Lift, and Drag

“Study. Learn. Apply.”

Those words of wisdom come from our own Zen Master, Mr. Chester E. Scott, the illuminated founder of our friendly neighborhood BUILT TO LEAD. Straight out of the playbooks of the Builder’s Journey on the road to OPUS.

Seems that he, and me, and the rest of the Band are into study—>learn—>apply these days, as always. See his blog post on Anger Management just below, and the book “The Anger Trap” recommended to him by Johnny Rue.

This post here, by yours truly, deals with a wonderful book I’m into right now entitled Lift: Becoming a Positive Force in Any Situation. I’m co-reading this one with a wonderful client of mine–let’s call him “Orville”–who has recently described his OPUS, or life’s purpose, as “Lifting others up and helping them remove the barriers in this life that prevent them from being the best they can be.”

How cool is THAT? Mastering lift. Just like Orville and Wilbur Wright.

Since Orville wants to re-dedicate his life to this awesome purpose, I thought he should start with a framework for what “Lift” is all about. And one of the band’s favorite authors, Bob Quinn, has obliged us by writing last year another great book on how to live the best life you can. That’s Mr. Quinn’s OPUS. And further great news, Bob has evidently passed on that passion-inspired purpose to his son, Ryan, who co-authored Lift with his dear old dad. “Together, we improve” is more than just a tagline…

So the Quinns describe LIFT as a psychological state of positive influence on ourselves and others. LIFT is made up of four conditions:

1. Being purpose-centered: knowing what result you want to create.

2. Being internally-directed: holding yourself to a standard of living consistently with your values.

3. Being other-focused: considering how others feel about a given situation.

4. Being externally-open: maintaining flexibility about how to accomplish the results you want.

Notice that these are “competing values,” meaning it is not natural to be both purpose-centered AND externally open. It is not natural to be both internally-directed AND other-focused. It takes REAL. HARD. WORK.

Why should any of us try to manage competing values? Because in training ourselves to seek the middle way between these four conditions, we harness the energy they provide and direct it to becoming a positive influence, rather than being harnessed by that energy and becoming a negative influence. A recent example of someone who failed to manage all four conditions might be Tiger Woods, who had built a global power brand on mastering numbers 1, 2 and 4, but who simply forgot 3 for a while. Perhaps still has. Time will tell.

So we all have a choice. Choices have consequences. Are we to be people who LIFT? Or, like many, we may choose to be a DRAG. We recognize DRAG from so much of our modern media and personal experience. People of DRAG have negative influence through one or more of all four of the opposite conditions of LIFT:

1. Comfort-centered: unwilling to think, serve, risk, or grow.

2. Externally-driven: being “filled up” by position, praise, or possessions.

3. Self-focused: looking out for #1.

4. Internally closed: “my way or the highway” types.

If you want to become more of a positive influence, how do you do it? Well, study—>learn—>apply is a good start on the journey to influence yourself more positively.

As always, if you want to change the world, be the change you wish to create.

What do YOU want?

Have you chosen to be someone who can LIFT others up?

What are you reading lately?

Who are you associating with?

How are they influencing you?

Are you practicing LIFT, or DRAG?

Keep going, Orville. You’re flying high…