Ever wish you could change the past?

Because if you could, you change who you are now and what’s possible for you in the future. This isn’t science fiction. Who we believe ourselves to be and what we’re capable of is not about events of our past, but how we respond to those events. Every moment of every day, our accumulation of judgment about what the world is and our relationship to it, is determining how we respond to circumstances now and into the future. Most people believe that by accumulating more knowledge and experience they can improve their judgment and avoid repeating the past, or at least improve upon it. But the powerful perspective that comes with wisdom isn’t accumulated, it is revealed. (more…)

What do you do in your free time? We ask this harmless question to better know a person by their interests or when we want to steer the conversation away from work. I pose it when I sense that people aren’t inspired in their career, because of the way they say things like, “It’s just a job”, with the same tone of resignation one might use in the phrase, “But I can control it with medication”. Free time is a strange concept, because it implies that the rest of our time is not free; we pay for it with our labor. It is only the small remainder of spare time that we can call our own; the leftovers from the banquet of life (more…)

“We all want to live. And in large part we make our logic according to what we like. But not having attained our aim and continuing to live is cowardice. This is a thin dangerous line. To die without gaining one’s aim is a dog’s death. But there is no shame in this. This is the substance of the Way of the Samurai. If by setting one’s heart right every morning and evening, one is able to live as though his body were already dead, he gains freedom in the Way. His whole life will be without blame, and he will succeed in his calling. — Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure, “The Book of the Samurai” (more…)

One winter in college I was visiting Paris, sitting at the bistro near my hotel just watching people. An American couple came in and the husband, in an accent I would best describe as “Chicago detective” (the word “Paris” came out sounding like “Pears”), called the waiter and tried to get “Two diet cokes”. The waiter in classic Parisian style, pretended not to understand what the man was saying. “Can you repeat, Monsieur”, he asked in French. The husband, in classic American style, only spoke louder, adding, “I know you know what I’m talkin’ about here”. The waiter, whom I had heard speak English to some women earlier, continued to feign interest in the conversation saying, “Faites un bel effort, Monsieur.” (make a beautiful effort). (more…)

Since I started writing on UnboundedLife, I’ve given a thought a lot to what freedom is and what it means in the context of human nature. One theme that I’ve come back to repeatedly is mobility; designing a life from a purposeful future, versus living out an extension of the past. It’s a lofty idea that is easy to talk about but as narrow as the razor’s edge to walk. Last month I was planning to write about how I walk it in terms of the life I’m choosing, but I found myself preoccupied with painful events of the recent past. I felt like until I had honestly moved beyond the sadness of re-experiencing this loss, it would be inauthentic to write about living into a self-chosen future. Kind of like an overweight personal trainer talking about losing weight. (more…)

This week I’ve been devoting considerable mental bandwidth to wrestling with yet another paradoxical facet of my human nature. On the one side is my desire for simplicity. I did a stint as a Buddhist monk in Sri Lanka years back, that’s how much I dig the minimalist lifestyle. But this ascetic existence didn’t really work out for me in the end, as I also love stuff. Not a lot of stuff, but nice stuff. It’s hard to be a renunciant with a Brooks Brothers card, but it is possible to reconcile this contradiction in a way that allows us to enjoy all the pleasures of material wealth, without indulging in it for its own sake. (more…)

I recently wrapped up a personal leadership seminar with an American corporate client in Beijing, and during a conversation about values, one of my students asked me, what did I value the most? Before I could think about it, I said, “Mobility.” Like the old SAT strategy, your first answer is usually your best answer, so then I thought, how was it that mobility had beat out core values contenders like family, health, love, compassion and spirituality. Here’s what I came up with… (more…)