Category Archives: Thoughts

Stop. Revive. Survive.

Thoughts

When you drive around countryside New South Wales, Australia, you will undoubtedly notice the many billboard signs with a ‘Stop. Revive. Survive.’ message. These signs urge drivers to take a break during long drives to refresh and rejuvenate.

You might think it is ‘common sense’ to stop and revive during long drives. However, as Shawn Achor says in his book The Happiness Advantage “Common sense is not common action… The fact of the matter is, positive habits are hard to keep, no matter how commonsensical they might be.” Achor states as an evidence for his claim that 44% of doctors are overweight despite the fact they know more than anyone else the importance of exercise.

So, why we ignore the ‘Stop. Revive. Survive.’ advice? Apparently, we focus on the ‘goal’ to reach our destination as quickly as we can. While it is a good thing to arrive at our destination early, it is certainly better to arrive more relaxed and energetic to enjoy the destination, not to mention the risk of not arriving at all.

Kevin Cashman provides a similar advice to business leaders in his book The Pause Principle. Cashman clearly articulates that today’s leaders should take enough time to deeply pause before acting. He argues that we need to pause not only to grow as leaders, but also to develop others and foster a culture of innovation.

You may say that we don’t have time to pause because we are living in an agile world where we need to maintain a fast pace. Cashman responds to this argument by asserting that pausing will help leaders create vision, understanding, clarity and agility; and therefore deliver better results, faster. Leaders who intentionally and consciously step back and go deeply into themselves and the world they touch, usually lead forward with deliberate purpose. This will give leaders and their teams the ability to stop the speeding train of business before it derails. In other words, it is a sort of ‘Stop. Revive. Survive. your Business’.

Robert Holden in his interesting book Success Intelligence promotes the same idea from a different perspective. Holden claims that Permanent Busyness is not intelligent. Holden stresses the importance of taking time out of your busy schedule to punctuate your business. Holden demonstrates in his book the value of White Space: the 20 minutes that busy people should take every day as a thinking time for vision, re-evaluation, and making sure they are living and working wisely. In other words, ‘Stop. Revive. Survive. your Business’.

‘Stop. Revive. Survive.’ is not just a slogan, it might literally help you survive while driving long distance or running your business. Allan McDonald tried to do that, but failed. If McDonald was successful in stopping the ‘speeding train of business’ he would have prevented the Challenger disaster back in 1986. Those who watched the disaster live on television on 24 January 1986 will never forget how a mission that was supposed to reignite a passion for space exploration turned into a horrific event in just 73 seconds, and claimed the lives of seven astronauts including a schoolteacher.

McDonald worked for the company that NASA hired to make the shuttle’s solid-engine rocket boosters. But a crucial component of the boosters, the dividers known as O-rings, had never been tested at ambient temperatures below 10 degrees Celsius. If the O-rings didn’t seal the joints of the boosters properly, the boosters would explode and kill everyone on board the shuttle.

On the evening before the launch, the weather forecast in Cape Canaveral, Florida, called for temperatures below zero degrees Celsius. McDonald was concerned about the O-rings not working properly and warned NASA about the dangers of proceeding, but NASA wanted to move forward anyway. McDonald strongly protested this decision and refused to sign the document that would have allowed the launch to proceed. His boss signed for him – in order to not stop the speeding train of business. The launch proceeded as planned, with fatal consequences.

Stop. Revive. Survive. Or as Mahatma Gandhi said, “There is more to life than increasing its speed.”

Are you happy?

Thoughts,

One fine morning, and instead of the usual greetings of ‘hi, good morning, how are you’, my friend Deena surprised me by asking straight away: ‘Are you happy today?’  I smiled and started thinking whether I was really happy.  I answered her with an apparent grin: ‘Yes, why shouldn’t I be happy?’  Deena responded cheerfully: ‘Great, that proves it’.  Deena went on explaining that when starting a conversation with ‘are you happy today’ instead of the usual greeting you get people ‘happily’ surprised, get them to smile, and serves as an excellent icebreaker.  This will also trigger your happy thoughts and positively impact your mood and emotions.  And because emotions are contagious, this will spread out a certain level of ‘happiness’ to the people around you.

Starting your day with a smile!  Why not.  A beautiful, happy, and cheerful smile is always a good thing to start your day with.  I don’t think anyone argues against that.  Professor Daniel Freeman and Jason Freeman in their book ‘You can be Happy’ said that experiments have demonstrated that even if you feign a smile you’ll actually feel happier.  Moreover, Ron Gutman in his Ted Talk ‘The hidden power of smiling‘ claims that smiling makes you live longer.

Happiness is far too important to leave it to chance.  Happiness does not just happen; it must be made to happen.  And guess what, it is not the job of your employer or the government or even your partner to make you happy.  It is your job to make yourself happy.  You should repeatedly practice ‘being happy’ until it becomes a habit, a natural thing to do.  You can always start with a smile, the prelude to happiness.

I usually say to people: the first thing you should do every morning is to look in the mirror and smile.  Seeing yourself smiling has a recursive effect that will boost your feeling of happiness.  By smiling in the morning you actually increase your chances of having the feeling of ‘getting off at the right side of the bed’ every day.  As Professor Daniel Freeman and Jason Freeman put it in their book ‘You can be Happy’, our extraordinarily complex organ –our brain- can be fooled by something as simple as a smile.  If someone smiles when they look at you, don’t you light up from inside?

So what are you waiting for?  Go on, give happiness a try, you can certainly do it.  What we do have a great effect on the way we feel.  Write on a piece of paper ‘I am in charge of how I feel, and today I choose to be happy’, and stick this paper on your fridge or on your desk in the office.

I recently watched an inspirational Ted Talk by Benjamin Zander about the power of classical music (if you like classical music, watch this talk.  If you don’t, it’s more reason to watch it).  Zander mentioned that someone he knew made the vow to ‘not say anything that wouldn’t stand as the last thing she says’.  I would like to turn this over and say: let your smile be the first thing other people remember about you.  You will certainly be happy.

Are you happy today?