Why are we all so busy?

Chinese New Year is not a time for drunken revelry and sequined hats like the new year celebration on the Gregorian calendar. Chinese New Year's Eve is when we gather in our houses for "reunion dinners" with family members. This year, I dined with my parents - both in their late seventies and spoke about my uncles and aunt - who'd all aged into infirmity and with declining health.

As they age into frailty, along with changes in the balance of power, come changes in the nature of love. I find myself feeling protective of my parents in new and disquieting ways. Just as I was once under the cover of their umbrella, they now seek shelter under mine. I give up a love that depends upon my parents and assume a new kind of love that is responsible for their welfare.

All of a sudden, I began to think about life - and death, love, God, suffering, forgiveness. Our lives change when we stop merely replying to questions and begin to ask them. I started asking questions. As I delved into my twenties and thirties, I could see that gradually I had allowed the hustle and bustle of the world to distract me, to affect me, to disorient me.

The world is full of men and women who work too much, sleep too little, hardly ever exercise, eat poorly and are always struggling to find adequate time to spend with their loved ones. We are in a perpetual hurry - constantly rushing from one activity to another. Realistically, there is never going to be a time when nothing is on our plate. At work, as leaders, we constantly see new things to fix or act upon. We are too busy for our own good. We need to slow down.

Is all this activity that clutters our lives helping us or is it hurting us?

We have more money and more choices, but less time. Less time to do the things that nurture well-being and less time to spend with the people who invigorate us. Life is not a competition to see who can collect the most expensive toys. The best things in life are not things - and sometimes less is more.

My experience as a leader has shown me that doing less but doing more of the right things are more effective. Do what counts.

 

Accept reality

The Trump era begins. The Guardian reported caution in China, sorrow and anger in Mexico as global responses to Friday’s power handover. Protests across America and the world overshadows his first 24 hours.

It is what it is.

Every day we're liable to encounter traumatic events that will depress, anger and all-around cripple us...if we let them. Maybe you wanted a job. But they decide to go with a different candidate. Maybe you wanted to go golfing. But there's a thunderstorm outside.

All of these things are common scenarios that cause us to lose our cool and get upset. And all of them are because reality is not matching up with what we wanted.
 
Why is it that some people fly off the handle at the smallest thing and other people seem to possess the patience of Job? Honestly, I don't know. But what I do know is that we can lengthen or shorten our fuse length. The way I see it, people don't have bad tempers; they have badly trained tempers.

The moment between an event which upsets us and response is where we choose how we are going to react. We can use that moment to breathe deeply or leave the room to compose ourselves.

Before we continue, let's get one thing straight: this does not mean that I advocate becoming a Buddhist monk who "submits" to everything and everyone, and relegates himself to a life of silence, prayer and meditation. No, not even close.

Each person has a temperament. Is it unpredictable and fiery? Is it calm and unhurried? Is it selfish and thoughtless? Is it generous and kind? The good news is that we can change it.

This is not to say I've reached this point - not even close to it. But this is an area I'm working very hard on.

In my 20's I had quite a temper. I was nicknamed "the executioner" on the football field. At work, I would bang tables, throw files across the room and yes, even slammed a flipchart board onto the ground once. I look back now and wonder where that person went.

The question is not "what is your temperament?" but rather "what would you like your temperament to be." I would like to be able to become a man who walks calmly, thinks calmly and acts calmly, even under pressure - especially under pressure.

 

Friends outperform acquaintances

When asked what the most difficult instrument in the orchestra is, Leonard Bernstein responded: "The second fiddle. I can get plenty of first violinists, but to find someone who can play the second fiddle with enthusiasm – that’s a problem; and if we have no second fiddle, we have no harmony."

Do you have a best friend at work?

Research suggests that workplace friendships yield more productive employees. Feeling a connection, when colleagues are close, a poor effort means letting down your friends. The social pressure to do a good job can often serve as a stronger motivator than anything a boss can say. Colleagues with better friendships also tend to stay on with their company for longer periods of time.

Hence as a leader, I work hard at promoting new employee connections and help sustain old ones. As a team, we went to Seoul for our kick-off meeting last week. From a financial perspective this can seem extravagant. Yet the value this trip yield to interpersonal connections - and therefore to team productivity - makes this a wise investment.

Getting a team into balance doesn't occur once. It requires perpetual work. Rather than viewing onboarding simply as a tool for getting new hires up to speed, I think of it as an opportunity for sparking employee friendships. True friendships can only emerge when there is an openness between colleagues.

We're more effective at working with out team mates when we're connecting on a personal level. When we see we're surrounded by people who care about us, it's a lot easier to perform.

 

Each and everyday we find new lessons to learn

This year ends in a 7. If you’re superstitious or a little loose with statistics, that makes us due for another financial crisis. The biggest one-day stock drop in Wall Street history happened in 1987. The Asian crisis was in 1997. And the worst global meltdown since the Great Depression got rolling in 2007 with the failure of mortgage lenders Northern Rock in the U.K. and New Century Financial in the U.S: reported by Bloomberg Businessweek

Many of us believe that when we graduate from high school, college or university, our education is finished. But our true schooling has only begun as we shift from word lessons to world lessons.

World lessons teach through experience. The lessons of experience are always positive, even if the experience is not. A book can point the way, but we must still make the journey. No matter what I may have learned in books, I have also lost face before I found wisdom, fell to my knees before I looked up to the heavens, and faced my darkness before I saw the light.

We feel frustrated when we don't get what we want, when we get what we don't want, and sometimes, even when we get exactly what we want.

Imagine you're 95 years old and ready to die. On your death bed, you're given a great gift: the ability to travel back in time - to talk to the "2017 you" who is ready is article, the ability to help this "2017 you" lead a better life. The 95-yeaold-old you understands what was really important and what wasn't, what mattered and what didn't. What advise would this wise "old you" have for the "2017 you" who is reading this article? Jot down a few words of what the old you would be saying to the younger you.

Once you've written these words down, the rest is simple: just do whatever you wrote down. Make it your resolution for 2017.

We can also gain lifetimes of street-smarts and higher wisdom by paying attention to the direct experience of others, as we learn from our own experience.

Over the years, I've witnessed people undergo miraculous transformation. I would like to hear about how you'd made changes in your own life.

 

You only have one life

Would you do anything differently if you knew you only had a year to live?

The Grim Reaper made 2016 annus horribilis and harvested indiscriminately, taking actors, comedians, musicians, writers and politicians and prompting a communal outpouring of grief.

Back to the question in the opening line. I guarantee priorities will come sharply into focus if you give serious thought to that question.

There exists within each of us a longing to leave a legacy, some proof that we were here. We need to know that our lives were important, that somehow our being here mattered.

Otherwise our lives are in danger of becoming an utter waste. We will become like a candle in the wind. We will achieve things, no doubt, and we will have things, but many years from now, in the dim light of our distant memories, we will remember the dreams we ignored and abandoned. Regret over things done can be eased over time. Regret over things left unsaid and undone is inconsolable.

I have noticed that everyone has dreams. I have noticed that some people achieve their dreams, and for others they seem always out of reach. Why is this? Does God have favorites? I don't think so. The reason is some people dream and wait for their dreams to come true. They look at others, whom they consider lucky and they think, I hope that happens to me one day! Other people go out, armed with their dreams, chasing their rainbow, living life passionately, making their dreams come true.

It is too easy to always want more from life, and that's fine to a degree, since expanding who we are is a part of dreaming nd growing. But as we will never have everything we want and will always be growing, appreciating what we already have along the way is very important.

But occasionally, through the darkest times, I struggled to come up with anything to be grateful for. Emotional exhaustion wears me out at times to such a point that even finding blessings was an effort.

And while I was striving for my financial and career goals, I forgot to enjoy myself along the way. It was all about the result of finding what I was looking for. This is something I had seen often, as they too are familiar words from other friends. While working towards goals, the present moment is too often neglected along the way. Our happiness was based on the end result, and was not enjoyed during the process of getting there.

We have one life and it is short. Far too short to lose ourselves in the day-to-day drudgery and the hustle and bustle. Time is fast. There is no replay, no rewind.

With the new year comes new strength and new thoughts. I wake up saying, "I'm alive, a miracle." And so I keep on pushing. I will dedicate myself to the things that deserve my dedication.