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
