Preface

THIS BOOK IS about amplifying your life, regaining your focus, and transforming your world.

Note that I said your world. Not the world. When we think of trying to transform the world, it might be romantic and exciting, even awe-inspiring. But it is largely unrealistic. Existential writer Franz Kafka made this clear when he wrote if it's you against the world, bet on the world.1

Perhaps not the most inspiring sentiment, but what he wrote makes sense. You, versus the entire world, doesn't offer the best odds. This doesn't mean giving up trying to make improvements to where you work or how you live. But it does mean thinking in terms of better rather than perfect, and working in stages toward making the improvements you want to manifest. This mindset is the think global, act local of personal and organizational development.

Taking care of your world is more accessible and easier to define. It is a world that you have ownership of, and for which you hold responsibility. We are developers and designers of our lives and contributors to the lives of those around us. Your world is where you work, create, and expand. You have a vested self-interest in keeping your world in order, and helping it grow.

To reclaim the moment is to regain your focus from a place of feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or underdeveloped, all of which are too common today. These ideas are about getting back on track.

If you're reading this book, it means that you care about growth and expansion. You consider where other people and their psychological well-being fit into that process. It means that you want things to be better in your business, your potential, and your outlook.

To take care of your world includes stewardship over your projects and approaches to them, and having a willingness to risk, shift, and change in order to improve the things you want to be better. It means embracing discipline and putting in a little (or more than a little) extra effort so that your relationships, potential for leadership, clarity, and pathways to the future can be better than they are today.

Because let's be realistic, while we want improvement and stronger connections, it is often easy to lose faith in possibility, especially these days. In the last few years life has often felt out of control. Socially, we are forging new norms at a feverish pace. Our desire for success outpaces our stamina. Frustration feels like it is increasing. Our world seems more selfish and, at times, even mean. We are pitted between what we want and a social framework that leaves us behind even as it drags us forward. Self-esteem is in a battle on many fronts, including our online identities, which both are, and are not, who we are. People feel disconnected – ironic in a digital world. We seem intensely ego-driven and ruthless in our judgment of one another. We are overwhelmed with input. We are too greedy and shortsighted. We feel stressed, disoriented, ineffective, and unsure.

These aren't trends with limited effects. Globally, the planet is suffering, and I'm referring to the literal earth. We take out our rage on where we live, because we aren't wise enough to think about the consequences of our actions and reactions. Our selfishness has real effects. In case you're someone who doesn't believe in science, here's a quick news update: the warming of the earth and the effects on its health are real.2 Have you noticed more people mentioning that the weather in their city wasn't as hot years ago, or that there was less rain, more rain, or noticeable changes having taken place over time? Anyone notice that summers these days always seem to include wildfires? I certainly have.

The effects on us aren't just that we are hotter in the summer or colder in the winter. Everything ties in and around itself. The changes we are experiencing affect our emotional and psychological health. They influence customer behaviors, too. We feel the impacts of retail shifts due to disruptions in supply chains and changes in energy sources. Emotional imbalances, social unrest, and environmental upheaval intertwine and the trickle down from this is becoming a flood. Our shortsightedness and disconnection from ourselves and our loss of focus, both in business and in life, is extending beyond our capability to manage. This leads to even more arguments and upheaval, and the cycle begins again. Things feel, to say the least, a bit out of control.

My mind often slips into hopelessness.

In January 2024, as I was finalizing the edits to this book, I took a month off in Thailand to recenter after I finished the first 99 percent or so of the text. I was in need of experiences rooted in compassion, as focus and clarity often accompany them.

I spent ten days between Malaysia and Myanmar in the Andaman Sea, living on a scuba boat with a predominately Thai crew, and spending a good part of each day in the water and under the surface. Scuba is like deep meditation, plus fish. In the water, a world within our world offered lessons in focus and reflection that supported the ideas in this book.

While the reefs I saw were vibrant, I was told that they were no longer as vibrant as they had been. The water was getting warmer evidently, year after year. The new temperature levels were impacting life under the surface. The dive leader, who had been diving the waters for decades, commented that in addition to the impact the climate has on the ocean, people wanting selfies underwater were disregarding the natural landscape. Coral is often kicked and broken and sea life is disrupted so that people can get that perfect photo under the surface. He was seeing a lack of focus amidst tourists, a self-centeredness and vanity. It was a priority shift that was having wide-ranging effects. I started thinking that the world might be out of balance, but people's imbalances were driving that. The impact was real.

We spoke on the boat one night as the sun was setting over the horizon. “The world is doomed,” he said. He added, “The only hope is that it wipes us clean and starts again with a new kind of human.”

I sat by myself on the deck under the stars after he went to bed and thought about that for a good long while. A new kind of human. What would a new kind of human look like, sound like, or act like? How would a new kind of leader lead? What would a new kind of communicator say? What could a new kind of teammate contribute?

I realized that I don't agree that the only hope for the future is that humans are wiped clean. For if that is the case, then why write books in the first place, or become better leaders or communicators, or wake up in the morning, or eat vegan coconut ice cream, or love our kids and partners, or do most anything?

The work to transform our world starts with humans. It doesn't end with them. We need a ramping up of what it means to be human, not a diminishment of it.

It struck me that this is the world as it is. We have built it up, we have fouled it up, and we have done so not just in terms of nature or kicking coral. Our way of treating one another is out of line. Our systems are off balance and off course. Our selfishness and greed are utterly ridiculous. The wreckage of humanity, both psychological and physical, has been strewn across the land, and an hour of desperation is at hand. We have reached a point of reckoning. Our inching toward accepting meanness and cruelty without judgment and our propensity for, and acceptance of, violence has begun to spin out of control and has led us off the proverbial rails. Our lack of focus and our acceptance of it as normal has started to shift us in ways that are off course from where we could be if we worked to shift back to center. We need to get back on track in many ways.

Our ability to be managers of people, effective teammates, inspirers to others, and supporters to them has taken a serious hit. We have so much to learn about focus, leadership, communication, teamwork, ambition, compassion, and our own potential. We have given in to our base desires without consideration for the impact that they have on others.

My friend's words were a deep condemnation, rooted in despair to a certain degree. But the ocean gives all sorts of lessons. One of them is about space and how one might experience it. Amidst vastness, what is one's place in it? What can you affect and change when the world is so immense?

If it's you against the world …

As I sat on the deck of the boat, looking out over the Andaman Sea, with 360 degrees of horizon around me, and immensity on a seemingly incalculable scale, I realized that we can either believe we are doomed and hopeless because we decide that the issues we are facing at work or in life are too overwhelming … or we can get active and creative about how we treat both our world and others in it. We can try new things, do some deeper self-work, and hear some new perspectives. We can move beyond however we've gone astray and commit to being better. We can regain our focus. We can reclaim this moment.

We can decide to build a better now, and from there build the future that we want and need.

With that in mind, in these pages we will be committing to the idea that change for ourselves and the systems we have developed is indeed possible. Opportunities abound for our experiences to get better.

Thomas Hardy, in a celebrated poem called “In Tenebris II,” described a path toward a future that requires asking hard questions. He said that...