Where is Your Moral Compass Pointing?

We each have our own Moral Compass, our own set of values, rules and practices that guide our decision making.  Most decisions we make each day don't require a directional check, but there are those big decisions that come along, those decisions made in moments of risk, danger and uncertainty, that define and highlight our true character.  It is in these moments that we truly see where our Moral Compass is pointing.

In order to live together successfully, we humans have created fairly intricate systems of shared values, delineating between what is considered to be 'right' and 'wrong'.  These systems are built upon formal systems of governance (laws and legislation) but also more informal social, religious and familial beliefs that govern our behaviour.  Despite this though, we each hold within us our own personal compass that helps direct our actions and choices.  It is relatively easy for us to make the 'right' choices and decisions in the easy times, but it is more challenging for us to sometimes determine what the 'right' decisions are in more difficult and complicated situations.  It's in these moments that we rely upon our compass to guide us.

"Who are you when no one's looking?"

Generally, we tend to only consider the effectiveness of our Moral Compass when we have lost our bearings, when we find that we have made poor ethical decisions.  We therefore struggle with finding and resetting our Compass as a means of finding our way back from or out of the situation that poor decisions and choices have put us in.

 It makes far more sense though to ensure that we have clarity over our values, over what defines 'right' and 'wrong' for us, long before we find ourselves needing them.  Keeping our compass dusted off and within easy reach will make those difficult decisions clearer.  They may not always prove to be the 'easy' choice, but they should always be the clearer choice.  Research supports this, finding that those with a clear, conscious set of values and morals tend to make more honest and ethical choices, even when no one would know otherwise.

Just how can we strengthen our ethical muscles and get our compass working?  Consider any of the following...

Listen to your Inner Voice.

We all have an inner voice that highlights right from wrong for us.  It speaks up and tells us when it doesn't think something is a good idea, but we tend to downplay it.  We need to learn to listen to that voice though, to lend credence to our 'gut' reactions.  These instinctive reactions to people and situations are still hardwired into our brains from generations ago when poor decisions likely meant the difference between life and death.  However, we tend to rationalize away these feelings, overlaying the 'voice' with 'reasons' why it is wrong or why you should do other than it is saying.  The voice is there for a reason and is likely more in touch with your morals than you are in that moment.  Listen.

Don't be a Lemming.

Just because others around you are doing 'it', it does not justify your following suit.  Others engaging in behaviour you know to be wrong does not magically make it right.  Follow your compass direction, not someone else's!

Don't Rush.

When face with an ethical dilemma take the time you need to make a decision you're going to be comfortable living with.  If someone is pressuring you to make a decision NOW, flags should raise and your brakes should go on. They are likely pressuring you to do something they know to be wrong but are pushing you to decide before you too determine it would be a poor choice.

How would you feel if everyone knew?

If you are horrified by the thought of anyone knowing about a particular choice, then it likely isn't a choice that fits well with your morals and values.  If you don't want anyone to 'know' then it is extremely likely that you are crossing a moral line somewhere in that decision.

Consider your Reputation and Resume

Our reputation is built upon the actions we take, the decisions we make.  If the choices you are making are not ones you would want highlighted on your resume then you are likely doing serious damage to your reputation and employability.

All of our decisions have an impact;  upon others and upon ourselves.  Having a strong moral compass simply means that we have clarity over what is important to us.  Using this as criteria in our decision making allows us to ensure we make decisions we will feel more comfortable living with, providing us with fewer regrets down the road.

What's Your Misery Index?

Sometimes, in order to become more successful, you have to look beyond the obvious. We all try to do all of the right things. We look at what the successful people do and we try to emulate. However, it can become frustrating when we don't seem to be netting the same results from those efforts. This is where thinking smarter about the way we work, and perhaps even the timing of some of our actions, is required. The right actions done at the wrong time will never net you the same positive impact of the right action at the right time.

For example, consider Campbell's soup. Like any company, they wanted to sell more of their product. Effort was put into the look and taste of the soup, the packaging and labelling of the soup, studies were done to determine the right price point of their soup in the marketplace. All of these were the 'right' and necessary things to do. These are similar to what each of us does (or should do!) in order to market our products or even ourselves. Campbell's ran ads in order to create more sales for their products. However, sometimes the marketing they did was effective, sometimes less so - even if it was the same advertisement.

In looking at their marketing information a little closer, they determined that the purchase of their product was influenced heavily by the weather conditions. Cold, wet, windy days drove more sales. Much of their marketing budget was wasted during bright, sunny days. The challenge, of course, was how to reach their audience primarily during those days and moments when it would be the most effective, when someone was chilled and a bowl of soup was very appealing. In response to this, Campbell's took meteorological data, tracked weather patterns, and created an algorithm - they called the Misery Index - to predict when to best run their ads, for each station/geographical location. Brilliant. The more miserable the weather, the more desirable their product. In making this simple connection they were able to increase the effectiveness of the same marketing programs and dollars.

In thinking about this concept, it occurred to me that we each have our own personal Misery Index. Where we happen to be on our own index, at any given point in time, will drive the effectiveness of our actions, influencing our outcomes. Brilliant. The more miserable we are, the less effective our efforts will be. Imagine then if you began to track and understand your trends, scheduling your work and efforts around your 'peak' times.

Some of our trends will occur seasonally. Some people find that they are much more productive during late spring, early summer and through the fall, experiencing a drop in their productivity during the winter and late summer. Extreme cold and heat can have a definite influence over our energy and focus.

Some of our trends may be driven by the calendar. Some people find that they are more productive during moments in the calendar year that seem to 'speak' to them of renewal: the start of the New Year, springtime, September. Others may find that Holidays have a significant impact on their energy, experiencing a positive or negative swing around these times of the year.

Some of our trends may be driven by the planets and stars.  Some people are influenced heavily by elements like the waxing and waning of the moon, without even realizing that their energy is being governed by it.

Some of our trends may be driven by our circadian rhythms.  Some people are more energetic and focused in the morning, some are most productive late at night.  Some people are raring to 'go' on a Monday, while others are at their peak mid or late week.

Understanding your Misery Index helps you to plan your work and activities to your peak periods, avoiding taking on a daunting task during your low moments.  However, it also is important to consider where your audience may be on their Misery Index.  If you know your boss is at her lowest in the morning, or hates the snow, you might not want to try pitching your new idea to her first thing in the morning during a snow storm, even if you are an early bird that felt invigorated cross-country skiing to work!

Plan your working schedule around your Index, but your pitching around the likely Index of your audience. The concept of the Misery Index is there to highlight for us the impact of doing the right thing at the wrong time.  Consider investigating further if you find that even doing the right things seems to result in your spinning your wheels.  The right actions, taken at the right time, will net you the right results.

The Art of Allowing

I was flipping through emails recently when the phrase 'The Art of Allowing' caught my eye.  This concept proposes that we allow people, things and events to be as they are... not as we want or wish them to be.  In doing so, we free ourselves from the need to 'fix' things to our own predetermined sense of rightness.

Think of how much time and energy we expend in frustration and anger over people not doing as we want, as things not going how we'd like.  I see this wasted energy a lot during coaching sessions, where clients vent their frustration over someone close to them not behaving as a 'good' mother, sister, spouse, friend 'should'.  This type of thinking of course presupposes that we know the correct way to be, do or act in a given situation. 

In practicing the Art of Allowing though, we need to suspend this judgement of people and events.  We are asked to recognise that others have the right to choose their own course and that those choices may not always be in support of our desired direction.  Not choosing to move in our direction doesn't make them 'wrong', it just makes their path different.  As soon as we adopt the view that they are wrong though, we begin putting thought and energy into fixing or changing their choices and direction.  We engage our energy and action into 'correcting' their course and certainly get angry, frustrated, disappointed when they don't.

Most of us struggle at coming up with the energy we need to chart and stay our own course, let alone expending energy into plotting everyone else's.  The Art of Allowing though, frees us from fixing or changing events.  We learn to accept things as they are, not to expend energy wishing them to be different.  We fight for the right to make our own choices, to lead our own lives... the Art of Allowing asks us to remember that others have those same rights.  Learning to respect those rights is a natural corollary.

In short... I don't need to like or even approve of your choices, but I need to learn to acknowledge your right to make them.

Why Getting it Wrong... can be the Right Thing to Do

Think about it.  Most people do everything they can to avoid being wrong.  We put a lot of time and effort into doing what we can to prevent even the possibility of being wrong.  And... we learned this early.  In public school we learned that when it came to raising our hands to answer a question, we needed to make sure we had the 'right' answer, or we risked embarrassing ourselves in front of our classmates.  We learned that we needed to study to make those 'A' grades, or risk being embarrassed, whether with peers or parents, about the grade we did get.

Let's face it.  If we fell short of that perfect mark, we were far more likely to focus on the answers we got wrong, to question the 'why' of getting it wrong, to 'feel' bad about those answers we missed, than we were to focus on those we got right and to celebrate the number of times we were 'right' in our answers.

Think about it.  We tend to get stuck in the feeling of being right, the need to 'be' right, primarily in an effort to avoid how we feel when we realize that we're wrong.  It's not the actual 'being' wrong that carries this emotional impact though, it's our interpretation and how we respond to the realization we were wrong that creates and carries that emotion.  It's our response to 'wrongness' that does it.  Somehow we have managed to equate being wrong about something to there being something wrong with us.

However, in dialogues with some of the greatest, brightest thinkers of our times we have learned one key necessary attribute they all possessed.  Consider this the secret key to your future success, it is that important.  Each of these bright people, these successful people, were willing to get it wrong, before they got it right.  That's it.  Be willing to get it wrong, before getting it right. 

The magic in this rests in the fact though that they didn't internalize the 'wrongness'.  They separated the action from their sense of self.  The action they took was 'wrong', but it didn't make them 'wrong'.  Each time they were wrong in a choice they eliminated one possibility off of their list of possibilities.  It taught them a lesson.  Learning from the mistake, the wrong turn, helped lead them to their breakthrough moment.  To do this though, they had to be prepared to accept error, to embrace the messages that came with being wrong. 

For us to advance in our lives, to enjoy greater success, we too need to learn to accept the lessons that accompany being wrong, to embrace our 'right to be wrong', as part of the growth process, and to move closer to our desired 'right' result.  Our fear of being wrong holds us back from achieving this though.  Our fear of others thinking we're wrong, prevents us from trying.  Adopting the response of... 'Ahhh, I'm wrong today, but one step closer to being right'...  frees us to begin making choices today, rather than waiting until we are sure we are right.

Having to be 'right' before we act is debilitating.  Embracing the possibility of being wrong... liberating.  After all, making mistakes is what being human is all about... and I don't think I'm wrong about that!

(great reference on this topic, from 'wrongologist' Kathryn Schulz)