Soul Shelter

Entrepreneurship can lead to fulfillment as well as to fortune. What better way to balance work and personal interests than by pursuing your own custom-designed career?

That’s what I did, though “design” had little to do with it. I just bumbled forward, pulled by an irresistible urge to understand the most intriguing thing I’d ever encountered: the Internet.

To help you avoid a few of my many blunders, here are three things I wish I’d known before starting my own business. Maybe these thoughts will save you a bit of time and trouble—or reveal some unexpected possibilities.

1. All Businesses Die
Businesses rarely grow as old as people do. Not one business in 100,000 even comes close to lasting 70 years, a typical human lifespan. This isn’t good or bad, just natural. Most new businesses fail, are bought out, or undergo another form of ownership transfer within the first seven years. Unsuccessful ones fold, implode, or go bankrupt. A few are still going strong after a hundred years, and a tiny handful have spanned centuries. But none last forever.

And when a business passes on, it may bring fortune to its founders (see Think Big below).

So understand that your business, like everyone else’s, will eventually go away. The sooner you accept this, the better positioned you’ll be to cope with change—and to benefit from its inevitability.

2. Marketing Trumps Quality
Say it ain’t so? Sorry, I can’t. You might make the best silver jewelry in town, but you’ll be outsold by the lesser craftperson who doggedly pursues consignments. The charismatic doctor with average ability and TV commercials attracts more patients than the gifted surgeon. Like it or not, “Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door” is a long-dead cliché.

Some years ago I learned this the hard way when a competitor emulated our innovative new service. Our offer was superior—but the other guys hired a full-time salesman who telephoned prospects all day long. They quickly blew us out of the water.

A century and a half ago, quality meant superior materials, outstanding workmanship, and unsurpassed customer service. Today, quality is marketing. Does McDonald’s make the best hamburgers? Starbucks the best coffee? Apple the best portable music player? Sure, there are product and service niches where customers still demand top quality in the traditional sense, but they’re scarce. Most who embark on the entrepreneurial journey must face this hard truth: Marketing trumps quality.

3. Think Big
Most of us overestimate other people’s capabilities and underestimate our own. That’s a central message of The Magic of Thinking Big. And going into business for yourself is the time to project yourself into the future and think big. It demands a leap of faith: refusing to accept what is and instead imagining what can be.

Once you understand that all enterprises eventually pass away or pass on, one of the best outcomes you can envision for yourself is selling your business. Thousands of small businesses are sold in the U.S. every year, many for a million dollars or more. Know that it’s possible for a small business to create assets of interest to much larger businesses. Over a few years you may be able to build up an enterprise that a larger company would have to spend a million dollars to replicate. If so, the larger firm would get ahead by buying your enterprise for $800,000. So be bold! Think big!

There are at least 27 other things I wish I’d known before starting my own business, but this should do for today. We’d love to hear what you wish you’d known before taking the leap. Or, if you’re still poised on the brink, what your top-of-mind concerns are. Whatever your thoughts, they’re welcome in Soul Shelter’s loving arms.

You may also enjoy:

“Entrepreneurship: A Primer”

“Recognizing the Opportunity Within”

“Fixing a Broken Work Model“

Tim and I launched Soul Shelter for the same reason we wrote The Prosperous Peasant, from our conviction that for the majority of people, every day presents a single definitive conundrum: How do I realize my desire to do work I love while needing to do work that earns money?

We believed there ought to be a forum dedicated to exploring the special challenges of integrating inspiration and employment, fortune and fulfillment. Our own personal experiences have taught us (and the parables in The Prosperous Peasant avow this) that there is no secret shortcut to the realization of dreams and the fulfillment of wishes. But we felt that a blog would be the perfect vehicle for sharing amusing stories and insightful perspectives with readers — and inviting discussion. Now, not quite six months on the blogging train, our steadily growing subscription rate suggests that our instincts were true. We’re glad you’ve come aboard!

And today we’re rounding an exciting bend in the blog-road by announcing a new Soul Shelter offering — one we hope you’ll be as thrilled about as we are. With the Soul Shelter First Person Essay Award, we’re searching for compelling personal stories on our theme of balancing fortune and fulfillment. We’re offering a Grand Prize of $1,000 and publication on Soul Shelter to the best essay we receive. Prizes totaling an additional $1,000 will go to seven runners-up.

We’ve established specific guidelines for submissions, so jump over to SoulShelter.org and read our contest rules and FAQ thoroughly, then use the online form to send us your entry by July 1, 2008.

Oh, and did we mention there’s no submission fee?

We’ve already received some superb entries. And to give you a sense of the kind of material we’re seeking, today we’re featuring this moving essay by Melissa Hanser from New York City. Congrats to Melissa on being our first featured writer from the Award pool!

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• Lighting the Way for Others by Melissa Hanser •

“Melissa, what do you do for a living?”

“I’m a teacher.”

“Oh. . .so you’re poor and lazy. Must be nice getting out at three o’clock, and having the summers off.”

I can remember the very first time someone uttered those facetious words to me. I was young, twenty-two or so. I had just finished graduate school and I had the drive of a twin turbo Porsche on the open road. I was hot-tempered and defensive. I argued my point until I was blue in the face.

“For your information, I am not lazy. I stay at work well past three, I work on the weekends, and by the end of my career my education will be comparable to that of a doctor. There’s no merit pay for working harder, or extending my day. There is no time-and-a-half. I don’t get more for the psychiatric counseling sessions that my job entails. I need the summer for my immune system to recuperate because I’m exposed to more germs and disease in a half-hour than many are in a lifetime. My job is important because I’m molding the future…”

I thought that the rest of the world was naïve for not understanding or valuing educators and I was determined to make sure that every person I encountered recognized the importance of my job. I was a teacher, for crying out loud, and I certainly was not lazy!

For many years, I stood my ground and defended my occupation, but often cried when I was alone because I too began to discredit the very part of me that I’d once been so proud of. Deep inside, I began to believe I was lazy, and that I could be making more money in another field-until one afternoon when a student refreshed my outlook and changed my defense.

It was 3:00 p.m. My extra-help session was over for the day and the children of my affluent school district were getting picked up by their parents one-by-one. I agreed to stay an extra hour every week before a test, beyond my contractual duty. It helped the students and the parents feel that they were getting the most from their tax money. I was tired and had three children lined up for private tutoring that afternoon. John, a young boy in my sixth-grade class, waited by my door as I grabbed my bag to leave.

“Ms. Hanser, you got a minute?”

“Sure, but just one. Did you need help with that last math problem? I made it more difficult so that the test will look easy tomorrow.”

“No. It…it’s not about the test.”

“Okay, what’s up?”

“Ms. Hanser, it’s May third.”

“Yes it…”

“Ms. Hanser, my dad died one year ago today … and I’m really sad today. I don’t want to tell my mom because she’s already sad enough, but … Maybe I’m more mad than anything. I’m mad at him for leaving us.”

My heart broke for this little boy. I sat down on the floor in the hallway and listened.

“He always bought me everything I wanted, you know…but he didn’t go to the doctor enough. I would give everything back if he had just gone to the doctor. They said that his cancer spread because he didn’t go when he started feeling sick, and I’m really sad today because I should be sad that he’s gone, but I’m mad at him and I know that’s wrong.”

“Sometimes we get mad at people for not taking care of themselves,” I replied. “Or for not seeing how important they are to others.”

“Well, what are we gonna do without him for the rest of our lives, Ms. Hanser? Who’s gonna take care of my mom when I go away to college?”

“You’re only in sixth grade. I’m sure you’ll figure it out by then. It’s going to take time … and time, whether you choose to believe it or not, heals all wounds. Time, and love from those who are close to you, and chocolate ice cream doesn’t hurt either.”

The young boy smiled, put his head on my shoulder, and cried so hard that his whole body shuddered with each sob. I sat there, and I remembered who I was, why I was there, and why I would teach until I had nothing left to give.

“Melissa, what do you do for a living?”

“I’m a teacher.”

“Oh. . .so you’re poor and lazy. Must be nice getting out at three o’clock, and having the summers off.”

These days, my response is very different and much more effective than the hot-headed retort I once used.

“Poor … that depends on what exactly you’re counting. If you’re counting time, then I’m not poor at all. I have tons of time for listening, teaching, learning, and helping others. If you’re counting knowledge, I have a wealth of it that stretches far beyond textbooks and facts. If you’re counting love, multiply the love and respect of fifty children by the amount of years I’ve taught, and you’ll see that I’m certainly not poor in that either. Lazy … well that would imply that I don’t work hard at what I do … and you’re right. I don’t work hard at being a role model, lighting the way for others, or lending an ear to a child in need — because these things come naturally to me. It is nice getting out at three o’clock — I wish I allowed myself to do it more often. And the summers are lonely without the laughter of my students.

“You see, my job affords me the wealth of what matters most to me, and the ease of knowing that I’m great at what I do.

“So what was it you said that you do, again?”

I’m a firm believer that our fortunes in life are closely bound to entrepreneurship skills, whether we’re self-employed or choose to work for someone else. On that premise, here’s the first in a series of posts on entrepreneurship we’ll offer Soul Shelter readers over the coming months.

This new thread is for everyone, from business novices to the veteran self-employed. We’ll hear from company presidents who’ve sold their companies for millions, and from artists who’ve achieved long-held dreams: sustainable income from their creative works. Today we’ll define our subject; later posts will cover basics for new small business owners, an employee’s step-by-step plan for going solo—and of course, interviews.

Let’s start by considering the origin of the word “entrepreneurship.” It derives from the French verb entreprendre, meaning “to undertake.” Thus, “entrepreneur” means “one who undertakes” (a new enterprise).

My own definition of the word differs a bit, though. For me, the essence of entrepreneurship lies in undertaking a new enterprise with limited resources. Consider the following three three types of businesses:

1. Lifestyle-Focused or Family Businesses
These are firms that depend heavily on founder skills, personality, energy, and contacts. Often their founders create them to exercise personal talent or skills, achieve a flexible schedule, work with other family members, remain in a desired geographic area, or simply to express themselves. But without the founder’s deep personal involvement, such businesses are likely to, well, founder. Professional investors are therefore rarely involved with lifestyle businesses.

2. Middle-Market Companies
In the business world, people talk about the “scalability” of a company, which basically means that the company’s product or service can be quickly manufactured or deployed on short notice, at a steadily falling cost to those who run the firm because the company has adequate systems in place to accomplish this. Packaged software, music CDs, and books are good example of scalable products; once the “golden master” is prepared, additional units can be inexpensively created. The business’s ongoing viability does not ultimately depend on the founder’s skills, reputation, or personal charm. In short, if a company is truly scalable, its founder is dispensable. Professional investors are often involved with middle-market companies.

3. High-Potential Ventures
These are companies focused on new markets with explosive potential. Often technology-driven, these ventures require heavy upfront cash investment to quickly gain decisive advantages, so professional investors—particularly venture capital firms—usually provide funding. High-potential ventures strive to achieve lasting economic and social impact, and aspire to achieve IPOs, or initial public offerings (getting listed on a stock exchange so they can sell shares to the public).

Among professional investors and academics, the traditional view is that one needs to build a truly scalable business in order to deserve the title “entrepreneur.” Otherwise, you’re merely a business owner.

But I don’t buy this. In my classes, I teach that entrepreneurship means different things to different people, but fundamentally, it means starting a new enterprise, whether a lifestyle-focused family business, a middle-market company, or a highly scalable, high-potential venture. The first type, while rarely scalable, deserves our attention and respect every bit as much as the latter two. Here’s why.

What portion of all new businesses do you imagine middle-market and high potential ventures account for? Take a look at the chart on the left. Yup. Less than 10%. But so-called “lifestyle” or family firms account for an overwhelming 90% of all new businesses. A definition of entrepreneurship that excludes 90% of all new firms bespeaks a certain lack of realism. So in my book, anyone who starts a new business is an entrepreneur.

Remember the idea of limited resources from 423 words ago? Firms fueled by millions in venture capital are exciting, but they account for fewer than one in 10,000 new businesses. The rest of the world gets by on limited funds—and unlimited energy.

Small business, in short, is where the action is. Figuring out how to allocate millions of startup dollars is no doubt an exciting challenge. But more intriguing to me is how tiny enterprises with limited cash seize a niche—or blindside powerful rivals.

So as our entrepreneurship series progresses, we’ll focus primarily on small businesses, and on people who’ve successfully made the transition from fortune-focused large firms to fulfillment-focused lifestyle ventures.

And remember, entrepreneurship skills are equally valuable for those who choose to remain employees. Studying entrepreneurship means examining the many ways one can earn a living.

So please join these forthcoming discussions. We’re confident you’ll find the entrepreneurial journey well worthwhile.

(A portion of this essay previously appeared in Japan Entrepreneur Report)

You may also enjoy:

“Fixing a Broken Work Model”

“Recognizing the Opportunity Within”

“The Lonely Novelist’s Five-Point Productivity Plan“

On a mild evening recently, I stood in the cooling air holding my week-old child in my arms, and watched his tiny face relax to the touch of the breeze. For both of us, the moment was strangely powerful. I was amazed and privileged to witness this little person’s first twilight sensation — and to have helped him experience such a thing. What’s more, while observing him, and feeling the breeze on my face, I sensed an innocent wonder reawakening within me.

It might as well have been the first time I’d felt such a breeze. I was experiencing the world anew, because my child was. In that moment, he’d helped me bridge the distance between my blasé adult self and a much younger, less complicated version of me.

We all have an inner child whose freshness and awe can continue to renew and enliven us even as our bodies age. If it doesn’t, perhaps we’ve become numb to the best things in life.

Put another way, our inner child helps us plant our feet firmly in the mysterious abundance of each single day — at least we should hope it does, otherwise we may be missing out on something essential.

In his unaffected rural style, the Romantic poet William Wordsworth wrote on this very subject more than two-hundred years ago:

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

As I observe my infant son in these first wondrous weeks of his existence (also my first euphoric days of parenthood), each hour brings potent reminders of Wordsworth’s poetic truth. The Child is father of the Man.

How many of us can truly say that the sight of a rainbow awakens for us, like Wordsworth, the same indescribable elation it awoke in us as children? Though the vision itself remains the same, we see it with different eyes. Duller eyes, maybe.

For most grown-ups, this is a fact of life. But remember the magical glow of primary colors back in your youth? The joy of warm beach sand or prickly lawn grass under your toes? The breathtaking effect of fresh snow? Do the potent immediacy of these sensory marvels become so lost upon us that they have only the hollow sound of cliche when called to mind? 

Why should our senses dim as we grow older? Why should we lose our childhood reflexes of wonder and awe?

Well … it simply happens, even for those who strive to stay alert, observant, open-hearted. It’s a fundamental problem in life. It comes with the territory of assuming adult responsibilities — and especially with leading high-paced and heavily scheduled modern existences. We become accustomed — and occasionally even indifferent — to the gifts each day brings.

Aging and amassing experience by the year, we grown-ups tend to believe ourselves well-practiced in living. While in truth our every moment is new, we feel we pretty much know what’s coming, and rarely is it something we haven’t seen before. This morning is a morning like most others. This breeze is a breeze, no big deal. In many ways, this nonchalance is demanded of us. We’re led to believe it’s what qualifies adulthood. We’re expected to know what to expect.

But my tiny newborn, still unpracticed in life, exemplifies the value of experiencing the world afresh, the value of being a beginner. And while it’s almost second-nature for grown-ups to regard inexperience as a detriment, to think of being a beginner as a condition to overcome quickly, my boy reminds me, his awe-inspired father, that every day is indeed something unprecedented — and therefore, whether I choose to admit it or not, I am always a beginner.

Another poet I admire, T.S. Eliot, put it another way in his “Four Quartets”:

There is, it seems to us,
at best, only a limited value
In the knowledge derived from experience.
The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,
For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking valuation
Of all we have been…

The child is father of the man. In every moment, the pattern is new. My actual son and my inner child, both, bring me fully into the richly palpable world, reawakening me in the most mysterious but unmistakable way.

Suddenly I find myself absorbed more deeply in the unprecedented present, and if I have the innocence to be a little awe-struck, it’s a good thing. It turns out I don’t mind being a beginner at all.

You might also enjoy:

“The Risk of Happiness”

“A Moment of Fulfillment”

“Art Awakens Us“

Readers who’ve subscribed to Soul Shelter for more than a few weeks know I’m a big fan of self-help books (there’s always hope!). So I’m shocked that it took me so long to stumble across The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz.

Though Schwartz’s subtitle might make you roll your eyes (“Acquire the Secrets of Success … Achieve Everything You’ve Always Wanted: Personal Property | Financial Security | Power and Influence | The Ideal Job | Satisfying Relationships | A Rewarding and Enjoyable Life”), his advice is down to earth-and in my view, priceless.

Instead of summarizing the whole thing, let me share some nuggets that hit me where I live. Maybe you’ll find them useful, too.

Think Positively Toward Yourself
Many of us were taught to be humble, to downplay our own abilities and accomplishments. Yes, modesty is a virtue, but constant self-deprecation—conscious or not—is a losing strategy in life. Schwartz believed that “the key to winning what you want lies in thinking positively toward yourself.” This passage reminds me of As a Man Thinketh, one of the granddads of the self-help movement:

The only real basis other people have for judging your abilities is your actions. And your actions are controlled by your thoughts. You are what you think you are … Thinking does make it so.

See What Can Be, Not Just What Is
Schwartz reminds us that visualization adds value to everything. Thinking big means training yourself to see not just what is, but what can be. Here are a couple of tidbits that deserve the big quotation marks:

A big thinker always visualizes what can be done in the future. He isn’t stuck with the present … Visualize yourself not as you are, but as you can be.

Broadcast Good News
Bitter thoughts are worthless. “No one ever won a friend,” Schwartz wrote, “no one ever made money, no one ever accomplished anything by broadcasting bad news.” ‘Nuff said. The following passage brings to mind a summer stay in Tokyo two years back amid 90% humidity and 100 degree heat:

Have you ever noticed how seldom children complain about the weather? They take hot weather in stride until the negative news corps educates them to be conscious of unpleasant temperatures. Make it a habit always to speak favorably about the weather regardless of what the weather actually is. Complaining about the weather makes you more miserable and it spreads misery to others.

Though written nearly half a century ago, The Magic of Thinking Big still feels contemporary, more so than some of the books discussed earlier this year in Here’s to Success Finding ‘How to Succeed’ Books.

So if you haven’t done so already, start thinking big by checking out a copy from the library, or purchasing one online from Powell’s or Amazon.

You may also enjoy:

“What’s the Big Idea?”

“The Heroic Journey”

“You’ve Got to Jump“

Back in March, Tim wrote about eight terrific titles that have made a big impact on him, and have helped to shape Soul Shelter’s twin themes of fortune and fulfillment.

Readers were invited to email us with comments on the books that have proven most important in their own lives, for a chance to win a signed copy of The Prosperous Peasant.

Our prize winner is Soul Shelter reader Nadine Warner, who sent us the following eloquent recommendations of four unconventional and intriguing titles.

Says Nadine:

“This list may be colored by the fact that I read stories to children. But I think that who we are is influenced by our early years, especially the books that we read and that are read to us. I’m an avid reader — always have been — but when I think about the books that have truly shaped my outlook on life, I find myself going back to these books. Maybe it’s because I remember them within the bliss of my childhood. Or maybe it’s because the messages are just simple and timeless.

Hope for the Flowers, by Trina Paulus: The quest for transformation, to “know thyself,” to think independently, to conserve … it’s all in there. In the author’s own words, “a tale-partly about life, partly about revolution and lots about hope for adults and others (including caterpillars who can read).”

A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle: A book about other worlds, the importance of family, the balance of good and evil, how to go beyond appearances. Time and again I come back to this scene (and I read the book over 30 years ago!). The Beatles were right: Love is all you need.

An excerpt:

With the last vestige of consciousness she [Meg] jerked her mind and body. Hate was nothing that IT didn’t have. IT knew all about hate.”You are lying about that, and you were lying about Mrs. Whatsit!” she screamed.”Mrs. Whatsit hates you,” Charles Wallace said.

And that was where IT made ITs fatal mistake for as Meg said, automatically, “Mrs. Whatsit loves me; that’s what she told me, that she loves me,” suddenly she knew.

She knew!

Love.

That was what she had that IT did not have.

She had Mrs. Whatsit’s love, and her father’s, and her mother’s, and the real Charles Wallace’s love, and the twins’, and Aunt Beast’s.

And she had her love for them.

But how could she use it? What was she meant to do?

If she could give love to IT, perhaps it would shrivel up and die, for she was sure that IT could not withstand love. But she, in all her weakness and foolishness, and baseness and nothingness, was incapable of loving IT. Perhaps it was too much to ask of her, but she could not do it.

But she could love Charles Wallace…

…Charles. Charles, I love you. My baby brother who always takes care of me. Come back to me Charles Wallace, come away from IT, come back, come home. I love you, Charles. Oh, Charles Wallace, I love you.

Tears were streaming down her cheeks, but she was unaware of them.

Now she was even able to look at him, at this animated thing that was not her own Charles Wallace at all. She was able to look and love.

Flatland, by Edwin Abbott: Sure, it’s a book that works on multiple levels (no pun intended!), but before I encountered this book about a two-dimensional square’s first contact with a three-dimensional object, I hadn’t given much thought to what geometry and physics could teach me about the nature of reality (this was grade school, after all!). Yet now, every time I hit a dilemma, I come back to this book to find out if, maybe, there’s something that I am not seeing, that I am not yet capable of seeing because I haven’t opened my mind to the possibility.

Earth Child, by Sharon Webb: The first book of an admittedly obscure Young Adult science fiction trilogy in which humans achieve immortality at the price of creativity. The process only works on children, so they are given a choice-live forever (my interpretation: become a god), or pursue the arts (my interpretation: channel God/The Divine/etc). As a creative type, I always come back to the idea of the arts being a calling, and recognize the sacrifices that we choose to make in the service of our craft.”

Many thanks to Nadine on her wonderful entry! Her copy of The Prosperous Peasant is on its way.

While reviewing thousands of psychology studies performed over the past six decades, Martin Seligman discovered a disturbing pattern: the overwhelming majority dealt with mental illness. Only a tiny portion addressed the issue of greatest concern to most people: How to be happy.

Dr. Seligman, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, was thunderstruck by the implications of his discovery. During World War II, Seligman realized, psychologists had focused on helping traumatized soldiers regain their lives. In the process they became preoccupied with studying, classifying, and treating mental illnesses. Inquiries into happiness and well-being were crowded out of the research ring. For the past 60 years psychology had been devoted almost exclusively to rehabilitation, remaining largely unconcerned with understanding how people become happier and more satisfied.

Seligman has since spearheaded a “positive psychology” movement dedicated to scientifically defining, identifying, classifying, and engendering behavior causally linked to happiness and well-being.

In short, he and others have undertaken rigorous research into Soul Shelter territory: Fortune and fulfillment. What did they learn?

Most important, work satisfaction is crucial. Seligman discovered that people become happier when they can use their “signature strengths”—another word for skills or core competencies—in an enterprise linked to a greater good. That jibes with Marcus Buckingham’s work (and my personal theory that business ventures are scalable and successful to the extent that they address significant social problems).

A growing number of scholars agree. Psychologists and couples therapist Aline Zoldbrod says recent research demonstrates that materialism is bad for one’s emotional well-being. Psychology professor Tim Kasser, the author of one such study, was quoted in an International Herald Tribune article:

Consumer culture is continually bombarding us with the message that materialism will make us happy. What this research shows is that that’s not true.

Such findings trace back to the Easterlin paradox, first proposed in 1974 by the economist Richard Easterlin. Easterlin conducted a global study showing that wealth does not improve national happiness levels once basic needs are fulfilled. Since then the Easterlin paradox has become one touchstone of the positive psychology movement as it relates to happiness.

Recently, though, the Easterlin paradox has been challenged. An article entitled “Maybe Money Can Buy Happiness” quoted two economists who found measurement problems with the data underlying the Easterlin paradox. “The central message,” one said, “is that income does matter.” Other economists agree.

Easterlin himself admits that people in richer countries are more satisfied, but cautions that correlation does not equal causality. In other words, wealth doesn’t necessarily cause satisfaction.

What are we non-economist, non-psychologist types to make of all this?

Well, it seems the experts agree on at least one thing: increased wealth clearly increases happiness for people living paycheck-to-paycheck. Yet unbridled materialism is a recipe for dissatisfaction. The problem seems to be our ability to effectively predict what will make us happy. Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert put it this way in (yet) another IHT article:

If it were the case that money made us totally miserable, we’d figure out we were wrong … it’s wrong in a more nuanced way. We think money will bring lots of happiness for a long time, and actually it brings a little happiness for a short time.

P.S. Today (5/2/2008), after completing the rewrite of this post, I discovered that Justin Wolfers, the author of Economic Growth and Subjective Well-Being: Reassessing the Easterlin Paradox, wrote an extensive, six-part series on happiness. I really need to start reading more posts than I write …

This essay first appeared in a different form in the October 2004 issue of Japan Entrepreneur Report.

You may also enjoy:

“What We Really Need to be Happy”

“The State of American Happiness”

“A Moment of Fulfillment“

(This post is an installment of CommonSensical, a periodic feature here at Soul Shelter in which we offer timeless words from thinkers and artists new and old on the subject of pursuing fulfillment and protecting one’s soul.)

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Self Reliance,” first published in 1841, is one of the most inspiring texts I’ve ever encountered. It reads like a gospel for anybody who’s looking to dedicate him or herself to the pursuit of a personally fulfilling life. And because in Emerson’s day such a pursuit often demanded a brave parting of ways with convention, a casting off of societal mores (and still does in our own day, to a lesser degree), “Self Reliance” has a lot to say about courage, inspiration, and the lessons we ought to take from the triumphs and accomplishments of the famous lives that went before us.

I return to “Self Reliance” often, and it never fails to reverberate anew. Here are some of its highlights (and these are highlights only, a mere sampling from the great 30,000 word text).

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. … A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility… Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another. …

See another recent Soul Shelter post presenting a similar idea — albeit much less gloriously: the value of keeping a notebook so our “spontaneous impressions” don’t flutter away.

We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. … A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.

Here Emerson states the Big Idea of Soul Shelter, which we phrase this way on our “About” page: “All too often a job is just a job, uninspiring or worse. Why is this so? Can things be otherwise? If not, then what changes might we make in order to devote ourselves to work that feels more meaningful?”

What’s Emerson’s solution?

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. … [But] society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. … It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. … Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. … I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. … What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. … It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character. … But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. …

Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment. …

Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. …

The man must be so much, that he must make all circumstances indifferent. … But the man in the street, finding no worth in himself which corresponds to the force which built a tower or sculptured a marble god, feels poor when he looks on these. To him a palace, a statue, or a costly book have an alien and forbidding air, much like a gay equipage, and seem to say like that, ‘Who are you, Sir?’ Yet they all are his, suitors for his notice, petitioners to his faculties that they will come out and take possession. The picture waits for my verdict: it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claims to praise. …

In Emerson’s view, inspiration is active, not passive. The inspired individual, rather than being the lucky recipient of frequent dispatches direct from some angelic muse, is more likely somebody who participates in the power of accomplishments preceding him or her. In other words, the truly inspired person does not wait in a room for an angel to visit, but goes out and collects and samples the fruits of others’ inspiration, closely examining just why this or that inspired work succeeds, and applying the lessons of its success to his or her own talents.

So the self-reliant individual learns to stand before an enduring creation—or ponder the achievements of another—without being cowed or worshipful, and to engage another’s success and synthesize it with his own unique potential.

To be self-reliant in this way, Emerson insists, is to “live in the present … above time,” in a place where ideas of consequence and beauty are abundant, and self-trust is as natural as the existence of a rose.

Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say ‘I think,’ ‘I am,’ but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God today. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time. …

If we live truly, we shall see truly. … The genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying soul. …

I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints. … It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men’s, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. …

If any man consider the present aspects of what is called by distinction society, he will see the need of these ethics. … We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons. We want men and women who shall renovate life and our social state, but we see that most natures are insolvent, cannot satisfy their own wants, have an ambition out of all proportion to their practical force, and do lean and beg day and night continually. Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our occupations, our marriages, our religion, we have not chosen, but society has chosen for us. We are parlour soldiers. We shun the rugged battle of fate, where strength is born.

The prophetic power of Emerson’s admonishment here always gets me. Who can read such a thing and not feel the irresistible impulse to stand up at last and take arms against his sea of troubles, to set out on the Heroic Journey toward happiness, creative fulfillment, and a balanced and befitting life?

Immediately Emerson goes on to address the problematic American pragmatism that tends to make us timid once an adventuresome undertaking fails to go as we’d hoped. From what I know of American measures of success, these observations hold all too true today.

If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined. If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened, and in complaining the rest of his life. A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not ’studying a profession,’ for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances. …

Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. …

Now, I don’t mean to be too timid and “quote a sage” instead of self-reliantly trusting myself, but that last line is one I ought to plaster to the wall above my desk. Such a simple and powerful truth is too easily forgotten.

Insist on yourself; never imitate. … Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses, or Dante, but different from all these. … Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart, and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld again. …

He who knows that power is inborn, that he is weak because he has looked for good out of him and elsewhere, and so perceiving, throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights himself, stands in the erect position, commands his limbs, works miracles; just as a man who stands on his feet is stronger than a man who stands on his head. …

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

So there’s “Self Reliance” in severe abridgement. Find the whole masterful text online, or better yet, buy a volume of Emerson for lifelong reference.

You might also enjoy:

“Time For Everything”

“Simplify, simplify!”

“Life Without Principle (or Interest)“