Life Code: The New Rules for Winning in the Real World (15 page)

If you’re not prepared ahead of time, if you don’t do your homework, then you’re bound to be disappointed when reality hits home in any situation. It’s the difference between expecting A and getting B versus expecting B and actually getting B. This doesn’t mean you have to “settle.” All it means is you’re setting yourself up for a fall if your expectations aren’t in line with reality. You have to know not just whom you’re dealing with but who
you
are and what your expectations are.

Now it’s time to take everything you’ve been reading in this book so far and apply it to anyone and everyone in your life. Do your homework, and
don’t lie to yourself
about who they are—or who you are. Good or bad, acknowledge it all for what it is. I know I am repeating myself, but this bears repeating: Winners are amazingly honest with themselves about self, others, and situations. If things are in the ditch, they admit it and admit it immediately, even if they wish it weren’t true. Remember what I said earlier in the book: Giving people the benefit of the doubt is not a virtue, no matter how badly you
want
them to be okay. That doesn’t mean you should prejudge them negatively. All it means is that you’re in a neutral position, suspending judgment until you have enough information.

History is at least as important as current observations. In fact, in my view, the best predictor of current behavior is relevant past behavior. If you want to know whether some guy you are falling in love with is going to cheat on you, the best piece of information you can get is whether he cheated in his last relationship, or the one before that, or the one before that.

Of course, emotion can make you lie to yourself. You can convince yourself that you are different from all those other girlfriends. You are the one he really loves. After all those relationships, he has grown so much! People change, right?

Not so much, really. The statistics are really against you here. For Pete’s sakes, that could have been you he was cheating on in the past! What makes you think you’re so different from all the other women he’s been involved with? If he cheated on them, he’ll cheat on you!

And think about that the next time you and your co-workers are chatting at happy hour. If your “friend” at work gossips to you about other people, don’t be so foolish as to think she isn’t
talking about you
to others, including the same people she is gossiping about to you!

People just aren’t that hard to figure out—but if, and only if, you take the blinders off and become a student of human nature. This means paying attention to the habits and patterns of those around you. Don’t be distracted by the social mask, the image they are selling. Figure out who they really are by looking behind the veneer, under the mask, and gathering data, from the smallest bit of information to the most meaningful. When everything is added up, it is highly instructive.

For example, I frequently have celebrities on the show, and I’m always curious who they really are and what they’re really like. Of course, they are all nice to
me
, because I’m the one who’s getting ready to interview them, and they tend to see me as relevant, at least in the moment. So how they interact with
me
is not very instructive.

But before I sit down in that interview, I take time to talk to my staff. I want to know how the “it” girl or guy I’m about to interview treated the driver who picked them up at the hotel. I want to know how they dealt with the makeup artist and wardrobe person who were helping them get ready for the show. I want to know how they treated the interns and the guy sweeping up backstage.

Those pieces of information, which don’t comprise more than two or three minutes of data gathering, can tell me volumes about who a person really is. If they’re sweet, warm, and cordial to me but condescending, rude, abusive, dismissive, or downright evil to people they regard as beneath them, that tells me two things: First, they can be charming; after all, they’re turning it on for me. Second, they can mistreat people who don’t matter to them. This is important information that I can gather by just paying attention and asking the right questions of the right people.

Once you’ve done your homework, then you can adjust your expectations accordingly. And if your expectations of people are consistent with who they really are and if your expectations of how they behave are consistent with what you actually get from them, then you won’t be upset, you won’t panic, and you won’t make a mistake in dealing with whatever they throw your way. If you do your homework, instead of saying, “How could they?” you will be saying, “Yeah, right, boy did I see that coming! They are as predictable as death and taxes!” This is true whether you’re dealing with a really big jerk or a wonderful friend who you can count on. The key is to be accurate and realistic, good or bad. Also, while you are at it, grade your own paper as to how you treat the people you don’t have to be nice to. Are you a condescending, self-important diva, or are you warm and considerate to everyone, including the people who can’t help you? It’s an interesting little self-audit, don’t you think? This commitment to reality is not just about other people—you also need to be totally honest about yourself. Another audit I think you should do is a “treasure hunt” of sorts. I want you to identify all of the good things about yourself. This is not just an egomaniacal, “hooray for me” exercise in self-aggrandizement. Trust me; it is wrongheaded to believe that focusing on your strengths, skills, and abilities is egotistical or narcissistic. You have to know what you are capable of, what your “go-to” qualities are, so you can nurture those qualities and trust yourself in critical moments. It is good to work on your strengths. My best (least bad!) shot in tennis is my backhand, but even though I have it down pretty well, I work on it regularly to keep it sharp. You should do that with strengths in all areas of your life.

I believe we all have God-given gifts, as well as learned and developed skills. I believe we all make choices about how we treat other people and how we feel about others. So, what I want you to do, all humility aside, is make a list of all your good traits, characteristics, skills, abilities, and God-given gifts.

For example, if you are a really good friend, put that on the list. If you genuinely care about other people and have compassion for their challenges in life, that goes on the list. If you are a superstar when it comes to math (definitely not on my list), put that down. Are you patient? Caring? Dedicated? Tough? All of those, and any other descriptors of what you’re proud of, go on your list.

Note: Pay special attention to whether this list is harder to fill out than the list of your shortcomings and problem areas. I’m betting you can more quickly pinpoint your negative attributes—they tend to get more airtime. You spend more time thinking about what’s wrong with you than what’s right with you.

Now you’re going to make another list. What are the hardest things to acknowledge about yourself? This list differs from your list of shortcomings in that these are attributes that tend to be more out in the open and obvious to others, rather than information about you that you are constantly trying to keep secret. Maybe you’re shy or maybe you procrastinate or maybe you don’t have enough confidence. If so, put that on the list. Do you get impatient or short-tempered? Are you distant and emotionally unavailable? Would your friends say you sometimes let them down? Would your boss or your co-workers or your children or your spouse? If so, be honest enough with yourself to put that on your list, too. It is extremely important that you actually write these qualities down so you can refer to these lists later.

These lists are important because the more you know yourself, the more informed and confident you are about who you are, and the more purposeful you can be about overcoming your less-than-favorite qualities. Also, when you already know and have consciously acknowledged what you aren’t proud of, you’re less vulnerable to the judgment and attacks of other people. If you already know who you are, you won’t be shocked that someone is “on to you.” Instead of panicking at being “found out,” you will be thinking, “Hey, tell me something I
don’t
know.” If, on the other hand, you are unclear about who you are, what you know, what you’re capable of, and what you have to offer, somebody will come along and state their opinion of you as though it were fact, and it’s going to get under your skin. If they are right about a sensitive issue, you just got ambushed. If they are wrong and you know it, it won’t get to you; it will roll off you like water off a duck’s back.

It’s not enough just to know yourself. You have to ask yourself, are you working for what you want or for what you don’t want? How do you approach your life in general? Are you passive or aggressive? Everyone has a style. Some people you know come in your life like a cool breeze; others blow in like an 80-piece marching band. These are all examples of what I call an “attitude of approach” to life, and even if you don’t think you have one, you do. You may think you’re just minding your own business, just existing passively in a reactive mode, but that
is
an attitude of approach, too.

What is it you’re trying to get? If you don’t have something you’re working toward, you’re making a serious mistake. You have to be goal-oriented. You can be leading the parade, but if you stop marching, your lazy butt is back in the tuba section before you know it. Even if it’s your goal to stop marching, to drop out of the parade, that’s a goal. So, you need a to-do list, a list of priorities to work on, even if your goal is to work less. Don’t just breathe air; figure out what you want. You may want to get off the ever-moving escalator to avoid getting caught in ascendancy, but without a goal, you’re like a missile without a guidance system.

You need to be asking what your precise, specific definition of success is. Do you even know? You could have had it all along and not known it, or somewhere along the line you may have passed it by. How would you know if you’ve been a good parent, a good spouse, a good worker? We used to get grades in school, but no one ever gets a letter grade for parenting. And no one is in a position to really know, except you—if you’re being truly honest with yourself.

I’ve always thought that New Year’s resolutions were a little artificial—after all, what’s so special about the first day of the year? Why can’t we make, and stick to, a resolution made on any given day throughout the year? Still, I think it’s a useful exercise to review your past and look ahead to the future, and if that’s going to take place on New Year’s Day, better than never.

So pretend it’s January 1 and ask yourself: Did you achieve what you wanted to last year? If not, why not? Were there unexpected obstacles? Did you lack the discipline or initiative? Some things were out of your control, like the economy or maybe the failure of the business you worked for. Maybe you were laid off, and it had nothing to do with you or how hard a worker you were. But you had some ownership of a lot of other things.

Have you been having problems in your marriage? Maybe your marriage fell apart. In my book
Relationship Rescue
, I talked about performing an “autopsy” of a failed relationship. How did it die, and why? What was your ownership of the problems that arose? Were there things you should have done that you didn’t or things you shouldn’t have done that you did? Be honest, and put them all on your list of things to do, or not to do, going forward.

But the to-do list has to be real. Your list has to consist of specific actions toward a realistic outcome, and progress toward achieving the items has to be measurable. That’s what makes a goal different from a dream—a goal has a timeline and an action plan. As I said in my book
Life Strategies
, for a dream to become a goal, it has to be specifically defined in terms of operations, meaning what will be done. And you can’t have unrealistic expectations, like starting in June and hoping to drop 60 pounds and 10 dress sizes in time for swimsuit season in July. Life changes like that don’t just happen; they happen one step at a time. Decide what it is you want. Identify and define your goal with great specificity. Know the answers to the following: What are the specific behaviors or operations that make up the goal? What will you be doing or not doing when you are “living the goal?” How will you recognize the goal when you reach it? How will you feel when you have it?

When I was doing management consulting, the most popular training my company offered was goals acquisition. We went into a work group, and we taught them how to set measurable goals, create action plans for getting there, and hold themselves to a timeline with accountability. All of a sudden, they were meeting goals that the other groups weren’t. And all of a sudden, upper management was saying, “Hey, whatever you did over there, I want you to do throughout the rest of the company.” Executives went through the same training as their staff; in fact, after they went through it, they “sold” it to their staff because they knew it worked. They knew that having specific goals with a timeline and an action plan is the only way to achieve measurable success in a corporation.