Month: June 2018

The Quiet Roar

The loudest message often comes from the quietest origins.

This might seem surprising at first. Especially since our culture lionizes the boisterous.

But those with the loudest voices all too often fail to win our hearts and minds. The sheer force of their vocal pitch causes us to take heed of what they have to say, but only for a moment.

In the long term, the loudest among us don’t win our attention. All that bravado eventually comes off as white noise, about as memorable as our morning coffee from three weeks ago.

This is surely not what those vociferous speakers want. But all too often, they confuse commanding the room for creating influence. And when they fail to capture hearts and minds by projecting their voice, they generally overcompensate by talking even louder.

These actions send these booming orators into a dark spiral. One where they’ll get a reputation as a loudmouth with nothing of substance to say.

It’s a reputation that fully undermines any remaining chance they have of causing influence.

There are a couple reasons why this paradox occurs.

One reason is that we’re poorly equipped to handle continual shouting. Our bodies act defensively when we encounter large bursts of noise. While it might seem as if a loud talker has captivated the room, a more likely explanation is that they’ve startled others into momentary silence.

Some of us do handle noise better than others. For example, some people are comfortable hanging out at large concerts or crowded bars. And if those of us who live under an airport flightpath — as my grandparents did for six decades — gradually tune out the sound of the high-pitched jet engines overhead.

But regardless of how well we acclimate to a noisy environment, loud noise is still a shock to our system. Our bodies just don’t handle it well.

If you don’t believe me, watch the late R. Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket. Consider how you’d feel if you were continually getting yelled at by someone standing six inches in front of your nose.

So yes, our defensive posture to noise is a barrier that prevents the loudest speakers from meeting their objectives. But there’s another reason why more noise does not equal more results. One that can be defined in six words.

Volume is the enemy of rhythm.

Yes, the key to resonance is not only knowing how loudly to speak. It’s also knowing when to speak.

Our attention follows cyclical rhythms. We are more likely to remember a massage when it’s part of a mixed pattern of silence and noise.

This silence most frequently comes in the form of a well-timed pause. Storytellers use these pauses to build dramatic tension. Great communicators use them to underscore their point.

Why? Because pauses illicit wonder in an audience. They allow minds to wander and silently ask What if? questions. They unlock a world of possibilities.

By the time the communicator is ready to share their message, the audience is waiting for them with anticipation. The captive audience members are wondering whether the message will resolve the stream of questions running through their mind.

If it does, the audience members will feel accomplished. They’ll feel as if they unlocked the mystery that floated through the silence.

If it doesn’t, the audience members will feel awed. They’ll feel as if they learned something new and unexpected.

Either way, the message resonates. The communicator wins.

All without lifting their finger or raising their voice to a full shout.

It’s an art form, for sure. So, what’s needed to master this art?

A hefty dose of patience and observation.

It takes the ability to read the room and chime in at the appropriate time. It requires the contextual chops to understand a situation and respond in a thought-provoking way. It demands context over bluster, wit over brute force.

And it favors those with a quieter disposition.

Think about it: Those best at this art must listen before they speak. They must recognize patterns and understand how to leverage them. They must embrace the silence as an ally, not an enemy.

This is the realm of the quiet, the soft-spoken. It’s the domain of the thoughtful speaker, the empathetic communicator.

But even while this pattern skews towards those who say little, it’s not exclusive to introverts or the more reserved. We all can use the rhythm of attention to our advantage when sharing our messages.

In fact, we all should.

Adopting this practice might require a leap of faith for the most gregarious of us. But the results will benefit everyone.

White noise will fade away. And we’ll have more chances to captivate and inspire.

So, let’s leave the myth of loud voices behind. It’s time to embrace the quiet roar.

Prioritizing Time

Which matters more: Time or money?

Many of us would go with the first option. But we have a strange way of showing it.

In reality, we tend to put our bank accounts first. We know that money is a finite resource and live within our means.

Yet, we fail to treat time with the same care.

We overload our schedules, meet our obligations with haste and act as if there’s no tomorrow.

All to earn more money, more accomplishments or more prestige.

It’s as if we consider time to be a maximizable asset. Something that can provide us an outstanding return on our investment if we play our cards right.

After all, we can’t pay for a burger with time. Or buy our dream house with it. So why not leverage time the most efficient way we can?

But thinking this way is a fool’s errand.

After all, time is not something that can be sped up. Or slowed down. Or packed and stacked to meet our agenda.

It moves at a constant rate.

Like the dripping of a faucet, that tick-tick-tick of the clock is relentless in its consistency. Always headed forward, but never in a hurry to get there.

Yes, it turns out time is the most finite form of currency there is.

Once a moment is gone, it can’t be recovered. Its only remnants lie in the banks of our memory. But the passage of time can cruelly take back those memories from us.

And of course, our existence itself is finite. Our hourglass will run out of sand someday. Yet, the tick-tick-tick of the clock, the rising and setting of the sun — those patterns will continue on.

Maybe that’s what terrifies us.

The lack of power and control. The inability to have final say over our destiny.

Perhaps this is why we feel we must dice up time like a tomato. Even if it’s better to mold time like a ball of clay.

Perhaps this is why we live in micromoments, run ourselves ragged for 19 hours a day, and become slaves to our email inboxes and phone calendars.

Perhaps this is why we continually race that tick-tick-tick of the clock, as if it’s Mario Andretti at the Indy 500.

All this running around might keep us stimulated. It might keep our cash balances replenished. It might help us get on the fast track to bettering our situation.

But there are significant tradeoffs for these outcomes.

When we run ourselves ragged, fatigue becomes normalized. Our attention spans erode. And regret eats away at us like a cancer.

This behavior doesn’t help us make the most of our life. It destroys it in the most brutal and calculating of ways.

The hour has come to end this destructive cycle. To give time the priority it deserves.

The hour has come to view time as a gift that’s given. Not a resource to be mined into oblivion.

The hour has come to value time more than money. Or any other factors competing for our attention.

We might lose some productivity when we commit to this shift in thinking. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

By prioritizing time, we gain freedom and fulfillment.

And that’s certainly worth striving for.

Offshoot Effects

What’s your mission statement?

Your purpose in life. The words that define your everyday actions.

If you do have a defined mission statement, chances are it hasn’t always been set in stone. It’s evolved over time.

Why? Because values change with experience. Often in unpredictable ways.

Look at the corporate world. For years, blue-blood companies followed the ethos of providing quality products and services. These companies had systems in place to deliver products efficiently. And consumers had both a need for those products and few alternative means of getting them.

Thus, the most powerful companies maintained long reigns of control. And their mission statements only required three words: Trust through quality.

But then some college dropouts tooling around in a garage changed everything. Technology upended the apple cart, first with PC’s, then with the Internet, then with smartphones.

As these innovations took hold, the control companies had long maintained over the buying process went out the window. Consumers now had tangible alternatives. And they no longer had to put up with shoddy customer service, delays or other pain points.

Trust through quality was no longer enough. The companies who evolved their mission statements to meet this new reality maintained their prestigious status. The others withered on the vine.

I call this paradigm shift The Offshoot Effect.

Offshoot effects don’t necessarily force you to do a full 180. But they do require you tweak your modus operandi in order to adapt to a changing situation.

While the corporate world has had to come to terms with offshoot effects for the past quarter century, we, as individuals, have dealt with them our entire lives.

Every time an event in our lives has changed our perspective, it’s left a mark on our mission statement.

Business as usual has no longer been sufficient.

I have seen this firsthand.

My mission statement has long focused on the core concepts of helping others excel and building connections. As a writer, and an introvert, these concepts have seemed the most in line with what I do and who I am.

Outside Words of the West, I’ve largely stayed out of the spotlight. I’ve poured my heart and soul into making the lives of those around me less isolated and more fulfilling. But I rarely took a public stand or made a public statement.

Then Charlottesville happened.

In mid-August of 2017, a group of Neo-Nazis descended on a college town in Virginia to protest the removal of Confederate monuments. The protesters carried torches as they spewed hate and bigotry. Counter protesters soon showed up, and violence ensued. By the time the dust cleared, one counter-protester and two Virginia state troopers had lost their lives.

From far away in Texas, I followed the events with horror. I’d been in the South for more than a decade at that point, and long defended it. This wasn’t the South I knew.

I remember thinking of what friends and family up north would say. See, it’s like we said. They’re all racist and despicable.

That rankled me.

All I had experienced in the South was warmth and kindness. Sure, I had seen the videos of the marches and the violence of the Civil Rights Era, but that was more than a generation removed.

I had seen no inkling of it with my own eyes, until that fateful day. And I didn’t know how to reconcile what I saw, and how I felt.

I reflected for a few days, until I came to a powerful realization.

The story had not been fully written.

Sure, the events of Charlottesville had grabbed all the press, and made other corners of America resent the South ever more. But the South I knew — the land of kindness and decency — was tangible and real. If I could embody those principles and inspire others to do the same, I could change the narrative — even if only by a little.

So, I went back and revised my mission statement, adding the following:

Be a better Southerner and cultivate the goodness that lies within.

Every day, I live into this statement. I make it my purpose to represent what my region has been and can still be.

It has made me more involved, more engaged and more aware of the impact of setting a good example for others.

Yes, as horrifying as the Charlottesville situation was, it served as an inflection point. It created an offshoot effect that has transformed both my personal mission statement and the purposeful journey that accompanies it.

I am not alone in this regard.

We each have our own inflection points that create offshoot effects. Perhaps not as public and horrifying as mine, but no less significant.

The key is to heed the message these sea changes bring to our lives. To use those offshoot effects to adapt our missions and amplify our impact.

For regardless whether we have a mission statement in place or not, we have the capacity to leave our mark on the world. So long as we can adapt to it.

Let’s use that power wisely.

Down and Dirty

How badly do you want to know all the details?

The inner workings of a process, a product, an organization, or anything else you might cross paths with in life.

This information can be valuable. But buyer beware.

You might get more than you bargained for.

In 1906, Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle shook America to the core.

The book was an inside look at the meatpacking industry. Sinclair, a muckraking journalist, spent several months working undercover in meatpacking plants as he gathered material for the book. And readers were not ready for his no-holds-barred expose of what life was really like behind the curtain.

The Jungle detailed oppressive working conditions and unsanitary health practices in meatpacking plants. As Americans read the book, they suddenly found their steaks, pork chops and Bratwursts to be far less appetizing.

It turned out, learning how the sausage gets made was a bit too much information. Uproar over the book eventually led to codified employment protections and food handling procedures. But the stain it left on our consciousness was permanent.

The Jungle changed the way we look at the details. And it sparked an interest not only in knowing the details of a process, but also in ensuring they’re up to par with our expectations.

That’s why the book is still talked about, more than 100 years later.

Times have changed, but the message remains the same.

Today, we’re obsessed with how the sausage gets made. We crave transparency throughout the supply chain. No longer is ignorance bliss.

We now demand control over every step of the process. And we demand accountability, by threatening to turn elsewhere if even a single link in the chain doesn’t meet our standards.

This phenomenon isn’t restricted to the companies we buy from, the governments we vote for or the entertainment options we patronize. It extends to our own interactions as well.

In the age of social media, we can learn all we can about everyone we know, and everyone we don’t. We soak this information up like a sponge. And use it to associate, or disassociate, with others.

The point is clear: Details matter. The more transparent and clean those details are, the more likely we’ll support the person, product or organization behind them.

We’ve reshaped societal behavior with this principle. But are we demanding too much?

Are we headed to a point of no return?

You see, our requirements for transparent details comes at a premium. A cleaner, more ethical process doesn’t come cheap.

Yet, we can’t stomach paying more for the convenience. In money, trust or social capital.

We’re hard-wired to search for the discounts. To get the most bang for our buck.

This chasm between what we demand and what we’re willing to give up for it is problematic. It leads providers to get down and dirty to meet our expectations. But once we find out about these tactics, we shame the offending providers and move to greener, cleaner pastures.

It’s a brutal cycle. And one that’s entirely unsustainable.

So, where do we go from here?

Do we dare take accountability for our own skewed expectations? Do we dare devote more time, money or energy to people and entities that go the extra mile for quality?

It’s unlikely. The Why pay more? question is too deeply embedded in our consciousness.

With that in mind, maybe it’s better if we don’t know how the sausage is made. If we focus more attention on the end result, instead of scrutinizing the intermediate points to no end.

Obviously, we’d still need to be aware of some details — particularly as they pertain to health and safety. But otherwise, peering behind the curtain might do us more harm than good.

Whichever way we turn, one thing is clear. Transparency comes with a cost.

If we aim to know all the details, we best prepare to get down and dirty.