I'm Back

I have been woefully remiss in attending to this website the past few months. It sucks when life and in this case death gets in the way of partaking in self indulgent pleasures.
So in the past two months I have been on trial in Kansas City (we won, staving off a potential $1.5 B in liability — rest assured I actually represented the good guys here); then I had to shoot out to California for a 24 hour turn around for another case that was supposed to start trial but got adjourned a month (the only benefit of the trip was I had the pleasure of sitting alongside a former Playboy playmate on my way out West –very former but she still looks great); I was elected President of MDI, a month later we elected a new POTUS who has already begun to provide an invaluable roadmap for me to follow in the art of effective leadership; two men who I came to know and admire tremendously through my men’s work died unexpectedly — weeks apart; my daughter turned 13; the financial infra structure of the United States has crashed and burned and some collegues of mine are presently caught up in the chaos in India.
I am sure there is more but that is enough for me to dwell on for now. So here goes.
First the election. My guy won. Although he wasn’t always my guy but Barrack Obama has weathered the onslaught of the media and the rigors of an endless campaign and has done so very gracefully. I have heard from people who knew the Big O way back when when he was a summer associate at the Chicago law firm of Sidley and Austin that he was always ambitious and just a tad arrogant (although I suspect if he were white the descriptive word would have been cocky or confident but I digress.) I haven’t seen any of that arrogance in his public persona. He has done a great job in demystifying himself. I mean the guys plays hoops. When have we ever had a president who while in office embraced a very physical and sweaty sport as a means of relaxing. No golf or sailing here and no solitary jogging or chopping wood. Basketball is a street game that places heightened emphasis on teamwork and requires a participant to survey the court, quickly identify an opening and seize the moment. What’s not to like about a leader who calls this his game.
I actually am lookingt forward to have a real family take up residence in the White House. The Obamas are not moving in with a sense that this was their birthright, rather I think they feel they got there by being able to be nimble enough to seize on the moment just like a skilled point guard. This was not supposed to be Barrack’s year. I think everyone thought that his moment was at least eight years off. But the Obama campaign clearly changed the game which any one in the marketing biz will tell you is necessary when you want to move quickly from obscurity to front runner. But the key to Obama’s success in my mind was his ability to shift again and then again with each changing benchmark in the campaign. McCain made the mistake of riding his psuedo “maverick” status way too long, he scored a major coup in naming Sarah Palinas his running mate but didn’t know how to follow up on the initial bounce, and Joe the Plumber……. somebody get the Draino.
But Obama kept shifting. If I were to be cynical — which I can be — I’d go so far as to say that things like the Reverand Wright bump in the road were actually planned dramas designed to give Obama some street cred as a man of principle who knows when to cut ties and move on.
But leaving aside the results here, we have got to change the system. The campaign goes on way too long, places too much leverage in a few swing states and doesn’t really serve the country very well. I am not sure it makes sense to go through this wholesale overhaul every eight years when we shift parties and change ideologies because the folks in office got a little too full of themselves and abused their power. While I’d like to think that won’t be the case this go round, the reality is Joe Biden will not be running for President in 8 years — he’ll be too old, and if Hillary is the next Secretary of State she will be too removed from the domestic political areana to have traction as a viable candidate. That means in about five years the positioning and politicing will begin again and the Democrats will begin to cannibalize themselves to both rise above the fray and get whatever spoils are to be had from the low hanging fruit before the country inches back towards the right. It’ll be nice to be proven wrong though. In the mean time I’ll keep me fingers crossed and wait and see.

It's About the Process Not the Results

As the election of our next commander in chief is upon us here in the US, I think it apropos to discuss my own experience with the election process. A few weeks ago I had the honor of being elected to be the next (and fourth) President of MDI, the men’s’ organization I have been involved with for some time. The operative word here is elected, not selected. Actually, I had originally been selected to be the next guy but that process hit a speed bump when the Chair of the MDI Board felt that it was the Board’s responsibility to ensure that the next man was in fact the best available man for the job.

Now that seems logical but in truth it rarely happens that way. In most corporations the outgoing CEO has his successor picked and the board is asked to rubber stamp the selection. Most CEO’s are adroit enough to realize the import of that decision and they go outside the organization while looking within for their successor. However, in recent memory there have been many instances of the corporate reigns being handed to a “team player” who had served the outgoing CEO well. That misguided sense of loyalty has often had disastrous results. I think there is a real difference in the skills set between being an invaluable number two and in being an effective leader. But that is a discussion for another time. For me, for right now I want to talk about what it meant to be elected rather than just responding to the “it’s your time” tap on the shoulder.

Initially I was angered. I felt like I had earned the right to take over leadership of the organization and I felt the outgoing President should have been given deference for the choice he made with counsel of his operations team. However, after the process, I feel the exact opposite. I think I’d feel that way even if I’d lost.

The process worked like this. A team of about nine men got together and put together a checklist of attributes and experience that they felt the MDI President should have. They went through our 1000 plus membership list and came up a list of over 100 candidates who met those basic qualifications. Then the committee, lead by Len Guida (who really should consider going into the executive recruitment business) reached out to each of these men, told them about the process and asked if they were interested. For many men the response was, “I had never thought about it before.” For others it was “why me.” For a few more it was “thanks but no thanks.” From those initial conversations a list of 35 men emerged. The top 16 candidates were then interviewed by sub-committees with questions designed to uncover their vision, their reasons for wanting the job, and any obstacles that might conceivably come between them and being able to be successful in the job. Those candidates were graded and the top three were presented to the board for consideration. The thee of us were then intrviewwed by the full board as well as the operations team, in seperate interviews durin ou annual leaderaship meeting. The questions were and promptd a lot of introspection for me. After some deliberation, I wa advised that I had been unanimously selected.

There are four things that, in my mind, made this process brilliant. The first is that it engaged the elders in the organization with a meaningful role to play in the ongoing viability of what we do. For anyone who has ever been at the top of the food chain in any organization, finding your place in that organization after you step down can be difficult. Often times men leave and move on to other entitesbecause they get frustrated by their inability to contribute in a meaningful way. For two months this process brought those men off the bench. It also allowed the organization to remind many of these men that their prior contributions were held in high regard and not forgotten.

The second thing is it engaged the entire organization. Men were talking about the process. I got phone calls from men I hadn’t spoken to in years who heard I was up for the post and wanted to wish me well. More importantly it made the notion of any man serving as president an accessible idea. Men have since asked themselves, “why not me?”. The third reason is some what related. The two other men who were selected along with me had not been on anyone’s radar prior to the search. When I heard that Bob Irwin and Charles Gjers were the other candidates, I actually felt relieved because I knew that either man would do an exemplary job as the next President and I would have no problem supporting them. My being chosen semed less urgent to me. They were two men with markedly different backgrounds and skills sets from me. It shifted the notion that there was some special criteria that men needed to satisfy to do the job and it also put into question how important “experience” really was. While experience is a valued commodity it need not be the determining factor.

Which brings us to the fourth reason: Through the process the board and operations team had to come to terms with “why Spierer?” They didn’t get to fall back on the easy answer of “he earned it” or “because that’s who Rich - the outgoing President - chose.” They all had to grapple with the question of whether I was the right man to have the job now. I had the chance to lay my expected challenges on the table and to address why I might not be the best man for the job as well as putting forth my vision and proposed agenda. I think that full disclosure will be critical my success. I was asked some hard questions and felt free to provide answers that came from my heart and say what I felt rather than what I thought I should say. There is definitely a freedom to that. I do not think that I have to go into the job with a facade of who I should be. They elected me, for who I am. Notwithstanding the fact they might not have liked everything I had to say. I am heading into the job confident rather than cautious because I acknowledged that I will inevitably stumble now and then and everyone was given some insight into why that might occur. I am driven by the excitement of having been elected over two men I respect highly who could have easily done the job rather than feeling burdened because I took the job because there was no one else to do it.

So at the end I feel that the real success wasthe process and what it has done to energize the organization by both acknowledging the efforts of the men who have laid the foundation for what we do and for inspiring the next generation of leaders to take ownership of what we do now and can do in the future.

If only I could say the same thing about the current process we have in place to pick our next commander in chief. But I’ll wait until Wednesday to comment on that.

Don't Be Sorry, Be Accountable

There are few phrases that ring more hollow than the words, “I’m sorry.” Don’t agree? Imagine your friend borrows your car and returns it with a tremendous dent. He of course, looks sheepish and says, “I’m sorry.” Are you feeling any better? I don’t think so. Let’s put the shoe on the other foot. You just went out with a woman that you know your friend was pining for. Big time. It went well. Really well. You brag about it to everyone else but tell your buddy you are sorry. Are you really?
The phrase has become this universal get out of jail free card when in fact all it is in abdication of responsibility. Now don’t misunderstand where I am coming from. I am not telling you not to feel bad when you screw up. When you screw up, it should burn. In my mind, when you do or say something wrong and it hurts someone else, it is inexcusable and rightfully it should tear at your insides. So, shouldn’t you say you’re sorry? Only if you want to marginalize your relationship with the person you just wronged and cheapen the impact of your intentional action. The time for “I’m sorry” is when you inadvertently step on someone’s toe or bump into someone on line and spill coffee on them. But it should stop there. If you intended to do what you did, own it. If your actions were the result of your oversight and carelessness, clean it up.
Hurt happens in the moment. In real time, to real people. Cleaning it up is not an intellectual exercise that gets remedied by explaining either it or you away.
Revenge is visceral and the Sicilians had it right when they said it is a meal best served cold. My advice is to do everything in your power to avoid having to pay the bill for that meal.
So how do you do that? As much as I’d like to think of myself as enlightened, every now and then I succumb to dark thoughts. Tthere are times when my thoughts fall victim to stereotyping. If I am in Disneyworld or some supermarket and I see an obese person trolling around on one those motorized carts, my thought process will lapse into a less than flattering synopsis about how they got there. I can give lots of examples where I think things that I am not too proud of. Does that make me evil, a bad person? That is somebody else’s call. I do however believe what it does make me is human. I think we all are. We are all capable of acts of incredible stupidity or worse gross insensitivity. And in those moments, it has been my experience that merely saying, “I’m sorry.” is never enough. Nor is whipping out my resume of prior good deeds.
So what do I do? First, I try very hard not to say or do those stupid things again and I never try to justify or minimize them. Ever. What I do when I really screw up is to make a point of understanding how the lapse occurred and to try to figure my degree of accountability in the break down. I have found that understanding what happened and committing to take action to ensure the mistake does not happen again goes a lot further than a blanket apology. Even more powerful, especially in a relationship that really means something to me is having the balls to look the person I offended in the eye and I tell them that I am sorry for having let them down or hurting them. Not for the words or actions – because if I said it or did it some part of me meant to -- but for the result. You can’t take back the words or erase the deeds but you can embrace and be accountable for the result. Now, I will cop to the fact that this is not easy. It takes practice. Looking someone in the eye in and of itself is not easy, let alone when you know you did something wrong. But you can get there with some practice and resolve.
So is conceding that “I feel your pain” enough? No, it is just the start. The magic is in what comes after. It is in taking personal accountability for the results. It is in saying, “I want to make this right by you”. The most empowering statement you can make is to ask “what do you need me to do to make this right?” It is probably the scariest offer you can make. Because in that moment, you are giving away your trust, not your power but your trust.
I can think of no better scenario to highlight this than a scene from the movie Gandhi. In the midst of the riots between Muslims and Hindus that overtook India shortly after the British left, Gandhi declared that he would go on a hunger strike until the fighting stopped. As he lay feebly on his straw mat he gave his followers the opportunity to sit with him. One man came to him distraught. In the frenzy he had struck and killed a Muslim neighbor and burnt his house to the ground. The dead man had a small son who was now orphaned. The man beseeched Gandhi for forgiveness. He desperately wanted some way to regain his honor. Clearly, an apology was not going to be enough. Gandhi’s suggestion was simple. “You must raise the boy as our own,” he said. The Hindu man quickly agreed. But Gandhi did not stop there. He continued, “And you must raise him as a Muslim.” In a moment, the relinquishing of his trust was rewarded with an act that would allow him to regain his integrity and find inner peace.
The tightrope that you are about to traverse by seeking to do the right thing can’t be understated. Nor can the human dynamic at work here. Most people will feel really uneasy with being offered the opportunity to hold you accountable. When asked, “What can I do to make this right, “they will probably attempt to brush it off by saying, “no, I am fine. I don’t need anything.”
That is where you need to go back and get them to understand, that they just won the karmic lottery. They can ask for anything in that moment and you will do your best to make it happen. You need to get them to understand that the moment to get clean is right then and there. They don’t get to say, “I’m okay” and pass on their right to extract their pound of flesh only to raise the incident in a week, a month, or maybe two years. They need to get that this is it. Let them take some time to think about it. But this is it. And when they insist that, “no it really is okay” only to take out the short list somewhere down the road – and they will -- when they are trying to wiggle out of a moment just after they screwed something up and hurt you, you need to be firm and remind them of the conversation. They had their chance and it passed. They passed on it. It’s over.
The first time you try this dance it might get ugly. But if there is relationship there, a real relationship, they will get it. And the next time you screw up and you make an effort to clean up, they will get it. And they might test you and ask for something really outrageous. Do your best to give it to them. Be true to your word and make good on the offer. Of course if you don’t think you can deliver on the request be clear about that up front. If you agree to do something you know you can’t, you are only going to perpetuate this viscous circle of failures and attempts to make it all right.
So what is the point of all this? It is all about self respect. There is tremendous power in owning your mistakes. By standing front and center and being willing to take the hit you are making a statement. By rationalizing or minimizing what just happened you are only giving away your own power and opening yourself up to being spoon fed half hearted apologies and rationalizations when someone has done you wrong.

The Circle Game

I often get asked, “What exactly do you and your guys do when you get together?”
My answer is usually, you just need to be there to get it. Sometimes it is easier to explain what we are not. I cringe when we are referred to as a “group”. In my mind that connotes some sense of self help or a place for men to gripe about their day. That’s not us. We prefer to use the term team to capture the essence of our circles.
Teams tend to have a purpose. Ours is to ensure that men succeed at what ever it is they set out to do. It is not always the same for each man and we don’t get there by offering advice or how to’s necessarily. No one is touting a vision of what men or any one man should want, do or aspire to be. Rather we ask a man, what do you want? No what do you think you should want? For example, I have witnessed men come to understand that their job, relationship or even their lifestyle is just not working for them. So to some extent we are in the business of getting to the ugly truth.
Then we try to get the man to get a handle on why he wants what he wants. Oftentimes men, and women for that matter, find that they are chasing something that they are really not committed to, so it is no wonder that they eventually fail at attaining it. How many times do you need to declare that you want to lose weight before you realize that you are perfectly happy with your love handles? We work hard at getting to the “why” and sometimes it gets ugly because I have often found the answer I initially give to the why question is not really my core truth. It might be tempered by a sense of obligation, a desire to be liked, or colored by what I have been marketed to believe I want but it usually is not enough of a why for me to fight for it. My guys will see through that. For example, when I was in New York at a very large and powerful law firm, I got to appreciate that the power, prestige and money no matter how attractive it seemed on paper was not enough to keep me happy at the end of the day.
And when I discovered that it was not because my men had any clearer sense of things than I did but because through the diversity of opinion that came out of that circle some thing clicked for me. In part it was hearing what wasn’t or hadn’t worked for other men, or maybe it was hearing a man talk about the heartbreak and the joy of being a father, something was not even on my radar at the time. In retrospect, a lot came to me from someplace totally unexpected. I remember when I first joined my men’s team, as men introduced themselves and what they did for a living; there I was calculating in my head their net worth. At that first meeting I got this perverse satisfaction from the belief that collectively, the six of them maybe made what I did in a year. But over time I got to ask myself, so what? We butted heads often enough for me to start questioning my comfortable little world and all the assumptions I was making around happiness.
Which brings me to another thing we are not, we are not a circle of friends. As a matter of fact, I have had men on my team that I just don’t like and often times that at first I can’t understand. But I have come to respect them and to trust them implicitly when they proved to be men of their word. And of course not even man turned out to be men of integrity, and there were lessons in that discovery as well. There is a way of being amongst us that is just palpable to a stranger. It is bond built on trust and strengthened by consistency. Friends want to be liked; we just strive to be respected.
That brings us to the third prong of the game. A man states what he wants, comes to understand why he wants it and then we ask, “so what are you prepared to do to get there?” If we are anything, it is a circle of men who gain honor by keeping our word. Since keeping your word is so important to us, we strive to ensure that a man knows what he is committing to. The initial commitment may come easy for the man but the job of the men of the circle is to inspect that declaration to ensure that it is grounded in reality.
For example, a man says he wants to get in shape, understands it’s important because he wants to be able to have the stamina to run around with his kids and declares he is going to lose 20 pounds in the next six months. So we ask, “When is the last time you lost 20 pounds in six months”? Or ever? Usually the answer is never, so we engage the man in a reality check. What do you need to know and do to make this happen? Usually the honest answer is “I don’t know.” Which is another thing our circle is, a place where men can embrace their ignorance, not as a bad thing, not as something to be ashamed of but as an opportunity. In the not knowing lies the opportunity to create something out of whole cloth. And our circle offers a place to brain storm, to hear of other men’s struggles or successes and to pick the pieces that fit.
And then comes the game plan. And it is usually an aggressive game plan. Because we pride ourselves in being a place where men can fail and can do so brilliantly. If you think about it there is little to celebrate solely because you easily attained something you knew you could do. There is often little chance to learn from easy success. But failure? Oh boy!!! It means you are in the game and every time you stumble you learn a better way to take that missed step. The circle works because you not only have men who witness your travails and do so without judgment but men who are enthusiastic about getting you off the ground and brushing the dirt off and getting you back in the game. You don’t get docked pay for failing in the circle, you don’t necessarily face ridicule.
And when you win, there is no jealously and no one- upmanship. There is just a sense of a collective job well done. Enthusiasm is infectious and winning is a wonderful drug. So at the end of the day we are a circle of men who love the high of witnessing other men winning in their lives. The competitiveness is not the driver; rather it is the sense that every man in the circle had a hand in the success.

Sculpting Happiness

How many times have you thought to yourself or heard someone else say, “If I only had (fill in the blank) I’d be happy.” I’ve actually stopped playing that game with myself. The reason is fairly simple. I don’t really know what will make me happy. I might think I know and my vision might make perfect sense when the idea comes into my head but until I get there I have no idea. And therein lies the problem, rarely do I get to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I have found it is easy to get distracted by a new dream and a new “if I only had…. ." I have come to find that chasing a fantasy is rarely fulfilling because even if I do attain what I set out for there is always the desire for the next thing which then leaves me dissatisfied with what I have.

It is often said that it is much more difficult to give something up that has given you pleasure than to live without ever experiencing something that you desire. There have been many studies that have concluded that people living in third world countries in extreme poverty perceive themselves to be very happy. Simply it is because they don’t know and can’t comprehend what they don’t have. We on the other hand might have a different take on it. But they literally are blissful in their ignorance. Meanwhile we Westerners get inundated with images of what we should want and we develop this twisted sense of longing that some how what we don’t have is the key to our happiness. I’d like to suggest giving up that ghost and taking a different cut at this happiness thing.

Instead of trying to attain what you don’t have take a look a what you do have and ask yourself a simple question, “Is this serving me?” “Is it satisfying my immediate needs?” The same way it is harder to live without something that you have come accustomed to deriving pleasure from, a short cut to happiness is giving up the stuff that is making you miserable.

Now that might sound selfish but let me put it into a different context. A man is walking down the street in Florence, Italy and sees an artist chiseling away at a block of granite. The artist is standing in front of his gallery and inside are some pretty intricate and impressive sculptures. The man knows this s genius at works so he stops for a while and watches as the form of a majestic falcon comes into shape on this former piece of granite. He then asks the artist in amazement, “How can you create such a beautiful piece of work out of a simple block of stone?” The artist looks at him quizzically and says, “It is really pretty easy. I just chip away at everything that is not a falcon.” For him the artistry is in the act of removal. I urge you to take the same tact with your life.

I submit that the odds are better that you will more accurately identify things that make you unhappy than to identify things that you have yet to experience that will actually make you happy. So go for the low hanging fruit first. Identify the shit list. And ask yourself, can I remove this from my life. If so, drop it. That includes people by the way. I believe there are very definitely people I have kept in my life simply out of habit who were toxic to me. When I finally let them go, I felt lighter and I really didn’t miss them. It is a lot like losing weight. You rarely hear someone complaining because they lost weight. Lightness equals contentment. Even incremental weight loss will feel good – provided you focus on what you lost rather than what you have yet to lose. I find it to be the same for responsibilities that I never wanted to take on in the first place. But that’s a whole ‘nother thread. For now take stock of what you have but really don’t want and commit to doing something about it. Let it go. I know it might not seem easy but there really is lightness to being.

Love Like A Dog

I’ve come to accept that dogs and kids are often my best teachers. There seems to be a lot of wisdom gained from observing those who act from someplace other than their head.
For example, when I get home, regardless of when that is, my 80-pound Labradoodle, DJ, comes bursting out of the house, he is not thinking “you’re late” or “have you been out playing with other dogs?” No, he is genuinely glad to see me. I know this because he shows up every time with two to three tennis balls in his mouth and dutifully stands there until I take them and throw them, over and over again until he just gets exhausted or, on the rare occasion, he finds something else that peeks his interest. Our relationship is in the moment. The best emotional connections are like that. There is no yesterday, no tomorrow. There is just now. And if now feels good, my dog keeps doing it until it stops being satisfying. So imagine your relationships were like that?

Imagine if you gave your self permission to be in a relationship because you enjoyed it. I don’t think DJ feels obligated to chase the balls I throw. I think he does it first because it is something he loves and in part because it gives him a sense of purpose.

Now I know the notion of doing something solely becasue you enjoy it sounds a little hedonistic but there is another side to the relationship. DJ is loyal to me and that loyalty is unconditional. If I chose not to throw him a ball one night he will still follow me into the house and sit by my feet. If I put my face in front of his, he’ll lick it. As far as I can tell, he doesn’t hold a grudge. After all why should he? I know where to scratch behind his ear. I know the little things that make him happy, like spooning peanut butter inside the hollow of his bone. Thee bond of the relationship is he remembers those things I do for him that he loves and more importantly, he quickly forgets those things I do thta he does not like. Again, imagine the way you would view your relationships if you cherished the good stuff and quickly disregarded the bad. After all if you really think about, most of the good stuff is done through intention, while the bad usually stems from some thoughtless happenstance that rarely get repeated.

So how do I know DJ and I have such a great relationship? Well the introduction of a second dog into the house last year didn’t change anything. DJ still comes out hoping I’ll throw a few balls. The little guy, a springer spaniel, has boundless energy but he knows that the ball throwing is something special between me and DJ. All during the back and forth, the Springer, Patsy, just runs around joyously in pointless circles, happy to be there. There will be times when I turn my attention to Patsy and DJ seems happy for a chance to catch his breath. The two of them understand the pecking order and no one is looking to change anything. DJ is still my dog and he knows that I will always be there for him. Our relationship has become a happy little threesome and who can argue with that?.

Honor the Truth

The Code of Honor was created by the men of what was then known as the Sterling Men’s Divisions. It was intended to reflect some very basic core values that all the men could rally behind, support and use as a benchmark for the ways of being we could expect from one another.



Back in the late 1990s some men from the Western Region (the Bay area around San Francisco) created an ark which contained 15 different pieces of wood, one for each tenet. Each stick was made of a specific type of wood and bore a specific design that reflected the way in which the men of the Western Region related to the tenets of the Code of Honor. Charlie Fleischheimer spearheaded that effort. The ark has since made its way throughout North America and men throughout MDI have had the opportunity to connect with it. I had the opprotunity to safe guard it for a while and was moved to write a little about my relationship to each tenet. What follows is the treatise that was created as a companion piece to the ark.


Honor the Truth



Wood: Madrone – The Madrone trees grow on hillsides, intermingled with many other species of tree. They do not dominate their environment and from a distance are unremarkable. They are easily overlooked. But on closer inspection, their bark gives away a hint of the rich beautiful wood that lies within.



Symbol: Sun & Moon – These are universal symbols of light. The sun projects the light and the moon reflects it. Without the moon’s reflection there would be no evidence of the sun’s presence. For this reason Zen Buddhism considers the moon to be the symbol of enlightenment for it captures the light and sends it outward.



The whole notion of there actually being something that is universally true is something of a lie.



Personal truth is just like fingerprints or DNA, it is consistently unique for everyone . So if that is the case why have a tenet that asks men to honor the truth? Well because that is exactly what it is asking you to do. Honor the truth, not just yours but others.



So how do you get there? Start by asking yourself a simple question, Why am I here?

From there the questions peel away like an onion.

What do I hope to get for myself? What do I hope to give back to my family, community, the planet? Who itch do I hope to get scratched from all this giving? What do I really really want?



Asking these questions is in essence what most would characterize as engaging in the search for truth. This search lies at the heart of every religion and drives every philosophical construct.



Buddhist say that when you perceive truth, all else drops away, ego vanishes and there is nothing more than that moment. A passage of the New Testament of the Bible says, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” It really is that simple, so long as you keep it personal.



The complications set in when you try to impose your truth on others. Once you accept that truth is a very personal thing, you come to realize that no one person and no set of people can claim ownership to it.



All of us have experienced moments when our truth about something has become crystal clear to us, sometimes painfully so. I know when I am there not because it resonates in my head but because it resonates elsewhere, in my heart, my guts my balls. Suddenly I feel enveloped with a sense of clarity and for the moment I experience a feeling of exhilaration or of calmness and freedom. Everything falls into place and I see things that I must have looked at a dozen times with a new perspective.



However, just a little word of caution, this tenet does not say “Tell the truth,” rather it says honor it.

Sometimes it is better to hold the truth in your heart than to reveal it to someone who might not be ready to face it.



For example, when you hear the question, “Honey, do I look fat in this dress?”



So when do you speak the truth? You can’t really pick the time, rather it picks you. If we suddenly declared, “It is time to honor the truth.” Each of us would unconsciously or maybe even consciously start erecting internal mazes that would make it exceedingly difficult to get to the truth.



In MDI we strive to create an environment that fosters respect for sincerity, honor and genuineness. To create such an environment is a challenge. In such an environment I have found there is an opportunity to learn something. Often it comes not from something that I say or think I know but from what I hear come out of the mouth of another man. When I am listening to another without judgment, that’s when the truth has a chance to bubble to the surface.

The Hapiness of Contentment

Some time ago a friend of mine asked me a question that haunted me for the longest time. We were walking along the beach in Santa Barbara, California when he asked “Are you happy or content?” At first I found it inconceivable that I could be anything but happy while walking the beach in Santa Barbara. So I took it as a trick question, dwelled on it a bit and came to realize that if I were being honest with myself, for the most part I was no more than content. That of course made me immediately miserable and it took some time before I was able to feel happy about just being content.
Let me explain. Happiness is this sort of abstract state of mind that can really only exist in comparison to something else. To be happy, you normally need to have recently been miserable so that you have something to gauge that happiness against. That or some really good drugs. In both instances though the euphoria rarely lasts. So I have come to view happiness as artificial and very illusory.
Contentment on the other hand requires an answer to a pretty simple question; do I have everything I need? Not want, but need. If the answer is yes, I should be content. That is unless I let the demons of need creep into my psyche and tell me that there are things I should be wanting and things that I deserve to have. Then of course I hop on the merry-go-round of despair, thinking that I can’t be happy because there is more that I want. Then when I get what I want, while I might be happy in the moments shortly after I get it, that is pretty fleeting. Typically I realize that what I thought I wanted is not what I needed to make me happy. So I then go back to being miserable until I eventually think, well if I just had…… and back on board the merry-go-round I go.
So these days I just focus on being content. Do I have a place to live, food to eat, a family that loves me? Check, check, check. Everything else is gravy. And since I am no longer chasing happiness, every so often I am walking along the beach , may be in Santa Barbara or Maui, and there’s this sunset and a cool breeze and the thought creeps into my head, ” It is just fucking great to e alive.” And in that moment I am very happy and certainly content.
Have a great 4th !

In Memory of Two Great Lovers – Carlin and Russert

George Carlin died, Tim Russert’s term expired. That’s probably the way they’d like it expressed. Two men from very different world’s, Carlin cranky, reckless and very definitely anti-religion and Russert, the devout Catholic, polite, and very definitely blue collar. But they both shared in mastering the energy of the mature lover. Now for clarity, the mature lover is not someone who masters the art of sex and revels in carnal knowledge. Rather it is someone who has mastered the art of communication and connection. Russert and Carlin were such masters but they did it in distinctly different ways.
The mature lover has the capacity to connect with his audience by both communicating with clarity in a way that any listener can relate to. Carlin did it by meticulously mastering the English language. Now matter how cutting edge his schitck. Carlin was always clear about where he was going. No mater how acerbic his take on the world, you couldn’t help but laugh. Carlin managed to distill the inconsistencies of society, language and religion to such a basic essence that it was hard to posit a counter argument. Not that you’d want to because you were too busy laughing.
On the other hand, Russert mastered the Lover’s art of empathy. Russert had the reputation of being a relentless and tough interviewer but he did it with such a disarming manner that his targets actually reveled in the exchange. Russert gave great effort to preparation but he did not get lost in his questions. He listened, so that no matter how intrusive his questioning, it came directly out of the very words his subject had spoken. So no matter how contentious the exchange was it was never a debate but a dialogue.
The mature Lover lives by two cardinal rules:
It is difficult to dislike someone who makes you laugh and you naturally respect someone who confirms that they have heard what you said. Comics rarely stay relevant for long periods of time, someone else is always viewed as the next comic working o the cutting edge, but Carlin remained in high esteem across generations and amongst his peers. His longevity is a testament to his mastery of the first rule. Russert excelled at the second rule within the intersection of two of the more visible and ego driven forums on the planet – the media and American politics.
While they clearly would not agree on what the after life held for each of them, I am certain that they would easily embrace both their commonality and the legacy they each left behind.

The MDI Code of Honor - The First Tenet Commitment Before Ego

The Code of Honor was created by the men of what was then known as the Sterling Men’s Divisions. It was intended to reflect some very basic core values that all the men could rally behind, support and use as a benchmark for the ways of being we could expect from one another.



Back in the late 1990s some men from the Western Region (the Bay area around Sasn Francisco) created an ark which contained 15 different pieces of word. Each stick was made of a specific type of wood and bore a specific design that reflected the way in which the men of the Western Region related to the tenets of the Code of Honor. Charlie Fleischheimer spearheaded that effort. The ark has since made its way throughout North America and men throughout MDI have had the opportunity to connect with it. I had the opprotunity to safe guard it for a while and was moved to write a little about my relationship to each tenet. What follows is the treatise that was created as a companion piece to the ark.



First Tenet of the Code

Commitment Before Ego



Wood: Manzanita – A strong hearty tree that grows in some of the most barren environments. Where other things have difficulty surviving, Manzanitas continue to grow and branch outward. A commitment driven by a powerful context will flourish like the Manzanita tree.



Symbol: Coyote – In Native American mythology, the Coyote is the trickster, the clever one who often tricks himself with his own cleverness.



To be successful, a man must possess a strong and healthy ego. However, a man’s ego can consume him if he has not learned how to master it. Without a strong set of core values, I have often found myself drawn to doing what felt good wthout giving any thought to the ramifications. Any man living life without a clear sense of his commitment will find himself being led by whatever happens to be at hand in the moment (usually his feelings or his ego). His life is one of reaction rather than proaction.



Commitment before Ego demands two disciplines:



· To practice and possess a firm understanding and adherence to one’s purpose and commitment; and,

· To hold an iron mastery over one’s ego.



Many people equate commitment to making a pledge or promise to do something. Actually commitment is action. Commitment shows up not in what we say in the passion of a moment or even the things we do when spurred on by others or when things are going well. The benchmark of your commitment is evidenced by your actions when the underlying reasons behind your words seem challenged. When you no longer wish to be held to what you said. When there appears to be no reward for following through. When quitting looks like an attractive option. This is where the Ego has fertile ground to play its tricks.



There are many definitions and theories about the ego. Although Native Americans embody it in the form of a Coyote, it is more elusive than that. It is usually easier for others to see Ego governing our actions than it is for us. when I find myelf needing to defend or explain my actions, it is usually a good indction that my ego is engaged. rarely do you feel compelled to justify ctions driven by commitment becasue the actions speak for themselves. When I am operating out of commitment, I am more interested in doing than discussing.



This tenet is not Commitment over Ego. It is Commitment Before Ego. By that we mean let your commitment lead your ego rather than the other way around. The need to look good is Ego before commitment. The desire to do good is Commitment before ego.



There is nothing wrong with doing things because they feel good. I am a firm believer in the notion of “enlightened self interest”. I do good not because I am altruistic and aspire to be Ghandi. There is always something very definite in it for me. The key is to know what that pay off is so that I can keep my ego in check and be honest with myself about my motivations. Fortunately, the men around me will help me to find ways to feed my ego while adhering to a higher commitment than just my personal self interest.