Tips on Leading a More Fulfilling Life

I was at a sake tast­ing last night lis­ten­ing to a lec­ture on how sake is made. I got a real sense for the crafts­man­ship that goes into sake mak­ing. It seems that high end sake almost exclu­sively does one key part of the process by hand, though they could eas­ily get machines to do some­thing almost as good.

I can relate to this crafts­man­ship, because I expe­ri­ence it in my daily life through my iaido prac­tice. And, this feel­ing is what I want to share. The sense of reward and accom­plish­ment that has noth­ing to do with mate­ri­al­ism. It’s in the pride they take in mak­ing a “per­fect” sake. It’s the pride that I have each time I leave prac­tice with all 10 fin­gers (still attached).

Crafts­man­ship is not just for hob­bies and eso­teric arts. Yes­ter­day, I was using a voice con­fer­enc­ing sys­tem I thought a five year old could have designed bet­ter. A sim­ple voice con­fer­enc­ing sys­tem… you’d think we (as humans) have solved that prob­lem! Nope. Clearly, some­one has missed an oppor­tu­nity to shine.

For sure, mate­ri­al­ism has its place in our world. I don’t think these sake guys would make very good sake after dying of hunger or dis­ease! But, there is a def­i­nite ful­fill­ment that comes when pur­su­ing a craft. I believe all the eco­nomic uncer­tainty we’re fac­ing right now will demand that we find ful­fill­ment elsewhere.

I came across an ebook today. It took me all of 15 min­utes to read. It’s funny, but seri­ous at the same time. It’s chock-full of advice, and con­trary to the title applies to free­lancers and any­one under­em­ployed by their own com­pany. In par­tic­u­lar, I really liked a lot of what Char­lie said, but three bits of advice to hope­fully entice you to read his book are:

1. Treat every­one as if they were your friend.
2. Stop read­ing the newspapers.
3. From page 28, be help­ful, be that type of per­son he’s talk­ing about on this page!

Some per­sonal advice on that last point… it’s amaz­ing how many peo­ple want to help when you ask. This inter­net thing is great for just that. But more impor­tantly, help­ing oth­ers excel at their craft just feels really freak­ing good.

Go ahead, read it and see if you can be suc­cess­ful enough to “sail your yacht into your boss’ beach house.”