Life
What Westboro Baptist and Jonah Hill Have in Common
Westboro Baptist and Jonah Hill
Unlikely pair, wouldn’t you agree?
This week, Westboro Baptist hit the news for unlikely reasons. Singer Brad Paisley took the selfie you see above on his way to perform. Westboro showed up outside the venue to protest the sinfulness of his shows. Paisley showed up to play loud enough for them to hear the music from the outside.
Actor Jonah Hill found himself in hot water after making a derogatory comment to menacing paparazzi. I won’t rewrite the word, but let’s say it was something you wouldn’t want you momma reading on your Twitter. Mr. Hill went on record this week to publicly apologize for the remark, saying it was a “disgusting word” said in a moment of frustration.
Unfortunately for the both, the media has not been so kind. Public reaction, on the other hand, has. Comments, tags, posts, and blogs have buzzed about the sincerity of Mr. Hill’s apology and have extended him forgiveness. Westboro Baptist, on the other hand… well, we all know what the internet has to say about Westboro.
We also know what Westboro has to say about the internet, but that’s another story altogether.
Though on the surface the two stories share little to nothing in common, digging deeper we find they are actually standing on two sides of a fence, a fence we psychologists call the attribution theory.
The attribution theory is a theory that tries to explain how people make sense of others’ behaviors. Take, for example, a scout helping a little old lady across the street. When asked to describe the young man, we might say, “He was very kind.” Notice we didn’t say he was a scout. Nor did we even say he was helping the little old lady. We called him kind.
We associate the scout with kindness because of his actions. (This is called spontaneous trait inference, for all you nerds out there) Given a 1/10th second exposure to a picture of someone’s face, we will associate (or infer) a trait to them. Happy. Sad. Good. Creepy. Hot. Gay. All in 1/10th second.
So much for objectivity.
What does this have to do with Westboro and Mr. Hill? Consider the pictures above. What did you associate to Westboro after hearing their story?
Heartless?
Bigot?
Cruel?
What about Mr. Hill?
Ashamed?
Sincere?
Apologetic?
Chances are, you don’t have relationship with either, yet you and I find ourselves making judgements about their behavior and their image based on a couple of sentences and a picture. Why would it be any different for us?
In work, in life, in our family – as leaders – we are subject to attribution. People will attribute traits to us based on our actions. And when we goof up, how we respond can change the trait completely. The action we take changes the perception we will get. Notice how both Westboro and Mr. Hill did something socially naughty, yet one is publicly considered as “cruel” and the other considered “apologetic.”
As humans, we can’t always avoid messing up, but we can still do the right thing and own our mistake. Though it may not always get us out of the dog house, it may be the difference between “bigot” and “better.”
I wish all the best for Mr. Hill. It isn’t easy to own up to something socially unacceptable. And as for Westboro, I hope at least they enjoyed the concert.
Mission Mess: making your mess a mission
“If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind…
“…then is an empty desk a sign?” -Einstein
In Manhattan on Broadway, there used to sit two magazine stores across the street from each other. One, a chain, put their Cosmopolitan magazine snugly and neatly next to their Fortunes. They had a powerful inventory system and training series that taught their employees how to make the most of their time with the customer. The other, owned by old Mr. Essam, haphazardly stocked his magazines without the aid of computer inventory or programs. He and his assistant operated from memory and straightened as best they could whenever they could. Can you guess which one survived?
Mr. Essam, of course.
This story is from Eric Abrahamson and David Freedman‘s smart and brilliant book, A Perfect Mess. They explain how mess makes the world a better place and why Mr. Essam is still in business. One reason was his lack of overhead – no profit eating computer system telling him what to do. The other, they explain, is mess.
I once worked with a young, startup company that had a beautiful business plan, great mission, clear values, neat goals. After they worked tirelessly for months to get the company off the ground, it sank like the Titanic. My diagnosis: they were too neat.
Though there’s something to be said about neatness, there’s a hidden benefit to mess, says Abrahamson and Freedman: flexibility.
Messy systems adapt and change more quickly, more dramatically, in a wider variety of ways, and with less effort. Neat systems tend to be more rigid and slower to respond to changing demands, unexpected events, and new information. – A Perfect Mess, page 77-78
Think about the messy improvisation of a jazz ensemble, or the chaotic and sometimes drunk-looking dance of a boxer. They aren’t at a loss; they are ready for change, whether in rhythm or response.
One of the biggest disasters an organization can commit with their mission statement is making it too neat and clean. A mission statement that does not make room for failure or change is, in itself, a failure. It lacks the flexibility life requires. Stuff happens. We have to adapt.
But think outside of work for a moment.
- What about your household rules like, “Always share, with everybody.”
- What about the unspoken family rules like, “We don’t fight.”
- What about relationship rules like, “I have to have a positive disposition, even when we fight.”
These rules might work for some or most things, but life is messy. Stuff happens. We have to adapt.
Teams – whether they are work teams or families – require allowances for mess. NOTE: they don’t require the mess to become a disaster! They do, however, have to expect the mess. Teams that don’t expect mess tend to get a little obsessive-compulsive: so obsessed in cleaning up each and every spill that they are compelled to ignore their primary objective.
So when setting goals for work, or for summer diet/exercise, or for your marriage, or for your kids/parents, focus on two things:
- What is my primary objective here?
- Am I willing to forgive myself when I mess up/Am I expecting to encounter mess?
Expect a little mess. Don’t let your obsession to have a perfect and neat mission get in the way of reaching your goals. Smile when messes happens. They are just reminding you that you are human!
Busy
It’s been too long.
Too long.
I sat across from a dear person this week, talking to them about my schedule:
“Yeah,” I said, “It’s been a busy week. Starting a new job, getting into a new groove, loving it all – but yeah, it’s busy.”
They nodded. “I know that feeling,” they replied.
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah! Wait until you have kids, it only gets busier.”
Awesome.
How many times have you heard the line “…it only gets busier...”? Dozens? Hundreds? I’ve heard it 2,309 times exactly. And since I heard it the first time, things have only gotten busier.
Yet the tragedy is, in the midst of all the busyness, things get left behind. Jobs. Duties. Responsibilities. People. We sacrifice things to the gods of the hustle-bustle. We unfortunately sacrifice a lot of relationships in the process, too.
Who have you sacrificed lately? This week I sacrificed my two best friends – I ignored them for the sake of the god of busyness. No, they weren’t facing any sort of crisis or emergency, but they are still my best friends. Ignoring the daily support of a friend is like forgetting to drink water – you’ll survive for a while, but eventually you will dry up.
Super smart-guy and leadership consultant Dr. Henry Cloud wrote a brilliant little book called Necessary Endings. I’m getting the chance to read it this week, but already I hate it – it hits too close to home! Dr. Cloud starts the book with a chilling yet honest observation:
“Today may be the enemy of your tomorrow.“
Today, we make decisions to focus on busy and not on relationships. Today, we make commitments that will make us sacrifice something tomorrow. Are those sacrifices worth it for the sake of… mere… busyness?
I doubt it.
At 100 miles per hour, my weeks has been swamped with responsibilities and work. No, you can’t shrug it all, but you can take a step back and see what is really important. As I sit down and write this, I have a graduate assignment due, social media posts to do, projects to finish, and events to plan. Those all have their place. But I think about what is important, what I really want to invest my time doing, I have to wonder if those things are worth it. Honestly, when I think about what is important to me and the things I want to remain important to me twenty years from now, those things aren’t on the list.
All I want to do now, is go to my sister-in-law’s basketball game with my wife. And I won’t regret a moment of it.
What about you?
Your Resolution Sucks
Your resolution kind of sucks.
Sorry…
Over half of the population has made a resolution this year to lose weight/diet. Of those, according to the stats, most will maintain their Jenny Craig diet for about two weeks. By February 1st, nearly half of the resolvers will be sneaking a Twix between dropping their kids off at school and beating the morning traffic to work. By March 1st, they’re almost all knee-deep in a Fudge Suicide Delight at their favorite grease bucket.
It’s just science, and it’s depressing.
Why are we so bad at resolutions? Is it because of too little resolve? Is it too little discipline? Is it Facebook’s fault?
No, our resolutions just suck.
Check it out – the top three resolutions of the New Year made by the population are as follows:
1) lose weight
2) get organized
3) save more, spend less
Kinda lame when you think about it.
Can’t we be more creative? Or even… Selfless? If we are being totally honest, losing weight, getting organized, and pinching pennies sometimes has less to do with others than it does with us and what we would like to accomplish. Not always, but we as humans have a habit of looking in the mirror and wanting to like everything we see rather than appreciate who we are in the first place.
But what exactly is it that stops us from accomplishing our goals regardless? In short, the thing that often impedes us from achieving our resolutions has nothing to do with the resolution we set.
Our resolutions often suck because we fail to take care of what we do before the resolution.
We don’t continue dieting because we leave boxes of Valentines chocolates lying around, unopened. We don’t work out because we don’t pack work out clothes and don’t drive near the gym on the way from work. We don’t save money because we carry too many cards we can spend money with easily with no accountability. We don’t spend more time with people because we feel we have to work just an hour extra before we can hang out; after all, what’s another hour of _____ really going to matter?
It will matter because it will stop you from seeing through your resolve.
Effectively seeing through a resolution works like this:
A) What activates your feelings? Want candy? – What makes you crave it? Want to spend? – What were you doing before you felt like spending? Pinpoint the feeling before the temptation.
B) What do you believe about it? “One more candy won’t hurt.” Ah, there’s the belief. Once you’ve found what activates the temptation, now, ID what you tell yourself to sell yourself on the idea.
C) Change it. Force yourself to drive a different route, tell yourself something different, or do it differently a second time.
A-B-C. Ha. See what I did there? With the, ya know, letters…
This is the fundamentals of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy used by therapists across the world. Google “successful resolution” and you’ll probably see something like this. Yet, when it comes to resolutions, there’s something we need even more of – something much deeper – that I believe impedes us the most:
“Resolve.”
Resolve involves us gathering ourselves and standing against an enemy that we eagerly want to vanquish. Perhaps “resolutions” have become too soft. They have become glorified “goals.” Tsk tsk. Resolve is far more powerful than that. Resolve pushes us to fight against things that are really gnarly, like indifference, impatience, and apathy.
Now those are things that could use a resolution or two.
This month, the blog is going to focus on the theme of “RESOLVE.” The things that plague our life, love, and families could really use some resolutions with some serious resolve. Our weight, finances, and gym memberships could use a rest this year. Broken relationships, depressed lives, and confused and deeply troubles love could use the attention this year instead. So let me formally invite you to tackle a new resolution – to make a resolve – that overthrows the old, confused, broken cycles in our relationships and replaces them with healthy, communicative boundaries, love, and life.
And if you haven’t already, follow us this month by clicking the “follow” button nearby so you can keep up with the theme of “RESOLVE,” and what it means in our life, love, and family.
Kyle R. Bullock 