About 3 hours ago I had dinner with an old friend I had not seen in a while. During our conversation she let me know that over the last several weeks she had been incredibly busy with holiday activities. Work parties, ugly sweater parties, keg parties and hell maybe even an egg nog party. I say that in jest however I know she has been busy with the holidays.
I can only imagine what it would be like for someone who was married and had kids. All the events leading up to the Christmas or Hanukkah must be exhausting, let alone the events themselves. I purposely put off a grand opening event at my new studio just because it was December and I didn’t want to monopolize anymore of my people’s time.
What I am getting at is time is limited. Food choices are plenty but they can be very unhealthy and not what we would classify as “JB friendly.” All in all this time of year is hard on everyone, including our fitness goals. SO…after thinking about what I wanted to say tonight, I decided to share with you all my 5 Pillars for success. They also happen to be my companies core values.
Inspiration
It can often be hard to get inspired to workout or eat right during this time of year. However, we must all realize that one bad meal does not mean you have to eat another and another. Stop the snowball effect by realizing this is marathon and not a sprint. Also, become inspired to inspire others. Others that may be going through something that you have been through. This is an important pillar of success. What goes around comes around.
Motivation
It can be just as hard to become motivated to keep good patterns rolling. Motivation can come from within or it can be external. However, do not be a procrastinator and say you will get to it after the first of the year. Time is ticking and time waits for no one. Start now or continue the path that you have been on. Do not quit.
Accomplishment
A big thing for me with clients are “small victories.” Whether it being able to walk up the stairs without feeling faint or being able to hop off the table with no issue or being able to accept their body for what it is, accomplishment is huge. This time of year we should all reflect on things we have accomplished and continue to build as we move into 2015.
Greatness
“The way you do anything is the way you do everything.” That quote defines greatness. If you are going to do it, do it all the way. No half-stepping. Go all in and never turn back.
Experience
“Life is the about the journey.” Enjoy the ride and hope that every experience can be learned from and built upon for future encounters.
Do not sweat the small stuff and keep your head on straight during the 20 plus days. January will be here before you know it. If you want to get a quick start on your New Year’s Resolution, look no further than yours truly.
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Dec 10, 2014 at 1:30 PM ET
I don’t like to ever be negative, especially on Facebook.
But if there was ever a time for a Facebook “Dislike” button to exist, it is now, for Facebook co-founder, Chris Hughes, for dabbling with and then destroying one of our nation’s most respected and thoughtful political publications, The New Republic magazine.
How does one person so single-handedly undo in two years what hundreds of literary giants toiled so diligently and relentlessly for over a century to create and build? The answer to that question –about an astonishing failure– is unfortunately not nearly as interesting or as unlikely as Facebook’s astonishing success.
It is instead the same timeworn story of someone who confuses great ability and success in one area to translate into great ability and success in other and unrelated areas.
For Chris Hughes of Facebook fame it was assuming being a star in anticipating a new niche in the new online medium of social media would mean brilliant success in creating a new niche in the old print medium of political analysis and commentary. Mr Hughes, of course, was wrong.
As stunningly wrong as he was stunningly right about his earlier success with Facebook.
In Mr Hughes’ case, it was hubris caused not from too much intelligence but from too little self-awareness of his own capabilities (and perhaps too much money and idle time) that led instead to his brilliant debacle with the New Republic. And that is worthy of an over-sized and emphatic Facebook “Dislike.” If it existed.
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Dec 10, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET
Is Chivalry Dead?
Not in Louisville, Kentucky, it’s not.
As I was leaving an event the other night, I walked outside with a group of people including a friend and one of the co-hosts, the lovely Tammy York-Day. I decided to walk Tammy to the multilevel parking lot nearby where we both had parked –as any Southern gentleman would be expected to do.
It was dark out and as we peered into the parking garage it was eerily quiet.
I had parked on the 2nd floor and Tammy told me she had parked on the 4th floor.
“What does modern day chivalry command?” I wondered to myself.
OK. I didn’t really wonder that to myself. What I really thought to myself was “Oh, Sh*t! Am I expected to go all the way to the 4th floor with Tammy and to pretend like I am going to protect her?” I didn’t say this out loud, of course. Just thought it. And then I thought, “I really don’t want to do that. It is two extra full floors up and it is late and I am a little scared to go up there with only Tammy to protect me.” I didn’t say that out loud either.
My mind immediately went into overdrive to quickly come up with an alternative plan. One that was still within the realm of chivalrous but not overly or absurdly chivalrous.
Instead of walking toward the elevator I started up the stairs. I let Tammy take the elevator. It would be harder, I reasoned, for Tammy to expect me to walk up two extra flights of stairs than I needed to for my car. And I figured since her car was on the 4th floor, Tammy would prefer the elevator and she did.
But my real save was I yelled out to Tammy as I said good-bye, “I promise to wait here on the stairs until you get to your car and I will listen for sounds of scuffling or screaming. If you get mugged or attacked just scream as loudly as you can.” I continued explaining my chivalrous plan, “I will be able to hear you because a scream from the 4th floor of the parking garage will carry to the 2nd floor where I will be with my car. Then I will start screaming and from the 2nd floor my scream would be heard at the street level,” and hopefully someone would hear and come to the rescue. Someone other than me, that is.
It was a brilliant, fool-proof, and yet still chivalrous plan.
But as we stood at the stairs and elevator, it became obvious to me Tammy was wondering what would happen if she was attacked then and there. I knew exactly how to calm her worries. I reassured Tammy that even though I wasn’t a tall guy or especially strong guy or even an overly masculine guy, I did have a big vocabulary and high emotional IQ and could use sarcasm —biting sarcasm, if necessary —and “shaming,” shaming from childhood parental wounds, if necessary. I explained I had a powerful “Disappointed father” look I could use on any attacker. And combined with devastating sarcasm, I had a powerful “one -two punch” (metaphorically speaking) that would knock back any attacker who was foolish enough to try to harm her.
Although she didn’t say anything, I could tell Tammy felt safe and secure with a Southern –and chivalrous– gentleman so close by as I stood in the stairwell about a dozen feel away explaining everything (so I wouldn’t have to go all the way up to the fourth floor with her).
As I waved goodbye and promised to wait to see if she screamed from the 4th floor, Tammy knew one thing for absolute certain: That chivalry was far from dead. That chivalry was, in fact, alive and well and flourishing tonight —at least here in Louisville, Kentucky for Tammy York-Day.
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Dec 9, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET
When I was a young man and someone said something that offended me, I would imagine my eyes lighting up and transforming into the Incredible Hunk — and mauling the offending person.
But now when I am offended, I imagine my eyes going dim and transforming into Super Guru –and forgiving the offending person.
And then turning into the Incredible Hulk and mauling him
By Erica and Matt Chua, on Tue Dec 9, 2014 at 8:30 AM ET
The saga of Sapa begins in the small hill tribe villages, whose civilizations have yet to reap the benefits of modernization. They have recently been inundated with tourists, however many of the traditions of the Black H’mong and Red Dao people persist. In particular the traditions that dictate love hold strong and the courtships of very young villagers are short and arranged, but I learned from our young trekking guide Coo that it is a little more complicated than that.
At first glance Coo looked like the twelve year old daughter of one of the travelers in her bright pink, rhinestone studded jacket talking on her cell phone. Upon closer examination I could here that she was clearly speaking in a foreign tongue, wearing a traditional skirt and had long, silky black hair to her knees. As we began our trek I hurriedly caught up to Coo as I had lots of questions for her, much to my pleasure she was happy to chat and eager to share her life with me. We became fast friends.
She was only sixteen years old, but clearly wise beyond her years. She had gone to school up until high school as her family could no longer afford to send her and she could contribute more by supporting her family as a trekking guide. It was clear that her dreams lie in Hanoi where she could get a proper education and have some independence before she married at 25 rather than fourteen like many of her peers that by sixteen already had one or two children. She was rare in the villages surrounding Sapa with her hopes of delaying marriage and going to school, but the constant Western influence of trekking tourists surely swayed her opinions.
As told by Coo the traditional path to marriage in many of the small villages surrounding Sapa started with a “kidnapping” of the fourteen year old soon-to-be-wife to their future husbands home to meet his family and gain their approval. A dowry was arranged for the girl, which often included a combination of money, animals and textiles. The steps that followed were quick, starting with the new wife taking up residence in her husband’s family’s home and then quickly moving into child bearing and child rearing. Love may or may not ever be part of the equation at any step in the process. Her feelings on the subject were clear, fourteen was much too young to marry.
The more we talked the more complex it got; for those of her friends that didn’t have a traditional path to marriage they risked being kidnapped and sold just over the border into China. With China’s strict laws on having just one child, many people abandon girls in hopes of having a boy. This has created an abundance of boys with no prospects for marriage. Girls in Sapa may also be considered a burden or embarrassment to their families because they were not married off. All of this is slowly changing and Coo is an example of that, but she was still saddened when she spoke of friends that had disappeared, presumably to China.
All of this sixteen year old drama was interrupted frequently by her cell phone buzzing, which indicated another incoming text message. One from a Singaporean she had guided on a trek a few months ago and another from a local boy telling her he loved her and wanted to get married. All of this made me a little more suspicious of her dramatic love stories, she may be wise beyond her years, but she is still “sweet sixteen.” All of my conversatios with Coo led to one clear conclusion, village love is certainly much different from courtships and weddings at home.
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Dec 8, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET
It looked like it was about to really happen. That rare and unnatural act that violates the most deeply entrenched parts of our genetic code: A wife apologizing to her husband.
There we were. Standing in my home office. Rebecca had initiated the conversation to bring resolution to the issue of who was most to blame for us going to bed sulking last night that led to 5 consecutive hours this morning of short matter-of-fact sentences, no ‘love’ or even ‘L’ at the end of text messages, pained pouting and the inability to smile at one another –although admittedly Rebecca had tried breaking the tension with a smile at around 10am but I stopped her “c’mon, let’s get over this silly thing smile” with a stern look that said,”Not this time. An example needs to be made. That was my favorite show last night you kept me from watching. And this cannot stand.”
Rebecca read me loud and clear and dropped all pretense of believing a casual reconciliation for last night’s transgressions were within reach.
There we stood. At that quiet and serious marital face-off. Who would blink first? More often than not, it is me (that is to say about 99.7% of the time). But not today. And Rebecca knew it. She could tell we were standing in the middle of one of those rarified historic moments like when Cicadas return or Haley’s Comet passes. There was a cosmic tinge in the air that made one feel like the universe was about to crack.
Rebecca slowly opened her mouth and sighed, “I…” She faltered momentarily as she struggled to form the sound of a soft “a” that begins the word “apoligize.” But she got it out. Then seemed to recover as she finished the entire sentence, “I….apologize….that you got angry with me last night.”
Rebecca exhaled. Relieved it was finally over. Or so she thought.
“What?” I blurted. “You…you are sorry for my bad reaction? That’s not an apology. That doesn’t count,” I reasoned. “You can’t, technically, apologize for someone else’s bad reaction to something you do. I mean…You can only apologize for you say or do” I paused for effect. “You see what I am saying?”
Rebecca knew she had missed the mark…and was willing to try tried again. Digging deeper into her guilty conscience than maybe ever before from an argument involving watching television together, the apology began tumbling out . “I apologize…for making you angry” I vigorously started shaking my head “no” but Rebecca rebounded with “and my part in causing that.”
Oh my Gosh. O!M!G! I ….I was completely overwhelmed! And touched! And touched deeply enough that at that exact moment everything seemed right in the world again. And it seemed crystal clear to me that God not only was real…but was standing somewhere behind me in my home office –where he was mouthing the words for Rebecca to repeat so that my over-sized hurt from my super-sized overly-sensitive feelings could be suaved over –finally. Like a mommy who realizes her 5 year old crying son just skinned his knee and almost broke the skin and that she has to pretend like it might require a trip to the emergency room to pacify the son and make him feel loved. Except instead of the son being 5 he is 51.
And God worked His magic. His grace. All was right again. I was able to forgive Rebecca even though she feel asleep during my favorite show last night and was snippy when I kept asking her if she was still awake (even though I already knew she wasn’t because I held my hand in front of her face for over 30 second and she never said anything).
She doesn’t know it yet. But at the end of my next text message to Rebecca, I plan on ending it with a capital ‘L.’ For love.
Heck I may just spell out the whole entire word ‘Love.’ I feel like after Rebecca’s soul-searching apology for last night’s TV debacle, it is the least I can do. And that, all things considered, I am a pretty darned lucky guy.
This is the ninth of a series of conversations originally published on the Time site, authored by Nicha Ratana and myself, with transformational leaders who will be storytellers at the BIF10 Collaborative Innovation Summit in Providence, RI.
“Today, smaller and smaller teams are building bigger and bigger things, faster,” he explains. In today’s marketplace—which is streamlined by technology and defined by abundant choice— “corporate muscle mass” such as factories and storefronts have lost the clout they had 50 years prior.
“What customers really crave is a sense of humanity,” claims Taylor.
“Leaders of economically successful organizations are every bit as rigorous about the human side of their enterprises as they are about R&D and acquisitions,” he maintains. Taylor encourages us to recognize the influence of passion brands. “Apple, Google, HBO” he lists, all have dominated their industry sectors thanks to the might of a zealous group of consumers.
“Ultimately, your culture is what sustains your strategy.”
The aspect of technological revolution that currently fascinates Bill Taylor is the power of businesses that are facilitated by technology, but driven by a human touch.
As a primer, he shares three guidelines for companies looking to embrace this new culture of work:
Capitalize on what makes you unique.
Breakaway success requires a commitment to the unprecedented.
“If your customers can live without you, eventually they will,” warns Taylor. “You can’t just be the best at what you do—you have to be the only organization that does what you do.”
Taylor looks up to an early adopter of this principle: Southwest Airlines. “They were never a “low-cost” airline,” he argues, “they were a “big idea” airline.”
Taylor says, “Southwest’s purpose from day one was to ‘democratize the skies,’ to give rank-and-file families the freedom to fly. In the early 1970s when they began to operate, air travel was a luxury of business travelers and the well-to-do.”
Southwest was successful because “their strategy was completely at odds with the rest of the airline industry.”
Create meaning and camaraderie at every level of the organization.
Instead of giving their employees the chance to amass power to get rich, companies must instead help them unleash freedoms from within, allowing people in their ranks to give input about the goods and services they produce.
“People want their work to be consistent with what they care about as human beings,” Taylor says. “The best leaders unearth the passion, energy, and commitment of their people by enabling them to make a real difference to their customers and one another.”
He urges companies to examine themselves. He asks them, “What does it mean—in terms of the language, the daily rituals—to be a member of your organization?”
Taylor shares a revolutionary tip: “The real use of social media is not so that we can market our product to a broader audience, but to give our people the capacity to humanize our brand.”
Be kind—it’s more important than being clever.
We can’t thrive in a corporate world that sacrifices humanity for the sake of profit, Taylor maintains.
At a BIF Summit several years ago, Taylor shared a story of two automobile dealers his father encountered while shopping for a car.
The first dealer sold Cadillacs, a brand Taylor’s father had long been loyal to. Cadillac sent the man a $1,000 customer-loyalty discount in the mail, but because he wanted to buy a car 24 hours after the coupon expired, the dealer refused to honor it.
The second dealer sold Buicks. After a conversation with Taylor’s father, this dealer offered to honor the expired Cadillac discount. The same dealer let the man test-drive the car over a weekend, and, when an emergency surgery prohibited timely return of the vehicle, sent a lovely bouquet of flowers with a “hilarious note.”
“Which car do you think my father bought?” Taylor asks.
“Small gestures of kindness send big signals about who we are and why people should want to affiliate with us.” He adds, “It was the highest ROI on a bouquet of flowers in history.”
Bill Taylor says he “always looks forward” to the Collaborative Innovation Summit, hosted by the nonprofit Business Innovation Factory (BIF) in Providence, RI. Taylor has joined the lineup of radical business thinkers at BIF Summit more than once.
“I’m proud to say I crashed the first BIF Summit in 2004,” he says, “because I’ve been back every year since. It is one of the most exciting and authentic learning laboratories I’ve ever encountered.”
“Community is an overused word, but BIF truly is a community. We come together once a year, and learn from and support each other all the rest of the year.”
“I live for months off the energy that I get from the BIF Summit,” he professes. “It’s a poetry slam for innovators. What a refreshing break from standard operating procedure.”
The BIF Collaborative Innovation Summit combines 30 brilliant storytellers with more than 400 innovation junkies in a two-day storytelling jam, featuring tales of personal discovery and transformation that spark real connection and “random collisions of unusual suspects.”
By John Y. Brown III, on Fri Dec 5, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET
Going to a weekend spiritual retreat is about the scariest and most exciting plan you can have for a Friday night.
If you are going for the right reasons.
It’s not a business networking opportunity or about being liked. It’s not about looking good. It’s not about sounding good. It’s not even about being good.
It’s about thinking anew while also letting go of old thoughts and beliefs that no longer serve their purpose. It’s about being silent –or as quiet as you can be –on the inside. It’s about listening when you normally speak–and actually listening to understand. It is about NOT filling up awkward silences with others or when alone. It is about standing stiller and seeing more. It is not about meeting others but meeting yourself. It’s not about networking with others but about networking with God —which includes long awkward lulls. It is about being real and laying yourself as bare as you are able. And then peeling off one more layer after that.
But it is mostly about the difference between the man (or woman) you left with and the man (or woman) you return with.
And although you think only you will really know if you’ve changed, you are wrong. And if you do it right, you will be comfortable being wrong, again, about so many of the things you were so certain you had been right about just a few days earlier.
That is both the scary and the exciting parts of a real weekend spiritual retreat.
It used to be that sporting glasses was reserved for nerds like Lewis and Gilbert above. There was a stigma attached to it, so the people who did wear them only did so because they absolutely had to, and/or because they didn’t really care that much about their appearance.
But over the course of the past decade, all that has changed. There are tons of options for stylish frames, and glasses are now used as a tool for expressing one’s personal style. Check out heartthrob Jon Hamm in a classic black frame below. The look is clean, confident and smart.
If you’re thinking about updating your look, glasses are a fantastically handy way to do so. Read on for my tips on choosing a pair of frames. And by the way, if you don’t need glasses, don’t feel left out. Plenty of people sport specs sans prescriptions.
SHAPE
1) Angular-shaped glasses read as authoritative, while glasses with rounded shapes make you look approachable.
2) There’s a lot of information out there about what shape faces should wear what shape glasses. To me, it’s less about rules and more about choice. If you wear the same shape glasses as that of your face, you’ll reinforce that face shape; if you wear the opposite shape, it will balance your face shape. So there’s no “bad” or “good” here. Rather, it’s what you choose to play up. As a specific example, if you have a round face and want to look tougher and more commanding, I recommend wearing glasses that are squared off. Luxottica CEO Andrea (above) is doing just that.
3) The sides of your glasses should end between the corners of your eyes and the sides of your face. (However, if you have a long and narrow face and want to balance that, look for shapes that extend slightly beyond your temples so as to create width in your face. Also, people with long and narrow faces should avoid very small frames.)
COLOR AND MATERIAL
4) A very dark frame can make a strong, dramatic statement (it’s also trendy). If this is what you’re going for, be careful that the dark frame doesn’t overwhelm your own coloring. Check out the guy on the left above — his own coloring and features stand up to the heavy frames. In comparison, the dark frames on the right dominate Brad Pitt’s facial features. On him, you see the frames first before you see his face.
5) Choose a color or type of metal that works with your own coloring. If your skin tone is warm, go with warm-colored frames; if it’s cool, go with cool-colored frames. Hint: if you have grey hair, a silver frame can play off of that nicely.
6) Metal frames have a more modern and dressy feel, and plastic reads more casual. Tortoise frames have a preppy and collegiate vibe.
7) Avoid transition lenses, as they often end up in an unflattering middle-ground of lens color — not quite dark enough to be sunglasses and distractingly shaded for when out of UV-light. They also don’t darken inside vehicles, so they don’t work as driving glasses.
Read the rest of… Julie Rath: Glasses — Not Just for Nerds Anymore
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Dec 4, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET
Airports seem to be a good place to be if you are an asshole and want to go undetected.
Airports have lots of food to eat that neither tastes good nor is good for you nor is affordable. You don’t get that combination anywhere else I can think of.
Airports are a great place to buy books you will never read. And would never have bought if you hadn’t been stuck in an airport.
Airports are places where you can shop for things you don’t need and would otherwise never consider buying –and pay twice as much for them as you would anywhere else if you did decide to buy them for some inexplicable reason. And yet buying these things in airports still makes you feel a little bit better on the inside.
Airports are in-between places. And no one likes to admit they are in an in-between place. Especially when they are at an in-between place that looks like an in-between place.
At the departing airport you see people who look just like you that you are leaving behind, and that makes you sad. But you also sense that the place you are going is going to be a better place –just by looking at the people in your airport. And that makes you happy.
But when you arrive at your destination you can tell that the new place isn’t going to live up to your expectations. And you can tell by looking at the people in the arriving airport —who also look just like you do. And that makes you sad again.
Airports are places where women don’t always wear make-up. And men don’t notice because men get to scratch and pick in otherwise off-limit areas when they are at airports. And secretly believe if they wear shorts, white socks and black dress shoes in an airport nobody can really see what they are wearing. Not even the women still wearing make-up.
Airports are a good place to pick up fashion tips if you want to know what looks good when you are exhausted, irritable, impatient, bored, sweaty and have just over-eaten —and are about to lose your cover as an asshole.
And airports are a terrible place if you want to plug in and recharge the things that normally help prevent you from being an asshole.
And airports, best of all, are a place you can feel almost invisible as you watch tens, hundreds, maybe even a thousand people pass by as you as you pass judgment on their most human follies and foibles and momentary inadequacies. While feeling certain that no one else in the airport would even consider doing that to you. As you quickly look down to make sure you aren’t one of those guys who is wearing shorts, white socks and dress shoes and thinks he’s invisible.
About 3 hours ago I had dinner with an old friend I had not seen in a while. During our conversation she let me know that over the last several weeks she had been incredibly busy with holiday activities. Work parties, ugly sweater parties, keg parties and hell maybe even an egg nog party. I say that in jest however I know she has been busy with the holidays.
