have to do and on Fridays we look at what we did.

A few of you reading this post will try these exercises and gain great benefit from them. What about the rest of you?

Will this blog post make you nod and agree vigorously… and then you’ll completely forget it in about two minutes?

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There are fundamentally two types of secrets in the world.

Exoteric secrets are surface level secrets. They’re the kinds of secrets that are easily transmitted, easily learned, easily shared, and thus easily stolen or imitated. Examples of exoteric secrets are things like the Colonel’s 11 herbs and spices or the formula for Coca-Cola. If the secret, the recipe, got out, there’s no practical way for these companies to ever put the genie back in the bottle.

Esoteric secrets are deep secrets. These are the kinds of secrets that require extensive training, knowledge, and experience to even be able to comprehend, much less make use of. Esoteric secrets include things like the process for building a nuclear weapon, which are so common you can find them online. The challenge for the non-nuclear physicists among us isn’t learning “the recipe” as much as it is having the means and the ability to make use of that knowledge. Another example is a black belt martial arts technique. You can show it to someone who’s not a black belt, but only the time, experience, and wisdom of a black belt will let someone execute it successfully.

If you, your product or service, or your company relies solely on an exoteric secret of any kind as your profit engine, you’re basically one step away from extinction at all times. If the secret gets out, it’s game over. There are countless companies out there that were either put out of business by a megalithic corporation or bought outright to leverage the exoteric secret that the company had.

The trick for long term survivability in a knowledge economy is building the esoteric secret. You can flaunt it in front of people all day and a sliver of a slice of a fraction of a percentage of your audience – including your competitors – will ever even grasp the secret, much less make use of it. This makes your company, your product, your service indispensable. There’s no way to imitate it successfully and no way to easily steal it.

What’s esoteric about the way you do business?

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Here’s a special holiday gift for you, complete with complex instructions.

This is a recording of the session I did at the Web 2.0 conference earlier this year. It’s about 30 minutes long.

Download the MP3 here.

You will need to do the exercises in this session with a training partner. It can be a friend, colleague, coworker, whatever – but do them with a partner or the value you’ll get out of the recording will be greatly diminished. Follow along with the directions in the session as if you were actually there.

Please leave comments and feedback here after you’ve listened to the session and let me know how it affected you.

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Ever lost someone you cared about?

Ever faced impossible odds or certain defeat?

The difference in life between those for whom events and circumstances crush them and those who overwhelm their circumstances to success (or at least a decent Pyrrhic victory) is all in how we approach them.

For some, escaping loss and sorrow is the best way out. We retreat from the circumstances, we get away, we change our context so that the loss doesn’t hurt nearly as much, so that it’s not in our faces all the time. We take the measured break from the life we lead to reset, reboot, and find our way out of blinding sadness. One day, we wake up from the nightmare and can live again.

For others, we work together to overcome our respective sorrows. We teach where and when we can to help others just starting out on their journeys how to overcome initial obstacles, maybe how to take that time off, and in the process of teaching, we learn and grow ourselves. We find that sometimes the best advice is coming from us, but we just forgot to get the memo. One day we wake up, realize that we’ve been teaching ourselves as well as others, and we are healed of our woes.

For a select few who are especially courageous and especially willing to subject ourselves to the fire, we dive straight into our misery and like a blacksmith pounding iron into swords, we find it within ourselves to twist and reshape our sorrows into motivators. We turn loss into gain, sadness into resoluteness, anguish into unyielding will to do more, be more, achieve more in the face of what we’ve lost. We honor the past by forging the brightest future we can. One day we wake up and realize we’ve become greater than we ever could have been without our loss, and in a wonderful, poignant irony we become thankful for hearing the lessons of our sorrows and being richer for it.

Whichever pathway you choose, may you find your way home.

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Why Serendipity Shouldn’t Matter

“Serendipity is the effect by which one accidentally stumbles upon something fortunate, especially while looking for something entirely unrelated.” – Wikipedia

I’ll be contrarian to my good friend Chris Brogan in saying that serendipity shouldn’t matter to you. Here’s what I mean. There’s an interesting expression in ninjutsu: banpen fugyo. Literally, change, never surprised. Toshitsugu Takamatsu, the previous headmaster of the Togakure Ryu ninjutsu school, is quoted as saying there’s no such thing as surprise for the ninja.

Stephen K. Hayes, my teacher’s teacher, often says that luck is merely energy that is unchanneled.

If you’re really good – really good – at life, if you’re working towards mastery of all that life has to offer and all the potential you have in life, then surprise and serendipity should be the gravy. They should be the bonuses at best. Why?

At the Web 2.0 Open, one of the exercises I asked people to do (adapted from Stephen K. Hayes’ phenomenal Evocation workshop) is to pick out something in your life that seemed like a lottery ticket sort of experience. Pick out something that was just wow! and good fortune came your way, and tell that story to a friend. During the event, I asked people to talk to the person next to them about their experiences, telling this story of a magical moment in their life when something fortunate happened. I told my story of co-founding PodCamp with Chris Brogan and suddenly finding myself on a jet to Sweden to put on PodCamp Europe at Jeff Pulver’s behest.

Serendipity, right? Good luck, right?

The second half of this particular exercise was to take the exact same story but retell it in a fashion where no luck was involved, where you made it happen and the natural course of events was that your efforts and focus created the outcome of success. I asked people to exaggerate if they needed to, but make the story work. Again, my story was of how hard Chris and I worked to create PodCamp and make it the success it was, and naturally events occurred which led to us being asked to create PodCamp Europe.

Here’s the funny thing: with a significant majority of the room, very little or no exaggeration was needed. Very little. Most people were able to find enough factual evidence in their lottery ticket moment of all the things they had done, all the choices they had made, that led to their good fortune. More than a few spirits perked up as they realized just how much of a hand they had in their “luck”.

This is the power that you have, the power that you give away, the power that you forfeit when you chase serendipity, when you hope for good things to happen just because instead of taking the reins for yourself.

Take charge of your life. Take charge of your destiny. Yes, leave room for hope and serendipity, leave room for good things to happen as bonuses to what you’re already doing, but do not live another day in your already too short life counting on hope when you have the capacity, the capability to take the wheel of the ship for yourself, to make good things happen, and to set the stage for the results you want.

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“When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” – Edmund Burke

Go read this story on CNN about a two and a half hour rape of a 15 year old at a San Francisco high school function as nearly two dozen people stood around did nothing, or worse, joined in. No one called 911. No one got help. Very reminiscent of the Kitty Genovese case and the bystander effect.

How do you stop something like this?

How do you counteract something like this?

How do you prevent something like this from ever happening in the first place?

Philip Zimbardo, of the Stanford Prison Experiment, has an elegant solution. The problem is the diffusion of responsibility. When a group of people are involved, no one person feels responsible. Only someone who steps forward, someone willing to take risks of social and physical violence, someone willing to bear the burden of breaking a conforming mindset can stop this.

In short, a hero.

Watch this TED talk featuring this discussion:

Dr. Zimbardo’s idea of hero courses is a good one, but probably won’t come to a school, church, or workplace near you any time soon. So how do you get started on this today? His idea of heroic imagination has deep, deep roots, stretching back over thousands of years, across multiple continents. At Stephen K. Hayes’ Evocation seminar, one of the exercises done by participants was a detailed exploration of what our inner superhero looks like, sounds like, and acts like. While it’s impossible to recreate even a fraction of that seminar in the bits and bytes of a blog post, I’ll leave you with a question you can ponder, one that will get you that first step down the path towards finding your own superhero.

Instead of thinking about superhero powers, think about superhero actions.

If you had all the superhero powers you wanted and needed, what would you as a hero stand for, and what in all of the world would you first fight against?

That single question will tell you not the kind of superhero that exists in your daydreams, but the one that exists inside of you right now.

What do you stand for?
What do you stand against?

Think about that as you ponder the San Francisco rape, the Kitty Genovese bystander effect, and Dr. Zimbardo’s lecture. That will be the first step towards awakening your superhero and the superheroes of all those around you.

Do it soon. Do it now. Right now, more than ever, our world needs as many heroes as it can get – including you.

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