Topic: Personal Development

  • Hippoposterous

    “Hippoposterous” by Jason Kotecki. 20 x 20. Oil on canvas.
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    This is a tiny hippo in a bowl of Froot Loops. Or is it a normal-sized hippo in a giant bowl of Froot Loops?

    I don’t remember.

    Either way, it’s preposterous.

    Most serious people don’t have time for the preposterous. They have much more important things to concern themselves with. Of course, there’s a good chance that these people are also riddled with Adultitis, make terrible leaders, and will never change the world.

    Consider the smartphone. It is a device on which you can look up any fact in the world or talk to your friend on the other side of the planet via video. And you can use it to order a hundred melon ballers that will arrive at your door by tomorrow. Just think of all the elements at play that make this thing work: microchips. The internet. Wi-Fi. Facial recognition. Speech recognition. Rechargeable battery. Unbreakable glass. (Oh, wait…)

    Now, imagine having to explain all this stuff to your great-grandparents.

    Preposterous!

    For those of you old enough to remember TV shows from the twentieth century, it’s something out of The Jetsons or Star Trek. But now it’s just an ordinary, normal thing.

    Okay, now let’s compare this to a pocket calculator. The calculator seems simple by comparison, right?

    What if I told you that the first handheld pocket calculator would not be invented until five years AFTER President John F. Kennedy declared, in 1961, that America would send a man to the moon by the end of the decade?

    Preposterous!

    Now let’s look at some of the challenges you might be dealing with.

    • Finding a better job.
    • Paying off that credit card.
    • Landing that account.
    • Finishing your degree.
    • Potty-training your kid.

    Do any of these issues seem all that hard by contrast?

    Will success require creativity? Hard work? Sacrifice? Teamwork? Of course. But let’s not label it as preposterous. It’s amazing how many things that started out as preposterous eventually become rather obvious.

    Remember, there once was a time when a stapler was a fancy piece of office equipment.

  • The Greatest Showman

    “The Greatest Showman” by Jason Kotecki. 16 x 20. Oil on canvas.
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    The absence of fear is not bravery.

    The absence of fear is a terrible life.

    If you stay exactly where you are and never try anything new, you may be able to avoid fear. Maybe.

    If you want your life to matter, however, fear comes with the territory. You’re going to have to figure out how to tame it.

    The good news is that our fear is never as ferocious as we make it out to be.

    Most adults don’t consider themselves to have a robust imagination; that’s the realm of children and fairy tales. However, there is one aspect where most adults actually have an overactive imagination, and that’s when it comes to our fears. It doesn’t require any effort at all to picture our portfolio going belly up, our project crashing and burning, or ending up penniless, homeless, and living in a van down by the river while eating Spam out of a can. We can picture all of these things easily, in vibrant, living color, just as easily as a child imagining a personal tour through Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.

    We easily dismiss any vision of an ideal (but as of yet unrealized) future, but give total credence to even the most far-fetched worst-case scenario. 

    A better strategy is to stop pretending that our imagination has gone missing, realize how powerful it is, and start using it to help us. Whenever I am freaked out about something, I like to do a little activity that only requires three steps, but requires full use of my imagination.

    The first step is to imagine the worst-case scenario in your situation. This is the easy part, because we probably already have a head start. It’s helpful to write it down or say it out loud, because the mere act of shining some light on it helps us to see how ridiculous it is.

    The second step is to imagine the best-case scenario. This might be a little harder, but it’s a lot of fun. Enter Mr. Roger’s Land of Make Believe and visualize the most preposterously positive scenario that you can possibly imagine. The sort of thing that would make you say, “If you wrote this into a movie, no one would believe it.” You will notice that you begin to turn the tables on fear and plant a vision in your head that can have an eerie way of coming to pass.

    The final step is to imagine a likely scenario. This will likely land somewhere in the middle of the first two. Your job is to pretend that you are a Las Vegas oddsmaker and draw up a picture of how things will most likely go down. It’s not ideal, and might be uncomfortable, but it’s surely nowhere near as bad as the worst-case scenario. Meanwhile, ideas will start to surface about some practical things you can do to help your cause.

    This activity helps you use your imagination for good, and also reminds you how it can trick you into seeing your situation as more terrifying than it really is.

    When I was a teenager, I worked at a car dealership. I was a good worker, but I had never received a raise. And I was trying to save up for a car. I decided to ask my boss for a raise. He was the owner, a smart, no-nonsense, sometimes gruff kind of guy. I put it off for weeks. I carefully planned the argument that made my case. I rehearsed my speech, prepared to list my accomplishments and call in lead witnesses if needed. I debated the proper time of day to ask: first thing in the morning? At the end of the workday? On a Saturday when the service department was closed? It went without saying that the beginning of the conversation was crucial. I needed to float a trial balloon to gauge his mood. Any sense of irritability, and the mission would have to be aborted at once. More than once, I considered what to do if he fired me on the spot for being an ingrateful little peon. 

    Eventually, I decided that the day had come. I screwed up my courage and walked up to his office, prepared to handle any possible rebuttal and ready to deliver an impassioned speech about justice and landing on the right side of history. 

    “Excuse me, Ron…can I talk to you for a second?”

    “Yeah, what is it?”

    That must have been when I blacked out. I probably mumbled the word “raise” at some point, but there was nothing close to the memorized inspirational speech I had practiced. 

    He let me flounder for about seventeen seconds before putting me out of my misery and saying, “Yeah, that sounds fine.”

    I walked back to my wash station on cloud nine. I had no idea that conquering the world would be so easy. 

    Sometimes the tiger we’re fighting is nothing more than a house cat.

  • Willing To Relocate

    “Willing To Relocate” by Jason Kotecki. 24 x 24. Oil on canvas.
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    When Kim and I decided to move to Madison after we got married, neither of us had jobs or job prospects for that matter. I’m sure some people thought we were crazy.

    Kim and I didn’t have to leave home. It was fine, and it offered an opportunity. But we wanted an adventure to call our own, and suspected that the life we wanted to live would require a change of scenery. 

    And so we were willing to relocate.

    We had to leave behind that which was familiar in order to grow into who we were meant to become. We picked Madison, but in our case, the need to move away from our comfort zone was more important than the actual location itself.

    Sometimes we have to be willing to relocate to make our dreams come true. Of course, that might mean moving across town or across the country.

    But it might mean moving into a different group of friends.

    It might mean moving from where our customers are today to where they will be tomorrow.

    It might mean moving into a new way of seeing ourselves, perhaps from the role of victim to that of victor.

    When I was a brand new speaker, Kim and I helped form a mastermind group with a few of our peers, talented people at a similar stage as us. We had the harebrained idea to invite Robert into our group. Robert was a true pro that we all looked up to. He’d been speaking for years and had a thriving business. We never thought he’d actually say yes. 

    He did. 

    The thing that impressed me most about Robert was his openness to new ideas. He shared hard-earned lessons, but never paraded the fact that he was further along than any of us. He looked at us as true peers. He was always curious and open to our ideas. He regularly asked us for our opinions and was eager to try out our suggestions. 

    I remember thinking that when I grew up and got really successful, I wanted to be like Robert. 

    Here’s the thing. I now see that he wasn’t patronizing us; he was smart. He knew that in order to grow his business and get better as a speaker, he couldn’t stay where he was. He had to be willing to relocate. 

    Sadly, the reason he stood out is that his attitude is rare. I’ve seen many speakers – and businesses for that matter – slowly fade into oblivion and irrelevance because pride held them back. They already knew it all. They weren’t open to a new path.

    Robert was successful. But he wasn’t about to settle.

    If you are not satisfied with your life as it is now, you have to be willing to relocate from where you are now to where you want to be.

    If you want to experience the summit, you have to say goodbye to sea level.

  • Leap

    “Leap” by Jason Kotecki. 20×16. Oil on canvas.
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    Why is it that so many of the people who have found success in America are first-generation immigrants? One big reason is that many of them came from a place that is not so great. They saw America as the Land of Opportunity, and they pursued it with a definitive focus and relentless persistence. They were willing to leap from the known to the unknown.

    A big reason people don’t chase their dream is that where they are now isn’t half bad.

    They give up the dream and settle for the dreamsicle.

    A dreamsicle is sweet and alluring and very tempting. It’s the option most people go for, with its safety, comfort, and surface-level perks. Because of that, you wonder if you’re crazy to even consider abandoning it.

    The dreamsicle is the lifestyle that ensures you need to keep your current job for as long as possible.

    It’s the boyfriend who checks all the boxes except for the one that matters most.

    It’s the job that impresses your parents but gives you Sunday Night Dread.

    But eventually, it leaves an unsatisfying feeling in your stomach. Like maybe you shouldn’t have settled for something so easy.

    When I first started my business, the prospect of dealing with taxes, paying for my own health insurance, and being solely responsible for the revenue (or lack thereof) felt daunting. Turning down a steady job with killer benefits and staying in a crappy apartment for eight years seemed ill-advised at the time. Now it’s clear that it was one of the best decisions I ever made.

    Any time you break away from the crowd and do something different is scary. The leap into the unknown requires us to be the leaders of our own destiny.

    But nothing is ever as rewarding or satisfying as chasing the dream in our hearts.

    The dreamsicle is not the same as the dream.

    Is it time for you to leap?

  • How Many Licks?

    “How Many Licks?” by Jason Kotecki. 30 x 24. Oil on canvas.
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    How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?

    A commercial that appeared on TV when I was a child asked that very question. It turns out that a number of folks have tried to get to the bottom of this.

    A group of engineering students from Purdue University built a licking machine, modeled after a human tongue, and determined that it took an average of 364 licks to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.

    A chemical engineering student from the University of Michigan built his own licking machine and recorded that it required 411 licks.

    And a group of junior high school students ditched machines in favor of human lickers, and reported an average of 144 licks.

    Apparently, the world really may never know how many licks it takes to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop.

    I remember the first time I took my kids to Wrigley Field. It was the year after the Cubs won the World Series, and the kids were excited to see their favorite players in person. It was a beautiful day, the Cubbies won, and we relished singing “Go, Cubs, Go” with 40,000 fellow Cub fans.

    We looked forward to that game for months. As we do for many of the firsts in our lives. Your first baseball game. Your first kiss. The first time you get to drive by yourself. The first place of your own. Your first child.

    We anticipate the first times and do our best to savor them.

    But the last times are different. They have a habit of sneaking up on us. Undoubtedly, there was a last time that I held my youngest daughter in the middle of the night, in a grouchy sleep-deprived state, comforting her – begging her — back to sleep. But I don’t remember it, because I didn’t realize it was the last time when it happened.

    The first times come with a lot of fanfare. But the last times come and go without a whisper.

    How many dinners do you have left with your parents?

    How many anniversaries do you have left with your spouse?

    How many bedtime stories do you have left to read to your kids?

    How many fishing trips do you have left with your grandchildren?

    How many licks?

    There is no machine we can build that will tell us. Not exactly.

    We can guess, we can estimate, we can hope for the best.

    But I bet that number is a lot smaller than we think it is.

    Live accordingly.

  • Wind In Our Sails

    “Wind In Our Sails” by Jason Kotecki. 20 x 20. Oil on canvas.
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    This painting was inspired by a family vacation to Mexico. One thing that was abundantly clear in the week we were there is that the Mexican people love their color. When you’re accustomed to everything being Pottery Barn beige and gray, it really stands out. 

    I wanted to incorporate that vibrant, whimsical color, along with one of the culture’s great traditions, Dia de Muertos, or Day of the Dead. I think it is a beautiful way to look at the afterlife and the ancestors who went before us. I appreciated the idea of seeing death as a part of the life process, rather than an end in itself.

    I also liked the focus on how much we owe to the people who came before us. In American culture, the independent spirit of the individual is celebrated. That’s fine, as far as it goes. Except that there is no such thing as a self-made man or woman. No one becomes successful by themselves. Yes, your unique talents and a fiery self-determination are key ingredients for success. 

    But life is a group effort. 

    I was thinking about the people in my own life who have passed away. Not just family members, but teachers and coaches who served as mentors, too. Every one of them taught me something that I carry with me to this day. 

    My Grandma K. made me feel like I was special, just as I was.

    My third-grade teacher, Mrs. Smith, encouraged me to take my artistic talent seriously.

    My Little League coach, Mr. Dawson, helped me believe that I was a winner.

    When I was an uncertain teenager, Deacon Vince saw me as a grown-up with valuable contributions to make.

    Each of us is like that tiny sailboat. At times, it can feel like we are drifting, alone, on a vast and overwhelming sea. 

    But we are not alone. 

    We have the wisdom, given to us by the people in our lives who have gone before us, charting our course. They have touched our lives, and their examples live on, showing us the way.

    And their words live on as the wind in our sails, guiding us into a bright and colorful future.

  • Good Fortune

    “Good Fortune” by Jason Kotecki. 12 x 12. Oil on canvas.
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    Lucky is winning a game of Candyland against my daughter.

    Most things in life that seem lucky are often anything but.

    I don’t like how chalking up someone’s success to a lucky break strips away credit. Not only from the person who worked hard, but also from God, who (often anonymously) orchestrated so many of the events and circumstances along the way.

    Undoubtedly, where you are born, who your parents are, the color of your skin, and whether or not you grow up to be 6-foot-8 with the ability to jump over a school bus are completely out of your control and could all be considered “luck.” And yet, having any of these so-called advantages is no guarantee for success, while not having them does not condemn one to certain failure. Every NBA draft class is filled with dudes who won the genetic lottery but won’t last long in the league.

    I could be all bent out of shape because my gifts are not advantageous to playing professional basketball. But we are all given different gifts that become our advantages. True joy and fulfillment are the result of fashioning a life that utilizes those gifts to the best of our ability in the service of others.

    The Roman philosopher Seneca said, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” 

    Luck is out of your control. But you know what isn’t? Finding the courage, discipline, and persistence to try something that might not work. See also: Putting in the hours, perfecting your craft, and getting back up after you fail. Sometimes the hardest work is keeping your faith when everyone else paints you a fool. 

    You have the good fortune to be alive, right now, with an abundance of realized and untapped gifts and talents. What you do with them next has nothing to do with luck.

    Want some good fortune? Be good at what you do, and be a good person. 

    Spend your life working on that, and the luck part has a way of taking care of itself.

  • The Burger King

    “The Burger King” by Jason Kotecki. 40 x 40. Oil on canvas.
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    When Kim and I are goofing off, either alone or with the kids, one of us will often challenge the other to “own it.” What this means is that we have to push away any iota of self-consciousness and fully commit to 100% concentrated silliness.

    When you see someone trying to act like a funny character or dance ridiculously, you can tell if they are not “owning it.” You can tell they feel awkward, and that awkwardness makes you feel a little awkward, too.

    But if you’ve ever seen someone “own it,” it’s like they’re the only person in the room. They look patently ridiculous — way more so than the person who feels awkward being just a little silly — and they positively don’t care.

    That is powerful.

    Each of us has a line that marks how far we are willing to go in looking silly in front of others. For most of us, that line is not very far away. Some people will do anything to avoid looking the least bit silly in public. We don’t dance in public, wear anything that might draw a sideways glance, or even raise our hands to ask a question if we think everyone else already knows the answer.

    Elite comedians are willing to go shockingly beyond that line. They go so over-the-top in their commitment to the bit, owning it in a way that clearly shows that they simply don’t care how silly they look.

    Amy Poehler rightly said, “There’s power in looking silly and not caring that you do.”

    We often assume that if we are too silly, people won’t take us seriously. But the irony is that the less we care about how silly we look, the more confidence we project. And confidence is power. We are more attracted to people with confidence. People follow confident leaders. We say yes to requests made with confidence.

    I considered making this painting 12 x 12 inches. What a stupid choice that would have been. The original painting is almost four feet square, and thank goodness. This painting is about the power of not caring about looking silly. It’s important that this lion, one of the most powerful creatures on earth, is life-size. Being face-to-face with him gives you a real sense of his power. 

    The fact that this lion, one of the most powerful creatures on Earth, is wearing a silly little paper crown from a fast-food joint does nothing to minimize that power.

    Are you going to be the one to tell him he looks like an idiot?

    Even if you did, it’s pretty clear that he wouldn’t care one whit about your opinion.

    We can’t control the opinions of others or what they think of us. But that doesn’t matter, because you are enough. You don’t need anyone else’s permission or validation to feel valuable. Own the power that comes from being you–your wonderful, weird, and wacky you, and not caring about what other people think.

    When you can own that? Well, that’s as powerful as you can be.

  • Half Full

    “Half Full” by Jason Kotecki. 12 x 12. Oil on canvas.
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    I like to think of myself as an optimistic person. After all, I am a lifelong Cubs fan who always believed in the hope-filled power of next year. Then again, when they lose three games in a row these days, feeling certain that they’ll never win another game again seems pretty pessimistic.

    The truth is, I’m probably a little bit of both. 

    The optimistic side of me believed that Penguins Can’t Fly would be a New York Times bestseller. It wasn’t.

    This defeat, along with a number of other epic failures in my career, bolsters the popular argument that I should minimize the risk of pain and defeat by keeping my expectations low. 

    This strategy of operating with low expectations is employed by many. The thinking goes that if you don’t get your hopes up about something, then you won’t be as disappointed if it doesn’t work out. And if it turns out well, you’ll get the enjoyment of being pleasantly surprised.

    As it turns out, it’s a flawed strategy.

    According to neuroscientist Tali Sharot, people with high expectations always feel better because how we feel depends on how we interpret the event. 

    When a person with high expectations succeeds, they attribute it to their own traits. When they fail, it wasn’t because they were dumb; it was because the exam was unfair, and next time they’ll do better. When a person with low expectations fails, it was because they were dumb, and if they succeed, it’s because the exam happened to be really easy, and next time reality will catch up with them.

    Secondly, regardless of the outcome, anticipation makes us happy. It’s why people prefer Friday to Sunday: it brings the anticipation of the weekend ahead.

    Finally, optimism acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Believing we will be successful makes us more likely to be so, and optimism reduces stress and anxiety, leading to better health.

    When a container is at 50% capacity, it is half full.

    But technically, it’s also half empty.

    Both are absolutely correct assessments of the container in question.

    If the label you give it is completely subjective, go with the one that gives you the best chance of going somewhere beyond what you thought was possible.

    So many of our life experiences could be seen in the same light. We lose a job. We break a leg. We get dumped by the one we thought was The One. Is that unexpected, unwelcome thing that just happened in your life an obstacle or an opportunity?

    Yes.

    Both are absolutely correct assessments of the event in question.

    Deciding what you call it can make all the difference.

    Was Penguins Can’t Fly a failure?

    Upon further review, believing that it had a chance of becoming a bestseller led me to put in a lot of effort. It pushed me to think of new and creative ways to promote it, and it got me out of my comfort zone by asking for help. All of these things made a difference. No, it wasn’t a NYT bestseller, but three printings later, and after having outsold my advance (something most published authors never do), it was a success.

    It turns out that optimism is attributed to that success. Without it, I would have always wondered what might have been.

    I don’t know if I’m naturally optimistic or not. These days, even though I still feel fearful about getting my hopes up only to have them dashed, I’m realizing it’s more of a choice than a disposition. 

    We all get to make that choice every single day. To me, there’s really no contest.

    I choose half full.

  • The Princess Dress

    “The Princess Dress” by Jason Kotecki. 36 x 36. Oil on canvas.
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    This painting was inspired by my daughter.

    Our family loves going on walks. A half mile from our house, there is a row of lakefront homes. A small sliver of land between two of them serves as a public access point to the lake. A few years ago, an hour before the sun tucked itself in for the night, we pushed our strollers through the skinny green passageway to enjoy the pint-sized plot of beach that was ours.

    It wasn’t long before my oldest began wading in the water, delighted by the sand squishing between her toes. Lucy was wearing last year’s Halloween costume — a sparkly pink and yellow princess dress — because, well…just because. The gentle waves kissed the bottom of her gown. I considered telling her to be careful not to ruin it, but reasoned that a little water never hurt anyone.

    Meanwhile, Ben was outfitted in his Incredible Hulk costume — you know, just because — and for some reason, was lying face-down in the sand. Motionless. He looked like a big green sea turtle who had come in with the tide to build a nest. We’d be finding sand on him days later.

    By the time I turned my attention back to Lucy, she was in lake water up to her armpits, princess dress and all! I stood there, in stunned silence, as the supercomputer in my brain whizzed through its vast database in search of some rule frowning upon the intermingling of lakes and princess dresses. (Old Halloween costume or not, that dress wasn’t cheap, and I didn’t want it ruined.) But the warm smile that beamed widely across her face suggested that perhaps this was yet another rule that doesn’t exist.

    In that moment, with the sun setting behind her, I realized that Lucy was living life as well as it could possibly be lived. Too often, we fall far short of this ideal. Why? 

    Because we’re afraid of getting our princess dress wet.

    And we all have one. Our “princess dress” is the carefully curated version of ourselves that we show off to others. It’s the way we look, speak, and act. It’s our degree and our job title, our home and hairstyle, our cars, clothes, and 401ks, all wrapped into one pretty package and tied with a bow that signifies that we are responsible, sophisticated, and successful.

    In order to keep this princess dress looking good, we must live a life of restraint. No full-out running, no sitting on the ground, no eating messy things, and certainly no swimming in lakes.

    We are given countless opportunities to dive headfirst into the experience of life, but we are too afraid to mess up our hair, our clothes, or our reputation. Because running through puddles, making a mess, or doing something silly for the sheer sake of fun sullies the dress we’ve worked so hard to preserve. And besides, people like “us” don’t do things like “that.”

    While settling for good enough, we miss the insanely great.

    Guess what? After the dip in the lake, Lucy’s princess dress went into the washing machine and came out… good as new.

    Fear does a pretty good job of keeping us from living an amazing life. But it’s a horrible predictor of the future.

    Don’t settle for dipping your toes into this adventure called life. For best results, spend more of your time up to your armpits in awesome. 

    Don’t be afraid to get your princess dress wet.