My Ethical Manifesto

Recently, I have been making an intentional effort to consciously shape my identity. I have a notion page that outlines a list of choices I make about what I want my identity to be that I read out loud to myself every week. Some of these choices, like “I choose to be a bridge-builder and I seek to find commonalities instead of differences,” are born out of self-awareness. Others, like “I choose to be encouraging and empathetic towards others” are more aspirational aspects of my self-identity that I am actively working on building towards. One of the items on my self-identity list is “I choose to act ethically in all things I do. I don’t take shortcuts and I don’t compromise on my morals.” This semester I took a business ethics course that gave me an excellent opportunity to think deeply about the ethical beliefs and values that I want to guide my personal and professional conduct. Our final project was to write a paper describing the characteristics of a responsible leader. Our professor encouraged us to think of this as more of a personal manifesto than a simple assignment and I thought it would be worth sharing and keeping updated. Think of this as a guide of the kind of leader I aspire to be and the characteristics I will be looking for anyone I choose to work for.

My definition of an ethical and responsible leader has coalesced around six main pillars.

1. Lead from a place of vulnerability

2. Provide others with an ideal to strive towards

3. Treat everyone with honor

4. Courageously challenge the status quo

5. Invert the Fundamental Attribution Error

6. Don’t take shortcuts.

Lead from a place of vulnerability

I believe that one of the most important things that a leader can do to promote a culture of ethical and responsible business practice is to lead from a place of vulnerability. From Enron, to WorldCom, to Theranos, we have seen the danger that comes from leaders who promote a culture where they are above reproach. The challenge for leaders must be to create an environment where immoral behavior is not given the opportunity to flourish. Otherwise decent people do bad things when their environment puts pressure on them be it from peers, authority, incentives, roles, or the system within which they find themselves. Those who are used to professional success are especially prone to suffering from the ‘Bathsheba Syndrome’ of thinking that they are entitled to special treatment and that the rules don’t apply to them.[1] Maintaining an air of humility and vulnerability is one of the most surefire ways to create an environment where there are no shadows for unethical behavior to fester. When a leader acknowledges that they are not always right and welcomes critical feedback they create an environment where issues are brought to light instead of hushed up in darkness. On the other hand, if a leader surrounds themselves with “yes men” and creates a culture where they cannot be questioned, the chances that they act unethically themselves, even if unintentionally, are significantly multiplied. As is the chance that their underlings will cover up unethical behavior out of fear of the leader’s reaction. By leading from a place of vulnerability, by looking at challenges or failures as an opportunity to learn and grow, leaders create a culture that encourages responsible behavior and discourages immoral actions.

Provide others with an ideal to strive towards

              A responsible leader should provide an ideal to strive towards for both themselves and their employees. In Brent Weeks’ Lightbringer series, they have a word for the empire’s commander-in-chief: “Promachos” which means “The One Who Goes Before Us to Fight.”[2] I believe that the modern responsible leader should be one who leads by example. Someone who sets the bar high for themselves and provides their team with an aspirational ideal to strive towards. A Promachos. When given the chance, people tend to rise to the occasion. This is exemplified by the fact that people are more likely to act ethically when they are reminded of their morals or asked to take an honor pledge.[3] When a leader holds themselves and those around them to a higher standard and points their team towards an aspirational purpose, people will be drawn towards living up to those ideals. French novelist Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is quoted as having said, “If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”[4] People are much more motivated by purpose or mission than they are from the rigid and dogmatic rules that seem like the strategy de jour of the modern workplace. A common pitfall of leaders is getting too involved in telling people what to do instead of telling people where to go. While working as the CEO of Expedia in 2003, Dara Khosrowshahi captured this ideal perfectly when he said a young engineer confronted him and told him that “you’re telling us what to do, but not telling us where to go. If you tell us where to go we’ll do it because we believe in you, tell us where to go and then we’ll do it.”[5] Great leaders create the vision for the company and then trust their people to do what it takes to accomplish that vision. This promotes people having the space to think for themselves and avoids situations where employees stop scrutinizing work through a moral lens or avoid thinking critically about whether their current course of action is the right one.

Treat everyone with honor  

              It is critical for leaders to treat others with honor. With fairness, respect, and empathy. The importance of this is grounded in my personal Christian belief system where all people are created in God’s image. As such, our value is intrinsically based, not on what we do, but on who we are and that means that everyone, whether they be an executive or a janitor, deserves to be treated with empathy, respect, and dignity. This requires us to treat people with honor regardless of what ethnic, social, sexual, or religious group they may belong to. Treating people honorably also means being fair to them. It means treating people like the adults they are and communicating with them in a direct way.  To dole out praise or criticism when warranted. To tell people the truth, not what they want to hear. Ambiguity in the workplace is opportunity for unethical behavior to flourish and a responsible leader must do their upmost to be clear and direct. Netflix is a company that exemplifies this brand of respectful, but direct communication perfectly. Netflix is focused on building a high-performing team and they think of themselves more like a sports team than a family. They honor their employees by treating them like adults and trusting them to make responsible decisions for themselves as exemplified by their 5-word policy for travel, entertainment, gifts, and other expenses: “Act in Netflix’s Best Interest.”[6]

Courageously challenge the status quo

              One of the more important things a responsible leader must do is promote a culture where people feel empowered to question the status quo. Speaking truth to power is never easy, but it is vitally important. A leader is responsible for doing what they can to empower their employees as much as possible and I believe that the best way to do this is to set a tone of questioning how things have always been done. Leaders must push themselves and their employees to always ask “why” and to reexamine previously held maxims in light of changing circumstances. In his inaugural address to students at the University of St. Andrews, philosopher John Stuart Mill stated that “bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”[7] If leaders do not promote a culture of questioning established orthodoxy and convention, the chance that their employees will stand up in the face of immoral actions is minimal. One way that leaders can do this is to consciously subvert the pressures that may lead employees to act unethically. An example of how this can be done on a personal level comes from my parents. A common refrain of theirs is to “always live within your means.” Part of this advice is given from the perspective of being fiscally responsible, but the second order meaning is to always have “screw you money”. Having a financial cushion gives you the ability to never compromise on your ethics if you are asked to do something immoral for work. If your boss is pressuring you to do something you know to be wrong, you are much more likely to be able to stand up to them if you have reduced the financial pressure of making ends meet by spending within your means. If you are left with no other option, you can always walk away. It is important to safeguard the optionality to leave, but the best option is to build an organization where people are willing to stand up for what they believe to be right. In the workplace, I think leaders can promote a culture that challenges the status quo by focusing the organization on pursuing “knowledge” over being “right”. A leader who sets the tone by challenging themselves and others to always critically examine why things are done the way they are and question whether they can improve will be a leader who empowers their employees to courageously stand up and be counted when they know that something is wrong.   

Invert the Fundamental Attribution Error

             The Fundamental Attribution Error is our tendency to explain away our faults or missteps while holding others to account for even the most minor of infractions. I believe that a responsible leader should seek to invert the fundamental attribution error by holding themselves accountable based on their actions while giving others the benefit of the doubt and allowing for the possibility of extenuating circumstances. In his 2005 commencement speech to the graduating class of Kenyon College, American author David Foster Wallace outlines the practical application of this maxim in a speech titled: “This is Water.”[8] He discusses how easy it is to fall into the “default setting” of assuming the whole world is out to get you and believing that you alone are a victim of everyone else’s laziness and ineptitude. The challenge he prescribes is to awaken yourself to an awareness of the world around you. To not get mad at the car that cuts you off in traffic because you allow for the potential that they may be rushing their wife to the hospital. Just as a goldfish may live their entire life without questioning what water is, so too can people live their lives without taking agency for themselves and acknowledging that they are part of a larger human existence than the myopathy of their personal perspective would lead them to believe. I believe it is crucial for a responsible leader to cultivate this openness to giving others the benefit of the doubt. Even if sometimes they will be disappointed, I personally believe that it is better to be optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and right. Andy Rachleff, CEO of Wealthfront has a great philosophy for operating called “putting the gun in the other person’s hand.”[9] The idea is when entering a business deal or negotiation to give the person on the other side of the table the opportunity to set the terms. Either they do so fairly and you know that you would like to work with them again in the future or they act in an unscrupulous manner and any short-term pain from the deal is well worth the knowledge that you won’t expose yourself to them again. Inverting the Fundamental Attribution Error allows you to empathetically see the world through other people’s eyes and give them the benefit of the doubt. This may lead to pain in the short-term, but it is the responsible thing to do in the long-term as you will, over time, self-select out of relationships with people who take advantage of your or act immorally.

Don’t take shortcuts  

              It seems to me that much of corporate ethical misconduct stems, not from a place of malicious intent, but from simply making the decision to take shortcuts which compounds upon themselves and leads to situations where people feel forced into unethical behavior. One compromise leads to another and eventually a morally upstanding person can find themselves in unanticipated moral ambiguity before too long. Clay Christensen’s belief that “it’s easier to hold your principles 100 percent of the time than it is to hold them 98 percent of the time” rings true.[10] The slightest compromise of your morals or ethics opens the door to future misconduct. This can be a path towards destructive habits and behaviors for both individuals as well as organizations. An insidious form of this propensity to take the easy way out is seen not just in misconduct itself, but in organizations who are willfully ignorant and turn a blind eye to unethical behavior going on under their watch. Not only does taking the easy way out often lead to morally unstable ground, but it delegitimizes good efforts. In class we talked about how if a kid cheats during a soap box derby, he will never know if he could’ve won without cheating. It is obvious how cheating harms others, but I would argue that much more of the damage falls on ourselves. One of my favorite mantras to think of is the idea that “we are building our own house” from the book Chop Wood, Carry Water.[11] The story told is about a famous architect who is asked to build one final home on the eve of his retirement. Begrudgingly, he goes about the project without his usual precision and enthusiasm. Once the home is completed his boss hands him the keys as a thank you for his years of service. Unbeknownst to the architect, he had been building his own house the whole time and if he had known so, he would’ve put much more time, thought, and effort into it. Taking shortcuts in life degrades the house that we are building for ourselves. A responsible leader needs to consider the impact that their words and actions have on others, but just as importantly they must be cognizant of the impact it has on themselves. A career is a marathon and surviving it with your dignity and ethical self-identity intact is the real winners’ medal. When I think of a responsible leader, I think of someone who steadfastly refuses to give in to the temptation to take shortcuts. I think of one of my all-time favorite literary characters, Dalinar Kholin, and his self-realization that “the most important step a man can take. It’s not the first one, is it? It’s the next one. Always the next step, Dalinar.”[12]

I hope this was interesting and that the transmission from paper to blog post wasn’t too forced. If you haven’t taken the time to lay out the ethical paradigms you aspire to hold yourself to, I can’t recommend the process enough. It is enlightens your own actions and helps you identify environments that align with your ethical compass vs those that may put you in a situation to compromise it.

As with everything I write, this is a snapshot of my perspectives at this point. I am sure that as I continue on in my career and find myself in positions where leadership is more of a focus, that these principles will grow and evolve. I still think there is immense value in charting them out and questioning what you think to be ethical.

Journey before destination and until next time.

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If you have thoughts on this post leave a comment below or reach out to me on twitter @abergseyeview where my DMs will forever be open.

If you enjoyed this post, you can subscribe here to receive all of my posts delivered directly to your inbox every Monday morning (or the occasional Tuesday).

If this is the first time you are reading something I wrote and you want to learn more about me, this is a good place to start. It includes some background on me as well as a collection of my top posts.

Sources:

[1] Wyatt Olson, “Do Fired Navy Cos suffer from ‘Bathsheba Syndrome’?”, Stripes, March 14, 2002, https://www.stripes.com/news/navy/do-fired-navy-cos-suffer-from-bathsheba-syndrome-1.171525  

[2] Brent Weeks, The Burning White, (Little, Brown Book Group, 2019), pg. 27.

[3] Dan Ariely, The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone—especially Ourselves (New York: Harper, 2012), Chapter 2.

[4] Randy Howe, 1001 Smartest Things Teachers Ever Said, (Lyons Press: An Imprint of Globe Pequot Press, Guilford, Connecticut.), Page 51.

[5] Zameena Meija, “Here’s the moment Uber’s new CEO pick gained confidence in himself”, CNBC, August 28, 2017, https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/28/when-ubers-ceo-pick-dara-khosrowshahi-gained-confidence-in-himself.html

[6] “Netflix Culture”, Netflix, https://jobs.netflix.com/culture

[7] John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Addresse, Delivered to the University of St. Andrews. Feb. 1st, 1867, (Longmans, 1867), pg. 36.

[8] David Foster Wallace, This is Water, Farnam Street, https://fs.blog/2012/04/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/

[9] “Building Something People want to Buy, with Andy Rachleff,” Invest Like the Best, Episode 42, https://investorfieldguide.com/andy/

[10] Frances Bridges, “Lessons from Clay Christensen’s ‘How Will You Measure Your Life?’”

[11] Joshua Medcalf, Chop Wood, Carry Water, (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015), pg. 6.

[12] Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer, (Tom Doherty Associates, 2017), pg. 1132.

Quality

Sometimes you come across a concept that just sticks with you.

I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance a couple of years ago now, but there are a couple of concepts from the book that I find myself thinking of often. None more so than the idea of Quality.

For those who haven’t read it, the book is part fiction, part philosophy textbook, part autobiography, and part holy tome. It is an exploration of one man’s metaphysical journey to uncover the meaning behind the word “Quality” and the toll it took on him.

I’m not sure the book ever truly comes to a definitive answer, but if I had to sum it up I would say that something is of high quality if there is a sense that it is doing what it’s supposed to do. That it’s doing it well. That it’s fulfilling its purpose. That it is acting in accordance with its identity.

Quality is a certain rightness. It’s hard to put your finger on, but it is clear whether it is there or not.

The idea of Quality shows up everywhere once you are looking for it. In the startup world, we call it “product market fit.”

Product market fit is when there is a resonance between what you are building and a problem that needs solving in the world. When customers want your product so badly they are basically ripping it out of your hands. I love Michael Seibel’s description of product market fit in this week’s Invest Like the Best episode. He describes the utter craziness you experience when your company finds product market fit. There is no time to sit around waxing philosophically on whether or not you have found this mythical equilibrium between a product and a market need, you are simply running around like crazy trying to keep all your servers from getting shut down by a complete deluge of users.

I think we see the idea of Quality in our personal lives too.

I remember a crisp fall day in college when my fraternity was asking a sorority to go with us to homecoming (a tradition that I have nothing but fondness for due, in no small part, to the role it played in introducing my wife and I). There was another fraternity that was asking this same sorority, so things were pretty competitive and the stakes laughably high. I spent that day running all over campus wheeling and dealing. Cajoling and entreating. I was trying to get my brothers organized at the same time I was coming up with new ideas for events we could hold. I didn't have a chance to sit around and think, I was too busy problem solving and executing. Now the context around this example is a little silly, but I remember at one point having this shock of clarity where I thought "This is awesome. I am good at this. I like this." Creative problem solving, communication, taking action, working on a team. I was doing something that perfectly fit my strengths. And it felt amazing.

Unfortunately in life, I think we so often experience the idea of Quality through its absence. There may be a wrongness in our lives that we struggle to explain. We may feel tired, disjointed, frantic, and anxious. We may feel like we are doing something wrong but we don't quite know what. We feel somehow less than what we know we could be.

I know I've experienced this dissonance. This dearth of Quality. If Quality is finding that magical apex of purpose where we are doing exactly what we should be, then anything else is a fundamental breach of our identity. There are gradients to this of course, but I believe that over time, the results of sustained actions that run counter to our core self are inevitably disastrous.

If you are in a career or relationship that is discordant with your notion of your own identity and purpose, it will eat away at you. For a day, a month, or maybe even years, it can be tolerable. We can pull the wool over everyone's eyes, including our own. But eventually, it will degrade you in a way that leaves a mark.

Maybe you are just so drained you miss a step in other places of your life. Maybe you are irritable or quick to judge when you know you are naturally easy-going. Worst of all, maybe you start to shift your core identity away from what you know to be true in order to somehow make the days and years more tolerable.

I look around me and see this among my peers and friends. As I get started at business school I see it in my new classmates. I have felt it myself in my career and life. A fundamental mismatch between what I am doing and what I should be doing. I think that it is natural to experience this in life. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that it is part of the human experience.

The unease you feel when acting counter to who you know yourself to be is actually a good thing. It is the latent potential energy that pulls you towards finding that apex of Quality where you are acting in a way that is core to your conception of self. Don't avoid it or pretend it isn't there. Lean into it. Ask yourself why you are feeling this way. What needs to change? Who are you? If you saw your ideal conception of yourself in this situation how would you expect them to act? How are you acting differently? Why are you acting differently?

Quality in sport, business, and life is magical. It is poetry in motion. It is a master at work on their craft. It is an internal rhythm and music that is in sync with the world around it. Like a tool in the toolbox that does exactly what it was designed to do and does it to perfection, living in accordance with your identity is the path to joy. Joy. Not happiness. Happiness is a stimulus-response from external actions. Joy is the music that your soul makes when you find the resonance point where your actions and words align perfectly with your identity, strengths, and purpose.

When you’ve found it, appreciate it and try to hold on to it. It may take years to build towards this resonance but, like a note played jarringly out of key, it can be lost in an instant by acting counter to who you are.

If you aren't there yet. That's ok! I'm not either. We've got time. People forget that life is long and full of possibilities. But pay attention. Pay attention to how your actions and the words you say make you feel. Pay attention to whether a relationship makes you feel better about yourself or worse. Pay attention to whether coworkers act in accordance with your value system or not. Social pressure is a helluva drug and if you surround yourself by people who act in a way that is discordant to you, it will be extremely hard not to eventually adjust yourself to appease them.

Stay strong. Stay curious. Think about yourself, and who you are, and what you were put on this earth to do. You may not have all the answers, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be asking the questions.

Whatever you do don’t settle. There is no quicker way to ruin your life than to accept a discordant path as "just the way it is". How many drones are there in our society who spend time with people who make them feel less then they are? Who work at jobs they hate? Corporate soldiers committing atrocities against others and themselves because they are just following orders. Wayword tools in the tool kit. Without purpose, form, or function.

If you are reading this and think, “man Erik woke up on the existential side of the bed this morning,” there is probably some truth in that. All this discussion of purpose and identity can sound a little whimsical at times.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t some truth in here. I hope I am getting to the heart of things. Maybe I am just dancing around it. Either way, I think it could be helpful for you to think about as I know it has been for me.

Our society holds up ideals that, for most of us, are of poor Quality. It worships freedom instead of purpose. Pleasure instead of joy. Memories instead of meaning. It tells us that work is only a means to an end and that relationships are worthwhile as long as they serve us.

I am not wise. I don't know how the world works better than anyone else. I am trying to figure it all out and these writings are a record of my thoughts and how they evolve. But one thing I have learned is that freedom is only a means to an end. True freedom is having the ability to choose what to commit yourself too and then doing so wholeheartedly.

If you are feeling ill at ease with where you are in life, join the club. Most of us do. Finding capital-Q “Quality” in our lives is the rarified air of a select few who choose not to settle for anything less than exemplary. Who refuse to bear the burden of a life lived in discord to oneself. Who stare into the face of the lies we are told, standing unassailably and whisper, "not for me."

It isn’t an easy path, but the right path rarely is.

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If you have thoughts on this post leave a comment below or reach out to me on twitter @abergseyeview where my DMs will forever be open.

If you enjoyed this post, you can subscribe here to receive all of my posts delivered directly to your inbox every Monday morning (or the occasional Tuesday).

If this is the first time you are reading something I wrote and you want to learn more about me, this is a good place to start. It includes some background on me as well as a collection of my top posts.

How to fail at everything and still succeed

Life has been taken over by preparations for our move to Philly. This has taken the form of trying to get together (safely) with friends before we leave, preparation for school, and packing. Lots and lots of packing.

It also has been a time of introspection. There’s a lot I don’t know about how my life is going to change in the next month, but one of the things I am fairly confident of is that I am about to be inundated with tantalizing opportunities to invest my time and efforts. As such, I have been thinking about what I want to make sure I focus on and prioritize once school starts.

As sometimes happens to me, this short-term question exploded into a long-term one. Not just where do I want to prioritize my time over the next 2 years, but what do I want to prioritize over the rest of my life? (This thinking lines up well with some of the thoughts I have been having on the Power of Identity.)

As I pondered this, the question struck me “What are the handful of things I could succeed at that would allow me to fail at everything else and still win?”

Put another way, how could I fail at everything else and still succeed?

I have spent the last couple of days thinking about this question and here are the endeavors I came up with.

A quick note before digging in. At times, this may wander near dangerously “preachy” sounding territory. At others, this may sound like banal self-help platitudes. Trust that the below is an earnest attempt at outlining what I believe to be answers to important questions. They are likely not the only answers and yours may differ compared to mine. I do not have this stuff all figured out. I am 26. I am happy with where I am at on some of these pursuits (I think I knocked #2 below absolutely out of the park), but others are still very much a work in progress. Remember this exercise started with thinking about where I wanted to prioritize my time. Hopefully, these rules can be a guidepost for you and me both.

Without further ado, the 5 things you can do to succeed, even if you fail at everything else:

Live Within Your Means

This is perhaps the phrase that has been hammered into my skull more completely than any other. It was a frequent favorite of my parents growing up and they still refer to it regularly. The idea here is to give yourself breathing room. Life happens. It takes all sorts of twists and turns. Your resiliency to low points could very well have just as much to do with your ability to follow this rule as any sort of personal amount of grit or drive. Living within your means is both downside protection and upside optimization. On the downside, it gives your breathing room and the ability to handle nasty surprises. On the upside, it gives you the flexibility to be able to take advantage of serendipity when it knocks on your door. I am a big believer in the idea that everyone gets lucky breaks in their life, but very few take advantage of them. Living within your means allows you to do just that.

Now I am not advocating a lifestyle of a modern hermit. You can definitely take this one too far and budget yourself into a pulp. Instead, think about what you care about and allocate money there. I am not a big car guy and likely never will be. But I love to travel and that’s something I would definitely like to do more of in the future. I care more about location in an apartment/house than appliances or square feet. You gotta decide for yourself what is or is not important. There are a million best practices for living within your means. Caitlyn and I use a tool called YNAB that really helps us keep on track with our budget through monthly check-ins.

By far the biggest thing you can do to live within your means is to select a home or apartment that is within your budget. The general recommendation is to spend about 30% of your gross monthly income on rent. I’ve always tried to get that number closer to 20% (not always succeeding). For most people, their rent/mortgage will be their biggest single monthly outlay and as such the easiest one to suddenly become an undue burden.

The last really important thing that living within your means can do is to help you safeguard your ethical well-being. Sound a little melodramatic? I don’t think it is. Otherwise good people do bad things when they find themselves backed into a corner. Giving yourself extra financial flexibility helps to minimize the chances of you ever compromising yourself because you feel like you have to. You always want to have “screw you” money. Enough money that you can tell your boss to take a hike if they ever pressure you into doing something unethical. You can question whether stealing an apple to feed your family is moral, but by far the better solution is to make the choices that mean that question is never necessary in the first place.

Marry Your Best Friend

Ever heard the phrase “you are the sum of the 5 people you spend the most time with”? Well, whoever you chose to spend your life with will have more of an impact on who you are than the other 4 combined. The world is very skilled at making us believe every choice we make is the most important choice in the world. I’d argue that the only one that really rises to that incredibly high bar is who you choose to marry. This choice is the one with more leverage than any other. Choose correctly and you have a very high likelihood of life working out. Choose incorrectly and it will likely have unpleasant and longlasting ramifications. Now I can’t tell you what makes a healthy and happy couple. That is probably different for everyone.

But if I had to give one piece of advice it would be to marry your best friend. If you get this one thing right, everything else seems to kinda take care of itself. I’ve been married for 2 years, 9 months, and 5 days. I am not the world’s foremost expert on the subject of marriage. But I may be the world’s biggest advocate.

The past 2 years, 9 months, and 5 days have been the best of my life. There is nothing quite like having someone who you can trust so utterly and completely. Who has your back against the rest of the world. Who you don’t agree with on everything, but you agree with on the big things. Someone you can more easily picture growing old with than looking good on your honeymoon with. Someone who fills your life, not with happiness, but joy.

I got married young, but that doesn’t mean that it is for everyone. If it is for you, great! It definitely was for me and it has been awesome. If it isn’t, that is totally fine too. Just don’t fall into the trap of being afraid of commitment. I worry that my generation is more interested in freedom than it is in meaning. In my experience, meaning more often comes from responsibility than freedom. I worry that people chase freedom expecting that if they finally found it, their life’s meaning would somehow magically appear. You are much more likely to find that meaning once you commit yourself to something. Or someone.

Freedom < meaning. And meaning comes from responsibility. And boy is marriage one of the quickest ways to increase the amount of responsibility in your life. It isn’t always easy, but with the right partner on your team, it is worth it. It takes a lot of work, a lot of faith, and a lot of grace. But believe that a life shared is a life made whole.

Take Care Of Your Health

In every sense of the word. Physical, mental, spiritual, emotional. Your health is another great leverage function. If you are in bad health in any of the four aforementioned ways it will lead to negative impacts on your life. Maybe not today and maybe not tomorrow, but health is one of those things that has a nasty habit of eventually catching up to you (and often at the most inopportune times). This has been an increased area of focus for me recently. I’ve realized that my health is not just about me. It is about being at my best personally and professionally. It is about making sure that I will be there for my family. It is about having the energy to be present and engaged with my wife after work. And it is about reaching the potential I know that I have.

A few quick rules I have found effective.

Exercise regularly. Spend time outside. Eat everything in moderation except fruits and vegetables. Eat as much of that as you want. Avoid falling into the trap of thinking that every meal is a “special occasion” (I am a certified black belt in the mental karate necessary to talk myself into thinking that lunch on a random Tuesday is a culminating reward of my entire life’s work). When you are “on”, be “on” and when you are “off” be “off”. Spend >0 minutes every day investing in your spiritual wellbeing through prayer, reading your holy words, or meditation. Focus on the things you have control over and don’t stress out about the things you don’t. If you are unhappy about something, do something about it. Appreciate the good things you have in life and focus on acknowledging all that you are grateful for. Make sure you have one thing you are looking forward to every single day, no matter how big or how small.

Do Something Meaningful

It seems like you fall into one of two camps. Either the “Follow your passion” camp who believes that you are entitled to make a living doing whatever you enjoy most. Or the “work is work” camp that thinks if work was supposed to be rainbows and butterflies they would call it rainbows and butterflies. I’d like to offer an alternative narrative.

Do something meaningful.

This is different than following your passion. Doing something meaningful isn’t always fun. Often it isn’t. But I believe that is what makes it worthwhile. It is about doing something greater than yourself. Doing something that moves the world towards a higher state of being. Doing something that pushes back the darkness to expand the light. I believe that at our core, meaning is something that every single one of us yearns for. For an acknowledgment of how we fit into the world and that our existence matters. What you do can be an avenue to that, but only if it is something that is meaningful.

I believe the key to this is finding something where the process is its own reward. If you find something that you find meaningful, irrespective of any outcome like money or fame, you are probably on the right track.

In the words of the Knights Radiant, “Journey before destination.”

Avoid Blowing Up

Ok, so this one is a bit cheating. This isn’t something you actively do so much as it is an active practice of avoiding certain things. You avoid “blowing up” by avoiding doing things that could cause you financial, emotional, or physical ruin. Life is uncertain and disaster can strike at any time, but there are definitely activities that increase disaster’s chance of knocking on our doorstep.

An important aspect of this is maintaining proper perspective. A naturally long-lived life gives you plenty of opportunities to change and succeed. If you wanted to you could have multiple successful careers. Take the tract of optimizing for the long-term over the short. Avoid doing things that have a chance, even a tiny one, of absolute catastrophe. If 2020 has taught us anything it is that black swan events happen. Based on the regularity with which airlines get bailed out, it seems like they happen every decade or so in the financial markets.

To a certain degree, this advice is impossible to really follow since an aspect of almost every blow up is chance. But you can engage in activities that decrease those chances and avoid activities that increase them. Avoid metaphorical bungee jumps. Just doesn’t seem worth it for the risks. But then again I am not great with heights so maybe that is just my genetic makeup talking.

Alright. That’s what I got. These 5 rules are the strategies I believe will make me successful in life. I don’t think any of them are a secret, but as with most wisdom, the doing is harder than the hearing.

What have been the rules you’ve followed for success in life?

What are the things that you have done that allow you to fail at everything in life and still succeed?

Until next week.

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If this is the first time you are reading something I wrote and you want to learn more about me, this is a good place to start. It includes some background on me as well as a collection of my top posts.

Leviathan

I learned to write from Thomas Hobbes.

During my freshman year of college, I unwittingly signed up for one of the most important classes I would take during my four years at school. Introduction to Political Theory. As a prospective public policy major, I thought this would be a good initial baby step into my major. Training wheels if you will.

Boy, was I wrong.

The professor was short and ripped. He was bald and had a massive bright red beard. He was a Buddhist who had spent his early career as a highway patrolman for the Louisiana State Police. That was up until he woke up one day and decided to become one of the world’s foremost experts on Hobbesian political theory. He was so well versed in the subject that he didn’t require essays in his class to be submitted through any sort of plagiarism checker. He was confident if a paper existed on any of the theorists discussed in his class that, not only would he have read it previously, but that he would be able to recognize it an ill-intentioned student’s submission.

I was so intimidated I dropped the class.

Luckily by my second semester, I was able to work up the confidence to sign up again. I am so glad I did as the class turned out to be one of the most influential academic courses I have taken in my life. Not only did the political theories examined leave an impression on me, but the very way that I wrote was transformed. How could it not be? I was spending countless hours examining the masterpieces of some of the most thoughtful orators and philosophers the world has ever known.

The writings of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke left an especially indelible mark.

Hobbes was a 16th-century English philosopher whose political theories laid the foundations for much of the modern state. Hobbes believed that without a form of central authority, man would revert to his basest instincts. In this state of nature, anyone would take whatever they wanted if they had the force to do so. This would lead to a “war of all against all” where there would be no room for arts, science, culture, or enterprise. Left to our own devices, Hobbes contends that life would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

Hobbes’ solution to this bleak proposition is for people to join together in a social contract that would provide for the good of all. Individuals would cede some of their rights to a central authority that would have ultimate power to enforce the social contract and remediate breaches thereof. He called this central authority “Leviathan.”

Leviathan would simultaneously be strong enough to maintain unquestionable authority and also be beholden to the governed. Hobbes believed that every member of the social contract would be entitled to equal rights and protections and because they themselves created Leviathan, only they could change it.

Hobbes’ theory of the state of nature and the need to form Leviathan was built upon by another English Philosopher named John Locke. Locke believed that a government’s obligation was to protect the “Life, Liberty, and Property” of its constituents. In Locke’s eyes, humans were born equal and free and that governments, therefore, only ruled by the consent of the governed.

Locke’s philosophy was the bedrock upon which a group of revolutionaries designed the United States of America. Like Hobbes, our founding fathers believed in a strong central government formed by, and beholden to, the very people that it governed. This government would be created to protect people’s life, liberty, and ability to pursue happiness.

Much has changed in the last 250 years, but I believe that the foundational beliefs that underpinned the creation of our nation remain as true today as they did then.

I believe that people have a right to live however they see fit up until the point where their freedom starts infringing on others. That’s where Leviathan gets involved.

The military and police are projections of Leviathan’s power. They enforce the social contracts that we have all joined together to be a part of.

As with Leviathan itself, they only have power because we give it to them.

Unfortunately, institutions are just as prone to principal-agent problems as people are. We may imbue them with the power to act on our behalf, but over time there will always be a temptation to act in their own self-interest. Many institutions forget that they exist to serve us and instead believe that their purpose is to expand and protect their own purview.

Law enforcement are a critical piece of infrastructure. Just like schools or libraries or roads. And just like all of those other institutions, they should be beholden to the people they have sworn to protect and serve.

They exist for us. We do not exist for them. If they are not working how we want them to, then change is not only appropriate but required.

I believe calls to defund law enforcement are just as short-sighted as they would be if they were calling to defund schools, or libraries, or roads (and a prime example of the unnecessary division of charged language). But it is clear that meaningful reform is needed for an institution that people no longer believe serves their best interest. The good news is that many of the most effective reforms are not nearly as drastic as you may expect (Side Note: It is shocking how few municipalities have common-sense requirements for their officers. Only 42 of the largest 100 police departments in the country require the use of deadly force to only be used as a last resort!)

Others have written on the issues and potential solutions for the current system much more effectively than I could ever hope to (I think my friend Kris did an especially exceptional job).

My hope with this post is to simply point out that demanding reform and questioning our institutions is not “un-American”. In fact, nothing could be more American. Calls for reform are based on beliefs that are foundational to the creation of our republic.

Beliefs that institutions should work for us, not against us. That we are created equal and that every member of our society should be treated fairly.

That the power of institutions is not inherent and that it only exists as long as we deem it so.

We agree and Leviathan enforces our agreement. That’s how it works.

Yes, Leviathan is all-powerful. It needs to be in order to protect those who have no power.

But we must not forget that Leviathan works for us, not the other way around.

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If you have thoughts on this post leave a comment below or reach out to me on twitter @abergseyeview where my DMs will forever be open.

If you enjoyed this post, you can subscribe here to receive all of my posts delivered directly to your inbox every Monday morning.

If this is the first time you are reading something I wrote and you want to learn more about me, this is a good place to start. It includes some background on me as well as a collection of my top posts.