Are you content? When we talk about being content it conjures up many different views. One of the most common beliefs, is that, if you are content, then, you are happy. This is not necessarily correct, although happiness can come with being content, however, the two emotions do not necessarily correlate.

These four points must be considered if we want to achieve contentment:

1. Things won’t make us content
2. Being content does not necessarily mean we are happy
3. Being content doesn’t mean giving up our goals
4. Contentment is a skill which we have to learn

We all have an idea of what would make us content, we just don’t necessarily know how to get to that state. We can start by going through the four points:

1. Things won’t make us content – We all know it. Obvious isn’t it? Yet we find ourselves thinking, if I had a new car, more money, financial freedom, a big(ger) house I would be content. The problem is, that house, car, latest fashion clothes, handbag, shoes, smart phone or gadget etc. will always get old. The little euphoria we feel when they are new, fades fairly quickly. This is why, the more we tend to earn, the more we want and less content we become. Yes, we can blame the marketers for years of brainwashing, rightly so, as it played a big part in our thought process. However, we can end the cycle within ourselves, we choose not to do it, the marketers are in no rush to persuade us to buy less stuff and we continue to oblige. Seeking contentment in material goods, is an expensive way to fail.
2. Being content does not necessarily mean we are happy – When we are content, we have accepted this is a goal achieved. Maybe we are free of debt, we are content to be living within are means and go about our days purchasing only what we need, this doesn’t translate into happiness. Although we have changed our lifestyle and got rid of a stressful element, we can still be bored, unhappy and looking for an injection of fun. This is where we end up undoing all the good work and making purchases looking for the thrill once again. This is because we have confused being content with our situation to translate immediately into happiness.
3. Being content doesn’t mean giving up our goals – Ok, so we are content. We have also achieved happiness, we are happy. This doesn’t mean we are living our dream. We still have many desires, not materialistic ones, that we seek. Being content is recognising what we have, not refusing to progress or stagnate. We may have a wish to travel round the world, because we are happy and content with our life, doesn’t mean that goal should be suppressed or ignored. We simply work at fitting it into our new lifestyle. The difference is, we know travelling round the world isn’t going to give us eternal contentment and happiness. When the goals is completed we are content with achieving another goal in our life.
4. Contentment is a skill which we have to learn – We are always learning. It is not easy to be content, especially in a culture where marketing has had many years to perfect the brainwashing machine. Every once in a while a tragedy occurs and we are reminded that having our health, safety and close friends and family is a privilege. Alas, it doesn’t last and we are on a drive for bigger and better achievements. I’ve written many posts about striving, not standing still and aiming for more out of life. This has to be balanced with recognising our achievements, understanding and learning to be content with ourselves and what we have (family, friends, mental calmness). We have to learn to let go of the tangible stuff, this doesn’t mean never wanting anything again, more about taming desire.

Learning to be content and being happy is a skill. Connecting the two emotions without expecting that one will automatically lead to the other requires work. The bigger lesson is, we can all be content now, yes, right now, no matter our situation. It requires a change of mindset, one not based on the accumulation of more things.

Or are you just lucky? We have either said or heard the remark, “I’m a good judge of character” or “I always judge those situations right / wrong”. What is this illusive judgement ability we refer to? This ability to make the right decision, every time, in every situation. We read interviews with entrepreneurs praising this skill, especially when they’ve made a good decision, one unforeseen by their competitors in the market place. Their response usually stated as, “I just made a judgement call and went with it”. What is really being said, is, I made a decision based on my instinct and knowledge. The knowledge I’ve drawn from experience of mine and others, learnings I’ve garnered and predicting the market. Alas, that is a mouthful and sounds rather boring, so a judgement call response sounds a more exclusive trait.

What isn’t rarely mentioned, is how many judgement calls the entrepreneur  has made that failed. I touch on this in the post overnight success stories on how we are sold the results without all the hard work and failures that occurred. Our judgement, like all decisions, will fail at times. The problem with viewing judgement as this supreme character trait, is it  absolves us of admitting we are either making good or bad decisions based on our personal view and not necessarily facts. In the workplace, we have to make judgement calls all the time, we term them decisions and give reasonings for making those decisions. Whether they are fast paced or slow burning ones.

In our personal lives though, we change this into an art form, a type of genetic gift bestowed on us. Picking the earlier mentioned statement, “A good judge of character”, what we are really saying is, we form an opinion of others and if it turns out true, then, it affirms our belief in our excellent judgement skill. However, we are not that forthcoming in admitting when we have judged others incorrectly and deeming our skill fallible. We give excuses such as, “Well, they surprised me, I had them all wrong”. The real response should be, “I should be more open, I’m not that good at judging others”. Alas, it’s not that simple to admit our own faults, especially out loud and is one of the most important skills we can acquire in the quest to be a better person.

So what are we to do? Is the answer to never rely on our judgement? No, we need our judgement. Using our instinct to make decisions will always have its risks, but sometimes it can be the only warning of a potentially dangerous situation. Going on instinct is needed as many decisions we make will not present themselves with all the facts, ample amount of time and the benefit of having the necessary experience. We will be in unchartered territory and have to go for it, which is ok, once we don’t start believing our own internal hype machine, ignoring all rational thinking and making decisions on instinct. If we do, we will literally be guilty of having poor judgement.

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Have you located yours? Are you still looking for it or not thought about it? My advice is predictable, find it. For those who have, bravo, now don’t forget where it is located, because the next part of the mission is to also find what triggers the pressing of it (repeatedly). We all have a self-destruct button, all of us. It appears to be formed from a combination of our fears, self-doubt, self criticism, procrastination and anything else that’s responsible for us not achieving what we set out to do. The amazing thing is, we trigger it ourselves, not by force or encouragement, we just set it off. The perfect self-sabotage which is effectively and successfully inflicted. It may be waiting too late to hand in that assignment because we don’t think it’s good enough, so if we miss the deadline, get penalised and cannot receive full marks, we convince ourselves it was due to lack of time and not the quality of our work. We may suddenly rush around at the eleventh hour to hand it in, partly because we have come to our senses or as part of the act (to ourselves). However a few days earlier, the assignment would have been found resting, comfortably, in its unfinished state, on the side of a table (or on our PC) whilst we were catching up with our favourite tv show. This assignment can be replaced with fixing that leaking tap, delivering a project, submitting a business plan, learning a new language, losing weight, quitting smoking etc. Whatever the goal, our fear of failing triggers it in many ways at different times and stages of our goal(s). We can sugar coat it with excuses about how busy we are, although we all know people who are much busier and get more done that us. We often comment “where do you find the time?” the unfortunately clichéd answer is, we all have the same twenty-four hours in a day and it’s how we choose to use them that yields different outputs.

The nature of the self-destruct button is so personal that the solution is recognising our own triggers. Everyone who has successfully achieved a goal has battled it along the way. The smoker who resists the temptation every single day to have “just one” to the entrepreneur who decides the business plan cannot be perfect and takes the leap of presenting it to investors with sales pitch at the ready. They faced the same internal conflicts against their own personal self-destruct button. For me, on days when I’m losing the battle, social media and email get all my time, my usual ten minute check, results in hours being distracted by watching videos online, reading tweets and status updates. Even as its occurring I recognise the self-sabotage is at work, I’ve stopped allowing myself the excuse “Well, I deserve some wind down time,” the truth is, I know I’m inventing things so I can avoid doing what’s important. I could wind down later and worse, I never complete those tasks avoided within their deadline, the time and opportunity is lost.

To action we need to take is to stop allowing ourselves the excuses. This isn’t to say we must always be busy. Taking time off to relax, unwind and do nothing is essential to a healthy mental balance and there will be times when we slip up, make mistakes or drop back into a bad habit. The important part is to recognise it is a self-destructive behaviour, get back on track quickly, develop the good habits that keep us on the path to our goal, banish the excuses and recognise the correct actions to adopt. There is an idiom “what we fear doing, is what we most need to do,” in most situations where the excuses start to ring in our heads, we will find this idiom rings true.

Most top tips are banal and trite. Unfortunately, it’s true. These were once ideal tidbits of information that delivered insight, bestowing knowledge and learnings in quick, digestible guides. They have become so popular, it’s possible to find “top tips” on about everything. Our quest to condense our learning times and shorten the curve have exacerbated these tips. It fitted with our culture, they were short and meant we didn’t have to read lengthy non fiction guides. As the Internet lost the popularised description of “the information super-highway” to phrases like “google it” or “check the web,” the desire for these articles found its place. I like short articles with tips, don’t misunderstand me, there are valuable ideas and suggestions to be found within some of them. The issue is, quality top tips are hard to find, mainly because they have become a marketing tool. If you want to drive traffic to your website, then issuing a top tips article is highly advisable. Businesses and many popular, large audience websites use them religiously as a marketing strategy. This is because traffic statistics translate into advertising revenue and website value, the quality of the article has become an afterthought. In the end, everyone loses from it, instead of the top tips being a valuable source of information to spur us on to further reading and personal research, we begin to ignore them as they become tarnished by the same prosaic brush. They are a bit more noise in our search for quality.

Nonetheless, this post isn’t to rant about cheap marketing tactics, that would be as easy to do as creating another top tips guide. This is about reviewing the quality of things we read. Maintaining the focus on personal development, we must remember the information we digest alters or reaffirms our world view and our approach to development. As the quality of many of these articles diminishes, we have to be conscious of what we are learning, some of the articles are of an entertainment value. Reminding ourselves to indulge in longer pieces of non-fiction on topics, investing time into researching and reading articles with opposing arguments and not restricting our reading to only leaders in our field of interest will give us a better balance. All these are obvious, we know this and simply wished we had enough time to devote to it. It’s ok to be working on gaining more time and doing something positive towards our development. Personal development is a life long journey, it may not fit in nicely with the quick gains aspects of other parts f our lives, alas, we know the short cuts don’t last in the long-term. This is the exact route we would be taking writing these articles or only reading the top tip guides (taking the short cut), with diminishing quality we are doing ourselves a disservice, sure they have an entertainment value and every once in a while we will hit the jackpot and learn something, however they are short-term and not a valuable piece of our long-term personal investment.

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Complaining gets results. This is what we have learnt from our dealings with customer service departments, [the bad ones,] as being the only way to achieve a resolution. When we buy a product or service and it doesn’t meet our expectations, we more often than not end up contacting a customer service department to express our dissatisfaction.  If we are speak to a representative of the organisation who states there isn’t anything they can do or we consider them unhelpful, we create an image and opinion of the organisation immediately. The window in which this company would go from being a recommendation to friends and family, to being catapulted into a ‘do not deal with them’ category is a small one . Organisations spend millions working on this first contact impression customers receive. Many take the approach of training their staff to know exactly what they can compensate, any product or service faults and most importantly, remembering to be polite no matter how irate the customer may become. This strategy takes a view from the position of complaining, answering the customer quickly and how best to ‘protect’ the organisation. After all, they know not all customers are honest and with this strategy, they weed out the ones trying to cheat the system from the genuine ones. It doesn’t take a lot of guess work to figure out this strategy ends up alienating some genuine customers who will never return. The alternate approach is to truly empower your staff, build an organisational culture that allows you to trust your staff to make their own judgements and deal with the customers from a human perspective. This is the approach organisations like Zappos and Amazon have taken and why they hit the headlines and receive awards for their customer service. They know some customers will be dishonest, will take advantage, will abuse the system, but the payoff is worth it. The majority of customers want a good service and will return to the organisations where they have the least hassle, these customers far outweigh the dishonest ones and building this mindset into their culture is why Amazon managed to take on a giant like the publishing industry and why Zappos have been so successful.

This point of this post is not about building great customer service centres [stating the obvious], what the aforementioned organisations have proved, is, by empowering their staff to make decisions it has benefitted the organisation. Instead of relying on a strict set of rules on how to treat customers, they have built a culture around an important part of their business; customer service, and empowered  their staff to make that part of the business a strength. It is without doubt that these organisations were built with a competitive advantage based on winning all those customers who were disappointed with the service from competitors and who could no longer be bothered to complain.

When we look at the culture of organisations, there are many with buzz words which can be found on their company literature or websites: Courage, Passion, Brilliance, Loyalty etc. Some organisations even include platitudes into their staff handbooks. All these have no impact if the staff do not feel empowered, able to make decisions, feedback openly and feel involved and understand the business strategy. Giving your staff the freedom to make decisions and take ownership for the areas within which they work is the easiest way to see your culture gain strength and business thrive.

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Not all feedback is worth receiving. This is because there are two groups worth gaining feedback from on our work. The first group is the one who commissioned the work or are the target audience we are creating it for and trying to please. We may request their feedback or it may be provide as expected as part of the work delivered. This could be our boss or colleagues in the workplace or customers who buy our work. Whether we are making red widgets for people who like red widgets, the feedback from this audience lets us know if we are meeting their expectations. This is especially important in the workplace where our boss or colleagues may have commissioned the work. The feedback answers the questions: Did we meet the scope? Were the requirements met? Has the objective been achieved? The feedback from this group is vital to our ongoing delivery and success in pleasing the audience.

The second group are those who we request their feedback on the work. They don’t necessarily have any investment in the work; its success or outcome. This second group are people we seek out for their opinions even though we are aware they are not invested emotionally or financially. It makes them neutral most of the time and their views will differ to ours, which helps in providing a different perspective. They may be experts in the industry or a professional in some field providing an expert opinion, or even a friend or acquaintance whose opinion we value and respect.

The downside arises when we receive feedback which is unsolicited. An example are critics who always have an opinion but have never had to create themselves and can always (in hindsight) state what would have been better. This happens in the workplace when colleagues provide opinions on work from a personal perspective and not for the benefit of the business. They will usually start their sentence with the words like: “what would’ve made it better is…,” even though there hasn’t been any request for extra functionality or the requirements they are sprouting. With this latter group, more than often, the feedback is unsolicited.  Their opinions must be scrutinised and at times completely disregarded. We must ensure the feedback doesn’t cause us to change our work drastically or miss the scope. They can steer us into making our work generic, trying to meet everyone’s needs and including everything which can be a turn off for our audience, the output ends up banal and a disappointment. In organisations, this ends up being expensive (cost and time wise), doesn’t deliver on the requirements and can be obsolete as soon as it is delivered.

Feedback is a great tool in aiding development and progress. When unsolicited, the idiom “take it with a pinch of salt” is exactly how we must deal with these opinions.  There will be little gems in some of them, useful titbits, generally though, we have to be cautious how much we digest and implement in our work. We need to weed out the noise and take onboard the valuable comments. The audience providing the feedback should be our focus and there is nothing wrong deciding at times to disregard the feedback and opinion of others.

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The hardest three words to admit to ourselves are – I am wrong. A lot has been written on starting projects and reaching for our goals. In particular, I have written  blog posts on pushing our boundaries and personal development. This is because, the only way to achieve what we want in life that is worth doing, is by stepping out of our comfort zone. The only way this will happen is when we start doing something, anything, towards these goals and dreams. Along the way we will fail at some endeavours, things won’t happen for us the first time or even possibly the third time, and many of us are learning to regularly review our progress and keep striving and adapting. This all works until we encounter that stark reminder ourselves that we are wrong. Although it is understood by most of us that we are fallible and willing to admit to making a mistake or taking a risk that has not paid off, it is tougher to admit we are wrong as this means our whole decision making process can be challenged; all the time. This isn’t admitting being wrong on one decision, this covers our opinions on everything. What makes us believe our world view is right (and others wrong) about anything we decide. We all have read about experts in a field proved completely wrong, this despite years of experience and their knowledge being revered by fellow professionals. The medical field is a a good example, it was no more than fifty years ago medical doctors were promoting smoking of a cigarette as a quick fix to deal with the onset of an asthma attack. Today that advice seems ludicrous and would damage the reputation of any medical professional who provided it.

Does this mean we are bound to thinking and re-thinking every decision and choice we make? Certainly not. It doesn’t mean all our judgements have to be questioned nor should we become petrified to make a decision. A part of knowing we are wrong is understanding why mistakes happen. The more important part is accepting that others may be right and it is worth consider, without dismissal, their opinions. This is clear in our personal relationships where the misunderstandings and opinions of both parties, can only see their viewpoint as the right one, implying the other is wrong, which can damage the health of the relationship.

Business relationships suffer the same flaw especially inter-organisational ones between colleagues. How can we take on the advice of others and be ready to change the way we work or the improve on our ideas, if we believe our ability and know-how makes us right. Sure, we may accept some changes to our original idea; however, we have to be open to the idea being wrong and a better one may be suggested with a different route to follow. This is the role business leaders play and why great ones are admired. Finding the balance between taking a risk, accepting mistakes, willing to be wrong and admitting to it, accepting others suggestions and choosing when to dismiss others; is a great skill. One learnt by being aware of our human flaw: the ability to be wrong and therefore challenge our own decisions.

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Peer pressure has a bad name. In the news when peer pressure is mentioned, it always has a negative connotation. This is usually in reference to teenagers and their social circles that lead to smoking, drugs or alcohol abuse or the social environments that breed gangs. There are varying degrees of peer pressure, such as, the influences from a group of friends convincing us to stay out late at a party on a weekday night with work the following day, which although  generally harmless are still forms of peer pressure. The more subtle instances are when we buy a luxury car because the group we align ourselves with and socialise, is one where cars are a main talking point. We want to be involved in the conversation and part of group, without any outward pressure from the people in the group, we push beyond what we would normally purchase to get a car which fits in with the group. This same behaviour is evident with fashion trends among ‘fashionistas’, hipsters and teenage groups or the purchase of the latest gadgets among certain geek and gadget lover groups. These examples are different to having the same interest in a group. The e difference is the social standing within these groups changes our behaviours in certain ways that we normally would not display, which shows peer pressure influencing our choices and behaviours.

Peer pressure is always seen as a negative, a lot has to be said (and should be) about positive peer pressure. When the groups we choose to associate with change our behaviours for the better, they have to be viewed as a good thing. Paternity groups are especially good at this, their purpose being baby boomers supporting baby boomers. Also study groups are a good example and why these groups are actively encouraged in Universities. They promote collaborative working and although there is evidence these groups do not benefit everyone as some people work better alone, when they have a good balance across personalities, they can be the perfect storm for positive peer pressure. The people in the group discuss the subject, encourage one another, promote group and personal study and support one another. All involved in the group play their part and input more effort into their personal work to give more to the group. This is positive peer pressure influencing the personal behaviour of all those involved in the group.

The main reasons we create and seek communities is to gain positive support from others. We don’t aways realise positive or negative impacts a group may have on us. If we start considering how we behave and react in our social groups, we will be able to identify those that have a positive effect on us. In these groups, we need to encourage and promote the pressure. Personal development is not complete as an individual activity, having the addition of positive group support and pressure to push us to meet our own goals is the only type peer pressure we need and should embrace whole heartedly.

Any organisation where staff are punished for failures will always struggle to innovate. The mindset on education versus punishment as a way to lead people, is a very personal one and passionate debates can be witnessed when raised. When speaking to criminologist, many express how punishment does not improve offenders and, it is actually counter productive to rehabilitation and avoiding repeat offences. Understandably when dealing with the cause and effects of crime, it is as complex as the solutions are varied and debated.

When the debate is in relation to organisations, it is not that complex. Let’s be clear, mistakes referred to here are different to flouting of the rules that could cause harm to others i.e. not following procedures in the healthcare industry.Where do we develop this culture of punishing individuals who make mistakes or teams that fail to deliver? The punishments take many forms from a disapproving leader’s verbal onslaught to demotion or even losing ones job. When an error occurs, it can feel like a witch hunt. The blame game goes into hyper drive, a large amount of energy is wasted identifying who did what, when, where, how and why. What a waste of resources and time. We forget that the ultimate goal at every organisation is to implement change and innovate. These are the only surefire ways to achieve the company objective, whether that is to gain more customers, increase donors , make a profit or effect change on the world. Keeping staff in a state of fear does not create a motivating environment. These are all obvious, speak to any HR manager and they will reaffirm it, alas, you will still find leaders promoting a culture of punishment over education.

You can find this behaviour in schools, yes, this goes back to our childhood. When we are at school, we encounter different educators with one of two methods of dealing with students who are failing. One approach is to take an educational approach, they will give the student extra time, suggest areas to work on, invest their personality into developing the student. They care and invest the time, not to receive appreciation from their students (who may not reciprocate), merely as they believe that is their role as educators. The alternative approach is the punishment route, the educator rebukes the student, apportions blame for their lack of understanding, suggest they drop the course or worse, ignores them altogether.  The student has not been afforded the time and the incorrect lesson is learnt, that failure is punished. This is not to pick on educators, the student must play their part and put in the effort and willing, however it is the difference between great educators and mediocre ones, the former being a positive influence.

Once a leader decides to use punishment, the team learns this is the modus operandi. The culture spreads and everyone makes sure they “cover their back” with any important work. Time is wasted sending emails or documents back and forth, everything signed by someone else. No one is willing to take the fall if it all goes wrong. If instead the leader chooses to educate the team, using the lessons learnt to learn lessons [obvious I know] and encourages the team to apply them without any negative connotations, the team is more positive and willing to try again. These are the teams every organisation needs and why leaders have to look beyond punishment in building successful ones.

One of the most frustrating traits of a weak leader is indecision. In any organisation where leaders delay or fret over making a decision or attempt to avoid it, you’ll find frustrated and unmotivated staff. There is a difference between leaders who make rash decisions based on ego, pride, misinformation or a whim and those who become paralysed when one [a decision] arises. This does not mean organisations require crazed glory hunters or thrill seekers who live for the chaos, and, cannot wait to be in the heat of a situation to start make rash, split second decisions without taking into account any information, long-term impact or the desired outcome. These individuals are as damaging to the company, as indecisive ones, because they leave an aftermath to clean up from the impact of their impetuous behaviour. The frustration for staff with weak leaders is bearing witness to their delay tactics, disguised as needing more information, more comfort with the options, better guarantees etc. All of which are a fear of failure in the form of making the wrong decision. Any leader who operates in this way, inadvertently pushes the same traits to their subordinates. The message being – be cautious, be sure, don’t make a mistake and the result is a team who struggle to accept failure as part of the process. The team become obsessed with obtaining cast iron guarantees for any action they choose, of course this is a fallacy and when one of the options chosen goes wrong [which is guaranteed] it is hard to accept, leads to blame, finger pointing and leads to the team becoming more cautious. The organisation suffers, with the fear of making a decision, means less risks are taken and innovation suffers.

The ability to make decisions in high pressure situations is developed from experience and habit. An example is, when we visit a restaurant with a group of friends. The menu is handed round and we begin the back and forth conversation either internally or out loud. Maybe we’ll have the fish of the day or the vegetarian meal, we really fancy the beef, actually the lamb looks good. On and on this can go, with everyone discussing what to have. At some point the waiter returns and one person at the table places their order and the waiter turns to us with the words, “What will you be having”, we are forced to make a choice. We may try stalling the waiter by asking if everyone has chosen, on receiving a confirmed answer of ‘yes’, we make up our mind immediately and choose a meal. The reason is straightforward, we do not want to delay further and be responsible for holding up everyone’s meal. We are forced into a decision. As soon as the choice is made, we settle back into conversation with friends, the pressure is gone.

It does not matter what position we hold within an organisation, we all have to make decisions of varying importance in our lives and our career work. Using the aforementioned scenario, it is a good reminder of how we can train ourselves to make decisions. Rather than being pressured by friends waiting on us or the waiter in the restaurant, we can apply the pressure on ourselves. The next time we are at a restaurant we give ourselves five minutes  to choose from the menu as soon as it is picked up or handed to us, no longer is allowed, our meal must be chosen. The same applies principle is to be applied when making a larger purchase decision, we give ourselves a challenging time limit, depending on if we need to get extra information and with said time, a decision must be made.

All of this is how we can train ourselves to be decisive and the more scenarios we expose ourselves to, the better we become. Making decisions will not suddenly be acquired when we fall into a leadership position. To develop the skill we will have to practice and this means making decisions without faltering or dithering, at every opportunity.

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