Happiness, it lies in the present

Happiness is an emotional state that we all desire. Yet very few of us find ourselves in a state of genuine happiness, and even fewer are happy for extended periods of time.

Throughout life, most of us come across the notion of pursuing happiness, implying that it's not permanent. This means that, when one is happy, one is embracing the inevitable prospect of becoming sad, which diminishes the pleasure of being happy at that very moment.

The pursuit of happiness is futile in other respects, too. Consumerism and advertising would have us believe that happiness arises from acquiring new items. The desire to acquire might give us a heightened sense of pleasure, as one experience while under the influence of ecstasy, but this path is nothing more than a happiness treadmill, leading to the undesirable destination of never being completely satisfied with what we have.

Others contend that, once we become successful, we become happy, and that the pursuit of happiness essentially translates into the pursuit of success. Those who pursue this line of reasoning completely overlook the fact that being happy is a conducive condition for achieving success, as we are more determined, productive, and approachable in a happy state than a sad or miserable one. The relationship, it appears, runs the other way.

Psychologists have long researched the causes of happiness. Their findings point to acts of kindness. Sharing food and clothes, giving out hugs, and listening to the concerns of our friends are acts that generate the warm, fuzzy feeling of happiness inside us.

In performing such kind acts, we do not have in mind 'the pursuit of happiness', but rather an eagerness to support and care for those people whom we love. We do not worry about being happy, because we know that happiness will naturally follow suit.

So far, it seems that, in pursuing happiness, it becomes more of destination, than a condition. A destination towards which we approach, but never actually arrive. Even so, the journey is that much better in the company of those we love, and with generosity, kindness, and enthusiasm.

Think about the following:

If we think not about pursuing anything, yet alone happiness, and merely consider this given moment, in which there is no harm, no danger, and no serious concern, and where we can live and breathe and be free in all of our strength, then this is the moment when we are happy.

Put aside your worries about the future. Happiness lies in living and being free in the present.

Emotional Intelligence, the defining characteristic of great leaders

Consider any great leader: Winston Churchill; Martin Luther King; John F Kennedy; Ronald Reagan; Mahatma Gandhi; and Benazir Bhutto. All of the mentioned leaders were incredibly intelligent, but it was not their intelligence that defined them as great leaders; it was their emotional intelligence.

Psychologist Daniel Goleman coined the phrase 'emotional intelligence', writing a book with the same title. He argues that truly successful leaders almost always display emotional intelligence, manifested in self-awareness, self-control, motivation, drive, empathy, and social skill.

These soft skills have more recently been emphasised as key characteristics of those who run the world's most successful and powerful organisations. Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs highlights the need to become 'a complete person', capable of interacting with a wide range of people, while his rival, Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan, stresses the necessity of keeping one's emotions in control during tough and turbulent times.

That is not to deny the value of intelligence for sound leadership. Instead, it is my aim to argue, in this post, that intelligence is a necessary albeit insufficient condition for developing oneself into a successful leader. We all know of one person who is incredibly bright and smart, but who did not succeed to a great extent as a leader.

Why not?

To provide a satisfactory answer, let us consider, in some detail, three key components of emotional intelligence: self-awareness, motivation, and empathy.

Developing self-awareness is to explore and understand one's values, desires, and areas for improvement. People with self-awareness know what makes them 'tick' and where they are going in life and how they will get there.

For instance, a self-aware person, who suffers from the pressure surrounding tight deadlines, will plan ahead and complete the required work well in advance. Self-aware people also admit to their mistakes, and as a result, are more likely to learn from their mistakes and perform better in the future.

Self-aware candidates demonstrate a thirst for constructive criticism, because they realise the potential to growth through listening to others. 

Second, if there is one trait that all great leaders possess, it is motivation. We are all motivated by external factors in the world, be it money, status, or power. Truly great leaders, however, are motivated by a deeply embedded desire to achieve for sake of achieving and becoming great.

These people love what they do and display unconditional enthusiasm and energy almost all of the time. These are the people who do not accept the status quo as given; they are the game changers in business, law, medicine, and other professional realms.

Highly motivated leaders remain optimistic even when the odds are against them. 

Finally, empathy is a crucial skill that great leaders have developed over time. Empathy does not equate with pity. Rather, it refers to the ability of a leader to recognise and understand the feelings of her team and base intelligent decisions on how her team is performing.

Given the need to attract and retain talented employees and team members, it is needless to say that leaders must be able to communicate and engage with their team in a meaningful and connected manner, such that the whole team feels a part of something special and capable of doing good for the team and the wider community.


To summarise, great leaders with emotional intelligence are:

1. able to understand their internal drivers and values

2. motivated to purse what they love unconditionally and relentlessly

3. capable of connecting with a wide range of people

4. able to empathise and listen to people and make intelligent decisions on that basis

and most importantly...

5. are not scared by what they are capable of achieving


Be a great leader by developing your own emotional intelligence.

Love at first sight?

Think back to a time when you were starstruck, literally, after seeing a man or woman whom you believed to be, without a doubt, your true love. Whether you both shared a certain twinkle in your eyes, or let off a small smirk after glancing at each for a few seconds, there is most certainly something special at play in these moments.

The most intense forms of love tend to occur in the early stages of a relationship, suggesting that our attraction to someone at the first instance of seeing them is usually an occurrence that remains in our minds and hearts.

Further evidence that love at first sight exists arises from the fact that human beings have the ability to judge, within a few seconds, whether they believe another person is attractive in their eyes. The first step in almost every relationship is based on attraction based on physical appearance.

A similar line of reasoning maintains that first impressions have a powerful influence on us. Here the two possibilities are at either extremes. In the first, positive instance, we are completely blown away by a guy or gal that we want to wrap our arms around them until the end of eternity, though we never actually deliver on this. 

On the other extreme, we are somewhat disgusted by another's pride, arrogance, or lack of empathy, that we choose to repel ourselves away from him or her, even though our judgement here is in fact very superficial and immature. 

My purpose in this post, however, is to present a case that undermines the view that love at first sight exists. Here's why.

First, there is no compelling reason for accepting that love has to be a noun. Love is also verb. To love someone is to be there for her unconditionally, in bad times and good, an action. To love someone is to make sacrifices for her, another action. See the pattern?

Second, to develop a feeling for someone that is as powerful and intense as the feeling of love requires us to grasp a deeper understanding of another's soft side. Traits such as intellect, compassion, kindness, and a good sense of humour cannot be revealed at first insight. On this basis, it is difficult to develop love, in a truly meaningful way, at first sight. 

Let me be clear and admit that there is definitely a case to be made for feeling substantial arousals when first seeing someone whom we believe to be somewhat extraordinary and special to us. I personally have experienced this many times in life.

Yet to claim that we 'are in love' after an initial encounter is perhaps stretching too far, given that love is something we develop over a long period of time. 

REMEMBER

Love is not only a noun, but also a verb.

Do what makes you come alive

'It felt like breathing; it felt right.'

She came alive, at the age of 20, when she held her first talk show event. She is Oprah Winfrey and she is a woman regarded by many around the world as a source of inspiration, love, and meaning.

Coming alive is to pursue a passion relentlessly and without care about what others might think. Coming alive is to live every day with enthusiasm and drive, always striving to fulfil your greatest potential.

This is mentally draining, which is why Oprah strongly emphasises that we each find what makes us tick and wake up in the morning, so that we can persevere when things get tough, because we love what we do.

Let's now consider how doing the thing that 'makes us come alive' fits in with success. For the purposes of clarity, we will look at Oprah as an example.

Serving as the lead on one of the most popular talk shows in world clearly has its financial benefits. We should never neglect the importance of money and attaining a position of financial stability.

Money helps us cater for our needs and for those whom we are responsible, such as our family and friends. Money also enables us to seize opportunities, to which we would not be exposed if we did not have a sufficient amount of money.

Money does not, however, add meaning to one's life. Meaning comes from listening to your feelings and making decisions based on your gut, says Oprah. Your gut is your GPS for life, guiding you through obstacles, challenges, and uncertainty.

Here's the difficult part. Only YOU can understand your gut feeling. So, making a decision based on your gut could seem entirely absurd from the perspective of other people, but to you it IS natural. IT IS RIGHT. There is a good case, then, for developing the resilience, over time, to care less about the views others hold about your decisions and instead devote more attention to understanding how we feel as unique individuals.

What about failure? What if doing the thing that makes me come alive is challenging and hard? As you already know, nobody said that anything worthwhile is easy. Let me, however, share some advice that I received quite recently.

Michael Nartey, co-head of Global Distribution at Barclays (formerly managing director at Goldman Sachs), is a man who rose to the top of one of the world's greatest financial institutions having been born and lived in Ghana for a large part of his life.

He said the following:

'If you are able to go home, reflect on the possible lessons that you should learn from your mistake or failure today, and come into work the next day with a fresh mindset that involves not thinking about the day before, then you will become successful.'

Michael's point could alternatively be explained in the following way: learn from your mistakes, but live in the present.

I cannot over emphasise the importance of living in the present. Opportunities, in the form of occasions to seize career-related opportunities, to develop and enhance your relationships, or to simply laugh and hug the people you love, occur in the present.

We cannot seize these wonderful opportunities that add meaning and happiness in our lives if we are too consumed with the past or too worried about what the future may bring.

Both are outside our control: we cannot change the past and we have virtually no influence over the future. Developing the humility and resilience to concede to this fact is the first step in letting go of a burden that keeps us back and arriving at a more peaceful state of mind.

Find what you love, what makes you come alive, and devote yourself to that day in, day out, with integrity, passion, and endless drive.

Do what makes you come alive and show it to the rest of the world

The conundrum women face

What does a twenty year old man have to say about women, their work, and their lifestyles? Probably not a lot, and I suggest that you take my points in this post with a pinch of salt. That said, I believe that the issues I raise here are incredibly important and worth your time and consideration.

It could be argued that women lead a life that is somewhat more difficult than that of men. Women face the challenging task of balancing parenting and a working life, whereas most men often focus exclusively on the latter, usually proving to be more successful than women. This is reflected by, for example, the disproportionate number of male CEOs and politicians.

Nonetheless, many female activists, entrepreneurs, and businesswomen have shown that it is possible to lead a life in which a woman has a successful career and is also raising her children in a healthy and happy manner. In this post, I want to direct my attention to the arguments put forth by Sheryl Sandberg, the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook.

In her book, Lean In, which is an interesting and fascinating read, Sandberg makes the point that women often hold themselves back from business opportunities and devote too much of their time and effort on parenting or preparing for parenting.

Yet the topic of determination and drive is not so clear cut. Personal motivations are inherently complex to understand and decipher. Even Adam Smith, a social psychologist and moral philosopher, explained that human beings are subject to elements of both altruism and self-interest, and the proportions of each are not always defined by one's gender.

Moreover, our aspirations and determination are influenced by the type of education we receive, our peer group, our personal environment and experiences, and the connections and relationships we form with people. Thus, it is perhaps not entirely plausible to claim that it is only women who hold themselves back.

There is, however, a serious obstacle that women face: when a woman is successful, she will probably be disliked by both men and other women. Meanwhile, successful men are commonly liked by other men and women.

A case study, titled Howard/Heidi, was performed, which illustrated that two individuals, each of equal standing in terms of success, received a different reception depending on his or her name, a proxy for attitudes towards gender.

While responders rated Howard and Heidi equally in terms of success, they considered Howard to be a likeable person, whereas they considered Heidi to be selfish and not "the type of person you would hire or work for".

Women consequently face a conundrum. We all want to be liked, but we also want to be successful. So the situation boils down to a choice. Should you sacrifice being disliked by a number of people in exchange for becoming successful? I think you should, let me explain why.

Let's say that, as a woman, some people dislike you. Ask yourself this question: is there realistically anything that I can do to make people like me? Probably not. Furthermore, even if you manage to  please other people, you will probably not please yourself, which is ultimately more important.

To conclude, I want to emphasise that there is not yet a clear answer to this conundrum that women face. The debate Sheryl Sandberg is attempting to stimulate is crucial to deliver more female leaders. Moreover, I agree with her: we should be having this conversation more frequently.

I understand that the topics here are very sensitive, and it may seen unnatural to talk about them, but these issues are also very important, for both men and women.

Let's keep the debate going.

Success is an iceberg

As I was casually browsing through my LinkedIn news feed, I came across a spectacular image that immediately caught my attention. That image was of an iceberg.

Now, on a normal occasion, I find icebergs neither very appealing nor interesting, but this was not such an occasion. In this instance, the iceberg served as a manifestation of something very important:

That there always an underlying feature, idea, or story behind every single instance of success

Before we proceed to discuss this issue in more depth, let us actually look at the iceberg:

The most noticeable characteristic of this iceberg is that the amount of ice below the water is far greater than the amount of ice above the water. This also happens to be a true fact about icebergs, in case you were wondering. 

However, the interesting discussion here refers to the ratio between how much work one performs relative to the degree of success one achieves. The former is far greater than the latter.

So what does this all mean for us?

Quite simply, it means that the shortest way to success is to take the long way. It means that achieving our goals will take a great deal of time, hard work, failure, and perseverance. 

It means that there will be moments in your journey towards success when matters will become more challenging and difficult. 

Notice also that the width of the ice below the water increases as you approach the surface. This could refer to the fact that, as you get closer and closer to achieving your goal, more and more effort is needed to push through those final few steps when you are getting tired and fatigued. 

That a part of the natural world, such as an iceberg, is so in touch with our struggles and aspirations is fascinating and telling. The value of this image, in my view, lies exactly in its relation with the natural world.

This seems somewhat confusing so let me simplify my point: facing challenges and struggling your way towards success is a perfectly natural experience. In other words, it will definitely happen.

You will fail. You will be placed outside of your comfort zone. You will take risks.

But when you reach the surface, and breath the crispy antarctic air, it will all be worth it.

Visualise your path to success as an iceberg!

Defending Wall Street

Since the Financial Recession of 2008, Wall Street has been labelled as ruthless, reckless, and imprudent. There is certainly some merit in this view. The construction of asset-backed securities, and their misguided distribution throughout the economy, triggered a severe credit crunch, from which we are still recovering today.

Yet such shocks to the system are exceptions, rather than the rule, of the general framework. In fact, I aim to argue that Wall Street (I use the term to universally represent all financial sectors worldwide) is a significantly important part of a successful and healthy global economy. 

Why is Wall Street, and more importantly finance in general, so crucial? The answer rests in the relationship outlined below. Let's say a business identifies a profit opportunity, but does not possess the relevant resources to execute the initiative. How should the business proceed? Naturally, it would seek the help of an investment bank to finance its investment and create value in the process.

Innovative Idea + Finance = Tangible Progress

Any initiative that creates value and improves the standard of living requires resources to do so. It is the role of financial institutions to raise the necessary funding, usually through equity or debt, that enables a business to convert its idea into something tangible. 

In other words, finance facilitates entrepreneurship, which, in turn, serves as the engine of most developed countries. Thus, the beauty and value of Wall Street does not lies in its existence, per se, but rather in its capacity to search for and identify the relevant businesses that require assistance to make their investments happen. 

Note that the argument I have presented here is not at all complicated, even though it is most definitely overlooked. This fundamental role of finance is brushed aside, largely because the reception of finance in the press focuses on currency manipulation, the rigging of interest rates, and other malicious acts.

These harmful activities do occur on Wall Street. Unfortunately, eliminating them entirely is likely to prove both impossible and unfeasible, though reforms, such as Dodd-Frank, and regulators, such as the FSA, have certainly curbed this type of behaviour in recent years.

There is, moreover, an element of non-profit finance on Wall Street. This is the equivalent of the 'pro bono' work that law firms perform to demonstrate their consideration for the society at large. Non-profit finance focuses on initiatives that enhance progress in communities and schools. 

However, non-profit finance is not the main backbone of Wall Street. To fully appreciate the importance of Wall Street, let us perform a thought experiment.

Imagine that Wall Street did not exist, what would the world look like? (It is often easier to appreciate the importance of something by considering the impact of its absence). 

A short answer is this: we would likely return to the primitive age. Any businessperson hoping to change the world could not do so. The visions of Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Eric Schmidt could not be fulfilled (yes, even these entrepreneurs need finance to give them a boost).

Yes, I accept that Wall Street includes reckless behaviour, but so does Silicon Valley and almost every other industry. Behaving irrationally and at the expense of society if it serves our own interests is a perfectly human feature. 

Let us move beyond these fallacies of Wall Street and finance, focusing instead on their wider impact, which improves lives and creates jobs.