My Hero's Journey: Chapter 11

 After reading the article “Attitude On Money” it actually made me feel a little better about my thoughts concerning money.  I want money to do good things with it.  In and of itself, money is not inherently evil.  It’s how we use it that determines its nature.

  My attitude towards money is: I want to earn it to both fulfill my dreams and make a positive change in the world.  It’s been a fantasy for a while now to own a beautiful Victorian in San Francisco.  I visited for the first time yesterday, and it was astoundingly out of the world.  All the houses were so charming and full of personality.  And the city itself felt so vibrant - life on every street corner.  

  However, San Francisco is a very expensive place to live because of all the tech people.  Everyone is telling me that it’d be impossible to live there given my “prospects”, but I refuse to think that way.  I look at my dreams in a realistically optimistic way.  I refuse to back down from a challenge.  Instead of thinking, can I make this happen or will I make this happen, I put forth the ideology of I will make it happen.  I just have to figure it out, but once again, that’s part of the fun of the obstacle.  Money is a big part of that.  I don’t lust after money, but I need it if I want to live in my dream city.  

  

  I believe this way of thinking is a healthier take on money.  I never want to become stingy with it, but I do want to be disciplined.  I’m not saying I’m immune to greed, but as long as I keep my eye on fulfilling worthy goals, I think I’ll be okay.  I by no means seek to live lavishly, but I want to reach inside myself and see my visions become reality.  Seeing the world.  Living in a beautiful city.  Doing it with my family.  And making the world a better place in the process.  That’s what I want.  (As well as a massive book collection, but that’s another story…)

  There are several rules, so in the interest of brevity, I will select one to discuss.  I especially thought that taking advantage of chances for learning to avoid ignorance was important.  When I lived on my own for the first time, it was very difficult to watch my spending at the grocery store.  I learned to become a savvy shopper - taking time to price compare, look at the brands, etc.  There were products that I desired more, but was willing to compromise to save in the long run.  It’s so important to know the worth of money, and it’s through these experiences that we learn that.  It’s tough, but true.  

  

My Hero's Journey: Chapter 10

  As part of this course, I have the opportunity to read, “A Field Guide for the Hero’s Journey”.  Each chapter is divided up according to a different step of the hero’s journey, and within each chapter is a selection of stories, parables, poems, and speeches that relate to that particular step.  Although it wasn’t the assigned reading for this week, there is a passage from chapter 2 (Who am I, and Who do I want to become?) that I’d like to discuss, as it left an impression on me. 

  

  An Aesop fable, the Mouse and the Lion is a short story about a mouse who is caught by a lion.  The mouse begs to be let go, promising that he will never forget it.  The great lion, “tickled at the idea of a mouse being able to help him”, freed the mouse.  Some time later, the lion was captured by a group of hunters.  The mouse happened across the path and, noticing the situation, proceeded to gnaw away at the rope that restrained the mighty beast.  The mouse said, “Was I not right?  Little friends may prove a great help.”  

  The moral of the story is: “If you are convinced that you are a mouse surrounded by stronger and more impressive people, ask yourself, ‘What can I do that these mighty lions can’t do?”  

  I think this is a theme we all face in our lives.  From time to time, especially when faced with higher standards of achievement or excellence in the world, I will wonder what I can possibly accomplish when others are so much more qualified than myself.  At school this past spring, this is exactly how I felt in the engineering program.  Sitting in a room, surrounded by programmers, I felt like the proverbial mouse amongst lions.  Of course, there were beginners like myself, but my own lack of experience in the field was a constant, painful reminder.  I was there to learn, true, but the feeling of inadequacy was unavoidable.  

  As time passed, however, I discovered that it was a common theme among my fellow programmers that they disliked writing.  This is a talent of mine that I have a particular fondness for, so to hear their dislike for the exercise made me realize the value of our individual gifts.  Although I was a mouse in the world of programming lions, they were also mice in my world of writer lions.  Putting that into perspective helped me get through some of my acute moments of amateur programming performance.

  I also had to learn that getting through my programming course was not a matter of accomplishment or failure.  It was about discovering myself, my perceived limits, and pushing myself beyond those limits.  I’m proud to have been a mouse in those moments.  I became a braver one because of it.    

My Hero's Journey: Chapter 9

  This week, one of the readings, titled, “Good to Great: Why some companies make the leap… and others don’t”, particularly stood out to me.  I found myself nodding my head at practically every sentence.  This is one of the best descriptions of a great business that I’ve read.  If I’m in leadership someday, this is precisely the type of company model I’d want to work with.  

  To illustrate a few of my favorite points… great companies put getting great people ahead of strategy, tactics, and even vision.  By putting this first, several benefits will fall into place.  First, the company will find it easier to adapt and change, because the people they attract will be more excited about who they get to work with, rather than what they get to do.  As someone who fantasizes about someday working at places such as Google, Youtube, or perhaps Pixar, I can attest that this is a major interest point for me.  These companies place focus on hiring exceptional individuals with amazing creative capabilities.  By formulating superb teams of people that thrive on working with one another, a powerful, adaptable vision will naturally fall into place.  

  Second, putting great people first will erase the challenge of motivating and managing people, since they will be driven by a personal desire to achieve and “be part of something great.  They will naturally be fired up.”  I love this idea.  If I have personal investment in a company, I will devote my energy and drive to overcome and problem solve through challenges we face.  

  Third, the company will become great because, even with an ideal vision, the wrong people will drag the company down from finding greatness.  Thus, seeking out great people as a priority will see everything else fall into place.  If a company had these motivations at its forefront, that’s the kind of company I’d want to work for.  Even better, if I’m ever in leadership, these are the prized qualities I’d strive to implement into my business’s structure.  

My Hero's Journey: Chapter 8

  This week, one of the videos that stood out to me was Eric Ries, “The Five Whys”.  Although the subject of the analogy is programming and engineering, the proposition is one that can relate to many more situations.  Ties illustrates that, behind every supposed technical issue, there is actually a human problem that caused it.  If one doesn’t find the human problems, aka the root problem, you can’t really make progress.  

  The example Ries uses is when a server crashes.  Upon further investigation, it’s reveled that it’s the fault of an employee who isn’t properly trained in a specific area of code.  He isn’t properly trained because the manager doesn’t believe in training.  What started as a technical issue was actually a human issue.  At each level, you can step in and take action, setting up measures that, upon the revisit of the issue, are immediately brought into play.  This saves trying to figure out new prevention action, and makes it easy for people to build databases that address these questions.  

  This is something I can relate to.  Having finished a programming class last semester, when I was testing a Software Engineering degree, it was amusing/painful to observe the “technical issues” experienced by my classmates.  I knew that, no matter how right yet wrong my programming looked, it was never the computer’s problem, but rather my own.  Nearly every day, someone would complain, saying their program wouldn’t function, and that TestBed (the program that we tested our coding against), was making a mistake.  It was a great experience in the art of accepting one’s own mistakes, and figuring out how to solve them, rather than shrouding them in convenient, yet completely wrong, excuses.