Campbell understood the power of story, or myth, in how we live our own lives. He studied this through countless cultures and their myths, and had the wisdom and prosaic force to share that knowledge with many individuals through his books and teachings.

Here are some of the passages I highlighted as I read Joseph Campbell:

"The world is perfect. It’s a mess. It has always been a mess."

"We are not going to change it."

"Our job is to straighten out our own lives."

Straightening out our own lives does not preclude us from helping others. Likewise, helping others should not preclude us from straightening out our own lives.

I want to share these now, as our expectations from life don't always match the perfect messiness of life. One of my success strategies states that "Life is perfect and everything is on schedule."  I challenge you to approach more moments of your day with that perspective…it will help you take a deep breath and "accept, adjust, and advance" more successfully than if you try to control or deny the messiness of life.

I hope some of these quotes might shift your perspective, and therefore, free you to find new solutions and ways to approach the way you live your day-to-day life. For…

"We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us."
(-Joseph Campbell)

Shift your perspective. Read The Power of Losing Control>>

Chances are it sounds like something you’ve heard before.

It may come as no surprise that our brains are more likely to enjoy new music that is more familiar, than new music that is vastly different from what we usually listen to. The same goes for new ideas, thoughts, and considerations…and even news channels.

Think about it – when you hear a new song, or a new band, do you immediately try to make associations to other music or bands? “Hey check out this new band, they are a mix between Neil Young and Elvis Costello.”  Isn’t that what the music genome project is built upon? Some of you might experience it regularly as Pandora, which builds playlists based on common characteristics of songs. This article from Smithsonian Magazine, which ties our music preferences with the way our mind works, got me thinking about how inextricably linked this is to our own sense of self.

Creatures of Habit – Habitually Maintaining Our Identity

We are creatures of habit largely because our minds operate on a sameness pattern that eventually largely contributes to the creation of our identity, sense of self, or our “agency.” We append the rest of our lives, consciously and sub-consciously working  to maintain and edify our identity as we know it. There is credible evidence that the psychological mind works this way because of how the physical brain works.

I’m currently studying a book called Synaptic Self by Joseph Le Doux (an author and Professor of Science at New York University’s Center for Neural Science). In the book, Le Doux writes, “My notion of personality is pretty simple: it’s that your ‘self’, the essence of who you are, reflects patterns of interconnectivity between neurons in your brain.”

His contention is that the key to who someone becomes is largely shaped by the particular patterns of synaptic connections and the information encoded by these connections. As we age, these patterns prefer to repeat and thusly imbed and further into our psyche. 

Our Identity Plays a Key Role in the Connections We Make Every Day

My clients and colleagues have heard me teach that, as humans, we form our sense of self via connections. Biologically, physically, socially, neurologically, we need to make connections. We need to create connections so we can find meaning. Our ultimate meaning is our identity, or sense of self. We view all of the rest of the world and everything that’s in it in the context of how we understand ourselves.   

Rule number one of the four rules of engagement is that our greatest desire is to be right. I would add that the thing we need to be most right about is our sense of self. Our sense of self is the first and foremost contextual filter by which we understand and judge all other considerations.

When Our Sense of Self is Challenged, We Experience an Identity Crisis

In the rare instances that some event challenges the core of our sense of self, the result is life-altering. It is true identity crisis. For some, it can lead to revelation, for others, to depression. Think of the following phrases:

“My world is falling apart.” 
“I’ve got to pull myself together.” 
“Nothing makes sense anymore.”  

Notice how all of these phrases imply the feeling of a loss of connection or cohesion. When things change dramatically in our losses, usually by some force beyond our control, it can shake things up enough that we can no longer make connections in order to create meaning that is familiar to us. And thus, we begin to lose the foundational context by which we define everything—our sense of self.

We are creatures of habit because of the way our brains and our minds function.   

It is said that history repeats itself. Perhaps it would be more explicit to say that individually and collectively, we are likely driven to recreate a new up-coming history based on some familiar old pattern. It is very difficult to do otherwise because we don’t want to risk losing ourselves in the process. To quote an old familiar song (I know you’ve heard it before) that can be found on Pandora radio, “Should old acquaintance be forgot…”

© Joe Caruso and Caruso Leadership, 2013

Learn more about how the mind functions and how it affects our behavior

Change for Good: Six Basic Steps to Developing a Habit >>

We Are Guilty of Our Training >>

Why Do We Refuse to Find Our Potential >>

Does your team have a shared context? If they don’t, they may fall short of achieving their goals (both individually and collectively). 

Leaders must own the context by which their teams operate. [The context is the general that lends meaning to the specific.]

Owning the context doesn't allow you to change people, but it does allow you to shift the way they approach their work.

When teams have a shared context, their individual work has meaning…each individual can thrive. The team will have greater success.

More Success Strategies for Business

Understanding Influence vs. Control>>

Success Strategies for Business>>

Our Trained Minds

We are all guilty of our training.  What I mean by this is that our past experience combines with the area of our expertise, and together they guide how our minds will consider problems and solutions. If we can be aware of this tendency we can free ourselves to think more creatively about problems and solutions. If not, our minds may not consider the problem in a manner that will lead to the optimal solution. In other words, the way you define the problem will limit the number of available solutions.

[From Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar]

One of my clients is the owner of a small business, and during a recent Leadership retreat, he brought the book Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman to my attention. Kahneman is a psychologist and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in Economics. In the book, Kahneman discusses his premise that the mind employs two different systems when it thinks—one fast and one slow. He explores the impact of how using one system to the exclusion of the other can dramatically shape the outcomes in corporate strategies, among other things. Each system has the capacity to shape our judgments and decisions.  It’s for this reason that overlooking one—or favoring the other—can have a profound limiting impact on our outcomes without us even realizing it.

That evening the owner, his CFO, his President and I sat down for dinner as the discussion about Thinking Fast and Slow continued.  When his employees asked for further explanation about the concept of thinking fast and slow, he provided an example from the book in the form of a quick question.

“How many animals, by type, did Moses put on the ark?”

Both employees answered very quickly and almost at the same time.

The CFO immediately answered, “Two!” 

The CEO said, “None – Moses was dead and gone long before Noah put the animals on the ark.”

The owner of the business then told us that most people don’t pay attention to the name being wrong because both Moses and Noah are similar in that they’re Biblical names. Instead they focus on getting the numerical answer correct. I found the example to be interesting on another level as well. My observation of the exchange between the three of them reminded me once again how much we’re all guilty of our training. The CFO focused on getting the number correct.  The CEO didn’t because his Jesuit training didn’t allow him to confuse Moses with Noah. 

Our Training Informs the Solutions We Will (or Will Not) Consider

After years of experience working with leadership teams that are made up of trained subject matter experts, I have learned that sometimes when the leaders of organizations focus on a particular problem, their minds hone in on solutions that are in line with their experience or their training. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it can limit the type and amount of potential solutions they will allow themselves to consider.

It’s important for us all to remember that how we define a problem determines the solutions we will consider.

Further, the types of solutions we will consider are usually limited to how our minds are accustomed to thinking. 

Whether advising a CEO or facilitating a leadership team, it’s important for me to stay diligent about not only helping them solve their problems, but also to always be aware of how the problems are being defined. Fortunately, my experience has my mind trained to do just that.

I guess this means that I’m guilty of my own training just like everyone else.  And there you have it.

© Joe Caruso and Caruso Leadership, 2013. Reprints available with permission.

Learn more

How to get the most out of your Leadership Team>>

Develop your Leadership Team – Book a Leadership Retreat>>

This role is also a useful one to play when an organization books me to do a Keynote Speech. Before I address an organization’s constituents from the big stage, whether the audience will be made up of employees, partners and clients, or members of that organization, I ask a lot of questions and listen. When I talk to the audience, I become a representative of the organization that hired me, and I do not take that responsibility lightly. It is similar to the responsibility felt by the event planner or committee tasked with organizing and planning the event.

Over the years I have given (and heard) many Keynote Speeches. I’d like to share what I have found to be the core elements of a successful Keynote Speech.

Three Elements of a Successful Keynote Speech

1. A great keynote should be about the audience. As humans, we long to make connections. To connect with the audience, the Keynote must be about the audience. The talk can be infused with themes, goals and priorities for the conference, but only as it relates to the audience themselves. Successful connections with the audience translate to the success of the conference, and —in the case of annual association meetings—can affect next year’s attendance.
2. A great keynote should use narrative or story. How many power point slides or bullet points does it take to bore the audience? Discussing facts, theory or practice can be very useful, but if no one remembers it, it’s been a waste of time. Story is the best way to make your theory or philosophy memorable. It goes back to connecting with the audience. The story should resonate with the audience, bring them to a higher meaning, and create a buzz throughout the conference and beyond. Story can even be more powerful than truth…just look at our society’s myths, or stories, that have survived for thousands of years. People are looking for meaning, and stories provide that meaning in a powerful and lasting way. Great and memorable keynote speeches are made up of great and memorable stories.
3. A great keynote should become the context by which the attendees experience the rest of the event, and/or the way they approach their work. A powerful connection becomes stronger when it ties and relates to even more experiences. The Keynote can drive the context by which your attendees experience the rest of the event. Stories and messages that make a direct connection, and apply broadly to the human experience, have the opportunity to provide a very powerful and meaningful context for the entire event. Enthusiastic and edified attendees are often happy attendees.

So take a look at your current criteria for a great event or keynote speech. I urge you to consider these three elements of what a great Keynote can do to set the stage for your next event.

Learn more about Great Keynote Speeches

Videos: “What Caruso Leadership Does for Leaders” and “What’s In a Joe Caruso Keynote”  Click here>>

More Videos: Keynote Speech Samples>>

Information on Caruso Leadership Keynote and Event Facilitation Services

© Joe Caruso and Caruso Leadership, 2013. Reprints available with permission.

Since we’re talking about freedom, I wanted to share another paradox of freedom. It’s a concept I’ve been sharing as part of my Success Strategies for years. And it’s directly connected to how our minds work, and how we simply cannot behave to a story that is inconsistent with our driving truths. Great leaders understand the paradox of the cage in which to be free not only for their own success, but for how successfully they influence others.

Each of us lives according to our own specific myths (stories), contexts, and definitions. We choose these myths, contexts and definitions (some consciously and some subconsciously) for ourselves. This is why I continually remind the leaders I work with that our perception is our reality. Not only do our perceptions (our myths, contexts and definitions) determine how we live, but they also determine the limitations we place upon ourselves.

You Determine the Context of Your Boundaries

This means that the concepts by which we choose to live become the boundaries of our potential—the bars of the cage in which we live our life. Our insecurities might lead us to believe that we are naturally driven to perpetuating pain and anxiety, but that’s only because we’re allowing ourselves to be controlled by our fears. By picking good myths, contexts, and definitions—the ones that serve us best—as our boundaries, we can ensure that the cage we’ve built for ourselves will provide us with whatever we need in order to grow and enhance the meaning of our lives.  A leader cannot control another person’s perception – each of us creates our own – but they can certainly provide an environment where the cage is one of positive tenets, rather than fear-based ones. That’s why it is imperative that leaders fully understand their organization’s story or narrative, and set the context by which people understand that story. 

Boundaries Give Us the Freedom to Act

Paradoxically, we all need the rules and boundaries that define our reality in order to feel free. The times we’re most likely to panic and become paralyzed by fear are when we can’t see any boundaries at all, when we’re floating at sea or lost in the woods or stranded in the desert. We need to see where we are in the world in order to function. As individuals, we have the ability to fix our own boundaries; we choose whether they are created out of fear, or love, or some other driver.

This feeling of panic and paralysis applies to organizations as well. Think about a company that might be feeling lost in their changing market, perhaps they are going through major changes internally in an attempt to respond to market forces. When the rules and boundaries change and they aren’t effectively communicated, accepted, and embraced, it creates fear, uncertainty and doubt among the employees. Leaders of organizations also have the ability to fix the boundaries, to create roomier, more positive contexts that allow employees to grow rather than choose contexts that limit and confine them. Given that choice, leaders need to commit to a vision that is bound by a positive context, rather than one that is driven by fear.

Successful leaders and individuals who reflect on this, understand it well, and consciously create a cage that serves them are generally the more successful people you will encounter. They push out the bars of the cage so they can soar. These are the kinds of leaders I would like to follow. How about you?

© Joe Caruso and Caruso Leadership, 2013

Learn More

The Paradox of Freedom Part I>>

Invest in Your Leadership Team>>

Organizational Development and Culture>>

In order to get the most out of your leadership team, you need to set the vision, and frame the context by which your leaders and employees reach their goals, always with the vision first and foremost. In other words, it is difficult to be innovative, productive, and profitable in a company where the leadership teams focus first on their own individual subject matter expertise, and lose sight of the vision.

In this video, Joe Caruso addresses Entrepreneurs on the topic of developing their leadership teams, with a powerful example to drive home the point.

Get your Leadership Team to the next level.

Book Joe for your next Leadership Retreat or event. Contact us today.

“Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose…” 

Those words are from the great Janis Joplin song, “Me and Bobby McGee.”

While most people would agree that this is a nice sentiment, it has very little to do with reality. In reality, freedom is directly and proportionally related to responsibility.

Think about it. There’s a name for the group of people who have almost no responsibility — people who go to sleep each night and wake up each day responsible for almost nothing, to almost no one. They’re called prisoners. If you think about it, prisoners have about as much responsibility as they do freedom. The very responsibilities that you and I see sometimes as burdens or pressures aren’t even options for those whose freedom only lies inside guarded walls.  (Of course I assume you’re not reading this from prison.)

When it comes to the relationship between freedom and responsibility, the truth is that the people in this country who have the most choices daily, are the people with the most responsibility. It is a virtually unavoidable paradox. With responsibility we gain opportunities and we get options; with options we make choices; and with choices we have freedom. 

Put Freedom into Context 

When we take freedom out of the context of responsibility, we begin to see an “enabled” culture, where people expect the freedom to make choices but disregard the responsibility from which those freedoms are afforded. Taking freedom out of context can create attitudes that are unproductive. It can also create dialogues that are too one-sided and cannot handle spirited debate or discussion. This attitude toward freedom might have the power to undermine the big decisions being made, or not being made, about the path our country takes to grow stronger again.  (See also: "Wisdom" of the Masses)

Be wary of perpetuating a culture that consumes freedom without the currency of responsibility. This is really a simple concept, but not always an easy one. It’s a concept that conscious, aware parents and educators try to teach our children and teenagers. It's a concept that older generations of Americans come to understand that their parents were teaching them. 

Let’s not lose site of this awesome responsibility; let’s make responsibility the context by which we enjoy our freedom. It will only afford us more and better choices, and healthier dialogues, by which we improve the quality of life in our country.

© Joe Caruso and Caruso Leadership. Reprints available with permission.

More words from Joe

The Power of Losing Control eBook or Paperback

Wisdom of the masses blog

Four Rules of Engagement (how to communicate, how to influence)

One day I was practicing my clarinet, working on a particularly difficult passage in preparation for my high school soloist competition.

“Hey Joe! Listen to what’s coming out of the end of your horn,” my Dad yelled down the stairs.  

Lost in my efforts to learn the proper fingering and phrasing of the passage, I had stopped paying attention to the sound that was coming out of my horn.

My father, an accomplished musician, didn’t mind hearing me struggle with the passage;  however, he did mind that while I was practicing one aspect of the instrument, I was completely ignoring how I sounded.

He knew that this kind of practicing would yield a player who was well versed in the fundamentals, yet incapable of bringing the beautiful sound of the instrument to a song—in short, a technician rather than a musician.

Life is like art in so many ways. Most of us realize that each day is an opportunity to improve ourselves.  We also realize that some days (passages) are more difficult than others. It’s important to our success and happiness that during our most challenging times we “listen to what’s coming out of the end of our respective horns.”

This is true for individuals, as well as leaders and even leadership teams. The challenge for leaders, of course, is to get their leadership teams to not only listen to what's coming out of the end of their own horn, but to listen in concert with the other members of the leadership team, so that they make a song that has the same rhythm, tempo, and style. Otherwise the song is fighting against itself, and falling short of its potential. The song does not play to the common vision unless each member of the team learns to listen to how they sound in relation to the others.

© Joe Caruso and Caruso Leadership. Reprints available with permission.

More Success Strategies

Find more success strategies (free)>>

Find this, and other stories to help shift your perspective, in The Power of Losing Control, available in paperback or eBook format.

            “How many people like you or like being with you?”  I asked a young salesperson.

            “What do you mean?”  she questioned back.

            “How many people in your life would call you a friend of theirs even in the most casual context of the word?”  I answered.

            “I don’t know,” she replied.  “Maybe about 100.”

            “So you’re telling me there are about a hundred people in your life who like you?”

            “I guess so,” she said.

            “GREAT.  NOW  I’d like to ask you another question.  How many people truly know the real you?”

            “Well, put that way I guess  I’d have to say only two people really know the real me,” she answered.

            “Well, that’s curious,” I said.  “You’ve given me two answers that don’t seem to support each other.  You say that there are about 100 people who really like you, yet you admit that only two of them really know you.  Am I to conclude that 98 of your so-called ‘friends’ don’t really like you?”

            “They all seem to like me.” she replied. “What are your getting at, exactly?”

            MY QUESTION to her was this: “How can you say that those 98 people like you when they don’t really know you? I’m suggesting that they can’t like you if they don’t know you. What they like is how they feel about themselves when they’re with you.”

This shift in perspective can change the way you approach every interaction…

More Success Strategies:         

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