It got me thinking about the masks we wear in society, in our jobs, in your life. What I find interesting is that the more we wear those masks, the more we become that thing. An old proverb says, ” That which you do makes you that which you are.”

This is both good and bad. It depends on the masks we put on, and why we put them on. Sometimes we fake it till we make it. We put on a mask of a better self, and try to become that thing. Sometimes we mask ourselves to fit into the norm.

But we’ve got to watch how we wear our masks, and how often we put them on. People start to believe the mask, expect the mask, and discount or upgrade our status based off of their beliefs. More importantly, we start to believe it. We are funny forgetful creatures. We lose sight of things. We remember things as they didn’t happen. The weakness (and power) of our minds is such that we can begin to believe our own stories.

So what stories should we believe, and what stories should we forget? What stories should we change?

What masks do we wear, and why do we think we should wear them? What masks should we wear, and what will we become by them?

Gatekeepers.

James Brown said,” You don’t have to give me nothing, just open the door and I’ll get it myself.” A bold statement from someone who was raised in extreme poverty, eventually abandoned by both parents, dropped out of school in the 7th grade, worked as a shoe shine boy and a petty thief just so he could eat, was charged with armed robbery at the age of sixteen, who eventually became a gospel singer, went on to super stardom, and became the one and only Godfather of Soul.

He did what he did with passion, flair, and a unique talent for bringing it all to the stage. He worked his hardest, and when that gate finally got opened, nothing could stop him.

In who we are as friends, as business people, as managers, teachers, and parents, we will all at some point hold the keys to the gate. We can’t afford to be blind to that responsibility, and we can’t afford to be blind judges. I’d hate to be the guy who turned down James Brown, or J.K. Rowling, or (dare I say it) Justin Bieber.

But we have to judge. That’s the gatekeepers job. You don’t let the axe murderers in. We can’t afford to be that kind of blind either.

In the end, we have to have our eyes open. That means knowing our stuff, knowing the cost of risk, being willing to take it, and knowing when not to.

Nope, that didn’t make our job any easier.

(but this makes it more fun)

Seneca said,” The fates lead the willing, and drag the unwilling.” We have to be watching for the change that inevitably comes into our lives, our businesses, our established paths. We must be willing to change, but I think there is more to it than that. I believe that we must become agents for change. We must lead the change that will happen.

But in order to become that, we must be willing to part with some of our expectations and preconceived notions. We must be willing to take another look at what we are, what we believe, and what causes that. It’s annoying, time-consuming, and often painful. But always worth it.

Bruce Lee said, “Take what is useful, and develop from there.” Inherent in this statement is an idea. We need to discard the rest. We cast off the offending hand. We take out the garbage.

Unfortunately though, there are a lot of emotional hoarders out there. I was discussing this with my wife. often, we feel we need permission to do something. We wait for some kind of magical approval from someone. For instance, throwing out all those old magazines on the bookshelf, or in the garage, or under your bed, wherever you keep them. She received emotional permission from someone else to throw the things away, now I can’t keep the things around long enough to read them.

So today, I’m giving you permission. That bad habit, that time waster, that ingrained process, whatever is holding you down, holding you back, DISCARD IT. Clean your glasses, stop categorizing people, stop believing that comfortable place you are in will always be comfortable. Say goodbye to that little blue devil, he’ll look sad when he’s leaving, but give it a month, you won’t miss him.

And remember, sometimes the thing that scared away your expectations isn’t a spider at all. Sometimes it’s a better looking set of expectations.

Introspection is a bit like doing a self portrait. It’s hard to get away from the emotional ties that you have to images of you. You start to mentally edit yourself in a way that you wouldn’t edit another persons face. You add and take away, you tell lies about yourself. It’s so difficult that you often find yourself stuck not in the actuality of you, but the idea of you.  You start to focus on what isn’t real, because it’s what you feel. This is totally normal.

It’s why we talk to others, try to get feedback, look for solutions in other places. But nobody, almost nobody, has those answers. It takes a shift in point of view. Often this requires some sort of crisis, or stress, or movement in the way we think. Often it requires a bit of revelation from outside. It’s like we need to learn to shift our eyes into a different body, and see from someone else’s perspective.

I’ve recently had that not pleasant, but helpful, experience, so I’d like to post sort of a how to.

How to see from a different perspective:

1. Go do something completely different that takes you all the way out of your comfort zone. Go hang out with a different crowd. Blend in for a while. See what they say about life, religion, politics, each other. I’m not telling you to change, I’m saying you open yourself to different possibilities.

2. Get to know a different way of thinking in a non-judgmental way, then use that lens to take a hard look at yourself.

3. Commit to something that forces you to do both of these. For instance, you could completely change the direction of your career. You could stop working and stay home for a while. You could choose to hang around someone who you obviously would never get along with.

For those of you who don’t know, I’ve spent over a decade in the arts, working with artists of all different types, from all different backgrounds. I’m used to their thought patterns, their points of view, their speech patterns, their style of dress. So getting an  MBA at BYU has been like doing an ethnography. I’ve been completely immersed in a different set of thoughts, different social structures, different people. It has forced me to rethink my positions on so many issues. It has forced me to see things from a different perspective.

The end product is that I have been given a gift of seeing myself as others see me. I’ve been forced to look through a different lens. I can see the story as they see it.

As a marketer, it means I can go tell the story in the right way. As a businessman, I can see how to profit from what is there. As a person, it’s a huge aha moment that initiates change.

What are we listening to? What are we plugged into? How is it affecting who we are?

As we plug in, we need to evaluate our media, our friends, our internal messaging, Because the messaging matters. It affects us deeply. As television switched from b+w to color, more people started dreaming in color. Our media matters. It affects the color of our dreams, does it affect the content?

We are a nation, and a world built on dreams. Those dreams have been built on Jules Verne, Shakespeare, Star Trek, The Bible, Grimms Brothers, and a million stories passed down to us through air waves, radio waves, sound waves, and light waves. They seep into our skin and cause us to wonder, to reflect, to look forward, and finally, to act. Today’s dreams are tomorrow’s realities.

So the question must be asked,”Who or what is teaching us to dream today?” Who do we let teach us to dream? What are we plugged into? Is it time to unplug?

A time to meet old enemies. Sometimes these rear their ugly heads, usually in the exact time when you don’t want them to. This has been a spring of old and new enemies, new struggles, new challenges. But through it all, I’m amazed. The growth that new struggles bring is something I’m grateful for, even if I don’t like the stretching.

Old enemies are reminders, of where you’ve been, of how far you have or haven’t come. They tell us who we are, because they tell us what we’ve been through.

Old enemies are milestones or landmarks, they give us a sense of the path we’ve come down. But they can’t tell us where we are going, just a general direction of where we’ve been. I’d like to make a map of those milestones, draw them out on a piece of paper, put them up on the wall, and call it tour de stupid. It’s a good thing we don’t have FourSquare following us around telling us how many times we’ve checked in to Heartbreak Hotel or Lonely Island. I’d be scared to find out what emotional backwater hangout I’m the mayor of.

But, to the point. I jokingly have said that my value add during this year of school is my ability to shut up. I should get participation points for NOT saying something. My reason for acting this way is not because I’m particularly shy, or that I don’t have anything to say. It’s because I want to learn, and I’m surrounded by people that have amazing experiences and thought processes. And, let’s face it, the more I talk, the less these people get to.

I’ve learned some amazing things this year, one of which is this. It’s time to say something. It’s time to be part of the conversation. It’s time to add the things that only I can add.

Silence tends to lead to invisibility. I don’t think that we can afford to be invisible in our society. I think we need to be known. Known for something, something that is different, something that is different that is important. (see Dr. G, I was listening) Each of us needs to speak out in the way that is best for each of us. It’s time for us to find our voices, and it has never been easier to broadcast that voice.

So, it’s time for me to say something. Here’s that something.

“The parentheses are bad.”