Ben Franklin Was Smart

This story from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin illustrates the counterintuitive concept that asking people for help brings them closer to you.

A new member of the General Assembly opposed Franklin's appointment to the prestigious and lucrative clerk position. Franklin explains how he win this person over:

I did not, however, aim at gaining his favor by paying any servile respect to him, but, after some time, took this other method. Having heard that he had in his library a certain very scarce and curious book, I wrote a note to him, expressing my desire of pursuing that book, and requesting he would do me the favor of lending it to me for a few days.

He sent it immediately, and I'd return'd it in about a week with another note, expressing strongly my sense of the favor. When we next met in the House, he spoke to me (which he had never done before), and with great civility; and he ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great friends, and our friendship continued to his death.

According to Franklin, this illustrated an old maxim: "He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged." There are two reasons for this:

First, once a person has helped you, he's more likely to help you again because refusing would mean he made a mistake in the first place. Assuming there were no bad consequences the first time, not continuing to help is to admit bad judgment.

Second, the prior interaction may have led to a better relationship. Therefore, doing something for you again has become natural. You, of course, should reciprocate, and an upward-spiraling, mutually enchanting bond can ensue.

So the thinking that people resent those who ask for favors may be wrong. Who are we to argue with Benjamin Franklin, anyway?

An excerpt from Guy Kawasaki's Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions

Why I'm Not Rayron

Today I was talking to a friend of mine about how I went from being Rayron to the man I am today.

As I went over everything that happened to bring me from then to now, I came across a realization:

I owe all of my personal improvements in the last six years to the existence of Glennda Bayon in my life.

This isn't a mushy "she makes me better and that's why I love her" thing, because that idea really is kind of selfish, I think.

It's more about stakes.

As a director, one of the most powerful tools we use to evoke genuinely meaningful performances from our actors is to raise the stakes. We take the situation that the characters presently face, and increase either their reward for success or their penalty for failure. Or both.

For example, I had an actress play the character of a lonely woman who spends 5 minutes pleading with her ex-husband to come back to her. She didn't seem desperate enough, so I told her that her character was pregnant. Out of the blue, she hit the degree of emotion that I was looking for. None of the lines hinted at a pregnancy, and she didn't reference it with her body language - it was just a seed that I planted in her head, and it stayed there - but it changed everything she did.

That's what happened when I met Glennda. Sure, I was growing up slowly and aimlessly, but I had no real reason to improve, other than the fact that I hated who I was. No one would suffer if I didn't mature, and there was no real reward waiting for me on the other side of adulthood.

But then, I met her. And we connected.
And we knew that we would spend our lives together.

All of a sudden, the stakes were raised. If I didn't grow and figure out my life, her future would suffer. But if I took the reins and learned how to be the man I needed to be, her life would improve too.

So again, the mere existence of Glennda in my life made me try that much harder to get from there to here, because she raised the stakes. I suddenly had something to lose. I had a lot to gain.

I had a reason to grow up.

And to this day, that's still the only reason I do anything to improve who I am. In that conversation with my friend, I made the comment:

"If I had never met my wife, the person standing in front of you would be an empty relic of who Rayron once was, hollow and only slightly less clueless."

This is all for now
-R.

The Idiot's Guide to Liking Your Life

The secret to liking your life, I've discovered, is to change it.

Alot.

It's not about getting rid of bad habits or finding new hobbies. It's not about reinventing yourself or creating the "new you." I find that those ideologies tend to focus on becoming who you wish you were instead of cultivating who you were born to be.

No, this is more about realizing that new things are exciting. That's because discovery is exciting. Creating things is exciting. Inventing things is exciting. Pondering awesome ideas is exciting, and it spurs you to action, which is exciting. Heck, research can be exciting if it's something you're super interested in.

And the things that they all have in common is change.

Growth is life, and growth is change. Therefore change is life, and thus stagnancy is lack of life.

...so if you're not living a life-filled life, what on earth are you doing?

...I think that's a fairly safe line of reasoning. Simply put, if you want to be excited about your life, change something in it. It really doesn't matter what. Start a diet. Keep track of your diet. Did it work? Did you like it? If not, try something else. Switch from a PC to a Mac or vice versa. Rearrange your living room. Buy a betta fish and see how long you can keep it alive. Plant a venus fly trap. Force yourself to wake up at 5:30 AM every day for a week.

The list goes on ad infinitum. Just change something, and you'll find that you'll become excited about that something. You'll come home from work or school or whatever you do during the day, thinking about that something. You might even obsess with your something.

And then, one day, it will either become a part of your life and you'll be glad you made that change, or you'll go back to the way things were.

Either way, when that day comes, change something else.

This is, I find, the best way to stay excited about life and be proactive in your growth as a human being. And let's face it: who doesn't want those two things?

This is all for now.
-R.