Monday, March 4, 2013

Taylor Made Marketing's February MVP - Ben




Congrats to Ben for being Taylor Made Marketing's MVP for the Month of February!


Learn more about Ben and read the meeting he ran for the rest of the Taylor Made Marketing Employees below:
 

Where’s your home town?  I grew up in Groton, MA but I live in Lawrenceville, NJ now.
Where did you attend college and what did you study? I attended Harvard University and was an English Major.
Who’s your favorite sports team?  UNC – Tarheels College Basketball!
What’s your favorite food?  Chicken… (boring I know)
What’s an interesting fact about you?  I rowed in the Junior World Championship in Lithuania.
What’s your favorite thing about working at Taylor Made Marketing?  Definitely the fantastic atmosphere, full of young, motivated people.
Do you have any advice to fellow employees to become the next MVP?  Just to take the words of my meeting to heart!
Why did you choose to run this meeting?  Being successful is great, but not if you aren’t happy.  So I think the two should go hand in hand. 

Ben's Meeting:

FOUNDATIONS OF HAPPINESS AND SUCCESS

GRATITUDE
            Be thankful for the people and the circumstances that have helped you and allowed you to become who you are.  “To be a saint or a hero is not just to behave a certain way; it is to be held up as worthy of being so.”1  In other words, you can’t proclaim yourself to be the greatest; it is others who can find you worthy of the title, and they will proclaim you so, if you show a deep level of gratitude toward others.

WONDER
Be aware of and open to the influence of forces beyond yourself.  The ancient Greeks believed in many gods.  They also believed that whenever humans were surprised by their own behavior or by being better, faster, or stronger than they ever expected to be, those are moments when humans were being influenced by one of the gods actually guiding them to act a certain way.  It was like feeling a mood which makes you sense “what matters most in a situation, allowing [you] to respond appropriately without thinking.”2  You must, therefore, develop an appreciation “for those situations in life when favorable things occur out of our control”3 and allow yourself to feel a sense of wonder and gratitude for whatever force was influencing you.  It’s not a religious experience if you don’t want it to be, but just be open and grateful for the wonder of those moments. 

COURAGE
            Be proactive about your own situation.  “Why do we set low standards for ourselves when the ultimate currency—when our own happiness—is at stake?  What we need if we are to implement change in our lives is courage.  And courage is not about not having fear, but about having fear and going ahead anyway.4  Learn to fail, or fail to learn.  And then when you do find what works and makes you happy, remember that (as Aristotle said) “We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence is not an act; it is a habit.”

PASSION
            Be in tune with the answers to these three questions—“What gives me meaning?  What gives me pleasure?  What are my strengths?”5—because the overlapping elements in those answers will bring you the most happiness and success in your life.  “When we view work as punishment and [free time] as a chance to do nothing, we fail to recognize the rich sources of pleasure and meaning that are right in front of us.”6  We usually see work as meaningful because it brings us benefit in the future, and we usually see play as pleasurable because it brings us benefit for the present moment.  But when you are in tune with your passions, “work, like play, can become pleasurable and yield present benefit [while] play, like work, can become meaningful and provide future benefit.”7


UNDERSTANDING
            Be eager to understand, not quick to judge.  As long as you look at the world through a lens of good vs. bad, understanding cannot exist.  And understanding has two definitions: 1) comprehending something; and 2) being compassionate.  If you dismiss something as too difficult, too stupid, or too foreign, your judgment will prevent you from learning about whatever it is.  If you judge someone’s behavior as bad and assume your own behavior to be good, you will prevent yourself from seeing what it’s like to be the other person, and you will prevent yourself from understanding what they might be going through, being sympathetic, and showing compassion. 

FORTITUDE
            Be self-assured in the face of the negativity of others.  Imagine a country that can’t grow its own sugar.  They have to import it.  They have to rely on others, but the supply isn’t always reliable.  As a result, sometimes the country suffers.  On the other hand, if they grew their own sugar, they wouldn’t have to go to external sources.  Be a country that grows your own sugar.

CALMNESS
Be at peace with the uncontrollable world around you.  Emotions aren’t reactions to events, they’re reactions to our thoughts about events.  Your emotions don’t know if you’re actually relaxing on the beach or stuck in a traffic jam—they react to your thoughts about the beach or the traffic jam.  When you worry about a negative outcome in the future, your emotions don’t know that you aren’t experiencing that negative right now; they just react to the fact that you are worrying right now, which makes you feel bad.  So remind yourself to breathe and don’t stress about what is uncontrollable.  More beach, less traffic.

FREEDOM
            Be uninhibited by limits, since you create them in the first place.  It is human nature to find the bars of your cell, hold onto them, and stare out from behind them, wishing you were outside.  Those bars that you hold onto are your limitations, sunk deeply into the walls of the cell you think you’re in.  Most people don’t realize that not only are there no walls and no cell, but more importantly that the bars only limit you if you hold onto them.  Let go of the bars.




References
1, 2, 3: All Things Shining by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly
4, 5, 6, 7: The Question of Happiness by Tal Ben-Shahar

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