To Know Thyself

"There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one's self. " - Benjamin Franklin

"This above all; to thine own self be true." - William Shakespeare

"Friendship with one’s self is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world." - Eleanor Roosevelt

"If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self." - Napoleon Hill

"Every human has four endowments- self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom... The power to choose, to respond, to change." - Stephen Covey

What do all these great quotes have in common? They all acknowledge the importance of knowing yourself. I have recognized the importance of knowing myself for a long time, and I am sure that throughout my childhood it was imparted upon me in one way or another. In fact a big reason I started blogging was to truly challenge my beliefs and to reflect upon where I am and more importantly who I am.

The other day I took a Myers-Briggs Test Workshop for Choosing and Changing Careers. The premise of the workshop was to learn more about your personality preferences and to leverage that enhanced knowledge of yourself to find a career you truly love. Although the workshop had a career slant I think going through such a workshop is just as applicable to many other facets of life as well.

Here are a few things I took away from the workshop:

1. I went into the workshop with a fairly good self awareness. That was reassuring. I think the combination of my team sports background, military background, and conscious attempts (blogging, reading, starting a non-profit company etc.) to get to know myself better have paid off. That being said we all are constantly growing and changing so the journey to understand yourself is just that; a journey, not a destination.

2. Your personality is a profile of preferences in the way you respond to outside events. If you are extrovert you can still be introverted in various situations. Being an extrovert simply means that your preference is to respond to different life events as an extrovert does. There is a sliding scale of how strongly you identify with a certain preference.

3. Your personality profile can and does change in different situations. Although my "personal" and "work" self were largely aligned there are some scenarios where my preferences change. For instance, I am more laid back and have a go with the flow attitude in my personal life whereas I appreciate a more solid schedule and organized work environment.

4. Improving your own self awareness allows you to better recognize other peoples personality types and allows you to more effectively interact with different types of people.I couldn't help but analyze where my wife would shake out on the Myers Briggs test. It was pretty enlightening to see that the source of some of our minor disagreements may not be a lack of desire to resolve those disagreements but two differing preferences on how to respond to outside events. A simple example is cleaning the kitchen. My wife notices every crumb where I take more of a holistic view of how the kitchen ties in with the rest of the home's appearance. These are not coincidences. They are living examples of our differing personality profiles. My awareness of this subtle distinction in our preferences will surely make me more sensitive to how she lives her life....and may even improve my counter-wiping ability. Although this is an oversimplified example, it can be applied to relationship management in any scenario.

5. There are a few different facets that would make up my “dream job” that are consistent with my personality profile. I must be in a creative, team environment that is very collaborative in nature. Not surprisingly this ties in very nicely with things I have been passionate about in my life. Whether it was growing up playing hockey, starting Checking For Charity Corporation, or leading a team of contracting professionals in Iraq I have always thrived and enjoyed these types of environments. My future career should be no different.

The US China Relationship

Although this article from MSN Money may be a bit too simplistic and a little more gloom and doom than I like, I think it does a awesome job explaining China and the United States' interdependency. It is very interesting to read a simplified history of how we came to depend on each other and how our relationship poses some problems for the future.

Imagine becoming so successful at your job that you stack up $2 trillion in income, which you conservatively place in short-term U.S. Treasury bonds for safekeeping.

Now imagine that when you try to cash in those bonds to buy a few things for your kids, the clerk at the bank abruptly shuts her window and tells you to go away.

That is essentially the situation faced by China these days as it wonders whether its plan to manufacture goods for U.S. consumers over the past two decades in exchange for a pile of credit slips was really such a hot idea.

I have heard little political tidbits and people's random remarks about how China basically owns us. I always had a gut feeling this was exaggerated paranoia, however my ignorance on the topic had me refraining from commenting. The one positive I took away from this article is that as scared as many Americans are about China having such a large possession of US bonds, the Chinese may be just as scared to have such a large position in US bonds.

Well, now think about this in the context of a Ponzi scheme such as the one perpetrated by disgraced financier Bernie Madoff.
Madoff's clients for years thought they were rich because he sent them brokerage statements that said so. But that scheme worked only as long as new money kept coming in. When international money flows seized up last year and too many people wanted to redeem their accounts at once, Madoff's $50 billion game fell apart. Then his victims suddenly discovered that their brokerage statements were worthless pieces of paper. Madoff clients' households crashed, and now one-time millionaires are broke. The reality is that they were always broke; they just didn't know it yet.

The credit that has kept American families afloat for the past 10 years is similar to those Madoff-produced brokerage statements. The credit is good only so long as China keeps recycling funds through the Ponzi scheme. But if Beijing leaders ever decide that it's just too risky to own U.S. dollars and debt, then the system is going to come crashing down. Of course, it is not really in China's interest to stop the scheme, even if it wanted to, because its own economy would likewise blow up. Satyajit Das, a credit derivatives expert in Australia, likens this to stepping on one of those land mines that are activated by the weight of a victim's body. As soon as the weight is lifted, the mine explodes, and the person's leg is blown off.

China is thus frozen in place, damned if it does and damned if it doesn't. It's a classic Catch-22. China's cache of U.S. bonds isn't worth anything unless the bonds are sold. But selling them on any kind of scale will gut their value.

"People need to realize that China doesn't actually have any real U.S. money," Das says. "Unless they can turn in their bonds and exchange them for something else, they're only paper assets. Yet if they try to exit the position, they'll destabilize the dollar, and the value of the rest of their assets will plunge. And that's not even their biggest problem. It's that they also need to keep buying Treasurys, or interest rates will go up and their capital losses will be terrible."

I don't really know if the situation is 'mutually assured destruction' like author Jon Markman claims, yet I don't really know the path to changing it either. Hopefully the recession has served as a wake up call that we cannot as a nation merely borrow our way to 'wealth'. Couple the wake up call with access to more information (financial education information) than ever via the Internet and maybe the US will begin to start living the Badskiblog definition of being rich.

Guest Bloggage - Andrew Ramsey

Welcome to the second edition of Guest Bloggage featuring Andrew Ramsey. I served alongside Rammer as a fellow Captain of the Air Force Hockey Team and let me tell you he is a world class individual. He has always been a go getter and a hell of a hockey player, but being a year older than him and having the opportunity to watch him develop as a player, teammate, and most importantly as a person, was truly a great experience. Insert tissue or homo-erotic joke here. Without spoiling some of what Rammer is about to go into detail about, I wanted to elaborate on why we used to call him "the Renaissance man" or "Renaissance Rammer." Having gone on endless road trips and having shared tons of different experiences with him I can assure you that he does what he advises. What I mean by that is that this guy is a gifted networker and knows a little about everything! I am going to take credit for coming up with the name the Renaissance man (I am pretty sure I did) because no matter what situation he was in people loved him. As I started watching him it became almost comical how he could relate to anything. We would be at an airport and he would strike up a conversation with a 45 year old cougar who sells insurance and somehow he could relate to everything they said. We would be in Germany and he would be having a conversation, in German no less, with the owner of a photography shop about cameras. We all used to give him a hard time but the older I get the more valuable and appreciative (even envious) I am of this skill. I'm telling you, heed his advice because he lives it. Enjoy.

As business minded professionals we are always attempting to move forward, progress, get better, get ahead, etc. One great way to do that is to draw on help from the people you know. The formal term for this is 'networking,' but it really comes down to interpersonal relationships and having a sincere interest in other people's lives.

Many of my friends know me as Renaissance Rammer. I think this stems from my ability to walk into a room of complete strangers and leave the room an hour later with a few new friends. One of those new friends might be someone you go grab a beer with or catch a game with in the future. Another might be someone who will end up playing a crucial role in you being accepted to a top tier B-school or land you that perfect job you've been waiting for for years. The ability to do this comes natural to some and must be studied and learned by others. Here are a couple tips:

-Knowledge. Often we know a lot about one subject. It's something we've studied and we are engaged in that topic every day. For initiating contacts in a completely unfamiliar place you must know a little about a lot. In large gatherings people will usually section off into groups of two three or four. You have to be able to walk up to a group of strangers, withstand a few odd looks at first, gather info in only a few seconds about their conversation, then either contribute something interesting about that topic, or ask an insightful question to the person who seems to be the expert of the group. Your ability to know a little about a lot can be improved by reading books on all topics and publications as well as drawing on experiences in your life that might apply to the conversation.

-Ask questions, shut your mouth, and listen. Often life is about the questions that are asked, not the answers that are given. If you can ask a meaningful question to someone on a topic they know in depth you are on your way. You will build up their confidence and allow them to elaborate on their expertise. You then listen closely and find a way to tie your expertise into theirs. Then you've made them feel good and they will be more willing to listen to what you have to say. If they are a good communicator they will respect your ability to listen and return the gesture.

-The follow on. Rarely do you accomplish your goal in this first meeting with a new person. You have to find someone with whom you connected well enough to continue the conversation at a later date. It's important you always have a business card or other means to leave your contact information with someone. Also, it's helpful to keep the ball in your court and let them know that you plan on contacting them to grab a coffee/lunch/drink in a week or two. This allows you to be the one who takes control of the future meeting. You don't want to wait around for someone else to get back to you. In the mean time, do your homework on that person. See what their company does. Google them. Read their blog. Read a book they've read. This will allow your conversation to flow naturally on topics which you now have in common.

Now, I've only focused on a narrow part of networking: working an unfamiliar room to find the few key people who you can bring into your network in order to help you achieve your goal and help them achieve their goal. Sometimes it'll be a large group sometimes you will be faced with a one on one situation. Either way, you can't be afraid to jump in, stick your hand out, and meet a new face.

Other areas that you should look into are: managing your network and contacts, helping others develop their network, and making links between different networks you have (for example, alumni network and business networks and extracurricular networks). I have some great stories that I'll have to share on later posts (how I saved myself from being stationed in the middle of nowhere for my first assignment in the AF, how I funded a trip to Switzerland to play hockey in high school, how I got a premier parking spot in downtown Boston for 4 months for free, and how I plan to wheel an MBA from Harvard Business School on someone Else's dime, while getting paid full time).

I want to thank Matt for asking me to say a few words about networking. I hope I can contribute more down the road. He is a charismatic guy who has his hand in many unique and hard to infiltrate networks. I am excited to see where he goes and what he does.