This Is Going To Hurt Me More Than It’s Going To Hurt You

“You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? Then who the hell else are you talkin’ to? You talkin’ to me? Well, I’m the only one here. Who the f**k do you think you’re talking to? Oh, yeah? Okay!”–  Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver

“A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.” – Timothy Ferriss

This is my last Mastermind Project blog post of the year and I wrestled with what I wanted to say and how to say it for quite a while.

I was going to recap the year by reliving the big wins of the group and by telling everyone to be grateful for their blessings. Blah blah blah. I couldn’t bring myself to do that. As you have probably noticed, we in the Mastermind Project have different writing styles and different themes that we like to explore. A theme I will be exploring with you is the art of uncomfortable conversations and facing harsh realities.

My writing tends to be very personal. I don’t mind. Exposing shortcomings and admitting mistakes is how we grow.  I am figuring this stuff out just like you are. Just because none of us in the Mastermind Project is perfect nor have we achieved all of our goals does not mean that there is nothing to learn from us and our journeys. Truth is truth. Messages sometimes have to be separated from their messengers.

So, instead of patting ourselves (myself included) on the back for a job well done this year, I’d like to call bullshit. I’d like us to force ourselves to take a good hard look in the mirror and look at reality for what it is. Did we do our best? Did we learn from our mistakes? Did our egos get in the way of learning? Did fear paralyze us yet another year?  We cannot afford to spend another year fooling ourselves.  It’s time to take the Band-Aid off.

In the spirit of the holidays, below are short messages that some of us should have gotten in our holiday cards. Some of these will sting a bit, but each card is me speaking to myself just as much as me speaking to you. If none of these apply to you, congratulations. Or, you might want to skip to the “Rationalizer.” You may be in worse shape than I thought.

Remember: this is going to hurt me more than it is going to hurt you.

Selfish and Single

Dear Selfish and Single,

Another year has passed and you are still single. You are not totally to blame for your predicament.  There are significant social and economic shifts that are taking place which have created disruptions in the dating market. So what? I want to share with you what I observed and heard from you all year. First, you are entitled. If you are a part of my generation, you are a victim of the self-esteem movement. Yes, victim. You have been coddled and told you were special your whole life. A lot of what you’ve gotten out of life has been given to you or it just worked out. Until now. When I talk to you about dating and/or marriage you can’t help but to tell me who you are looking for and what that person has. That’s because you don’t understand love and you think that a mate is a special prize to you for being so “special.”

You’re not that special. Just because you want something doesn’t mean that you will get it nor do you deserve it. In 2012, focus on love and not your ego.  Ask yourself if you are who you are looking for. You probably weren’t in 2011. Love is not about you. Love is about giving. You keep complaining about what you’re not getting. I don’t know what that is, but it’s not love.

P.S. I know it’s hard for you, but be patient. The world doesn’t revolve around you. Good things often take time.

Money Bookmark Man

Dear Money Bookmark Man,

Congratulations. You spent another year complaining about money. Don’t get me wrong – money is important. However, study after study reveals that past a certain point, the incremental happiness provided by money is just not that great. So instead of taking a good hard look in the mirror and actually deciding what will make you happy and what fulfills you, you take the shortcut.  All you say is, “When I make more money, THEN I will figure out what I want to do.” Sadly, it doesn’t work that way. Rather, it shouldn’t have to be that way. The money bookmark allows you to not take responsibility for today. Since you don’t really know what you want, there is no actual dollar amount in the future that will satisfy you. So, you can play the money bookmark game for decades instead of going for it. If money is the only hurdle, then I challenge you to sit down and price out everything you need/want to be content. Put a dollar amount on everything. Everything. Once that is tallied up, write down a plan to get money out of the way. The first step is to identify what you spend money on now that didn’t make it on your list of items that would make you content and eliminate them. You probably won’t do this because you will most likely see that it is fear and not money that is holding you back.

P.S. “If…then happiness” never works, but this one is a real stinker.

Man Trapped in the Xbox

Dear Man Trapped in the Xbox,

You are over the age of 25 and the only conversations that you have with your male friends revolve around women (actually sex), money, sports and video games. I love all of these things. However, if you have not reached a level of friendship with your male peers beyond these topics, you are hanging out with the wrong people and you don’t have real friends. You have Call of Duty buddies.  One thing that amazes me about the Mastermind Project is that after the first six months of meeting every other Wednesday we stopped talking about bullshit. We took the fig leaves off and started talking about real life things. As men, we pride ourselves on being strong. Strength to me is telling your friends that you miss a parent that has passed on or sharing that you have met the woman of your dreams or that you have always wanted to climb a mountain or donate a building in the memory of your grandmother. It’s not about sitting on the couching discussing feelings with Dr. Phil. It’s knowing that if anything should happen to you, there are men you call friends who will make sure that your family is taken care of.

P.S. For those of you who are slow… those will not be your Call of Duty buddies

The Procrastinator

Dear Procrastinator,

You didn’t do anything last year. Why on Earth would we expect anything different from you this year? Please don’t litter our email, Facebook or cell phones with grand pronouncements of what you are going to do. We don’t believe you. Next year, give us a call when something is done and there is evidence that supports your claim. We love you. You have time. You just don’t have a lot of time to waste.

P.S. You would amaze people if you just showed up to things for one whole month 15 minutes early.

The Self Saboteur

Dear Self-Saboteur,

Bravo. Another year has passed and you could have succeeded if you wanted to, but you didn’t want to succeed.  You showed up late. You didn’t study. You made excuses. You blamed others. You half-assed it at work. You did everything in your power to assure your ego that it couldn’t be bruised because you never really tried. It is quite remarkable actually. It takes a lot to sabotage oneself. Sooner or later your self-image must come into contact with this harsh place that we all know as reality. I know you think you’re better than Kobe Bryant and Derrick Rose. It’s easy to say it from a couch and you’re 25 pounds overweight. Why don’t you get out there? Show us what you are made of. Oh yeah, that’s right. I know why not. Deep down in a place you are afraid to acknowledge, you know that your ego isn’t real and you’re probably not that good, smart, good looking, cool, etc. It’s easier to be a legend in your mind than to try in the real world where you might fail. Next year, you should pick 12 things that you have never tried before. You will suck at them all. By the end of 12 months, you will realize that everyone sucks when they start and it’s not the end of the world.

P.S. You are probably also Selfish and Single and string multiple people along to feel good instead facing the vulnerability of actually liking one person who might not like you back. Stop it. You are wasting a lot of good people’s time.

The Rationalizer aka Too Smart to be Delusional

Dear Rationalizer,

You are one of my favorites.  You cannot be wrong. People with different political, economic or social points of view are clearly intellectually inferior. You believe what you believe because you are enlightened and informed. Except none of this is true.  The truth is that you cannot even trace the origins of your beliefs. Most of your beliefs stem from emotional reactions of which you are not even aware.  But you are smart. That’s what your ego says to you at least.  It turns out that not feeling smart (or right or pretty) is something that our psyches cannot handle very well. So here is what you do. You rationalize. You watch the TV stations where people have your same views. You hang around people who engage in the same behaviors. The next time you catch yourself doing something that is questionable, dangerous or just plain dumb and your justification is, “Everybody is doing it,” you are the rationalizer. It’s the reason that 90% of the people in this country believe that they have above average intelligence and why politicians can get away with saying things like “I want everyone to be rich,” when, by definition, neither of those statements can be true.  My gripe with you is not that you are delusional. We all are. My gripe is that you foist your world view on the rest of us. You blindly believe that if the world just saw things your way, it would be a better place, not realizing that some of us disagree with you now and would be miserable in your utopia.  You think you know more than you do and this arrogance thoroughly screws the rest of us.

P.S. As a society we MUST stop rewarding these people and assuming that this is what leadership is about. If we do not allow our leaders the freedom to look at facts, assess situations and change their minds when the situation calls for it, we will be stuck with smart people chained to terrible ideas.

All of Us

Dear Us,

I want to conclude this post with a simple request. Before the clock strikes midnight on the 31^st of December, I want us to go into the bathroom for 10 minutes and ask the following questions as honestly as possible.

• What is true regardless of whether I believe it or not (Hint: gravity and death are good places to start)?
• What are the three biggest lies I am telling myself right now? (I didn’t gain weight? All of my past relationships are the other person’s fault? Maybe.)
• Who are the people in my life that allow me to lie to myself the most? (Am I surrounded by  yes people? Probably.)
• Regardless of how people might judge me, what do I REALLY want from life? (Spend 5 minutes on this one. Ignore everyone. Your family. Your religion. Your kids. Your education. Keep it 100% with yourself.)
•  Why am I afraid to try, fail and/or make a mistake in public when I have already done all three?
• Why will this New Year be any different from the last one?

A year’s worth of blogs here at the Mastermind Project cannot help you in any way until you sit down, take off the mask and look at reality for what it is. Until you do so, you are trying to change a reality you cannot see. It would be like trying to make out someone’s face in a hall of mirrors. You can tell it’s a face, but the mirrors distort the features so much that you might be mistaking a nose for an ear.  Some things are true whether you believe them or not. You don’t have to believe in gravity. Go ahead and drop a bowling ball on your foot from 10 feet in the air and see what happens.  The truth hurts, especially about us.  However, if I didn’t give you this medicine before the New Year, I wouldn’t be your friend. I’d be your Call of Duty buddy. And you mean more to me than that.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. RIP Steve Jobs

P.S. I wrote each and every letter above to myself. Trust me. It hurt me more than it hurt you.