Joe Gerstandt | keynote speaker, freedom fighter, freak-flag flier

My attempt at rubbing everyone the wrong way.

There is a theme that has been catching my attention lately, and I generally take that as a sign that I should write about it or talk about it. So here it is. I think the topic is the increasingly evident conflict and confusion between our ideals and our ideologies….between what we believe and what we want…between the big picture and the short-term.

This theme got my attention again yesterday when a comment on Twitter (of course) caught my attention. Someone, (sorry I do not remember who it was), said that they were going to be sure to buy a Ford to show their support for capitalism. There has been a great deal of “conversation” lately about the economy, “free” markets, the good and bad of capitalism, the governments role in helping large corporations, etc., and I think that this person was voicing a fairly popular sentiment.

But here is the thing.

Buying a Ford because it is a Ford, does not really help Ford in the long run. It might help it today, but ultimately it works against it, just as a “buy American” campaign ultimately works against American business. If you want American business to be strong, proactive, innovative and competitive then the best thing that you can do is purchase the best value on the market…even if that is not American. The best thing that you can do for Ford is to find the best value on the market…even if that is not Ford. What helps an organization is to be engaged in and aware of real competition, true market forces and where the real demand is. Acting out of a desire for Ford to win today may actually weaken it in the long run.

The person making the comment on Twitter about buying a Ford might simply have been trying to make a point or wanting to make a point with their purchase…I am probably putting much more thought into this idea than they did, but I think it is an example of something that we see on a very regular basis in business, politics, religion, education, etc. We put our ideologies in front of our ideals, we compromise what we believe for what we want, the big picture for the immediate fix and we squander what really matters by focusing on what we can measure.

We get lost. And in the land of the lost, nobody ever really wins because the debates and discussions are never about anything real…they are simply about volume and  “winning.” We claim to be one thing, but live differently and we can build nothing real on that sandy beach.

• Republicans who stop caring about what the Republican party claims to be about and care only about winning elections.
  
• Democrats who stop caring about what the their party claims to be about and care only about winning elections.
  
• Corporate executives who stop leading according to their beliefs and focus solely on moving the right numbers in the right direction today.
  
• Inclusion advocates who only want to include those that agree with their beliefs on inclusion.
  
• Sports fans who stop caring about a good, fair game and care only about their team winning.
  
• Educators who stop loving the potential in every child and become driven by test scores.
  
• Religious leaders who put aside compassion and unconditional love to push agendas and fight over doctrine.
  
• Citizens and elected leaders that claim to love and value peace, and then convince themselves that going to war is actually a way of promoting peace. 

I could go on. Lost. Flailing. Driving faster and faster without knowing where we are going and having forgotten where we came from.

Politics may be the perfect example of this.  If you spend 10 minutes listening to both the right and the left on the radio or on television, it comes across pretty loudly.  You can predict what each side is going to say about a particular issue, because it is not really about the issue, but rather who it pertains to.  Party A is outraged at run away spending when the other party does it.  They do not say anything about spending when they do it.  They do not actually have strong foundational beliefs on spending, they are simply against Party B.  Party B is a strong voice for diversity in leadership, when it is their party making the decisions.  When Party A is making the decisions, Party B does not celebrate diversity, but questions Party A’s motives. And on. And on.

None of us are perfect, and I am likely the least perfect among us, but I believe we could and should be about doing better. Part of what doing better means for me is letting go of attachment to specific outcomes. This is, I think, at least part of the way out of the land of the lost.

I am a recovering alcoholic. One of the most valuable things that I have learned in recovery (it is also one of the most frustrating, aggravating and infuriating things) is that expectations about outcomes are often resentments in the making. There is very little in the world that I actually have any control over. Having strong and specific expectations as to how things are going to turn out, while common and very natural, is neither realistic nor wise. I know that we live in a very outcome driven society and that this sounds a little bit like sacrilege, but I would humbly suggest that it is our worship of specific outcomes that leads us to compromise that which we claim to believe and value.

Supporting the idea that “winning is the only thing”, changes a game into a job for children and drives considerable dysfunction. Structuring schools, curriculums and classrooms around driving test scores does not foster real learning.  We must stop evaluating our journey based solely on what the speedometer and odometer tell us.

The discussion with the devil about the price of your soul does not take the form of an actual meeting at your kitchen table or across a long conference table. It takes places in the tiniest, most quiet and solitary of places when we decide what to do next, what and who to pay attention to. If we do not take great care to have clarity on what truly matters most to us and to hold tightly to those ideals, we can easily find ourselves trying to buy happiness, trying to legislate morality, trying to demand respect, trying to defend freedom by taking it away.

I love what I do for a living. I do it because I love it and because I believe that it is of value. While I think that what I do and how I do it will lead to consistently increasing income, I do not do it for the money…as I said, I do it because I love it and believe in it. So…hopefully I am not writing this post simply because I think you might like it and it might lead you to want to pay me to do something. But that would be cool. And in this real world that we share we often dance around fine lines on slippery slopes.

So.

How about you?

Do you know what is really and truly important to you? Do you know what you are on this planet for? Do you know what your gift is?

And.

Are you acting accordingly?

Or in the Land of the Lost?

-be good to each other