If you know your psychology or psychotherapy, you'll know the term "integrated" as used in the context of "a psychologically well-adjusted, well-integrated person." This book offers the clearest explanation I've seen on precisely what steps to take and what specific character traits one needs to build in order to become a genuinely well-integrated person.
This is an insightful and well-organized book, and the book structure actually lends itself to conveying the ideas; as such, the table of contents is worth studying to understand how the author breaks down the various character traits that make up the overall meta-trait of "integrity" he discusses.
Pair with:
Younger Next Year by Chris Crowley and Henry S. Lodge
Breaking Out of Homeostasis by Ludvig Sunstrom (review/notes forthcoming)
Notes:
Preface:
1) On how character traits supersede gifts, talents and ability. On the six character dimensions that make for a person with a fully integrated personality, "a person of integrity" as the author puts it.
Part I: Why Integrity Matters
Ch 1: The Three Essentials
2) You can have a lot of talent, you can have lots of alliances, have a great Mastermind group, but you also have to have the character to not screw it all up.
3) Character is a very broad term, including ethics, honesty, dependability, honor, etc. This is a narrow definition of character; a broader definition of character might also include what a person does with their gifts. Also how do we deal with our blind spots, what is our willingness to work, how do we deal with obstacles and setbacks, can we transcend our own interests, etc., these all have something to do with what the author means by character, and of course these things have nothing to do with IQ, talent, education, etc.
4) How to "lose well" as an example of something for which no one ever really gets training, but seeing the skill of "losing well" as a structural aspect of character that one can work on and develop, and which makes one more resilient to get through the inevitable failures that we will face in life.
Ch 2: Character, Integrity, and Reality
5) The wake of a boat as a metaphor: what kind of wake do you leave in your path? Do you create a good vibe, do you finish the tasks that you set out to do so that they're not left for others? Or do you leave a trail of destruction, or a negative vibe, or a stressful environment behind you? What types of relationships do you leave behind--the effects of our interactions with people and their hearts and minds?
6) The wake represents what we leave behind. "The wake doesn't lie." This is a tremendously helpful metaphor and mental image.
7) This is a really interesting metaphor, because it forces you to look at the aggregate of your life results. Imagine for example somebody who is in serial relationships over and over again and doesn't see the implications of this reality unless they look at the aggregation of "wake" behind them formed by the multiple relationships that failed: they never put together that the single thing in common with all those failed relationships is me. See also a trail of destruction in the business partners that you no longer work with, this is another helpful (and visceral) example of a wake.
8) "Are there a lot of people out there water-skiing on the wake, smiling, having a great time for our having 'moved through their lives'? Or are they out there bobbing for air, bleeding, and left wounded as shark bait? In other words, would they say that they're experience with us has left them better off for our having 'moved through their lives,' or would they say that it has left them worse off? Did they consider it a blessing that they were associated with you, or a curse? What is the nature of the wake?" Good money quote here. Do you help people raise their game? Do you help them live better? Do you make life better for them, do you help ease their burden, do you help them be their best selves, etc.
9) See the example of the CEO looking to sort out both the problems and the benefits of a sales VP, and once he looked at this guy's wake he knew that the cost of keeping him was much too high, despite his incredible productivity. His "task" wake looked good, but the rest of his wake looked terrible. People were not water skiing in his wake! Likewise the CEO in this case study had a character deficit in the sense that he didn't see the trail of destruction behind this guy, he only concentrated on what he chose to see, which was the VP's incredible sales performance numbers (which helped the CEO), while he failed to see the brewing fragmentation of his management team (where the negatives impacted others).
10) Your personal character is what leaves a wake.
11) "Character = the ability to meet the demands of reality." Having a higher standard for character, not just doing what's ethical but also being alert, being conscious, not being asleep/unmindful, these are all things that we do if we use agency and effort. Also: are you robust to failure, do you recover from it? Or do you panic and retreat because the failure does you in?
Ch 3: Integrity
12) On "Integrity" which the author sees as a type of fully integrated or well-individuated self, a whole person with, if not a full range of skills, at least an awareness of what skills he has or doesn't have and a willingness to build those skills to meet the specific challenges of reality.
13) Note the use of Tiger Woods as a "good" example of someone driven in certain ways so as to make him the golfing genius he is... unfortunately we all came to learn there were tremendous gaps in Tiger Woods' integrity that ultimately led to his undoing as a champion and caused him to fall short of his potential.
14) Six dimensions of integrity of character:
1) the ability to connect authentically, leading to trust
2) the ability to be oriented toward the truth, which leads to finding and operating in reality
3) the ability to work in a way that gets results and "finishes well"
4) the ability to embrace, engage, and deal with the negative
5) the ability to be oriented toward growth
6) the ability to be transcendent, which leads to enlargement of the bigger picture and oneself.
15) Integrity in this context means an integration of all the parts discussed above, being "sound in construction."
16) If people can function well in these areas a good 'wake' is virtually inevitable.
17) Another takeaway of this book: you want to continue working on aspects of your personality, continue working on character traits, on eliminating your blind spots, etc, facing and improving areas where you might be underdeveloped and could use improvement or refining.
18) Three elements to the development of integrity:
1) to face up to the nature of reality, the true nature of our reality: that we need personal development and can't avoid it if we want to reach our goals
2) to understand the components of character itself, to take a hard look at which aspects of our character are producing problems for us and grow from that.
3) to work toward a full integration of character, avoid compensating for incomplete aspects of ourselves by overdepending on our strengths.
Character Dimension 1: Establishing Trust
Ch 4: Building Trust Through Connection
19) An interesting anecdote here about telling the truth to a consulting client:
[CEO consulting client, new to the CEO job, after an all-hands meeting with employees:] "Wasn't that great! It went so well." You could feel his energy.
"No!" I said. "No! It wasn't great at all. It was one of the worst meetings I have ever sat through. You completely lost them. You did not connect with one of their concerns whatsoever."
[If this conversation, between the author and one of his CEO clients actually happened then this guy is the only business consultant who actually tells the truth to his clients! How does he have a sustainable business?]
20) On the CEO who was incredibly optimistic, very nice, but couldn't connect, he didn't come across as taking people's concerns seriously, and in fact unintentionally negated them with his rampant optimism, which made him seem like he had zero empathy. He failed to build trust through connection.
21) On the difference between getting compliance from employees as a leader versus capturing their hearts and capturing their best efforts.
22) "Sometimes there is nothing that can be done. But, to know someone understands makes it somehow different."
23) Being nice is not enough. You have to have empathy to a degree that gives you credibility.
24) "Empathy requires a few character components." You need to be not detached from your own emotions, you have to overcome character detachment, you also will have to have good boundaries (avoid over-identifying, recognize the other person and their experiences as separate, finding the right balance here), and you have to listen in a way that communicates understanding: the other person has to understand that you understand.
25) Re: the other person understanding that you understand: "They talk --> you experience them --> you share what you have heard and experienced about their experience --> then they experience you as having heard them."
26) Connectedness as a sort of life force, an underlying energy, that fuels all sorts of drive, accomplishment and passion in every aspect of life.
27) Invalidation as a connection-killer and trust-killer: negating someone else's experience as being somehow not real or nonexistent: "that's not going to be a problem, you won't have to worry about that," etc. These may reflect your feelings about the situation, but they don't reflect the other person's feelings, in fact they invalidate that person's feelings about the situation.
28) When you say, "Oh, that won't be a problem," you think you're alleviating that person's anxiety, but in reality you heighten it. Another example: see where someone says something negative about themselves like "I'm such a loser" and you come back with "Don't say that! That's not true." What this does is create two problems for the person instead of one: the initial problem of feeling like a loser, and then the secondary problem of not feeling understood. "That is why people who try to help others by talking them out of what they feel are usually no help at all. It also is the reason why research has for decades proven that you can help desperate people immensely by giving them no answers at all, and only giving them empathy."
29) All of this makes the reader wonder if figuring out some ways to frequently and actively employ sincere empathy/connection would be a good thing to do as a daily kata.
Ch 5: Building Trust Through Extending Favor
30) On the business partner who was ethical and honest and did everything he said he would do, but had no interest in looking after anyone else's interests, thus someone who might partner with him would have to have everything tied up tightly, legally speaking, because if he doesn't look after his own interests the other person definitely won't. Such a person is technically "trustworthy" in the sense that he could be trusted to do those things he agreed to.
31) A person of complete integrity will be trustworthy beyond that: he will look out for your interests, as well as his own.
32) "To trust means to be careless." Interesting.
33) On the company whose employees were disgruntled about their benefits package, and the CEO went out and found a better one that cost much less, and he then went further and decided to allocate the savings to his workers as well. "They had no representation on the other side, and their interests were still looked out for by the other party, not by themselves." "Their interests were being looked out for when they were not looking.... Now that is trustworthiness. Think of how much less 'on guard' they felt they had to be in any dealings they would ever have with him or the company. And that is the supreme essence of trust, not being 'guarded.'"
34) The advantages that accrue when two parties let down their guard with each other: getting open, creative, learning from each other, etc, to much more of a degree than they would be in if they were in protection mode/shields up mode; this likewise happens in relationships like a marriage or friendship.
35) Three "stances" of a person's ability to trust and be trustworthy:
1) Paranoid: will respond with heavy artillery if they feel threatened or attacked even based on suspicion or a sleight of some sort
2) Non-suspicious: you treat me well, I treat you well (you could also call this a tit-for-tat stance); I trust based on the demand for mutual performance.
3) A Person of Grace: someone who will have appropriate boundaries with someone who is destroying something good, "and then is only against the destruction and not the person himself."
36) Grace as "unmerited favor," a theological concept when we extend favor to someone not because they have earned it but because we possess it to give, it is a "stance" in life. "So, if you want to leave the best wake possible, leave behind a trail of people who have experienced your being for them... People of grace leave others better off than how they found them, even when they were getting nothing in return."
37) Unmerited help, assisting people to meet the requirements and standards of performance that are appropriate for them. "Leaders without grace set the demand and do nothing to help people meet it." Being a force for good for others, even when no one makes you do it or it's not required or even merited by the other person.
Ch 6: Building Trust Through Vulnerability
38) Do you trust someone who is powerless? Would you trust a wimp? Someone incompetent?
39) At the same time, some people are so strong they become impenetrable in some way: we can't connect with them or identify with them they become too unlike us.
40) "In this way, therefore, we see attention in the dynamic of power and trust: Not enough power, and we can't entrust things of value to the person. Too much power, and we can't feel that they could ever understand or relate to our own vulnerability." This is an interesting balance here, probably not an easy one to strike. "There must be this dynamic tension between power and vulnerability."
41) When the author's mother explained to the author (as a young boy) that sometimes she doesn't want to go to work when she doesn't feel well or is sick, but she still does... how the fact that his mother told him this transmuted something inside him, caused him to have a moment of clarity regarding performing one's duties, one's responsibilities in life.
42) Internalization: receiving from others what we do not possess in ourselves, like encouragement (which is literally courage put into you) from outside, from someone else. "Our character and abilities grow through internalizing from others what we do not possess in ourselves." See how his mother said "I don't feel well" and yet go to work anyway, as opposed to encouragement in the form of saying "don't be afraid, you can do it" or "it's not that hard." The latter are statements that do not enhance connection; worse, they're invalidating; in the case of the author's mother, it's instead "hey, she is like me, and she is afraid too sometimes and feels like she can't do it. But, she does it anyway. She pushes forward."
43) "For you to build trust with people, you have to be vulnerable enough for them to identify with you, so that you are not so 'unlike' them as to be alien. And, you have to be strong enough for them to feel that they can depend on you."
44) Models who are followed and trusted have the following four characteristics
* Strength
* Likeness to the ones following (such that we identify with them)
* Warmth
* They're imperfect with coping models as opposed to perfect
45) "The expression of need" as an aspect of vulnerability that builds trust: when people feel needed they perform at high levels
Character Dimension 2: Oriented Toward Truth
Ch 7: In Touch With Reality
46) "Character truthfulness": e.g., the difference between “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky” and instead saying from the beginning, “I did a bad thing, and I am sorry.”
47) The husband who was juggling finances, but not telling his wife that he was juggling because of her overreactions their financial situation: thus ultimately leading him to lead her to believe that things were financially better than they were. Then when she finds out the real truth, it illustrates "The consequences of deceit are usually greater than the ones of the truth."
48) Truth 101: give a representation of reality to others as best as they understand it. (I would also add here to outline the dimensions of your empirical confidence--in other words explain what is the nature of your confidence in what you know.)
49) Truth 201: "reality is always your friend." being truthful is foundational but it's not enough, [a necessary but not sufficient condition]. See the dog food company where the dogs didn't like the food, and the CEO didn't know this fact. Thus he didn't understand why the company's marketing wasn't working. Thus one needs to have an orientation towards truth.
50) Lamentably the author cites Jim Collins's unrigorous and borderline unethical book Good To Great.
51) "I don't care what the truth is, just give it to me. I have to know what is real. Then I can know what to do." A marriage counseling client of the author. Compare this to "spending time in some alternative universe that does not exist to make the one that we are living in feel better."
Ch 8: What People In Touch Look Like
52) Pastor Rick Warren going door to door to find out why people didn't go to church, then building a church that had none of those reasons. On not assuming (or thinking, or acting) as if you know what reality is, instead seeking out what it is, avoiding a know-it-all approach.
53) Having a genuine hunger to find out what is true: "They are different from people who are honest but do not take active steps to find out more of what reality is."
54) Another paradigm: actively seeking reality versus avoidance. The CEO of the dog food company may not want to deal with the ramifications of the truth because they're so bad... and then you'd ask are we even going to stay in business any more? In other words it's easier to avoid because otherwise it would require an acceptance of a level of "being wrongness" that would be very difficult to swallow.
55) Actively seeking the truth about reality, about ourselves and about other people. Genuine hunger/desire to know the truth, to get at the truth.
56) Also a willingness to get at the truth both about your strengths and your weaknesses, as well as others': "people of integrated character tend to delude themselves less about others. They have worked through their own issues and distortions about other people to a degree that they can see pretty clearly... Wise people are 'cautious in friendship,' as the proverb says. They seek to get to know a person clearly, as the person truly is, before they hire him, marry him, become partners with him, or divorce him, fire him, or not go forward with him."
57) The observing ego: another feedback mechanism we need is feedback about ourselves from ourselves. The ability to monitor our thoughts, behaviors, attitudes, etc. Having a sort of internal instrument panel that instantly tells you if you're piloting yourself off course with other people: talking too much, bigfooting someone's project, etc. The ability to ask oneself "what am I doing here?"
58) The ability to neutralize a hard truth, to give it an emotional valence that is low enough so that we can metabolize the truth rather than reject it or tune it out. Another trait of high performers, a key building block in people's ability to see reality.
59) [I think another way to invert this idea would be to make yourself into the kind of person that doesn't need hard truths to first be "neutralized" for you before you can hear them, see them or perceive them; in other words: increase your tolerance for emotionally valent truths.]
60) "People of integrated character do not have extreme polarized emotions that make the truth unusable."
61) "When a person experiences emotional states so powerful that their thinking ability is diminished or overridden, then the ability to meet what reality is asking them to do at that moment is lessened." The author could use another editing pass to tighten sentences like this, but the insight is well worth the imperfect writing.
62) Life and business have all kinds of ups and downs so we want to stay above the roller coaster of it all on some emotional level, "and deal with reality as it is, not as they feel about it." On regulating both positive and negative emotions.
63) It's interesting to read on page 132 about a director colleague who reacted in a very visceral way to another potential team member ("No way! The guy's an idiot! He is just an idiot."), and the author files this incident away, making a mental note to be careful around this guy. It brings about two insights. First, don't be the kind of person who causes other people to make mental notes and "file away incidents" like this, and at the least don't do things that would cause you to be perceived this way. Second, raise your awareness and alertness so that you can "log" events like this when they happen, thus you'll protect yourself from problem people or problem situations in the future. You'll know to avoid this person's bad side, or (better still) to avoid them altogether. Two good meta-insights here.
64) Seeing the world as "whole representations" rather than black or white, all good or all bad.
65) Another ironic situation: in the early 90s, the author is asked why he has an AOL email address on his business card, and the president of some company rolls his eyes at the idea of email being common enough to have it on your business card. And of course later everybody came to see AOL email addresses as embarrassing, like a boomer indicator of someone who doesn't know how to use the internet! Note also this is another example of "remembering a person's reaction" (see note 63): clearly this CEO guy isn't open, he's unable to grapple with new paradigm shifts, etc. He was able to see reality but not see what was possible beyond it.
66) Note the desirability of having an "assimilative" or "accommodative" personality: one well able to handle existing reality, but also can handle iterations or shifts to that reality.
67) It's also interesting to think through that it's likely justified to ignore most new things, to assume they won't become popular, won't catch on, but yet there's an entire industry of books, articles and media that mostly cite exceptions to this rule, thus giving us an impression all the new new things are actually going to catch on for sure! (After all, why would they talk about it if it weren't going to be the next big thing?) Perhaps using the "this'll never catch on" heuristic is more predictive in general, with the cost of missing out on rare extreme examples.
Character Dimension 3: Getting Results
Ch 9: Finishing Well
68) Five components to finishing well: you will
* Know who you are
* Have proper preparation/ready-aim-fire
* Be willing to make hard calls
* Have perseverance/somehow find a way
* Lose well
69) Knowing the "what" part of the work (baseline components like knowing the facts, the processes, what to do, how to do the work itself) vs the "who" component of your integrated character; see also also the necessary baseline qualities of showing up, having a work ethic, working hard, etc., and the difference between these "necessary but not sufficient" conditions and what is fully needed to excel. You need to have the baseline aspects but they are not enough.
70) You need an internal well-integrated understanding of yourself, not how you've been defined by others; you need to be in touch with who you really are, be aware of what fully engages you. Likewise on being humble enough to know what you're not good at, so these are areas in which to not try to operate, it "cuts off the left tail" of where poor performance would happen (e.g., entrepreneurs learning that they're poor managers and thus turn things over to better managers). On having deep and humility-based knowledge of what is the right place for you.
71) "My career really took off when I finally realized that I was not the type of person to own my own business. I got a good position here and it has been upward ever since. I am glad I faced that truth about myself."
72) On being "ready": not just gathering information and making a careful decision but also being ready in yourself, in the sense of having skills, a proper knowledge base, etc.
73) On being properly focused on doing the right things.
74) On being able to make the hard call: nothing erodes respect more than when people see a person lacking the ability to make the hard call. Having the fortitude to take the heat and criticism, the fact that people may never forgive you for doing what needs to be done, etc.
75) "Things never work. When they don't, that is the time to make them work. Then, if you do, they work." From time to time this author really comes up with some koans.
76) The author's failed efforts to start a small psychiatric hospital treatment center is a really good example of a Fourth Turning-type situation where neo-feudalism and neo-mercantilism conspire (in the form of excessive regulation and bureaucratization of an industry) such that the treatment center cannot meet the needs of its marketplace. A really good example of the decay of a collective institution, to the point that healthcare itself doesn't function well.
77) I'm learning how to lose, on handling defeat. "Winners lose well, and losers lose poorly." Also the idea that winners iterate from losses and therefore won't lose the same way repeatedly, they learn from the loss.
78) See also bereavement, "complicated bereavement" (using the psych term) versus standard bereavement, you experienced a loss, grieve it, and then emerge from it.
79) Likewise in business or in relationships or in reaching goals, cut your losses, move on, and make sure that you examine carefully and understand and learn from the reasons for the loss.
80) Also on taking "cutting your losses" to an interesting advanced level: cutting your losses even with things that are working well, and focusing your energies on the very best things. The things that are running "pretty well" can take away focus from something that could be tremendously positive. See for example a company that sells off profitable product lines but focuses on a narrower suite of products that will provide tremendous growth or opportunity for the company. "Letting go of things that are good." Many people are unable to practice this due to sentimental over-involvement, or attachment, or fear (as in "what if we can't replace the revenue?") Interesting insights here. You could think of this in the context of an investment portfolio: you might boot your "placeholder names" that you've held for a long time just... because.
81) [It's interesting how often the word "narcissism" appears in this book, it draws the reader to think about how the business world may select for certain narcissistic traits. Sure, incredibly successful people in business tend to transcend narcissism (or not have it at all), but the overall environment may select for narcissistic people. And then a further insight: you have to watch out for them, avoid, them, not hire them.]
Character Dimension 4: Embracing the Negative
Ch 10: Eating Problems for Breakfast
82) The company with a huge sign that said "No problems, no profit." On the willingness to tackle obstacles, to deal with problems, to understand that problems are to be expected and even embraced.
83) "The ontological implications of people's language": an interesting quick phrase the author tosses off when talking about a CEO who wants to "face into" a problem that he needs to deal with... Interesting phrase to remember though: the idea that people indicate a lot about who they are by the way they speak.
84) On having the internal character-based abilities and equipment to directly address a negative reality, or a problem.
85) On Tiger Woods re-engineering his swing after his rookie year, even after winning a major that year. The author uses this is an example of someone having the character to "embrace the problems" compared to the masses who enjoy a comfort zone and do whatever is most comfortable.
86) "Recoverability": the ability to recover quickly from a setback, from an error or a failure, after a negative emotional event.
87) Also on "separation from results": "When someone's identity is tied to his outcomes, he or she doesn't exist in a certain way." One can work on de-catastrophizing the outcome. "Outcomes are separate from the person, and the people who perform have stable sense of self no matter what happens."
88) See also the paradox of separating your ego from the results of something, but at the same time taking ownership of something as a leader--rather than just being a worker who does what he's told and doesn't have true ownership of the result. See Sam Zell's book Am I Being Too Subtle? for more on this topic.
89) On blame and fault: the idea that some people avoid fault or avoid blame for things because they want to preserve their egoic good self.
90) The author also believes that excuses, blame, and trying to appear never at fault "are actually some of the biggest ways of being lazy that exist." Interesting.
91) On the ability to confront, and confront well: "It is true that you get what you tolerate." "...nonconfrontors leave a lot of success on the table, they also lead a lot of messes in their wake."
92) Confronting well requires integration of the truth-telling side of your character along with the loving and caring side of your character. "I try to go hard on the issue and soft on the person." Also asking "What do I want to have happen as a result of this confrontation?" and "You and I versus the problem." Teaming up against what is wrong and coming together to fix it. It preserves the relationship.
93) "The best way to solve a problem is not to have it to begin with." On having an ability to sense and avoid bad situations; on not agreeing to things that don't fit your values or your criteria, or that involve other types of negatives you don't want to deal with. On avoiding any situation or person where there's a "cringe factor."
94) "Hard, easy versus easy, hard." On taking the hard road first and having things be easier afterward, versus looking for the easy route first--being avoidant and then the hard life will follow.
Character Dimension 5: Oriented Toward Increase
Ch 11: Getting Better All the Time
95) On having a drive to grow, having curiosity for what is around the corner. The desire to create "increase" which doesn't mean more in the sense of greed, but more about realizing personal growth and your best self.
96) Being a good problem solver versus being a grower. A good maintainer versus a grower.
97) Here is where we being to see a complete integration of all the book's character dimensions up to this point: you need to have good connections to others, be oriented towards the truth, be able to solve problems, embrace adversity in order to grow. All these things are integrated and interdependent.
98) "Lack of use ushers in death" and "What is good to use, grows." An interesting construct here: not just use it or lose it but something more forceful, that there's more at stake; that use it or lose it as a philosophy is a bare minimum, you want to aim higher and use/grow more.
99) Differences between growers and non-growers (wait: what about show-ers??): having a desire for more growth, learning and new experiences versus "anorexia of life"... people lacking a growth appetite and withering as a result, or else easing into a dull state of maintaining.
100) Character detachment: the belief that "no growth can happen" to oneself.
101) Distinguishing taking risks from gambling; growing out of your skin; on taking a managed risk that may not work out and accepting that risk (and embracing the possibility of growth/adversity etc.) versus taking a clueless leap and risking all your money on something. On risking in increments and being able to withstand a potentially negative outcome.
102) Note his circular definition of an "integrated risk": if you can't withstand the possible negative outcome of a risk it's therefore not properly integrated.
103) Preventing entropy by applying energy to a template or a structure in your life, and not staying in a closed system. In other words, opening yourself to growth and connection, taking in energy in the form you need it and having some organizing force or principle that shapes the direction of that growth. "The number one reason for lack of growth in people's lives, I have observed, is the absence of joining forces outside themselves who push them to grow." [Note that another way to look at this is to make sure that you are the kind of person who can be that for other people.]
104) Regarding templates/structures: you need to "submit yourself to a structure" in order to grow: examples would be submitting to a schedule of growth activities, submitting to investing time/money/effort into these activities, submitting to a mentor. Note also down the road you may find yourself submitting to your current inability or limits, accepting your limits at this time in order to grow, also submitting to "rest." Really interesting this paradox of growth via submission.
105) On a clinical supervisor that Dr. Cloud had who was sadistic and abusive, but would also get you to your weak areas and expose them, exposing him as needing to learn much more, and Dr. Cloud saw it as a price worth paying for something very valuable: to learn more than you could ever imagine very quickly from this guy, albeit at a price. He saw the price as very much worth it.
106) "You will not grow without attempting things you are unable to do." "They place themselves in situations that demand more of them than they are able to deliver." Again, paradox.
107) On resting: rest and the idea of a Sabbath--or a sabbatical. "Rest means not producing. When something is not producing, it is regenerating." Physical rest, cognitive rest, etc., you need to construct a character makeup that is aware of the need for rest (and likewise egoically capable of rest, rather than a total Type A personality).
108) Finally, on teaching others: this helps you master the material itself, but it is also a growth experience for the people you teach. Investing in the growth of others. On the importance of not just having mentors or learning from those who are further down the road in life's journey, but also to be the person further down the road for someone else. Giving away what you possess, yet another aspect of leaving a good wake.
Character Dimension 6: Oriented Toward Transcendence
Ch 12: When You're Small, You're Bigger
109) The "we are a lighthouse" joke.. the Navy ship was trying to get a fixed lighthouse to "adjust its course" by trying to pull rank, etc.
110) "To live and flourish, we must bow to the things larger than us."
111) Asking a meta-question in psychology: are you God, or not? Almost everyone knows clearly that they're not God, but they act most of the time as if they are, living as if they're the center of the universe and building their own little kingdom/fiefdom in it, essentially believing that the lighthouse should move.
112) The author uses the word transcendence to describe the polar opposite of selfishness and self-centeredness; to describe someone who's gotten beyond their ego, who doesn't believe life revolves around him, who realizes there are things much bigger than him, and that life is about fitting in with those things, serving them and finding your role in the big picture. In this way you find much more meaning in life.
113) What are the types of things that can help us transcend? Values, a level of awareness or a type of enlightenment. This can happens to us either when we hit rock bottom (like an alcoholic), or we perhaps develop some system of motivation beyond basic instincts, or we may "catch" awareness from being around other enlightened people. We can experience "the end of ourselves," which is to say we hit some kind of lack of meaning, where we realize "there must be more"--and then we are ready to seek transcendence, we try to find out what that "more" might involve.
114) This is one of the weaker chapters: the author is having difficulty conveying the ideas--possibly because they are largely ineffable in the first place. In fact, the last two chapters are somewhat weak, the conclusion feels rushed, and not properly "integrated" with the rest of the book.
115) Also reading this along with The Fourth Turning you start to see how many of the institutions that may have experienced or practiced Transcendence in the past in the United States will necessarily fail to do so today. One can't help but think about the activity of modern pharmaceutical companies today versus the behavior of J&J during the 1980s Tylenol cyanide poisonings that J&J handled so incredibly well back then. Likewise it hard to imagine a less transcendent action than, say, the comportment of offices of the Uvalde, TX police department, who refused to risk themselves in any way to protect their own community's children, which is the actual function, the actual purpose of a police force. Institutions fail to work the way they should during a fourth turning, we are seeing this more and more now, and it's a signal a major shift is coming.
116) "The immature character asks life to meet his demands. But the mature character meets the demands of life."
Conclusion
Ch 13: Where Did It Go?
117) The CEO who was afraid to fire one of his workers and forced the HR consultant to do it; on having a chink in your armor (being superhuman human yet dysfunctional all at once), understanding and accepting that you have gaps to work on and there's nothing wrong with this, and knowing what steps to take to resolve those gaps.
118) Sometimes we forget that everyone's a human: we see someone with power and tremendous capability but then we're surprised that they have a gap in their personality integration... and as a result we tend to hide our own weaknesses out of comparison and thus miss out on an opportunity for growth.
119) Also the idea of people who live in "survival mode": not the mode in which we develop new aspects of our character (with the possible exception of perseverance).
120) You can't really get someone to change but you can do a lot to make them "want to."
121) Some final takeaway points:
* Integrity is not something you either have or don't have, you have aspects where you have it and aspects where you don't.
* You might think high achievers have it all together but they don't.
* All of us have issues in our character that are opportunities for growth and development: you are not bad, inadequate or defective,
* When you understand where character comes from you can better understand and accept why you and others have gaps.
* When you understand where character comes from you get a glimpse of the kinds of things that are going to help you grow.
To Read:
Martin Buber: I and Thou
Rick Warren: The Purpose Driven Life
John M Gottman and Nan Silver: The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work
Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton: Now, Discover Your Strengths
Larry Bossidy (CEO of Honeywell): Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done
Thomas Nelson Soderquist: The Wal-Mart Way
