When Company Values Falter

When we talk about cases of clear fraud or criminal misdoing, it seems so easy to say, “What was wrong with these evil people?” But when they’re in the moment, they’re saying to themselves, “I have to do things for these investors” or “I have to do things for my employees to keep things going.” It’s the concept of escalation of commitment; at first you had very small things that would get covered up and justified, but then the amount of deception gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Theranos might be a good example of this. The people who founded that company had good intentions, right? They wanted to develop medical testing and products that would benefit the world. They believed in it. And either for the mission, for the long-term viability of the company, or for the employees, you can see how they end up making mistakes and unethical actions even though they began with good intentions.

Ken Shotts quoted in Fast Company

we are here

The miracle is that we are here, that no matter how undone we’ve been the night before, we wake up every morning and are still here. It is phenomenal just to be. This idea overwhelms some people. -Anne Lamott (born April 10, 1954) 

Your Pain

Finding a different way to interact with your pain is hard. People have the most difficulty embracing the paradox of acceptance. Our instinct is to run as far away from our pain as possible, to be as safe as we can be. Making a decision to step into it rather than trying to get rid of it can be excruciatingly difficult. Feeling the intensity of those difficult, painful emotions and sensations can feel very dark and very lonely. I see it in all forms of suffering. The depression that never seems to lift, the drink that has to be drunk, the highway we cannot drive on, the hands that must be washed over and over and over. The reality is that most people are willing to embrace acceptance only when they have run out of options – when what they have been doing, often for years, simply doesn’t work anymore. This is a dark place that feels like there is no light to guide you out. It can be devastating. 

To be able to connect and embrace a lifetime’s worth of suffering in service of a valued end, that – in its very essence – is acceptance. 

Joseph Trunzo writing in Aeon 

The Hedonic Treadmill

One is weary of living in the country and moves to the city; one is weary of one’s native land and goes abroad; one is [weary of Europe] and goes to America etc.; one indulges in the fanatical hope of an endless journey from star to star. Or there is another direction, but still extensive. One is weary of eating on porcelain and eats on silver; wearying of that, one eats on gold; one burns down half of Rome in order to visualize the Trojan conflagration. This method cancels itself and is the spurious infinity.

Søren Kierkegaard, Either / Or

Riding the Wave of Boredom

It turns out that bliss – a second-by-second joy + gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious – lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (tax returns, televised golf), and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Constant bliss in every atom.

David Foster Wallace 

Was it an April Fools’ Joke?

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has released a rap song. 

Mosquito bites can be avoided by listening to electronic music - specifically dubstep.

DJ Khaled is TikTok’s new Chief Motivational Officer.

Google has developed an audio assistant that attempts to talk with plants. 

Tinder is introducing a Height Verification Badge.

McDonald's is adding Shake-Dipping Sauces.

Burger King has put out an Impossible Meats beefless Whopper.

Starbucks is opening new stores aimed at dogs.

The US Open to add puppies to the ballperson teams at the 2019 tournament.

New Alarm Clock App wakes you to the Sound of a Puking Dog.

Fish slime could help the development of new antibiotics, researchers say. 

Shutterstock is opening a brick-and-mortar library for stock images.

Snoop Dogg once left a sack containing £400,000 cash in a nightclub, its owner said. 

A globe company is selling a flat Earth globe.

Hasbro Has Found a Millennial-Friendly Replacement for Mr. Potato Head is is Mr. Avo Head who sports a man-bum.

A comedian with no political experience has won the most votes in the first round of Ukraine's presidential elections.

The weed-flavored cottage cheese.

Auntie Annie’s is getting into the hot yoga business.

White Castle is auctioning off a carbon-frozen burger from 1921.

Pasta air fresheners.

Scroll down to see which of the stories in this list are real.

These stories are real!

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has released a rap song.

Mosquito bites can be avoided by listening to electronic music - specifically dubstep.

Burger King has put out an Impossible Meats beefless Whopper.

Fish slime could help the development of new antibiotics, researchers say.

New Alarm Clock App wakes you to the Sound of a Puking Dog.

Snoop Dogg once left a sack containing £400,000 cash in a nightclub, its owner said.

A comedian with no political experience has won the most votes in the first round of Ukraine's presidential elections.

Embracing Life as it Is

For millennia, philosophers have understood that we don’t see life as it is; we see a version distorted by our hopes, fears, and other attachments. The Buddha said, “Our life is the creation of our mind.” Marcus Aurelius said, “Life itself is but what you deem it.” The quest for wisdom in many traditions begins with this insight. Early Buddhists and the Stoics, for example, developed practices for reducing attachments, thinking more clearly, and finding release from the emotional torments of normal mental life.

The goal is to minimize distorted thinking and see the world more accurately. When people improve their mental hygiene in this way—when they free themselves from the repetitive irrational thoughts that had previously filled so much of their consciousness—they become less depressed, anxious, and angry. 

Greg Lukianoff & Jonathan Haidt writing in The Atlantic 

Patriotism & nationalism

Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism when hate of people other than your own comes first. -Charles de Gaulle

Mental illness: Out of the shadows

Mental illnesses account for more suffering and premature death in rich countries than heart disease and strokes, or than cancer. One study estimates that depression is 50% more disabling than angina, asthma or arthritis. Men with mental-health problems die 20 years earlier than those without, according to the British Medical Association, mostly from causes other than suicide. That is partly because mental illnesses make physical ones tougher to treat, and because sufferers often live less healthily. Research has linked even moderate levels of stress to lower life-expectancy. 

Half of adults with long-term mental conditions suffered their first symptoms before turning 14. Left untreated, even moderate conditions such as anxiety hurt school results and the prospects for employment. For serious conditions such as psychosis, prompt treatment greatly improves outcomes.

From The stigma of mental illness is fading in The Economist 

No one was paying attention

Hazel Motes walked along down town close to the store fronts but not looking in them. The black sky was underpinned with long silver streaks that looked like scaffolding and depth on depth behind it were thousands of stars that all seemed to be moving very slowly as if they were about some vast construction work that involved the whole universe and would take all time to complete. No one was paying attention to the sky. The stores…stayed open on Thursday nights so that people could have an extra opportunity to see what was for sale.

Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood

(Born March 25, 1925)

the tragic fate of most individuals

The whole life of the individual is nothing but the process of giving birth to himself; indeed, we should be fully born, when we die, although it is the tragic fate of most individuals to die before they are born. -Erich Fromm (born March 23, 1900)

Plenty of reason for doubt, anger and sadness

All of us — whatever our natural serotonin level — look around us and see plenty of reason for doubt, anger and sadness. A child dies, a woman is abused, a schoolyard becomes a killing field, a typhoon sweeps away the innocent. If we knew or felt the whole of human suffering, we would drown in despair. By all objective evidence, we are arrogant animals, headed for the extinction that is the way of all things. We imagine that we are like gods, and still drop dead like flies on the windowsill.

The answer to the temptation of nihilism is not an argument — though philosophy can clear away a lot of intellectual foolishness. It is the experience of transcendence we cannot explain, or explain away. It is the fragments of love and meaning that arrive out of the blue — in beauty that leaves a lump in your throat, in the peace and ordered complexity of nature, in the shadow and shimmer of a cathedral, in the unexplained wonder of existence itself. 

Michael Gerson, published in the Washington Post 

Look for the helpers

When I was a boy and would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping."  To this day, especially in times of "disaster" I remember my mother's words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers-so many caring people.  – Fred Rogers (Mister Rogers, born March 20, 1928)

The Value of Community

I used to think that community was as simple as having friends who bring a lasagna when things fall apart and champagne when things go well. Who pick up your kids from school when you can’t. But I think community is also an insurance policy against life’s cruelty; a kind of immunity against loss and disappointment and rage. My community will be here for my family if I cannot be. And if I die, my kids will be surrounded people who know and love them, quirks and warts and oddities and all.   

Jenny Anderson writing in Quartz

A Successful Team needs Cohesive Personalities

A useful way to think about teams with the right mix of skills and personalities is to consider the two roles every person plays in a working group: a functional role, based on their formal position and technical skill, and a psychological role, based on the kind of person they are. Too often, organizations focus merely on the functional role and hope that good team performance somehow follows. This is why even the most expensive professional sports teams often fail to perform according to the individual talents of each player: There is no psychological synergy. A more effective approach focuses as much on people’s personalities as on their skills.

Dave Winsborough and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic writing in Harvard Business Review  

Three rules of work

Three rules of work:  1. Out of clutter, find simplicity  2. From discord, find harmony  

3. In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity.  –Albert Einstein, born March 14, 1879

struggling with insecurity

We struggle with insecurity because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel. -Steven Furtick