“Small suggestion: don’t make ‘being young’ part of your identity. It’ll get harder to feel like yourself with each passing year…”
~ @BatKaren | Twitter post
Going through life, we gather and collect ideas. We paste these ideas into a mental scrapbook that inevitably influences or overtakes our thoughts. We fill our pages with things we’ve intentionally selected—a desired school, career, or mate. We fill other pages unintentionally with ideas from our relatives, neighbors, and the media we consume. We clip out scraps and pieces from books, movies, family, the people we see, or unknowingly from other sources. Some pages are just filled with idealized thinking.
I tried to go to college right after high school. It wasn’t a good fit for me at the time. I felt like a failure when I quit. I convinced myself that I was inferior to everyone else. I grew to hate social events. High school and college football are a huge deal in Texas. So, if the topic of football came up, I knew it was just a matter of time until people started talking about colleges. “Where did you go to school?” The question itself so clearly pointed out I was supposed to already have a degree.
These scrapbook pages serve as a guide to measure our desires, intentions, hopes, and dreams. We measure the success of our days against what we think life should be for us. If we aren’t paying attention, the guideposts we set for what we most value won’t even be things we truly care about, rather, things that we feel we are supposed to care about. When we inspect what we hold close and find that those beliefs haven’t grown with us, it is time to consider pruning.
My scrapbook contains a page that, as I have grown older and taken on new life experiences, has shifted throughout the years, titled Values. Currently, this page in my scrapbook includes five key sections:
1. Do I Matter To You (DIMTY)
2. What Matters Most (WMM)
3. Understanding
4. Compassion
5. Be curious, be kind, be whole, do good things.
DIMTY
This first section highlights the question DIMTY—Do I Matter To You? My friend Andy Hickman is a professional speaker and magician. In Andy’s book Stuff That Really Matters, he explains that his acronym ‘DIMTY’ represents a question we often silently ask ourselves when facing someone who seems to be focused on anything other than our interaction: DIMTY.
There is a deep psychological need to belong and to be valued. Our brains are still configured for life in the tribal plains. We fear being rejected due to our evolutionary response to preserve our role in the tribe. Life outside the tribe meant death. Nearly every interaction starts with the question, even if only as an undetected, subconscious feeling—do I matter to you?
A server at a restaurant didn’t listen to your order. The distracted receptionist didn’t instruct you clearly. The person you were sharing a personal story with began typing on their phone. If you have experienced any of these situations, then you know what it feels like when someone answers your DIMTY with No. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, they are telling you that, in that moment, you don’t matter. We want to matter. We need to matter. We can change so much by answering Yes to the silent question running through someone’s head when they encounter you: DIMTY?
WMM
Michael Weber, a Wonder-Worker and public speaker, said in a live lecture that when we need to focus, we should ask, What Matters Most? When we have that answer, we can prioritize properly and focus on what matters most.
Time and other resources spent in any one area take away from spending that time in other areas. When we focus on our career, family, or hobbies, time is taken away from something else. Understanding those trade-offs is key to successfully prioritizing WMM so that we can allocate our time in the way that leads us to the experiences that are most fulfilling in our lives. If we are constantly tackling what is directly in front of us at any given moment, we can easily miss the things that are truly important to our lives.
Once we clearly understand what matters most to ourselves, we can then, carefully and openly, listen to and ask questions of others. We can help them identify WMM to them. When our WMMs intersect, we can intentionally collaborate and move each other closer to our respective targets.
One of the biggest traps that we must avoid when deciding where to spend our time is the phenomenon known as a “fear of missing out” or FOMO. Advertisers have learned to manipulate this fear to sell more products. They pepper us with an act now or a limited-time offer, which creates a fear of being left behind. And we all have people in our lives who apply the same tactics when trying to re-prioritize where we spend our time. They say that if you don’t go to this concert or join them for those drinks, you’ll be missing out on something special. Without fully understanding what matters most to you and prioritizing your time accordingly, you easily fall into the FOMO trap. When we make time for the wrong things, we miss out on those that are truly special.
Oliver Burkeman, the author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, suggests that we pivot FOMO into JOMO or the Joy of Missing Out. The fear of missing out on something is an irrational fear. It is irrational because we are constantly and inevitably missing out on something. It is an unavoidable situation. Instead, we should determine what matters most right now and invest (not spend) our time and energy in those things. We will find joy in that worthy investment into our rest, play, or work. Don’t pay attention; invest attention.
Understanding and Compassion
We should not only accept who we are, but we should also be comfortable with ourselves. I want to create an environment that encourages others to be fully who they are. In return, I need to be comfortable being myself. Step one is knowing who I am.
In Dare to Lead, author Brené Brown recommends selecting two key core values. She says direct and explicit values will allow us to make decisions more easily. We will be stronger leaders and followers, especially during times of adversity. In The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, author Mark Manson suggests values should be both immediate and controllable. For example, I shouldn’t tie a core value to being young, since I cannot control growing older. I combined these authors’ suggestions and identified two core, controllable values that I prioritize as central to my being.
- Understanding means to “stand in the midst of.” It is not enough to know or see each other; we must be in it to truly understand each other.
- Compassion means “to suffer together.” Empathy is a powerful ability for connecting, but acting on empathy is deeply altering for everyone involved. We cannot touch without being touched.
Be curious, be kind, be whole, do good things.
Understanding and compassion are active values. These are forms of doing, which have been critical to all the success I have experienced. Over time, I have found four themes that continue to weave through most of what I believe: Be curious, be kind, be whole, do good things.
This simplified core philosophy reminds me how I can simultaneously accept who I currently am and still strive toward progress. The focus on being and doing has dramatically benefited how I view life, and, in turn, improved my appreciation and quality of life. They serve as a reminder to find balance and focus on what is important to me. Trying to jump into a massive change that ultimately fails has never worked for me. Consistency has led to greater change over time.
Be Curious ~ My curiosity means I know a bit about many things. Being inquisitive and having a basic understanding of a wide range of topics has led me to understand new concepts faster. It has enhanced my creativity when problem-solving and allowed me to connect with people more easily.
Everything we know and learn goes into our bag of tricks for later use. Curiosity enables us to develop tools, skills, and solutions before we need them. Our curiosity lets us learn more about those around us, expanding our ability to understand, empathize, and influence each other.
Be Kind ~ I feel better and less stressed when I am kind. I know others recognize and can feel it as well. When I assume the best intentions in others, I am right most of the time. Mistakes are rare.
We make the best decisions we can based on our life experiences at that point. When there is safety in allowing for error and differences, we can develop trust. This level of comfort allows everyone to be themselves—their entire selves—and leaves room for others to contribute their perspective and ideas, giving you access to points of view you wouldn’t have in an environment of fear and mistrust.
Be Whole ~ I am most comfortable when I accept who I am and allow myself to be complete. I connect more fully when I create a safe space for other people to be themselves.
Outside of where we are most comfortable, we put up a guard as a safety buffer. This armor causes us to protect ourselves by holding back, thus creating a small level of dishonesty. While the dishonesty may be imperceptible, it creates a layer of distrust. Trust, especially vulnerability-based trust, is critical to building the best relationship possible. When we bring out the entirety of who we are and allow ourselves to be wholly ourselves, unexpected results come from it.
Do Good Things ~ This one is far more loaded. I feel greater satisfaction when I am actively doing. This is especially true when my doing yields good things.
Michael Weber exposed me to the perspective of doing versus being. He said the idea originated with R. Buckminster Fuller’s book I Seem to Be a Verb. Weber discusses on the podcast Jesse’s Office that he is “better and happier in a verb mindset than as a noun mindset.” A verb mindset is “not a label of person, place, or thing—those have borders, whereas actions are not constrained.” He said that doing, which he called a “verb state,” is far better than any “noun state” or labels that we’ve assigned to ourselves. We easily fall short of a label or description because we don’t meet the ideal image attached to that label. When we tie our identity to being something, it can be very difficult to know if or when we arrive. A goal of doing is far more attainable and satisfying. With that accomplishment, we are moving forward in our lives and becoming more fulfilled. If we are doing things, they might as well be good things. The vagueness of the things is intentional—planning is essential, but without doing, the planning is futile.
Ultimately, the scrapbook page in my mind titled “Values” boils down to these two concepts: pay attention and be intentional. To let someone know they matter to me, I must invest attention in them and intentionally address their needs. To know what matters most to me, I must pay attention to my needs and intentionally address them. For me to understand, I must pay attention. To have compassion, I must act intentionally. The mission becomes pay attention and be intentional, or…
Be curious, be kind, be whole, do good things.
Mindset
There are many more scrapbook pages in my mind, and in the pages to follow, I will share some of the greatest hits—the experiences, movies I watched, books I read, and lessons I learned that have shaped who I am, who I want to be, and where I want to go. I hope that this book can help you as you wrestle with some of the same questions in your own life. If nothing else, there are some great stories in the mix.
I believed for a long time that I was just who I was. I felt stuck. Carol Dweck is a psychologist, researcher, and the author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. In her book, she explains the two primary modes of thinking: 1. Fixed, and 2. Growth. Our environment and upbringing condition us to believe one of two things: that our personal qualities, such as intelligence and empathy, are innate, unchangeable, and fixed, or that those qualities are capable of changing and guiding us to growth. This is similar to the belief that we are born a certain way (nature) or raised a certain way (nurture). The answer is the same as the nature versus nurture debate: both are factors.
However, mindset is a choice. If you believe you are stuck, fixed in your capabilities, then you are right. If you believe you can grow and change, you are right. Choose your own adventure.