MR. SARKAR: Hi everyone. Thanks for being here today. My name is Frijat Sarkar. I'm a PM on
Windows. And it's an honor for me to welcome Richard Shell to the Microsoft Research Visiting
Speaker Series.
Quick introduction for him. As the Wharton's School Thomas Gerrity Professor of Legal Studies,
business ethics and management, Richard Shell has won almost every teaching prize the school has to
offer. He's also the author of many books, including the one he's going to be talking about today,
"Springboard, Launching Your Personal Search For Success." The book is based on his Wharton
course, surveying what history's greatest thinkers have to say on the subject of success and life.
I had the good fortune of taking the class back in my time in Wharton, and I have to say it was by far
the most impactful class I've taken in my life. So I'm really excited that he's here to share those
teachings with you today through his talk and through his book. So please join me in welcoming
Professor Shell.
[applause]
RICHARD SHELL: Thank you. Thank you. And thank you for coming. It's a great pleasure to be
here on such a beautiful day. And to share some thoughts about one of my favorite subjects and to see
if we can get you to have a few thoughts on this subject. Because the underlying theme of everything
I'm going to say is that no one can tell you how to succeed, no one can tell you what success is, because
it is your journey, your definition, and your capabilities that are the secrets. One of the best-selling
success books of the modern age is a book called "The Secret." But I've read all the success books. If
any of you, you know, can come up with one I haven't read, I want to hear about it, because I've spent
the last twenty years or so reading every single one I can get my hands on. And having read them all, I
can tell you for sure there is no secret. Although we all wish there was one. Wouldn't it be great if all
you did was think a single thought and then everything would, you know, like light up. Doesn't work
that way.
So you have an assessment in front of you called "the six lives exercise." It's part of the talk. So I
encourage you to take a minute and to review it. There's six little paragraphs, and they're just six
stories. And the idea behind the assessment, which is in Chapter 1 of the book, so it's just part of the
book, is for you to read those six paragraphs then rank those six lives from number 1 to number 6.
Most successful number 1; least successful, number 6. And the only rule is you can't have any ties.
They have to actually have six different numbers. And a little later in the talk I'm going to refer to this
and ask you, you know, who ranked which one number 1 or number 6. And that might give us some
interesting comments from you guys about what's going in your mind when it comes to this activity of
conceiving of success. And I think you'll be interested to hear what some of your colleagues have to
say about their choices. So if none of you have done the exercise, that part will be very short. So I
hope that some of you can turn to it.
Nothing I say here at the beginning is more important or more interesting than what you think about
those six lives. So feel free to immerse yourself in that little exercise. It only takes about five minutes
while I do my little set up here. And then we'll eventually get to the six lives.
So as [indiscernible] said, my talk and my book is based on a course. And it's a course I've been
teaching at Wharton since 2005. It's called The Literature Of Success. So it surveys all of the best
success literature that I could come up with, and has been modified and changed over those ten years
by the students. So currently we read Aristotle, Plato, Epictetus, The Handbook for life, the bestselling book of the middle ages, and work our way all the way up to Sotomayor's recent biography, the
Supreme Court Justice, about her life, her memoirs. And in between, Stephen Covey's highly -- Seven
Habits of Highly Effective People, and Mary Kay Ash's Miracles Happen.
So it's really a course in challenging the students to come up with how they view all this literature. But
at the end they have to write a paper, it's called "My," fill in the year, "2014," was this year's papers.
"My 2014 idea of theory of success and how I plan to achieve it."
And so I created this course because I was looking for what I would have want to take when I was a
senior in college to help me think about these questions in a systematic way. And the goal of the paper
is to not actually provide them with an answer, even for their own lives. Because no one at 22 knows
what success is, even if they've read all the books; right? But it is a reference point for them to look
back on ten years later and say, "so that's what I was thinking about when I was a senior in college."
And it also is -- I think this is the most important thing, and this is part of what I'll do in my talk. I try
to help them learn to think about success for themselves. So that when they reach different points in
their lives, different nodal points, different decision points, different stages of their lives, they'll have a
bit more structure to what it is that the problem looks like that they're trying to solve so they can solve
it more wisely of themselves.
So it's really not a course in what success is, it's a course in how to think about what success is. And
that process changes. At each stage of your life you will discover that you have different experiences
you're bringing to that decision, different relationships that are part of your life when you make the
decision, different knowledge that you now have that you didn't have earlier that you can bring to the
decision about what success is. So you change your definition as you move through the years. And so
how to think about it, it's much more important than having an answer, in my view. All answers are
provisional.
So this is the motivating question. Every one of us at different stages of our lives has to ask this
question, "what's next?" And what's next for college grads is real easy. What's next is their first job.
And that's -- they consider that a fairly momentous decision, the first job out of college. It actually
turns out not to be that important.
I once had a friend of mine -- I'm from a small town in Southwestern Virginia, Lexington, Virginia, and
a friend of mine who's a doctor in town who I went to elementary school with, said, actually, you know,
the most important thing to do after college is keep learning. And the first job is just another chance to
do that, in a different way. So I think that that's absolutely the case. But it still seems really important
since you've worked for, what is it, sixteen years, is by the time you get to graduating from college, in
doing only one activity mostly, taking tests, getting grades, that, "Hey, I've got to have -- this is going
to be it, I'm going get my job and then life is over, done." But it doesn't work like that. So what's next
is the question that this book is about and that my course is about.
So how do you answer it? I've got two ways to help think about it. The book is divided in half. The
first half asks you to consider "what for me does this word success mean?" And there are different
chapters that give different assessments, like the one you just took. And the second half of the book is,
"well, having decided some thoughts about what success looks like, how will I achieve it?" And the "I"
is very important. Because everybody will achieve whatever their goals are in many different ways.
Mostly the success literature tells us to do it the one true way, visualize, set goals, network.
There's a book for every tool. And of course, those tools are toxic in the wrong hands. I don't know
about you, but I know some people who set so many goals every day they don't have time to do
anything else except set goals. And if that's the case, they shouldn't be setting any more goals; right? I
mean that's not the way to success for them. They need to do something else. And there's some people
that can't help themselves; they network with everybody they meet on every elevator in the day; right?
So they really don't need a book on networking; they probably need something more on relationships
and what meaningful talk looks like.
So everybody's got different capabilities, different automatic success practices, but everybody's
different. So the second half of the book has assessments and questions and things for you to sort of
test out, what are your special capabilities to lead you down the path that you want to go for yourself.
We pick up -- there's a big paradox when you start talking about success. We pick up most of our
messages about what success is from outside ourselves; schools, culture, media, family. But in the end
you have to define it for yourself. And so the separation of yourself from all that hypnotic messaging
that came in at times when you weren't fully aware that it was even being put in, is very difficult.
Waking up, essentially from the dream of your parents, of the media, of your culture, to define this
word for yourself, is not easy. It's almost as if you feel obsessively compelled to keep performing on
metrics that you've been handed. And that in a Pavlovian sort of way, you've been rewarded for
achieving for a long time.
Students, especially Ivy League students, are very practiced at a very narrow range of success practices.
They learn how to take standardized tests. They learn how to set out what a course is going to require
to get an A, figure it out, perform to that, and then do it with the least amount of work, and then move
on to something else. And it's sort of dangerous, because when you've gotten really good at something
as defined as that, what happens when you start choosing what employment to take? You start
choosing employment that will reproduce that success system so you'll be easily evaluated according to
metrics that you can see around you, and then have that little charge that, you know, you're okay still
because you're still checking boxes that others recognize.
So getting away from whatever you've been rewarded for is hard. It takes work, thought. It helps to
have friends helping you to do it with their similar commitment to doing it. So it's really important and
it's not easy.
So why this book and why am I so interested in this? Well, in my own life, I had what you might call a
kind of complete breakdown of my success system in college. My dad was a general in the Marine
Corp. He then retired from that and was president of the Virginia Military Institute, which was his
college, it's a military school in Virginia. His father had been a career military officer, my mother's
father had been a career military officer. My sister had married a career military officer. So it was no
doubt in anyone's mind where I was headed. I was headed for -- I got to choose, Marines or Navy.
That was about it. And so for me, I never even gave it a second thought. I was raised in the service;
we moved every year. And every single grade I was in, first, second, third, fourth, fifth, we were at a
different place, from Hawaii to France to Carolina, Norfolk. And it was just the way I thought
everybody lived. And it was just my world.
So when it came time to go to college I sort of broke the mold a little. I got into Princeton. So rather
than go to Naval Academy, which was the prescribed journey, or DMI, which was okay too, I got a
Navy scholarship. So I got a Navy scholarship, free ride to go to college, join the ROTC, and March
around on Fridays. And they paid for my education. And I would then be a career military officer.
That was the deal.
So everything was going great until my Sophomore year when the Tet Offensive in Vietnam was
launched by North Vietnam. The United States escalated its commitment to the Vietnam War in a
major way. And all of a sudden, all over America campuses erupted in protests, demonstrations, all
kinds of activities that called into question the war and the military. And so for the first time in my life
I was called to ask myself what had I actually signed up to do? It was this sort of rude intrusion from
the outside world that I didn't ask for that said, "well, wait a minute, why are you doing this? What is
it? What's involved in it? Are you okay with it?" And when I came to think about it, which I had to
do, I found myself between a rock and a hard place. Because I came to the conclusion that I had no
quarrel whatsoever with the Vietnamese people and I had no interest in going over to kill them. So that
was pretty easy to figure out. But then at the other hand, I had my entire family legacy and my
commitment with the scholarship. And my whole life was directed toward doing precisely what I now
saw to be amoral. So there was just this collision between the cultural norms that I assumed success
looked like and the reality of what that turned out to be. And so after some long and difficult thinking I
decided to resign the scholarship and become a war resister and a passivist.
Now, you can imagine the call when I had to tell my dad that I made this decision. And it was a big
moment for me. I wrote a little speech, I practiced it. And I made my phone call and explained that I
was going to be turning away from my entire family history and joining the war resistance movement.
And he listened and then he said, his little pause, and then he said three words, "Are you sure?" And I
was absolutely not sure. There was no way any 21-year-old could possibly be sure that they're making
a call that's going to be the right call about something like that. But I had to be sure with him that night
and so I said, "Yes, I'm sure." And that one word essentially cut the narrative cord of my life. I no
longer had a past, I no longer had a story, I no longer had -- I wasn't a product of some journey that was
going to continue into the future. I was just -- it was almost like I had parachuted into Princeton with
no identity. And so it was a pretty -- it was like vertigo.
And so from that day, for about seventeen years, I had to think about it to figure it out. It took a long,
long time. I didn't start working as an assistant professor at Wharton without tenure until I was 37. So
I took a long way around. But of course, because it was a long way around, and because I had no
choice but to do it, I learned how important it is to ask those questions and to go to the core of the
answers for yourself and not try to put them off, not try to finesse them, not try to fake it, just go there
and figure it out.
So I became a social worker in Washington for a while as an alternative service for the draft. I worked
with poor families in condemned buildings. That of course was a second culture shock. I had gone
from military to passivism, and then I went from Princeton to the ghettos. And no one had prepared me
for that disconnect. And I finally just gave up. It was all too much for me. And I had saved $3,000,
and I got a one-way ticket to Greece and decided I would just travel and figure it out. And the only
commitment to myself was that I won't come home until I figured it out. I stopped talking to my
parents, I stopped communicating with anyone in my family. It was gone. And it was a tough time.
So I took two years on this around-the-world trip, just followed my nose, wherever it went. And
ultimately discovered what I was looking for in a Buddhist monastery in Sri Lanka, where they
welcomed people from the West, and I lived there for a while and was taught by a wonderful monk
named Veterval Sieverli, who gave me the opportunity to live a very different life, but one that really
forced me to just observe what was really going on inside myself, in a very disciplined way. And then
went on to another Buddhist monastery in South Korea where I actually met a zen master who asked
me if I wouldn't mind changing my journey and just stopping there and becoming a monk. So that was
a career decision. Monk or home. I didn't still know what I wanted to do when I grew up, but I did
have enough self knowledge by then to know whether I wanted to be a monk or not. And the answer
was no, I needed to go home and straighten things out with my family. So I made my way home. My
parents, God bless them, were both still living, which was a great miracle. They welcomed me home,
prodigal son. They never stopped loving me. And I got to know them. So I left the country with a
general and his wife as my parents and I came to know a mom and a dad. And lived in the basement
for two years selling insulation door-to-door in Rockridge County. So I was about 29 by this time.
So if any of you are like around 29 or younger, you're way ahead of me. So finally went to law school
because there was -- that was something I could do to make money that was more interesting than
selling insulation. And then discovered in the middle of law school, something I would wish on
everybody and everyone. It was a moment in time. Now I earned it by this time. I had been puzzling
this question, what should I do? It was like a Zen Cohen to me. And I was sitting in a law school
classroom at the University of Virginia with 150 students poised on the end of their seats with a
professor in the front telling us about the deep mysteries of contract law doctrine. And everybody was
like this. And I was like this, waiting to raise our hand. And I had an out-of-body experience. I drifted
over myself and I looked down at myself and I looked down at this classroom. And suddenly, like a
bolt of lightening, I said "I know exactly what I want to do. I want to be that guy in the front of the
room." So that's where I've been going every since.
How do I figure out how to be a teacher? And so I found a job at Wharton, made my way through the
process. You're lucky enough if you have an academic career to invent what you do, especially at a
great school like Wharton.
So every course I now teach I've made up. The success course, majored in English in college. I'm a
law professor. So I figured out how to teach an English course in a business school with a law degree.
We read Death Of A Salesman in that class. So why this book? Because I think it's so important for
people to open the door to their own futures by thinking in a careful, systematic, personal, authentic
way about who they are and what they want to do. And it's worth the effort. And it's a hard subject,
because there's so many people that have the answer for you. But really the most important thing is to
ask the question. And then learn a little about how to answer it, not what the answer is.
So we don't do much to help you guys in a lead education. Emerson once said "Harvard teaches most
of the branches of learnings," and Thoreau, his friend, said, "Yes, indeed, all the branches and none of
the roots." And education really doesn't do much of a good job. Some do at some of the Catholic
universities, like Notre Dame; they work pretty hard on helping people discover ideas about what their
vocation ought to be. It's a kind of Catholic concept of vocation. But in most schools they just hide
this; it's relegated to career services. And you know about career services. They're nice people at
career services, overworked, underpaid, and harassed, and all they end up doing is managing the
information session for people like Microsoft and Google and Bain and McKinsey so that all the
recruiters are comfortable and all the students line up. And that's all they can do. If somebody comes
to them and says "What should I do with my life?" The career people go, "Well, I don't know. Maybe
you should go talk to the psychotherapist. They're down the haul." It's almost as if you're a pathology
not to know what it is that you want to do.
But I'll tell you a secret. Nobody knows. Nobody knows. And very few, 10 percent, 15 percent, of
students know what they want to do really. They know what they're going to do, they know what
they've been told to do. They know what everybody else wants to do so they want to do that. But they
don't necessarily know what they want to do. And if you scratch them a little bit they'll admit that they
don't know what they want to do. But we haven't given them too many tools to help them get past that
uncertainty. Because right behind the door of uncertainty is a little pool of fear. And people close the
door again. They don't want to go to the fear part.
So at Wharton we've got a new program we just started. About 300 MBA students are doing it now,
where they, themself, are facilitating groups, you can do it here, where they take Springboard, they read
a chapter a week for eight weeks, two hours a week, talk to each other in small group of six people, and
share what they're really thinking, what they're really uncertain about, what they really ought to be
doing. Experiment a little. Audin once said "How do I know what I think until I see what I say?" So
sometimes when you hear yourself saying something, "I said that? Wow, that's interesting. Maybe
that's what I should be thinking about."
I have another correlator that, "How do I know who I am until I see what I do?" "How do I know who
I am until I see what I do?" So if you want to know who you are, just look at what you do every day,
that's who you are. And guess what? You can choose to do something different. And then you will be
someone else. So it's really a question of choice, action; and your identity follows. You don't have to
have the identity all figured out in order to be something. Just do something different. And the identity
will catch up with you.
So here's a quick little diagnostic. We're going to do this and the six lives thing before I'm finished.
But I think it's sometimes useful -- someone at Microsoft ought to design an app for this. It would be
something that you could carry around with you and on a given day on a random moment, it would
bing you to put your dot in one of these cells, and ask you, "Well, how are you doing as far as
achievements are concerned?" And you get to rate yourself. And "How are you doing as far as
satisfaction is concerned?" And then you get to rate yourself. And then you get to see what you're
dissatisfied with. Are you dissatisfied with your level of achievement or are you dissatisfied with your
level of satisfaction? And whatever your dissatisfied with, that's the compass. Move it in the direction
of improving it.
But notice there's always tradeoffs. You can't have all of one without some missing part of the other.
And so it's like navigating on water. You know you got forces that you have to manage at the same
time to get you where you're trying to go. But it's a pretty good sort of weigh-point taker. You know,
you can kind of point yourself.
Well, I do this at Wharton. And I'll just give you a couple of examples of what can happen to people,
senior people, when they don't do this enough, check to see whether they're on the right path. There's a
program for senior executives called the advance management program that have people from all over
the world at 55, a couple times a year, and I have a day with them on success. And I did it a few years
ago, and there were a couple of people in the room who were actually honest enough, which I thought
was kind of very open of them. And it's a good learning community, so they learned to be pretty
candid. They put their dots here in the low satisfaction, high achievement cell. Very few people. They
always stick in these four. So I asked them what's up with those two people? So one of them raised his
hand and said, "Well, I'm the CEO of a major global 500 company; I'm the CEO of not the whole
company, but of North America. So big, big responsibility. I've achieved way past any expectation of
where I ever had in my life of where I would end up. This is just, you know, a wonderful gift that I
have this position." And I said, "Well, that sounds pretty good. Why did you put your cell here? Why
low satisfaction?" He said, "Well, as I was sitting here this morning thinking about this, I realized that
for the last three promotions that I've gotten, each one has taken me further and further away from what
I actually love to do."
And so here's someone who's in a career and has sold themselves to the career. It was either be
promoted or leave. They didn't want to leave, they had other things that were keeping them there. So
they just kept promoting themselves away from satisfaction. Turns out he really loved logistics,
efficiency, factories, and as he got promoted he got further and further away from running anything that
had anything to do with efficiency and mostly had to do with politics and regulation and, you know,
corporate backstabbing and whatever goes on up there. So he wasn't a happy guy. So his job was,
"okay, now I figured that out, that's dissatisfaction, let's move myself in a direction where I'm closer to
what I love to do."
The other guy, he was 35 years old. He was the youngest lawyer in Argentina ever to win the prize the
country gives to the best lawyer. So here's a very young person, top lawyer in Argentina. So I said,
"Congratulations. It seems like you've really achieved notable success in your achievement category.
Why so low in satisfaction?" He said, "Well, pretty simple. I hate law." So now there's someone who's
been rewarded for doing something that he has a talent for and got paid for. But he forgot about the
enjoyment part and just went down the trail of getting paid to do something he hated to do. And if you
do that for a long time, you will burn out for sure.
I mean to do -- you have a choice between a life of satisfying work and a life of work that you are good
at that you hate, choose the lower-paying, satisfying work, and you'll live longer, you'll be a better
friend to people that need you, you'll be a better parent to children if you have them, you'll love better
the partner that you found. Life will work a lot better if you choose the lower compensation with the
higher satisfaction, than the higher compensation with -- not lower; you have to hate law in order to get
to this test. But don't leave satisfaction behind as a criteria.
So all of you are different stages of your lives, but that's what can happen if you suddenly wake up one
day and you're honest about it, what's really going on? So it's a wake-up call.
So these two dimensions of success that the book talks about and that you really discover as soon as
you open the lid and look in the box, outer success, achievement, recognition, celebrity fame, fortune,
and internal success, happiness. And of course if you ask most people off of the street, "what do you
mean by the word success?" And without much thought, they'll say, "well, it's happiness. I'm happy,
I'm successful." But we'll see in a minute that that's really just shifting from one uncertain word to
another. Because happiness turns out to be just as hard to define as success does. So you really haven't
solved the problem by saying happiness is the answer. You just introduced a new puzzle. So we'll talk
about that in a second.
So external success. The problem with measuring yourself on this -- and this is sort of famously
known but seldom followed -- is that it's always relative. Wealth is any income that is more than the
income of one wife's sister's husband. So doesn't that sort of give you a problem? If you're going to
measure your success in wealth, then you better pick a poor community to live in, because you'll
always be dissatisfied, because someone will have more than you.
Hungry ghost is another thing that can happen for people who are motivated by external rewards. The
hungry ghost is a Buddhist deity -- deity is a glorious word. It's a Buddhist entity that's in an afterlife.
And this is what you get to be reborn as if you live a life of shameless service to your own appetites.
So you've been nothing but satisfying cravings all the way through your earthly life, then you get
reborn, and you get reborn as an entity with the body the size of an elephant and the mouth the size of
the head of a pin. And so for the rest of eternity you try to feed yourself with this tiny little mouth and
this gigantic body, and you can never, ever cure the torment of hunger. Pretty brutal.
But think about it. I'll bet you know some of these people already. Hungry ghosts are people who
wake up every day and they have to start all over again proving that they're important. Or start all over
again trying to get attention. Or trying to get more money. Or trying to get recognized by their
audience, whatever it is. And all they do, they end up with this little empty bucket every morning and
they spend all day filling it with praise that they can find or the attempt to find it. And then they wake
up the next morning and their bucket's empty again. Their whole life is consumed with seeking
external validation for their existence. Sad, but it's very common.
So that's another problem with external success is you end up as a hungry ghost. We have some
Wharton alumni who have fallen prey to this. Raj Rajartnam recently went to jail for the largest insider
trading program of the last century. He's a class of '82, Wharton grad. He was worth over a billion
dollars when he was indicted and tried and convicted for insider trading. What could that be about?
You have a billion dollars and you still don't have enough. And he brought the head of McKinsey
along with him. So they're both in jail now. The head of McKinsey. If you go to Wharton and catch
any of the students and say "Where would you like to work"? McKinsey sounds good. I'll work at
McKinsey." Well here's the global head of McKinsey and he's in jail. Hungry ghost. Hungry ghost,
couldn't get enough. So they have less freedom than a homeless person you'll meet in the subways of
New York. Pretty amazing.
Sometimes you pick the wrong pond. I think everybody's entitled to pick the pond that they're in. But
sometimes you pick a pond that makes you feel inadequate, less than the best, always questioning your
own abilities because everyone around you has more. And that can be very discouraging. So you pick
a pond that doesn't actually recognize your talents because there are so many people around you that
have more of those, and then you become discouraged and then you become unmotivated and then you
don't use your talent. So you took a different pond, smaller pond, different pond that would use and
recognize your unique gifts a little more readily, you'll be a bit more motivated, you'll feel better, you'll
achieve more. So you may pick the wrong pond.
Sometimes people get to the okay plateau. It's like a bar, the okay plateau. The okay plateau is a place
where everything's okay. And the problem with being in a place where everything's okay is that it's
hard to change anything. Because if you change anything, it may not be okay. So it's not the
excellence plateau; it's not the happiness plateau. It's the okay plateau. So it's a dangerous place to be
because you become [indiscernible] and you spend your life playing defense against opportunities that
keep coming at you and go, "yes, but." And then you stay on the okay plateau another day. It's like
having a used car that's just not quite ready to get thrown away yet.
And then there's the metaphor problem. And I'm going to have two tests for you before we're
concluding. And this is the first one. I think it's important. It's a simple assignment you can take home
and think about with your friends or loved ones. What's your metaphor for the type of achievement
you need to be doing? What's your metaphor for the type of achievement you'd like to be known for?
This is the usual metaphor for success. It's a ladder; right? And you climb the ladder, one wrung at a
time. You go from whatever the lowest is to whatever the highest is, or try to go there.
Notice something very interesting about this. It's a very lonely ride up that ladder. And also it suggests
that everything's easily defined. So this is the school metaphor. This is a problem with school. If you
go through college, you get into the great -- go through high school, get into a great college; go through
college, get into a great grad school; go to grad school, get in a great firm; get in the firm, get in the
great -- partner in the firm. Then what? You may have realized after a while that what you've really
been in is a pie-eating contest. And every time you win the contest, the prize is just more pie. That's
the problem with this little plan.
So is that your metaphor? You know sometimes it's really important to realize what you're working
with. And a lot of people work with a ladder. It's buried in there. It's like a little programming glitch
that got put in very early. Because what's the first thing people want to know when you're at a party
with people you don't know. "What do you do?" And what do you do in America usually means,
"Well, I do something important." Or at least cool. And then there -- well, there you are on the ladder.
So everybody says, "oh, I see, you're on wrung number 12. Well I happen to be on number 13." So we
get to compare ourselves. So it's a career metaphor. Just realize there's limitations. It's a career
metaphor.
Here's one I like for myself. But I think the challenge is for you to come up with one of your own. So
think about this. This is a pond, and there's been a little plop somewhere in the middle. That's an act.
And then it has influence on others. So one way to measure achievement might be how many positive
influences have you had on how many people throughout your life? Because every positive influence
you have on one other person, they're going to have some sort of influence on their network.
So how far do your rings extend? That's a different metaphor. Not about climbing. It's a little harder
to talk about at a cocktail party, "Well, my rings are about this big." But I think it points to a different
goal. And that's what I'm thinking about. Maybe your metaphor is a light bulb, and you want to be
inventive and create things that make light better. Maybe your metaphor is a hand that's on someone
comforting them and you're measuring success by the people you can comfort with hand-to-hand,
person-to-person connections. I don't know; it's up to you. But I think it's important you have a
metaphor for what it is you think it's worth achieving before you decide what success is. So that's your
homework, find your own personal metaphor with the kind of achievement you aspire to in your life.
You do that, you'll be right on the right path. At least your mind will start working on it. Mind loves
images. Images are simple, compelling, and memorable. It will start moving that way.
All right, if you're going to do success on a happiness trail, then you better find out what happiness is.
And that's the problem. Happiness is very hard. Three kinds of happiness. I work with a positive
psychology center at the University of Pennsylvania, Marty Seligman and his guys. They've studied
happiness; upside, downside, sideways, every way. And this is basically the conclusions they've come
to. You can define happiness as an accumulation of many positive mood states. So when someone
says "Were you happy today?" And you think back, "Yeah, I liked that corn beef sandwich. Yeah, I
was happy today." Problem with that is they tend to average out. And different people have different
genetic setpoints for the degree of positive moods that they can experience. So some people have a
high level of a setpoint and their high is really excitingly high; but their low is well above what the
person in the next cubical has as their highest high. Because they're down there at a different set point.
And for them life is a question of being realistic. You know. We have research that shows that people
who are more pessimistic are actually more accurate at describing reality. So that's what gets you
pessimistic is you actually see reality the way it is.
Ben Gilbert, who's a psychologist at Harvard, were terrible to forecasters of what's going to put us in a
positive mood state. Or a negative one. We stay away from things we fear that wouldn't make us
miserable, and we try and try and try to get the things that actually don't make us very happy. And so
just turns out that way. We're just bad at forecasting the future before when it comes to our own
moods. So if you run your life predicting that you're going to be happy and so you do this, that, and the
other, you're always going to end up about half the time going "didn't make me happy. Rip off. Want
my money back." But it's not reality's fault. It's your fault. It's a bad way to measure what to do. It's a
flawed compass you're using.
Another way to think about it is they're sort of retrospective evaluations. Were you happy when you
were at Microsoft? You know, this twenty years later, you're looking back from your penthouse suite,
having started your own company and everything's working great. Were you happy at Microsoft?
Well, if you're in a good mood when you're asked the question, you'll probably say you were a little
happier, than if you were in a bad mood when you were asked the question. So our current mood
effects our memories of the past in a huge way.
And if that's the case, how flawed is that as a measure? Because I could just give you a chocolate chip
cookie, if you like chocolate chip cookies, and you'll have a much rosier view of whatever it is I'm
asking you about. Not a reliable metric. And then we tend to influence peaks and ends more than the
rest. So you may have a net happiness, you know, total happiness experience at three out of ten. But
during that period of time, the twenty years you were at Microsoft, there was a time that you were a
ten. And near the very end it got good again, so you were a ten again. When you look back you won't
average two 10#s# against 3s. You'll say that was probably an 8. Because you're just going to focus on
those two points and extrapolate from those to the rest. It's a very flawed cognitive process.
And then finally there's this, which I recommend, we should all have lots of deep happiness. Names
for this include "joy." This is [indiscernible] term, "Eudaimonia," which means thriving, nourishing.
"Simcha" is a Hebrew term. Normally means ordinary happiness, like go to a wedding and be happy.
But a rabbi that one of my students brought to my attention once defined it this way, "Simcha is the
feeling that comes when you're doing what you should be doing." The feeling that comes when you're
doing what you should be doing. Now, that may be the feeling that comes when you're sitting with
someone who needs comfort, or when you take time out of your day to work on something that's
actually very difficult but deeply satisfying to you. That's not happiness like smiley face. Very often
it's happiness in a way that follows suffering, sacrifice, experiences where you're devoted to a purpose
larger than your own survival or your own positive moods.
So that's worthwhile. But it doesn't really sound like happy. It's something else. And one more
problem with this, it's hard to arrange. You can't go, "Well, I'm going to spend the next month visiting
people in hospitals and I'll get a lot of deep happiness." Well, maybe you will; maybe you won't.
Gilbert's rules still applies, you're not going to get what you expect. Hawthorn once said this kind of
happiness is like a butterfly. If you try to catch a butterfly with your hands, very hard. But if you sit
still, sometimes a butterfly will come and light on your shoulder. So sometimes you get this by a gift
of grace. And you only notice it if you're quiet enough to see it. You have to be there on the beach on
that random morning when you got up too early because you couldn't sleep and you walk out and
there's a sunrise and, oh, it just happened. You didn't get up to go find an oh. Because if you do, it
won't be there. So great concept, but you have to just learn to be still.
All right. So now let's see. I got one more thing and then we've got your six lives exercise. This is my
second challenge to you. First, let's find your metaphor. What is it you're trying to achieve in this is
find your definition of happiness, since there isn't any. A guy came up in a seminar I was attending at
Wharton, and was a big -- might have been twelve, fifteen people, big room, and they were doing a
lecture on income and happiness, the relationship between income levels and happiness. And there was
all these data about Bhutan and Mongolia and stuff. And about right before I was getting ready to start,
that man walks in, who's obviously not a member of the Wharton faculty. He's a working-class guy
with flannel shirt, blue jeans, and rough hands. Sits down right next to me at the end of the table. And
our seminars are open to the public, so sometimes people come in. We always wonder what they might
say, because you never know, you know, who's going to come in.
But the lecture went on, the guy finished, and someone asked a question about the regression analysis
on the Bhutan data set, and he happily answered that. And then this guy raised his hand. And
everybody sort of held their breath. And he said, "Excuse me. I'm just a member of the public. But
you seem to be talking about happiness and money." He said, "I don't see how happiness has anything
to do with money." He said, "As near as I can tell, happiness is just three things, good health,
meaningful work, and love. You have that, you're happy." And there was this dead silence. And it was
very, you know -- like the presenter kind of went, "Well, thank you." And then someone else said,
"About that regression analysis on the butane data set," and everything kind of went like water over
sand. And then he got up and wandered off and went out the door.
Now, I'm sitting there and I thought to myself, "My goodness, God has sent an angel to the Wharton
school to tell us the meaning of life and nobody listened." I mean, isn't that interesting? So, it was the
first time I'd ever heard the phrase "meaningful work" when he said it. So I took -- you know, I said
let's find out what that is. That looks good.
But I don't think that's actually true for any of us. I mean good health may be the beginning of
happiness. But you can have some bad health and still have days when you're happy. Meaningful
work, whatever it is, is something that you may have outside of your job that pays you. And there's
another thing that you're doing that's your meaningful work. So it's hard to know whether it's a
requirement that you have it as a 9:00 to 5:00 part of your life. And love comes and goes. You know,
you lose a loved one; doesn't mean you can never be happy again. Just means that you have some
sadness. So I don't know that that's actually the last word on the subject.
But I would give you this challenge. If you're going to say success is happiness, you have to define it.
And I thought -- I call him the wise angel. I think the wise angel had a pretty good definition. And I
gave him credit for having thought enough about life to come up with it. And he shared it with us and
no one listened. But I listened. So I'm telling you.
And finally, you know, if you're going to succeed, I think it's important to be unhappy sometimes. I
mean that's where we get injustice, and so we have problems to improve it. That's where we get
poverty and we're unhappy about our poverty and we try to change it. That's where we have
relationships that aren't working and we take steps to fix them. So if you're constantly in denial about
the things you're unhappy about, then you're going to end up piling all this stuff on top of yourself and
collapse at one point.
So be dissatisfied, use them as motivations. Be unhappy, find out why you're unhappy. Work from
that. Don't just, you know, follow this pursuit of happiness. I think Jefferson should have said, "life,
happiness, and the pursuit of dissatisfaction." That would have given us all much more to work with.
All right. So here's the six lives. And I'm going to ask for a quick show of hands and I'll wrap up and
we'll get some Q and A here. So there's six lives and some people rank them number 1s and 2, 3, 4, 5,
6. So I'm just going to ask you to sort of raise hands and we'll do a very brief survey to see what the
numbers are. For number 1 and number 6. That's a separation for this. See if we all agree about the
same thing.
So the wealthy investor, the guy who makes a lot of money and has political colleges that he supports.
Anybody rank -- well, the investor number 1, hands up for number 1. Okay, about four of you.
Number 6, quite a few more. All right, but we have some on each side, so some 1, some 6. People like
the wealthy investor's variety, autonomy, options. A lot of things to be said for having that kind of
control over your life and the willingness to exert yourself and have influence. People don't like the
wealthy investor because he has no family, he has no partner, he doesn't really have a way of
connecting emotionally with others. It seems like he's on a lonely drift and some people find that to be
very painful as a choice for a definition of success. But people have different ideas about this.
The banker. Anybody pick the banker as number 1? Okay, so we have about maybe ten of you, eleven,
picked the banker. Number 6 for the banker? About the same number, maybe a few less. All right,
people who pick the banker often respect choices. I mean here's a woman who's defending her life
choices against a lot of people who are saying, you know, "you ought to be dissatisfied with your life."
And she's saying, "no, I've chosen my life." Her devotion to her child, her loyalty to her company, to
her mission at work, her success in the latter sense there. All of that suggests a person not living a
selfish life, and one that she's chosen. And that's very admirable to some. People pick it number 6
sometimes because it looks like a very painful life in some ways. I mean she's got a lot of time devoted
to this child and not sure that that would be the way you'd want to spend your time. And she's alone.
Like the wealthy investor, she doesn't have a partner, doesn't seem to be working out with the love side.
Although she has a great deal of love for her child, it seems incomplete to some other people, so they
pick it lower.
Tennis pro, number 1? Anybody pick the tennis pro number 1? Oh, just one person. Excellent. Well,
congratulations on your choice. Tennis pro, number 6? Okay, a few more. People pick the tennis pro - I mean different audiences I have the reversal of that dynamic. Tennis pro has some appealing things.
She's very accomplished. She's been on the front of the tennis magazine, she's very good at what she
does. She is an individual accomplisher, so she earned the right to do this on her own merits; there's no
complications about who gets the credit. She has a family, she's gotten past the possible pain of not
being able to have children and adopted them. She's taken control of her life in that respect. She's
given back to the community. She has a nonprofit she works with that brings tennis to kids with lower
incomes and less opportunity. All that sounds pretty good. People pick against this life often at
number 6 because she doesn't have work/life balance quite set right, she doesn't have time for those
kids she's adopted. It's a hard road out there in the circuit. It looks like she's sort of sweating it a bit.
And some people wonder if she chose this life. Someone who's been playing tennis since they were
five, did they really choose this? Or is this something that the parent said up in the morning, drill, drill,
drill, serve, serve, serve, volley, volley, volley; and it just turns out she's good at it, but isn't actually
something that excites her passion.
If any of you have read Andre Agassi's autobiography Open. He's obviously a world-class tennis
player, it starts with the first three words are "I hate tennis." Because his father with a monster who
drilled him beyond endurance. And that's of course why he got to be a great tennis player, but he really
hated the game. And finally put it together later in life when he married Steffie and started on some
other things.
Nonprofit leader? Anybody pick the nonprofit leader number 1? Oh, quite a few. Okay. Number 6 for
the nonprofit leader? A few of you. People pick numbers 1 for the nonprofit leader often respect his,
or her, willingness to sort of take accomplishments in one career, repurpose them to a new direction.
So moving in a more purpose-filled direction for another stage of their career. That looks attractive.
They have a family, they're bringing them along, they're going to expose them to this new culture in
Africa. That's a good look, exciting. I moved around a lot when I was a kid. That doesn't show any
fear for me. That was normal for me. I would assume those kids will get with the program. But
people sometimes see their life and go, "oh, I see a nuclear bottom going off in the middle of Africa
when this family lands in Africa. Because those kids are not going to like it and no social media, no
friends, not a happy crew." And if that's the case, maybe this pair is really a dictator and not really a
parent who's compassionate and caring. So they see that as being an unsuccessful choice.
Then notice what you're doing with each of these lives; you're interpolating from your own fears,
hopes, experience, to read into this what you read into it. I think that's important to note because it's
true that they're different, but it's also true those are your fears. Those are experiences. And when you
get to nodal points, unconsciously, that's some of the stuff that you're using to choose this or that. So
it's important to kind of be aware of those metrics.
The teacher, anybody pick the teacher number 1? Okay, excellent, about ten or twelve. Teacher
number 6? All right, fewer. People like the teacher generally like the idea of this pond thing. You
know, a person showing ripples with their immediate community. They love to bring out excellent in
others. They're quite good at it. They've got award-winning science high school students. And they
have a family too. People would pick against this often fear that one nick, there's a child who doesn't
speak to the family anymore. And sometimes people kind of infer, "wait a minute, if this person is such
a great high school teacher, how come she can't keep her own family going?" And that's sort of a
problem, if you think about it that way. And that looks like really a dark place to go. I, myself, picked
the teacher as my number one life out of this exercise. But not just because I happen to be a teacher,
which is obvious, but I like the pond thing. I like the bringing out the best in others part. And I was
her child and I came home. So I know that it works out sometimes. And so it doesn't have that fear for
me.
Finally the stonemason. Anybody pick the stonemason number 1? Oh, quite a few. Interesting.
Stonemason number 6? Couple of you. High picks for the stonemason often come from a sense of his
autonomy, his craftsmanship, his control over what he's doing. His family is completely integrated
with his life. He's building his children's homes, takes great pride in what he does both for them and
for his work. So this looks like the zen master of the 6. But, you know, some people read this life and
go "boring, boring, boring. I mean what effect is he having on anyone outside his family? And he's not
even on the cover of stonemason weekly." And people honestly feel, "You know what? I want my life
to have a little bit more -- like happening out there besides this stonemason thing." So it's not a literal - you know, the stonemason is anyone who likes a kind of craft approach to their work that they can
control. And that's rare in our workplace. So I see a lot of people picking the stonemason because
they're lacking that sense of completion on things that they do and control over things that they do. In
our world that's rare and people really would like to have more of it. And so we vote for that life.
So just as a final thing, and then we have a few minutes for questions. If you had to pick one of these
lives for your only child, assuming your only child is just sort of an average child without a lot of
aptitudes displayed yet. Sometimes when I ask it that way, people change their votes. One, and only
one, life for the only child you're going to leave in this world, which one would you pick? And very
often people move a little more to a kind of external/internal balance with a few less risks. Because
even the stonemason's life, money's sometimes a problem. Some people get a little worried about that
when they think our only child we're going to endow this life to this person where there's money as a
problem? Not sure.
So I throw that one out as a final note to you because I think the choice you would make for your only
child is probably the choice you would make for yourself, if you actually had to take the path of one of
these six and the balance that they're showing. And I think that's important to know because that's the
action value that you're using to make real choices. Not just the ideal, the admirable, the thing that you
admire. But the thing you would do if you had to do it. So I think getting at that level is kind of
important.
Okay, we got a few minutes for questions, comments. Anybody got anything they want to throw at
me? The professor is here. Yes?
>>: Seminars online?
RICHARD SHELL: Yeah, the course online. I've been asked about that. I tell you, I haven't put it
online. It's not because I'm trying to hide it. I put a book out after all. But the trouble is I find the
online teaching environment to be rarely one way. And so for me to just sort of sit in front of a camera
and talk and then have 20, 30,000 people out there isn't the kind of ripples that I'm -- you know, I'm
spending time teaching, I like to spend time teaching people I know. And I can tell you that that means
a lot of interaction, a lot of discussion, a lot of knowledge about what -- who they really are, to be
helpful. Because, you know, my real goal is to try to help, not just to influence to be known. So I
haven't. But maybe some day. You'll change the online environment. You guys will invent a new way
to make it interactive and a way that's compelling.
Yes?
>>: So everything you know now, looking back on your life, would you have made the same choice?
RICHARD SHELL: You know, that's a great question. The question is knowing what I know now and
looking back on my life would I have made different choices? You got to remember that the big
moment for me wasn't a choice. It was an outside force that hit me like a hurricane. And so I was
completely turned upside down and my identity was taken away. I had to make a choice and I made
the right choice on that. That is I chose an anti-war stance that I still maintain. I led part of the team
that protested the first Iraq invasion that took place back in the '90#s#. I could see the train coming. It
was an old train. I knew it well. And there was nothing we could do to stop it. But we stood up and
waived the flag and said, "no, no, not again," and it just went right over us again. But I still maintain
the rightness of that position.
But as far as my own life is concerned, I am a big proponent of trial and error, rather than choice,
cause/effect. I think what you do is you make choices that put you in different places and then life
happens. And then you make new choices based on the options that life provides at that next stage.
And you can't predict what the next stage actually is going to be. So going from the inside out, try to
maximize your capabilities so that you continue to get better at what you do and achieve what you're
trying to achieve. And I think that that's the best you can do.
I kept journals while I was traveling those two years. So I have this great big stack of these very
introspective journals. And at one point the question "what should I do" was a big question I used to
write about that a lot. And at one point I came to the insight abstractly, "I want to be a teacher." This is
before I had the out-of-body experience that I realized I really wanted to be one. So when I wrote it
down I said, "Okay, I want to be a teacher. What are the things I could teach and what are the things I
could never teach?" And I could teach English literature, history, you know, poetry. And the top of the
list of things I could never teach, business. Here I am. So I was smart enough that I married to
someone who's smart enough, I married my college sweetheart, who was also there -- she had a few
adventures of her own but we connected with each other after I came home again. And she knows me
well enough to know that when the opportunity to teach at Wharton came, I should take it. So it's not
always choice. But it is response, and wise responses.
Anybody else? Yeah.
>>: Do you have advice for someone just about to go into their last year of college?
RICHARD SHELL: Yes, other than read Springboard. Yeah, I think you should be taking things you
really enjoy and not just things that you think are going to look good on your resumé. You're only
going to be a senior in college once. Take an acting class, take -- you know, whatever it is you like to
do. And then I think you ought to look at the next stage of life more as a postgraduate fellowship in life
and not as a beginning of a career. And even if for a couple of years you do something else, it might be
travel, it might be work on a cruise ship, might be go to work for some group in Arabia, or something.
Not a career choice; an educational choice. So that you maximize your ability to respond to the world
around you. Open, open the big gate and let the information in. I think that's the best advice I would
give.
Yeah?
>>: And you talked about sometimes it takes being still to be able to tap into that. Does that go along
with how like meditation and getting into that still place and kind of really increase the happiness and
increase those experiences?
RICHARD SHELL: You know, I wouldn't say it has to be meditation. I think some people are
hyperactive people and so for them they have to get really, really, really active and then they can be
quiet. And if you try to tell them meditate, they just sit in a meditation and go like this. So I would say
whatever it takes for you to be at a place mentally where you're open, where you're aware, where you're
noticing what's happening around you. Even if it's running. It might be open and aware and noticing
what's happening. You might be in motion as you have that state of mind. So however you achieve
that state of mind, without drugs, I think that's the way to do it.
So it's like everything else, it's your own -- you have to sort of assess yourself. For me quiet meditation
-- I'm an introvert basically. I like to spend time alone. I don't like big crowds. I love being with you
guys, but if this were a social event and we had a mix, I would like go to a corner and find one of you
and just talk to that one person the whole time. So I think everybody's got to find their own kind of
thing. For me it was meditation.
Yeah?
>>: I just have the feeling that if in the point of defined success on your own terms, then isn't such an
exercise when we're looking at different people awaiting their success and they're just inherently
establishing this model where we're qualifying people's success, taking this back to the same tainted
vision of finding success in terms of what other people see?
RICHARD SHELL: Well, I gave you this exercise that is an impossible exercise because I asked you
to judge six lives. But the reason I gave it to you is not to decide whether you think they are successful.
The reason I gave it to you is those criteria are implicit in your mind about yourself, and that's what's
activating those choices. So there's no way to separate the social inputs from the inner world. We are
social creatures and we are the product of social conditioning and social information. No way to
separate it.
But you can be more aware of it. Just like you can be aware of hunger. And so once you become
aware of hunger, you don't have to eat as much. Because now you're not fearing hunger. "Oh, that's
hunger, okay, that happens sometimes during the day." And so a lot of people eat just to keep the
feeling of hunger away and they never are aware that it's the hunger that's motivating the eating. You
get aware of hunger as a feeling you can do something with it.
So I think that this compulsion to achieve, or to achieve status, or to get fame, or increase your wealth
or whatever, are impulsions. And once you're aware of them, then you become able to sort of judge,
"Well, is this one I ought to follow? Or should I just move this one down the road and see if I can find
something that gives me more satisfaction when I achieve it?" A lot of people wake up often in the
week and they go, "Wow, I just achieved the X, Y, Z." And then they say to themselves, "But why do I
feel so empty? Why am I not excited the day after that about it?" And that's because they've been
acting on these impulsions that are unconscious. They might be trying to please their family or trying
to beat a brother or trying to whatever, and they've forgotten all the "whys" and all they do is the "dos,"
but they wake up and they don't understand why they've been doing it. So that lacks the savor of
something you generally understand.
So I think it's a great question. I don't think you could ever pull the two apart, but you can adopt an
attitude about them that gives you a little more perspective and choice about what to do.
Yeah?
>>: A quick question. Maybe not so quick. So you spoke about maximizing your ability to respond to
the world around you and also inherently experiencing a set of unhappiness or dissatisfaction. And I'm
looking here, and there is -- when is it a point where people are not as happy as they would like or they
realize that perhaps what they're doing is not their finest quality. Is it worth -- and for how long
possibly, once you remain in that position, the notion that there's probably a lot to learn, there's
probably a lot more to pick up or to learn more about setting happiness, or what really is the core driver
of it. So I don't know if it's the juxtaposition that you thought about and written about.
RICHARD SHELL: Certainly something I thought about. The question is, I mean one of the things
that keeps people from taking this journey is the fear that "it will never end, it will never end. It's going
to end up with me being dysfunctional and unable to achieve anything and depressed and sad and
lonely and yuck. So why not stay on the okay plateau?"
And I got a number for you. 32,850 is the number of days you get to live if you're lucky enough to live
to be 90. Now that's it. That's it. That's the quantity. There's no more than that for most people. So
how do you want to spend them? I say my theory is you should go all in. That is be willing to face the
fear, be willing to face the uncertainty, be willing to -- especially at your age, be willing to open the
door to finding about yourself. This is not about finding a career. This is not about discovering you
have an aptitude for programming. This is about discovering what it is that motivates and moves and
causes you to behave. And if it does -- I'm for therapy if that's the way it goes, that's the direction it
needs to take to figure out the emotional core that's actually bubbling under there. I just think if you
don't do that, you're always the effect of these things that aren't under your control and then you die.
And you were just the effect of some disease. And it just doesn't seem worthy to me. So I think it's
worth the roll of the dice. Find yourself.
All right. I think it's about time to wrap it up. I see Amy coming up here.
AMY DRAVES: Yeah, just because there is someone online who's messaging the session group based
on the book. So if you're interested, please send the alias an email and [indiscernible].
RICHARD SHELL: I'll conclude with this thought with that motivating statement. The book that is
back there has an appendix which I created based on feedback from the first publication back in
August, which is a reader's guide. And there's eight session guides and they have questions that a
group can talk about, as far as the exercises and assessments, topics to discuss. So there's eight little
sessions all designed to provoke you into asking the right kinds of questions and facilitating your own
growth. So the book has that all built in.
Thank you. Thank you, Amy.
[applause]