Michael Melcher Reports ...

Don't forget -- I'm now at www.thecreativelawyer.com

2009-04-10T18:10:00.000-07:00

World,

Just a reminder that all my posting is now at The Creative Lawyer. Click on over!

Inspirer'd in Paris

2008-07-10T16:07:00.000-07:00

I have come to Gay Paree to conduct a coaching workshop at Davis Polk & Wardwell, the law firm where, back in the day, I worked as an associate. My workshop was called “Beyond Staying or Going: The Creative Lawyer Approach to Managing Your Career (While in Your Career)” and it’s basically about all the things you need to know to be successful and fulfilled in your career that have nothing to do with the actual practice of law. It follows my core philosophy that if you spend all day just doing your job, you’ll never get anywhere!

After checking into the delightful Hotel de Sers and taking a much-needed disco nap, I sought out the local Bikram Yoga studio. Soon I was getting hot and sweaty a la francaise. Though I have occasional iss-shoes with the Bikram Chowdury personality cult, there is nothing like a 90-minute workout in 100-degree heat to overcome jet-lag and eliminate the residual effects of sitting in a basically gross airplane. Plus, it turns out to be a great way to practice French vocabulary! Bikram yoga teachers use exactly the same monologue in every class no matter where in the world it’s taught, so it’s pretty easy to follow along.

“Inspirer, expirer,” the teachers chanted. Breath in, breath out. “Inspirer, expirer.” They said this about 500 times.

As I did my standing head to knee pose, being told to inspirer and expirer, I recalled reading that that the word “inspire” comes from the Latin word for “breath.” We mostly think of inspiration as something that comes from within us, but the other way of looking at it is that inspiration is something we bring into our lives from the outside world. It’s not something we think up, but something that is waiting to be let in. Foreign travel is inspirational to me for just this reason – when I travel, I breathe in the world.

When my coaching clients ask me how they are supposed to figure out what they really want to do with their lives, I sometimes advise them to think of their search as a treasure hunt, as opposed something they are supposed to contemplate. Instead of looking for the answer inside you, you’re often better off looking for it out in the world. You’re most likely to find it by going out, having a bunch of experiences, and seeing what you see. As I have written in my book, when it comes to career development, thinking is vastly overrated!

The next time you’re looking for inspiration, let yourself get inspirer’d. Open up your lungs, breathe in what the world offers, and and see where that gets you.

So very clever!

2008-04-13T17:48:00.000-07:00

Check out Jessica's Hagy's site, Indexed, in which she cleverly uses graphs and Venn diagrams to illustrate funny social insights. My favorite is the "Tax Fraud vs. Online Dating Fraud" graph.

Go ahead, write that letter to the editor!

2008-02-19T08:01:00.000-08:00

I am a graduate of Valencia High School, a reasonably ordinary high school in Placentia, California. This is the northern part of Orange County, the more diverse and less affluent section that is never seen on shows like "The O.C." Until recently, we had no famous grads. Now we have one and a half. Michael Chang, the tennis player, attended for a couple of years before getting his G.E.D. Congresswoman Linda Sanchez is also a graduate. And then there's me!

My sister, Jocelyn, who is also a lawyer, graduated from VHS as well. She lives in Henderson, Nevada which is just outside of Las Vegas and, until recently, was America's fastest growing city. Check out her brilliant letter to the editor of her local paper, in response to a vicious editorial against Hillary Clinton.

Not everyone can write an intelligent, punchy letter to the editor. So if there's a topic that you feel passionate about, go for it.

People and their iss-shoes

2008-02-02T11:29:00.000-08:00

Despite my generally loving and accepting nature, there are a couple of ways in which I discipline my coaching clients:

-- I don't let clients use the phrase "don't get me started..." To me this phrase (usually preceded by a dramatic sigh) suggests someone who spends a lot of a lot of time living in and talking about their problems rather than moving out of them. (If I'm speaking with someone in a thinking-about-coaching call and they use that phrase, I gently lead them away from me. Not a scene I want to get into.)

-- I don't let clients talk about their "issues," as in the phrase, "Well, my issue with that is . . ." and "One of my issues is . . ."

Why am I such a hard-ass with this phrase? I think it's because I believe the process of analyzing and listing one's issues encourages a type of preciousness that is not conducive to moving forward in life or to being particularly useful to the world.

Once someone has defined and catalogued their set of issues, said issues seem to become part of their self-concept. They start drawing a sense of personal distinctiveness from their problems, as opposed to their positive qualities. I sometimes call this "The Princess and the Pea Syndrome." You know, you're special because if there is just one pea underneath twenty mattresses you'll wake up black and blue. Since you have royal blood. In other words, the sign of your specialness is that you have unique needs, pains and sensitivities.

This is just not true. Negative stuff does not make you special. Your talents and hopes make you special. Your iss-shoes do not.

Okay, all that notwithstanding, I recently did a fun interview with the American Bar Association e-letter about some common lawyer iss-shoes. Check out the cool graphic, too.

(Speaking of iss-shoes, I have an issue with nonstandard use of grammar. It really bugs me and I don't hesitate to correct people. Today I am violating my own policies -- I am aware that in my preceding paragraphs I used "they" as a singular pronoun rather than he or she. For today only, I'm giving up that battle.)

In case you wonder what might have happened had you gone to medical school . . .

2008-01-12T15:50:00.000-08:00

You know what feels really good? When you meet someone you knew like twenty years ago who took a totally different path, and then you reconnect in some meaningful way.

This has happened recently on several fronts. For instance, I just spoke yesterday to my first boss, who hired me for an internship in 1986. (I know, not every six-year old is hired for a post-college internship but there you go.)

Another example is when I reconnected with my friend, Pauline Chen, first at a dinner several years ago in Palo Alto, and most recently this past fall when we both coincidentally published our books. Hers just came out in paperback: Final Exam: A Surgeon's Reflections on Mortality. It's earned rave review, deservedly so.

Rekindling the 11-year old financial mastermind that lives somewhere inside me

2008-01-10T18:35:00.000-08:00

Long-term observers of Michael Melcher are probably aware that in 1974 I was Paperboy of the Year for Scottsdale, Arizona. Actually the official title was "Carrier-Salesman of the Year" and the paper in question was The Scottsdale Daily Progress.

I was simultaneously a very sincere and determined paperboy, and a crafty one. I never missed a delivery, and at the same time plotted things like making homemade Christmas cards for my customers on the theory I would get higher tips.

Looking back, it's clear that I had a very entrepreneurial bent. I grew my route from my starting number of 37 customers to a high of 168, saved money, bought stocks (seriously), and lent my mom $600 when we moved to California the following year. This is an interesting memory for me since I tend to compare my financial skills unfavorably to those of the various bankers, venture capitalists and internet zillionaires that were my classmates in the Stanford MBA class of 1993.

What's my point here? I think it's that whatever we think is the truth about ourselves may not be the full truth. And whatever identity we have is probably just one of the many potential identities available to us, should we decide we'd like to shake things up.

I am having these ponderous thoughts after doing an interview for a cool website called QueerCents, which is a bunch of GLTB financial advisors -- who cleverly have realized that putting real, useful content on a site is more interesting than just having a bunch of people talk. They have a "Ten Money Questions" series that is interesting. Here is their interview of me.

Year-end review, with yourself

2008-01-10T18:19:00.000-08:00

Here's the interesting thing about writing. You never know how something is going to come out until you write it. And you never know how it will resonate with the rest of the world until you put it out there. Okay, I guess that's two things.

A couple of weeks ago I did a guest-post on Marci Alboher's blog at the NYT, Shifting Careers. (A most excellent blog, by the way, independent of my own participation.)

I wrote this particular post during a recent visit to my mom's house in the burbs of San Diego County (San Marcos, California, to be precise -- a little prefab town that oddly has its own Bikram yoga studio). "Hmm," I thought. "What could I write that could be useful. Maybe some kind of exercise." I thought back to an exercise I did with my friend Polly on a Hawaii vacation three years before. "Well, I guess I could try that," I mused. I wrote it up, edited it down, and sent it off to Marci, with a not untypical email message to the effect that if she thought it sucked, I could try something else.

She loved it and posted it. It became widely read. It generated a number of strange ad hominem attacks and revealed that there is a certain sector of the population that has great hostility toward things like setting goals and in particular toward yoga bootcamp (which was merely a casual mention in the post but generated an extended argument about the divorce settlement of Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love. I know, kind of weird.)

But traffic continued to grow. I know, because I obsessively check the visiting stats for this blog as well as my somewhat duplicative but slightly different blog, The Creative Lawyer. Lots of potential client contacted me, as well as people I worked with more than ten years ago. It made the top ten emailed articles on the biz section. Which isn't the top ten overall, but still! Some people wrote on their own blogs about how they actually did the exercise, which made me very happy.

Anyhow, the point of all this is: you never know. If you feel the inkling of creativity, just do it. Reach into the well and see what's there, and then with a deep breath send it out to the world.

Oh, here is that cool invented-in-Hawaii exercise. The point is to look at the previous year before moving on to the next one. It's a method of taking you through the year to get clear on what, in hindsight, was meaningful to you. My favorite web post that I read about this was on a blog called Maigrey:"I'm astonished how unimportant the various men I've dated are. Seriously. Some not even mentioned, and not a one of them underlined. On the other hand, my lady friends got hearts."

Try it. It's fun and it works.

Take it from the striking Hollywood writers ... December is a great time to network!

2007-12-16T11:40:00.001-08:00

I have parachuted into L.A. for a few days to visit, among others, my friend Henry who was once a lawyer and is now a glamorous TV writer. However, just moments after he inked his new deal with a certain well-known star's production company, the Writers' Guild went on strike. So now he has to work that picket line.

It does not surprise me at all that, amongst the various striker antics (like Star Trek-themed day) the strike itself is turning out to be a great networking event. Because, basically, when you have a lot of verbal people hanging around for hours at a time every day, they end up getting to know each other a lot better.

One of the hazards of being any kind of entrepreneur (and writers are basically entrepreneurs) is that it's very easy to get isolated. Especially when you have to turn out the next episode of a show that's already jumped the shark, like Desperate Housewives. ("Let's see, we've given Lynette cancer and had a tornado come out of nowhere. Wait, I've got it! We'll send Carlos to Thailand for a botched a sex-change operation!") Networking is one way to counteract this isolation. It helps people keep up on relevant information, forge connections, and brainstorm possibilities, and writers need it as much as anyone else.

You don't have to be a glamorous striking writer spending his days chatting up Valerie Harper (as my friend was doing last week) to be a good networker. Just spend some time accessing some of your weaker ties (people you don't know all that well or whom you used to know but have fallen out of touch with).

There's a misconception that you can't do much job-related networking in December, since people stop working, go off to wherever they came from, and in general spend their days in the swamp of holiday commercialism. But actually, December is a great time for networking. Whoever is left in town isn't really doing all that much work and the upcoming New Year has made people a bit more reflective of where life is taking them. If you manage to get in touch with them, they are probably available for conversation. Since the normal rhythms of professional life are off it's a good chance to mix things up a little bit.

Facebook can wait, people. And so can that shelf take-down memorandum. Get off your computer and get out there in the world and connect!

Hillary Clinton, misunderstood INTJ

2007-12-09T16:50:00.000-08:00

Hillary Clinton is an introvert. I'm quite sure about this. My best guess is that, in Myers-Briggs terms, she is an INTJ (details below). This explains a lot about how the world regards her and why the press seems to find her so problematic.

Let me start backwards. In today's New York Times, a lengthy article about Hillary Clinton's political persona ends by comparing Hillary and Bill at the eulogy of one of Hillary's best friends, Diane Blair. Hillary gave a great eulogy, but apparently it wasn't tearful enough. "It was left to Bill Clinton to bring the service to its emotional peak," the article concludes. "When he spoke of Mrs. Blair, Mr. Clinton wept. 'I felt about her as I have rarely felt about anyone,' he said. His wife, Diane Blair's best friend, held steady in the front row.'"

Presumably, what writer Mark Leibovich would like us to conclude is: "oooh, yet again Hillary is so cold and emotionally flat. Oooh, what a strange person she is."

What I concluded was, "yeah, big duh, Mark Leibovich. Hillary is an introverted thinker, and Bill is an extraverted feeler, and each was behaving in a style appropriate to his or her type."

According to the theory behind the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), each of us uses four different types of mental processes, each of which has two poles: introversion/extraversion, intuition/sensing, thinking/feeling and perceiving/judging. We have access to all of these functions, but we tend to prefer one of each pair. This theory is unprovable, but in my personal and work experience, it is valid.

Introversion/extraversion refer to where people get their energy. Extraverts get their energy from other people, the external world, and experiences. Introverts get their energy from themselves or their own space. Extraverts are often chatty, social and open; introverts are often quiet, reflective and contained. Introverts open up to their close friends; extraverts open up to everyone. Bill Clinton is clearly an extravert; I think Hillary is an introvert.

Since 75% of the population is extraverted, extraverts are considered normal. By comparison, introverts are considered a little weird ("why can't you just open up?"). (As I’ve written in The Creative Lawyer, law is an exception: the majority of lawyers are introverts.) Introverts often have to feign extraversion to succeed in the professional world; their natural style is often not valued. Much of the criticism of Hillary Clinton's authenticity is criticism of her introversion. She's basically criticized for being private and for being careful about her words; and then she's criticized for inauthenticity when she tries to act more extraverted and social.

The second Myers-Briggs function is intuition vs. sensing. Intuitives look for concepts, the big picture, and possibilities. Sensing types are more interested in facts, details and concrete reality. Hillary has some strong sensing skills but my guess that she, like Bill, is an intuitive abbreviated as "N").

The third Myers-Briggs function is thinking vs. feelings. Both of these are ways of thinking. Thinkers prefer to make decisions based on impartial, objective principles, whereas feelers prefer to make decisions based on strongly held personal values or the effect on other people. Thinkers tend to think logically; feelers tend to think associatively. Though Hillary talks a lot about her values, I think that she, like the vast majority of lawyers and virtually all the men running for president (with the possible exception of John Edwards), is a thinker. Bill is a feeler.

Around 60% of women are feelers, and around 60% of men are thinkers. This means that both Hillary and Bill are in the minority for their particular gender. This is where the press gets wigged out. The words commonly used to describe presidential presence are all thinker-ish: strong, clear-headed, tough, questioning, blah blah blah. So the press is constantly evaluating whether she's enough of a thinker to be president. At the same time, the press seems discomfited that Hillary is not more girly: they also want her to be compassionate, open, nuanced -- apparently she is supposed to cry at eulogies.

The final Myers-Briggs polarity is judging/perceiving. This refers to attitudes about closure. People with a preference for judging like to be scheduled, organized, and know where they stand; people with a preference for perceiving are more spontaneous and open-ended. Hillary is a J, Bill is a big P.

Conclusion: Hillary Clinton: INTJ. Bill Clinton: ENFP.

What's the point? Since Hillary is in the spotlight, more or less 24/7, people assume that everything she does has some core meaning that has implications for her potential presidency or her character. But sometimes Hillary is just

And now, eleven minutes of the mellifluous vocal stylings of Michael Melcher . . . . My ABA podcast has arrived!

2007-12-06T20:37:00.000-08:00

The ABA Publishing homepage has a podcast featuring ME, talking about my book, lawyers, and how intelligent people can attain work happiness. Click here to go to the home page, then just follow the directions to listen.

Special thanks goes to my high school speech and debate coach, Mr. John DeNike! All that articulateness is the direct result of those many thousands of hours of preparation back at Valencia High School. Hooray.

Ivanka Trump? Michael Melcher? What's the connection?

2007-11-10T08:37:00.000-08:00

A couple of months ago I sat behind Ivanka Trump on a flight from Newark to Hong Kong.

At the time, I didn't realize that the tallish blonde person in front of me was the daughter of The Donald. She seemed nice enough, pretty smart, a little chatty on the cellphone while we waited to depart, though no more so than the average contemporary flyer. I remember guessing that she either worked in finance or was a kind of high-end real-estate lady.

I only discovered her celebrity identity a day or so later. Click here for the continuing saga!

Why I am inspired by the lawyers of Pakistan

2007-11-08T08:45:00.000-08:00

My thoughts (and a cool photo), here.

In Which I Offer the Readers of the NYT a Good Exercise to Figure Out What to Do With Their Lives

2007-11-08T08:37:00.001-08:00

I'm a guest-blogger on Marci Alboher's Shifting Careers blog at the NYT.com. Check out the cool exercise.

How do you say studly? Perhaps "letter published in the Sunday NYT"

2007-11-05T13:00:00.000-08:00

The NYT published my letter to the editor in this week's Sunday edition. It turns out that when you are in the Sunday NYT you get more blog traffic and your amazon sales number goes way up! I briefly elbowed Judge Judy aside for the most-purchased legal practice book.

Meanwhile, in another part of the blogosphere...

2007-10-06T19:59:00.001-07:00

Check out my snazzy new book-related blog (which, ahem, tends to have most of the same posts as this one), The Creative Lawyer. And don't worry if you're not a lawyer––the fresh, punchy content is suitable to anyone interested in improving life and career! And who likes to travel and think.

P's Have More Fun

2007-10-06T08:33:00.000-07:00

Are you familiar with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator? It’s a personality assessment instrument that’s based on the theories of Karl Jung, and it has pretty much permeated the professional world. This is the instrument that measures you on the parameters of introvert/extravert, intuitive/sensing, feeling/thinking and perceiving/judging.

Read the rest here.

Create a Right-Brain File

2007-10-02T13:42:00.000-07:00

When people come to me to figure out what to do with the rest of their lives, they typically arrive with one of two mindsets. Either they have lots of ideas, and don’t know how to figure out which one they should pursue; or they don’t have any ideas at all, and want to get some.

One method that can help you, regardless of what category you are in, is to create a “Right-Brain File.”

A Right-Brain File is a way to collect data that you aren’t ready to process. It’s a way to let your subconscious do the work for you. A Right-Brain File is based on the premise that applying your analytical skills, alone, won’t get you the life you want. As I wrote in my recent book, The Creative Lawyer, when it comes to creating a great life, thinking is overrated. That’s where the Right-Brain File comes in. It’s a way of thinking without, well, thinking.

What you put into your Right-Brain File is anything that tickles your fancy. It could be an article, a photo, a travel brochure, an email, an overheard snatch of dialogue. My Right-Brain File consists mainly of articles, but that’s just me. What you put into your Right-Brain File might excite you, it might intrigue you, it might make you boil with envy, it might make you just say, “huh.” There’s something there, you’re just not sure what. And the key is: don’t think about it. Just put it in the file.

Later, once your file has grown, take a look at what you’ve collected. What do you see? Any patterns, inspirations, insights? What you have is a record of what your right brain—the intuitive, associative, non-logical part of you—has noticed. It’s been noticing things, even if you haven’t been able to put words around it. Indeed, sometimes avoiding putting words around your impulses is one of the best ways to let them develop.

Create a Right-Brain File, and see what your mind comes up with when it’s not thinking. Here’s what I put into my Right-Brain File yesterday morning.

What’s in yours?

Have you been upgraded to the Valley Wing (and not realize it)?

2007-09-16T17:15:00.001-07:00

When I was checking into the Shangri-La Hotel in Singapore a couple of weeks ago, I asked the front-desk person, “Is it possible to get a room with one king-size bed rather than two double beds?” I get kind of creeped out sleeping by myself in rooms with two beds.

He looked doubtful. But then after clicking on his computer for a few minutes, he announced that he could comply with my request and that I’d been upgraded to the Valley Wing.

“That’s nice,” I said, though the phrase “Valley Wing” meant nothing to me. Still, you gotta love the word “upgrade.”

My room in the Valley Wing was really nice. Extremely spacious and sort of classic-looking but brand new at the same time. The bathroom was divine. There were many interesting things to investigate, like the automatic blackout curtains and shoeshine kit.

Since I was spending a relatively large percentage of my earnings upgrading my airfare and hotel, I decided that economizing was in order. So, the next morning I made coffee in my room with the free coffee provided, and deferred eating until later. Internet access was free in the lobby, so I hung out for some time in the lovely gilded Valley Wing lobby checking up on things. Several times I was asked by the exquisitely coiffed lobby hostesses if I would like a coffee, cappuccino or tea, but I smilingly resisted their blandishments. I didn’t want to spend seven bucks for a cup of coffee after spending three hundred dollars a night on my room.

The second morning I splurged on the breakfast buffet, since felt it important to be well-nourished in order to perform several hours of workshops. I’ve seen a lot of breakfast buffets in my time, but nothing like what the Shangri-La provided. It really defies description. There were a lot of food choices, very artfully provided. It cost about forty bucks, but I felt it was a reasonable investment.

The fourth morning, as I checked email in the lobby, I was again asked if I would like something. My workshops done, I decided to treat myself with a cappuccino. The cappuccino came in a little Wedgwood cup, with a glass of water and a cookie on the side. Yummy! Afterwards, I asked for whatever I needed to sign.

“No, sir, there’s nothing to sign.” It turned out beverages were free in the lobby of the Valley Wing.

The fifth and final morning, since I was flying later in the day, I again went to the breakfast buffet. However, I wanted to be intentional about my spending. After the waiter asked for my room number, I asked, “Do you have an a la carte menu?”

“We do have an a la carte menu,” the elegantly dressed waiter said. “But you are staying in the Valley Wing and your breakfast is included. So you can have the buffet if you want. Either way.”

So there you have it. All week I had been resisting the offers and entreaties of the Shangri-La. “Not for me,” I’d thought, marveling at my self-control and financial focus. “I’m spending three hundred dollars a night and not a penny more!” Yet all along, the free, lovingly made beverages and buffets were mine for the taking. It just never occurred to me that such things were possible.

It’s easy to think that we are only going to get things in life if we struggle for them, and that the outside world is our opponent rather than our collaborator. But what if it’s more complex than that? What if we’ve already been upgraded to the Valley Wing? What if the world is waiting, in some way, to help and support us. Can we let ourselves see it?

What I learned from Madeleine L'Engle

2007-09-08T12:49:00.000-07:00

Here’s what I learned from reading the obituary of Madeline L’Engle, the author of A Wrinkle in Time, who recently passed away at age 88: she didn’t write this massively bestselling book until after she was 40. In fact, in her thirties her writing career was going so badly that she thought she might give it up. The novel itself was rejected 26 times before finding a publisher. How’s that for inspiration?

If you haven’t read A Wrinkle in Time, you have missed out on one of the great experiences of childhood. It is practically the awesomest book ever. So go out and get a copy!

I can still remember how I felt in fourth grade when Mrs. Thacher read our class a chapter each afternoon after lunch to help us cool down. (This was at Navajo Elementary in Scottsdale, Arizona; given the midday temperatures lunch recess resulted in my daily entering a state of heat exhaustion and borderline mental illness). As she read the novel, I was transported.

A Wrinkle in Time is a book that’s both intense and easy to read. It’s about a girl named Meg who steps through a tesseract – a wrinkle in time – to a parallel universe in order to find her missing father, who despite his PhD can’t save himself. Meg is accompanied on this journey by her eerie genius 6-year old brother Charles Wallace. They meet characters named Mrs. Who, Mrs. Whatsit and Mrs. Which, and find a planet run by an evil force where all the children creepily bounce balls with exactly the same rhythm. Lots of other stuff happens.

Now that I think about it, Meg’s journey is sort of a metaphor for career growth and transition. She’s plunged into uncertainty and weirdness, her parents can’t really help her, and she gradually discovers that she has talents she’s never really seen or valued. The whole journey is scary and dangerous but far better than living on the planet of people who bounce balls with exactly the same rhythm!

When asked in an interview how she came up with the idea for A Wrinkle in Time, L’Engle said, “I think that fantasy must possess the author and simply use him.” She then added, “I cannot possibly tell you how I came to write it. It was simply a book I had to write. I had no choice.”

When reading this quote I thought of myself. I thought of the time I have spent wondering why I’ve made the decisions I have, both in work and love – basically why am me, as I am, rather than a different version of me.

What if we thought about the ways life possesses us rather than always thinking about how we are supposed to possess it? In other words, what is sometimes life is in charge rather than us?

Focusing on what we can do in our lives – as they are now -- rather than endlessly wondering why we are here, or why we’re not somewhere else – opens up possibilities. Maybe you can write a book that goes into (literally) 69 printings. Or maybe you can just bounce your ball to your own personal rhythm.

How jet lag can improve your life

2007-09-01T21:26:00.000-07:00

I’ve popped over to Singapore to do some workshops for the National University of Singapore business school. With a 12-hour time difference, you can’t really fight jet lag – you just have to give into it. But jet lag isn’t all bad.

The mindful pleasures of ironing

What do you do when you are fully awake at 4:30 am, before all the lovely amenities of the Shangri-La Hotel have opened? I ironed my clothes. Slowly and carefully, since I had a lot of time to kill. First my suit and tie; then all my dress shirts; then my jeans. I lovingly attended to every ironing detail. And you know what? I felt really happy.

Mindfulness is being in the moment. “Now I am ironing,” the mindful mind observes. “Now I am turning the sleeves inside out because I once heard that’s what you are supposed to do. Now I am attending to the collar. I am doing these things rather than thinking about global warming, or whether I will forget my passport when I check out.”

Buddhism holds that the monkey mind is always part of ourselves—the monkey mind being the voice that constantly judges and raises points of dissatisfaction. The way to freedom is not to talk ourselves out of vexing questions, but to rise above them by attending to the moment. In this case, ironing.

New frontiers of exercise and community

After a big travel stint last year, I ended up with back pain, weird sleep patterns, and, let’s be honest, constipation. So I decided to go to a Bikram Yoga class since there is a Bikram studio in Singapore.

Normally when I think about going to a hot sweaty 90 minute yoga class, I mentally seesaw for several hours asking myself should I go, will I like it, is there enough time. But with jet lag, I had a lot of time as well as great urgency to do something constructive.

So I went, and it was awesome. “Say hello to Michael from New York, everybody,” the peppy instructor said. I sweated through my bad airplane juju energy, and felt great.

Time to be and time to plan

When your body clock is off, you don’t automatically fall into the normal work, socialize, check email routine of our lives. You have a fair number of hours when you are just hanging out.

So after a lapse of several months, I returned to journaling my Artist Way-inspired “morning pages.” I also spent a fair amount of time planning and replanning my day, to make sure I could do all the cool things that Singapore has to offer – taking advantage of delicious street food (which, in Singapore, is arranged in nice clean indoor food courts) and planning my trip to the Singapore Zoo’s night safari. Plus getting ready for my workshops. The end result was that I felt ready for my days, because I’d taken time just to reflect and anticipate, rather than just to jump in and bounce from activity to activity.

Jet lag can make you gorgeous!

You can curse jet lag or you can cheer it. Notwithstanding the great street food, I haven’t been all that hungry so I’ve eaten lightly. Plus I went to Bikram Yoga three times. So I’ve lost like five pounds. So now I’m coming back confident and trim rather than bloated and regretful. Hooray for jet lag!

Dare to be peppy!

2007-08-28T18:18:00.000-07:00

When I was in business school, my friend Polly and I decided to name ourselves the two peppiest people at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

We did this not because of our inherent Pollyanna natures or our uncritical admiration for all thing b-school; quite the opposite. We made this decision because we recognized we were in danger of falling under the sway of cynicism, and still had the clear vision to see that this would not be a good thing.

MBA students are very peppy. They are high-energy, can-do people. Compared with, say, law students, they focus on execution more and analysis less.

When we started business school, Polly and I felt different from the mass of b-school students, and one of the ways we felt different is that we were skeptical of jump-on-board group activities. We felt proud of our critical faculties. We understood the world. And its difficult complexities. And its iss-shoes. More than others, anyway.

But then we realized that critical faculties can come at a cost. We found ourselves holding back from what we were experiencing, and from what we were contributing.

So we decided we would be the two peppiest people at Stanford business school. We also decided that our most dreaded class, Cost Accounting, was actually our favorite class. “Are you ready to study for our favorite class?” one of us would ask. “Omigod, I can’t wait to get started on our favorite class!” the other would reply.

Sometimes it was difficult to fulfill our mission. Polly went on a study trip to Chile and Argentina with a group of b-school students. “Let me tell you,” she wrote. “It is quite a tall order to be the peppiest person amidst a group of people who are getting up at 6 to go jogging in downtown Santiago. Extreme levels of peppiness are in evidence.”

Other times, people were not so supportive of our peppiness. When we started something called The George Stephanopoulos Fan Club (this was in the early Clinton days), and created our own fanzine, Stephanoupouletter, just for fun and the prospect of fame, some of our classmates thought we were incredibly witty and creative fun, and others thought we were kind of weird. It sure opened us up, though, and we even got into People magazine.

Deciding you are going to be the peppiest person in your environment really does change the way it looks for you. You choose one path – positive energy – over another – detached analysis. You pull open the shades and let the light pour in, even if it might bleach out your expensive carpets.

In certain professions – law comes to mind – deciding you are going to be known to be peppy takes courage, since peppiness is not always a culturally smiled-on characteristic. But try it. It gives you options, and you might like it.

Achieving Career Happiness by Being Gay on the Inside

2007-08-09T16:43:00.000-07:00

One of my clients works for a big, fancy firm. It’s the kind of firm that people who went to Harvard go to if they want even more Harvard in their life.

This particular client has dreams besides being one of a thousand employees of a highly branded business, but he is not sure whether he will pursue those dreams. Setting off for the unknown involves risks and the benefits are uncertain.

Recently, he pondered aloud to me, “I wonder if the reason you’ve made so many career transitions is that you’re gay. I mean that in a good way. One of my siblings came out the closet recently and then completely changed her career. Once she made that big break from convention, other breakthroughs were possible.””

I nodded sagely, as I sometimes do. “You’re right,” I said. “Career change is probably easier if you are gay. A big part of coming out is recognizing that you are not going to get acceptance and approval from everyone, including in many instances your own family. So you develop a basic undertanding that what you truly want and need may be quite different from the world’s expectations of you. If you naturally expect a certain amount of rejection and befuddlement from the world, they don’t fase you as much when they happen.”

“In addition, coming out is a process of sorting out your adult self, and understanding how that’s different from the childhood image of what you thought you were going to be. When I was twelve years old, I thought that success would involve my becoming a lawyer, getting married and having kids, and being elected to the U.S. Senate. When I realized that some of those things were not going to happen in the way I imagined, it freed me to envision how all the other aspects might be different too. Accepting that you can’t be like everyone, and may not even have the same options, can be very freeing.”

“Conversely,” I added, “if you fit in too easily, you may never explore who you really are beneath the acceptable exterior.”

My client nodded, somewhat sadly, silently reflecting on the ways that he is like many others in the particular demimonde of affluent professional New York—married, white, earning a good salary, working for the well-branded company. And therefore, somewhat trapped by expectations.

“But don’t worry,” I assured him. “You can be gay on the inside.”

“Really?” he said brightly. “That makes me feel much better about everything.”

Anyone can be gay on the inside. It just requires three things: (1) consider that you might be different from the way people think you are; (2) consider that you might be different from the way you think you are supposed to be; (3) be willing to accept that other people may disapprove of your choices, and realize that their approval doesn’t matter all that much anyway.

Get past those things, and you can start thinking about what you really need to be in order to be your true self.

Extraverts can be great writers, too

2007-06-23T17:27:00.000-07:00

People know me as an extraverted person. I get energized by being around people and doing things in the world. When I think of my favorite foreign trips, I inevitably imagine myself walking in large exotic public spaces surrounded by throngs of people. Once in college I talked for eight hours in one day. You get the picture.

Because my extraversion has always been so clear, I have often wondered whether I am the right kind of person to be a writer. Writing usually happens when you are alone. It requires a lot of concentration. It takes a long time to get the words down, and then to edit them into the right shape. You can talk over ideas but at some point, you need solitude. Lots of it.

While introverts are 25% of the population, I am pretty sure that a significant majority of are introverts. Introverts’ personalities are streamlined for the process of writing in the same way that super-studly Olympic champion Michael Phelps’s body is streamlined for the process of swimming.

Introverts rarely have resistance to the notion of spending time thinking by themselves or working by themselves. For instance, my partner, who is a law professor, is an introvert. He spends his days happily working on legal scholarship. Ten hours after turning on his computer he is still at his desk, the only signs of physical movement an expanding set of empty coffee cups.

That is just not me! I can sit still for maybe a couple of hours, max. And even then I need to indulge in various kinds of self-bribery, most of which involve food.

And yet—my whole entire life I have been drawn toward writing. As a 12-year old in California, I typed 150 pages of a novel (it was about a 12-year old character named “Michael Melcher” who lived in a townhouse in New York City and went to a special school for millionaires’ children). I’ve continued writing, on both serious and wacky topics, ever since. Several years ago I wrote a novel with three other people (about a student prostitution ring at Harvard), and I just wrote a self-help and career-management book for lawyers (which is … a self-help and career-management book for lawyers). Plus articles, travel emails, crazed letters to the editor . .. the whole nine yards.

My urge to write has persisted. Writing is not the thing that makes me most comfortable, but fulfillment and excitement are rarely about comfort. When I do it, writing makes me very happy in a very unique way.

So now, instead of wasting any time wondering whether writing is really me, I focus on creating the workarounds that enable me to write—I have lots of clever tricks (more on those, later).

All this kinda makes me wonder how many of us put off pursuing things that excite us because they don’t seem to fit. Instead of just making them fit.

There are a lot of masterpieces of all kinds waiting to be created. What would it be like to make them happen, rather than pondering the reasons you might not be able to?

Hassle me, please!

2007-06-12T09:10:00.000-07:00

My friend Gretchen Rubin just turned me on to a new site, brilliant in its power and simplicity!

It's called "Hassle Me" and, basically, it bugs you at particular intervals to do things, like go to the gym, pet the dog, or take a moment to get out of your head and enjoy life. What I love about the idea is that it's a way to build in MINDFULNESS–at those prearranged moments when you are being bugged by the reminder, you remember what it is you are trying to focus on.

This is basically part of what I do for my clients, albeit in a psychic, non-computer way. They internalize the Michael Melcher voice who occasionally peeps up in their unconscious, "oh, I need to use my positioning statement" and "oh, I need to call person I've been trying to reach" and "oh, Michael Melcher says I'm allowed to treat myself to something fun when I do something that's hard so I'm going to buy flowers for myself and also get a massage and also have chocolate."

I will let you know how it goes. I'm going to focus on "eat fresh fruits and vegetables" which apparently is the key to all happiness.

Buddha on the Subway

2007-06-07T10:15:00.000-07:00

This morning, when I was talking with a friend about life stuff, I remembered an exercise from a self-help book I once read.

Try going through your day imagining that everyone you run into is more enlightened than you. This means: the post office clerk, your boss, your dog, the checkout girl chewing gum, the delivery boy, your kid, your spouse or partner, your assistant, the scary teenagers shouting on the subway. Et cetera.

Sound hard? Actually, it’s easy. It frees you from the burden of judgment. If you regard other people as more enlightened than yourself, you’re accepting that you don’t have all the answers, and don’t have to.

Instead of getting annoyed at the person who stands directly in front of the subway doors, you get curious about him—because he’s more enlightened than you are. You start wondering about his thoughts, interests, gifts, what he’s struggled with, what he knows, who he loves, who loves him. In a weird way, through this kind of observation, you join with the world, rather than detaching yourself from it.

Reducing my carbon footprint, and increasing LUV

2007-05-03T21:53:00.000-07:00

On a recent trip to San Francisco, I decided not to rent a car and instead to rely on public transportation. I did this partly because I think the world is coming to an end due to global warming, and partly because I'm not all that into cars. I like trains and subways.

I took the BART system from SFO to the city, and then took the toy-like MUNI tram to the Sunset area of the city, where I was staying.

As soon as I rolled my bag over to the airport BART station, I felt a spring in my step. My mind felt engaged. I had to figure out the ticket machines, analyze the route map, contemplate my next moves. I noticed the people around me. I wondered where they were from, and where they were going.

Since instant mobility was not possible, I spent the afternoon hanging out in my host's neighborhood, which is largely Chinese. I had dumplings and bubble tea. Both were delicious.

That evening, I took the toy MUNI train again for a mile or so to Cole Valley to have dinner with a friend. He doesn't have a car, either, and takes the Googlemobile to work every day.

The next three mornings, I took the toy MUNI train to Embarcadero Center. In previous visits, going to the Embarcadero had always been a hell-on-wheels experience for me as I attempted to navigate the counterintutively triangulated streets of downtown San Francisco and find parking. This time is was easy and fun.

The morning rush consisted of lots of folks in their twenties doing their early-career-experience thing. They were sipping coffee, listening to iPods and reading books like "David Copperfield." It was refreshing to be with fresh people.

A couple days into the trip, I realized that I was loving San Francisco. This is a big deal for me, because previously I never--confession here--liked San Francisco all that much. I think this is because I had certain semi-traumatic experiences in the area over the years that were difficult to dislodge from my system, even years after the fact. I appreciated what San Francisco represented, I just couldn't get into it.

Freed from automobile imprisonment, however, I was able to easily construct a new reality. I rewired my San Francisco brain. Without a car to tempt to hop around the city (to places where I would never be able to park), I focused on where I was, and I connected to the people around me.

Spring wisdom

2007-04-05T20:42:00.000-07:00

The next week or so is a magical time in New York. Why? Because nature renews herself.

It may come as a surprise to certain people (such as my father) that I, Michael Melcher, consummate urbanite, often turn my thoughts to nature. That I find inspiration, joy and peace from flowers and birds and trees and butterflies and squirrels. But I do!

The other day I was in the park (and when I say "park" I mean ultra-glamorous Central Park), observing the birds a-twittering, and I shouted out (inwardly), "You made it! You all made it through! You're all alive!" 'Cause I become concerned what happens to nature's creatures when it's, like 70 degrees in January and then 5 degrees in March.

(I also get excited when sparrows make lots of racket when the evil red-tail hawk comes snooping around for food. "Hide, you guys!" I scream (inwardly) to the birds and squirrels and even rats, which they all seem to do very effectively.)

Here's why New York is even more special than normal this week. Because for the next few days, all the trees look wintery. Their branches are bare. Not a lot is going on. Even though you know that spring is here, if you look at any particular tree you can't quite picture how it's all going to transform into lushness and vitality.

But within a week that's exactly what's going to happen. Spring will be everywhere! Just like that. Growth and renewal coming out of nowhere, really.

All this happens to us, too. But since we're not trees or daffodils, it takes different forms. With my clients (all of whom are extremely attractive, by the way), I talk a lot about "cocooning," a phrase coined by Fredric Hudson.

Cocooning is kind of like winter. It's a period of internal growth. You can't see it. It might not feel like growth at all. Cocooning happens when something else has ended. A job. A relationship. A sense of who you are. A whatever. You know how it feels. You wake up and think, "Geez, I'm 35, what the hell happened?" In our superglamorous, high-octane, Sex and the City city, cocooning can be hard, because everyone is out there seems to be makin' it.

But cocooning is leading to something. It doesn't look like growth, but it is growth. And one day, spring emerges. The bare branches fill up with green, and you wake up and feel alive, hopeful, excited and lush again. And maybe luscious. That too.

Check out this week's natural transfiguration. And get excited about the one that will assuredly happen to you.

He's baaaaaaaacccckkkk!!!!

2007-04-01T08:23:00.000-07:00

Hey, guess what? I wrote my whole entire book. Done! More or less. Just a few revisions and it's off to the presses. And my editor LUVS it. So stay tuned for a late summer book publication, jet-setting travel and parties with celebrities. Or something like that.

Insights about ME

Somewhat to my surprise, I really enjoyed writing this book. And I'm referring specifically to the final four weeks or so when I was really cranking things out. There were two feelings in particular that I experienced.

First, was the realization that I CAN STILL DO IT! I was capable of the old college try, or in my case, the old high school try. I was engaged, focused and able to manage my energies (example: periodically taking breaks to watch SuperNanny.) I have to say, I had sort of unconsciously concluded that over the years I had become a lazy person. You know, having lots of interests but not really able to pull it together. That was all false. It turns out that when I am really into something the sky is the limit!

The other thing I realized is that it is really a cool thing to write a whole, entire book. Because it's an expression of ME! And, given my subject matter (all of my coaching theories and experiences, adapted for a lawyerly audience), it was something that I could only do because of the choices that I've made over the past decade or so. Let me tell you, write a book and instantly your alumni-magazine anxiety falls away.

Insights about writing, and life in general

As for the writing of books, here are two other things I've learned that may be of interest to all you would-be authors.

The first is that if you put in some work every day, eventually it gets done. Strange how that works. Doing beats thinking (and it certainly beats feeling).

The second is that there's a RIGHT TIME for certain things. I first had the idea for The Creative Lawyer six years ago, and periodically over the past six years would harangue myself to GET MOVING ALREADY! But actually, this was the ideal time to write it, since I actually know what I'm talking about and have a platform from which to market what I've written.

This makes me think about other goals I have (e.g. having a kid, running for public office, developing six-pack abs) and wonder, "hey, maybe I don't have to these things right now. Maybe I can do them LATER."

p.s. You regular readers -- make some comments already!

A great new career book -- "One Person/Multiple Careers"

2007-02-22T06:37:00.000-08:00

In the early years of my career, I felt I had a good resume. It was pretty cool and it all made sense. And the one day—all hell broke loose! For I had added one experience too many and things didn’t fit into any clearly defined box.

When people asked me what I did, or what I aspired to do, it was hard to give a straight answer. “It depends,” would have been the correct one. A lawyer? A writer? An entrepreneur? An unemployed person? A former this? An aspiring that?

I wasn’t sure which identity people wanted to hear about, and I wasn’t sure which identity was really me. And I wasn’t sure whether random experiences—my experiment with stand-up comedy and open-mike singing, my gigs writing on philanthropic topics—counted as a whole identity.

Part of me thought, "Why do I have to be some dumb label, anyway?" And part me thought, "What I really need is a smart, cool label that can magically encapsulate all the fabulosity that is Michael F. Melcher!"

If any of this rings a bell—if you have gone shopping for boxes to put yourself in and discovered that the only ones available are too small, too flimsy or are still using that tiresome 1980s color scheme of mauve and grey, then I’ve got the book for you!!! It’s called “One Person/Multiple Careers,” and it’s by Marci Alboher, a lawyer turned author/speaker/writing coach. It’s hot off the presses.

You’ll note the slashes in her current title. “Slashes” is what the book is all about.

Marci shows that the slash effect has gone way, way beyond the old standbys of actor/waiter and writer/[tedious day job]. Her book is filled with stories of really interesting, cool slashes: a lawyer/minister, a psychiatrist/violinmaker, an art consultant/Pilates instructor, a rabbi/stand-up comic, along with the tale of a very charming and handsome life coach to the stars based in New York.

More to the point, the book explains very clearly how having a slash career isn’t something to manage, or explain away. It’s something to ASPIRE TO, and she shows you the methods for making it work. This is the greatest contribution that this highly readable book makes. That slashing is part of good living.

As Marci says in the epilogue, “After all, who can answer the question ‘what do you do?’ with a singular response? And who would want to?”

My imprisonment … and my impending freedom

2007-02-18T09:00:00.000-08:00

I’m in prison. Writing prison! My manuscript for “The Creative Lawyer” is due to my editor at ABA Press on February 28, which gives me 10 more days! My friend Gretchen Rubin says that writing is easy if you just pretend you are in prison. It kind of works.

I am being very focused. But not so focused that I am not enjoying the occasional short distraction, like writing this.

Here’s something I didn’t expect about writing this book. I don’t feel any anxiety about it. I am quite confident that it will be good. (I wouldn’t say it’s good now, but it will be.)

I first had this idea six years ago. I was in a sticky nightclub in Paris and I thought, “I should write a self-help book for lawyers, and I will call it 'The Creative Lawyer'." In the interceding years, I would occasionally work on it, but not really. Interestingly, it seems clear that now is the right time to write it. I might have constructed a self-help book for lawyers back then, but I would have been making it up. Now I know what I’m talking about. Plus, I’m ready to be famous.

I’ve also had a feeling, for a few years now, that a major purpose of this part of my life is to write this book—I can’t go forward to other things until I do.

I therefore perceive a great expanse of freedom awaiting me! Because carrying around an unfinished mission really does stop you from doing other things. I’ll be free to do whatever—build a school in the third world, join a presidential campaign, make money the way my classmates from business school do, write another book, have a baby, declutter my home, perhaps all of the above.

Thus is the state of my consciousness on this Sunday morning. Okay, back to the book!

super-inspirational story of the day

2007-02-14T18:15:00.000-08:00

I wanted to post an obituary from today's New York Times, about someone I'd never heard of who did something that could change the course of history for the better.

Check it out!

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/14/science/14skovmand.html?ex=1329109200&en=a79e0383d56eddc1&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Message in Milan

2007-02-04T08:26:00.000-08:00

In which I find myself in Milan

Recently, I was in Milan doing some workshops (because that’s the kind of glamorous thing that I do) on networking (it turns out that all the world is interested in networking) for the Bocconi School of Management’s MBA program. I had been quite nervous before going, because this was a new client and there’s always a question of how well things I do here adapt to international audiences, even though most U.S. audiences are themselves quite international.

I have traveled overseas on business before a few times, but mostly under the name and protection of big institutions – the foreign service, Davis Polk, etc. Mostly I’ve just traveled for pleasure. This time, it was me qua entrepreneur, trying to make money and deliver a service, as opposed to me qua tourist, just spending my dollars and being friendly. Going overseas in an entrepreneurial capacity is simultaneously thrilling and scary. I felt exposed. What if the carbinieri locked me up for some unknown tax code violation? What if the PowerPoints didn't work? What if I felt unattractive next to all those skinny Italian guys on Vespas?

My story, heard two different ways

As it turned out, the workshops were really fun and successful. Later, some of the Italian MBA students took me out to lunch. One of them asked me to explain my career progression, which had been hinted at in the bio attached to their handouts.

I briefly went over the story – foreign service, more school, law firm, internet start-up, unemployment, coaching. I actually left out several pieces – the first post-college internship I had in investment banking, my year in consulting, the stupid hedge fund, attempts to make it as a screenwriter, philanthropy consulting projects, my SAT prep business, temp jobs. As I jogged through my past (both what I told them and what I edited out), I felt that awkwardness you sometimes feels when questioning judgment in telling people things that might give them a negative opinion about you—like when they ask you how you are and you start going on too long about a bad relationship or a skin disorder.

The students listened very intently. A student named Tommaso said, “I wish I had that freedom. We can’t do that in Italy. Here it’s very hard to do anything besides the one thing you are trained for. People don’t accept your changing fields so most people don’t even try. I would like to be able to try a lot of different things, as you have.”

Well. That made me think.

The part I forget to think about

You see, I don’t often think about the freedom inherent in my choices. On several things I have not made it to the finish line (like being a rich entrepreneur, or a successful screenwriter) but no one has stopped me from taking the first step. Or the second, or the third. I can look back and see the cost of trying new things. But I never really ask myself, “how much would I pay for the ability to make changes, if I didn’t have it?”

Here in competitive New York City, it’s easy to focus on the outcome of everything. We always think, “what result did I get?” I don’t think we ponder as often the value of the process. Do I want a life in which I get a particular result? Or do I want a life in which I’m able to live fully—which means being able to sample a lot of what life makes available?

Change is scary (even when it’s just furniture)!

2007-01-19T18:59:00.000-08:00

My apartment, myself

My apartment is an enduring metaphor for my mental state. It’s large (for New York), has good bones, is darker than I wish, is nonetheless the subject of much envy, and is filled with stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff. After 12 years, so much stuff. Oy.

This is one aspect of adulthood that I had no inkling of as a child. That as you grow older, you accumulate, and not in a good way.

One way childhood was easier than adulthood

I was not burdened much by expectations as a kid. I was excited about the future because, well, there seemed to be lots of exciting things out there. I wasn’t sure how far away from me they were, but I knew that they would be cool.

Perhaps as a result, I was quite the doer. I got a paper route, went to debate camp, played the piano, listened to language tapes in my sleep, tried out for the school musical, got a job at a donut shop. Basically, I set goals and went after them, without quite thinking of things in those terms. Of course, these energies also yielded some semi-disastrous results—water polo comes to mind—but once I was out of them I barely gave them a second thought.

So imagine my surprise that as an adult I find myself spending so much time reflecting, looking back, comparing, and in general evaluating my present and future in terms of my past. We’re talking baggage here. Am I off the mark in saying that one of the biggest challenges of adulthood is being fresh?

It’s hard to ignore what we have experienced, or the emotions to which we’ve become habituated. Changing my life is like rearranging my apartment—I have some ideas but it’s so easy to get bogged down in the stuff.

My life as seen through bookshelves

A couple of years ago, I hired someone named Maxwell Gillingham Ryan, who runs www.apartmenttherapy.com , to come and do a consultation. It was super-interesting (this is where I got the phrase “good bones”). Among other things, he noted that my apartment’s waistline was inconsistent mostly due to two towering bookcases in our living room. These bookcases I originally purchased from Gothic Custom Craft, a sort of cheapo furniture chain here in New York. I painstakingly assembled them myself. Shortly thereafter I decided I hated them. One of them is pictured above. It looks innocent, but don't be fooled.

Two years later, I have finally taken up Mr. Gillingham-Ryan’s suggestion that we install a lower, wall-length bookshelf instead—one at proper room waistline level. Aiding in my effort is Mr. Luis Calvo, the brilliant handyman and furniture constructor who is the father of a student I helped with her college applications several years ago. It turns out that spending part of each morning at Starbucks in December 2001 helping Sulay with her 13 college applications was a fine investment on my part.

Feelings about furniture

I was prepared to be all excited but what I am experiencing is anxiety. Anxiety about whether it will look good, anxiety about how we are going to get rid of these behemoth bookshelves, anxiety about whether our dogs are feeling anxious about hammering sounds, anxiety about the fact that whenever you lift up a board in our 1928 building or punch a hole in the wall you realize that the entire building is basically filled with rubble

But basically, my anxiety comes from change itself. I’m taking a step to making my life different. But it’s kind of messy and I don’t have any certainty what it will be what I want. As a kid, I didn’t have an overstuffed albeit glamorous apartment, so it was easy to move forward. But now I do. So change is more complex. It requires me to get rid of my stuff, which is hard. And if I am so weirded out just by furniture and dusty books, no wonder bigger goals can be daunting to achieve. While one is undergoing a change process, it doesn’t always look or feel so good.

I’m moving forward, though. I’ll let you know how it comes out.

Everyone Can Be a New Yorker in 2007!

2007-01-01T17:13:00.000-08:00

Will the real New Yorker please stand up?

On the morning of New Years Eve as I was waiting in line at a Starbucks in midtown, I saw a fit, middle-aged woman with puffy red hair carefully unwrap her long coat to reveal an ensemble consisting of knee-length black boots, a brown long-sleeved top and pumpkin-colored walking shorts. And it looked good!

“Love the shorts,” I told her. “They work!”

“D’you think so?” she asked, in a friendly British accent. Her interracial family beamed in the background. “I just gawt them today. I felt that this is what New York City on New Year’s Eve is all about!”

“It is what New York is all about,” I concurred. “Sometimes the best New Yorkers are the ones from somewhere else!”

I, myself, am a born New Yorker, even though I didn’t get here until I was 31. You see, New York-ism is a state of mind that anyone can adopt. You just gotta have the attitude to make it all happen! If you live out in Kent, or Scottsdale, or Anaheim, or Charlotte or Skokie or Dallas or wherever, you might actually be in your core a glamorous New Yorker.

A core New Yorker skill: healthy skepticism

One New Yorker skill is having the attitude to make it all happen. Another is having just the right type of skepticism.

My partner, the famous professor Jason Mazzone, is a bit of a skeptic. Toss some interesting trivia his way, say about how South Bronx is the hot new property market or how you might have prostate cancer because you pee a lot, and you are likely to get a “hmmm,” kind of response. Prof. Mazzone doesn’t automatically believe everything he hears. Though from Tasmania, he is also a born New Yorker.

Unleashing your inner skeptic can be good for you. It's your best resource against the cavalcade of self-doubting, depressive, cranky, whiny thoughts that form much of our inner lives. Even here in glamorous New York.

A breakthrough at Bikram

Recently, I was taking a Bikram Yoga class, as part of a revisiting of various physical fitness regiments I’ve tried over the years. (Long-time Michael Melcher observers will recall that my Bikram period stretched from 2000 to approximately 2003.) Anyhow, I was in the hot Bikram class, wearing my bathing suit staring at myself in the mirror (in Bikram you are instructed to stare into the mirror for the entire class), and I thought, “Oh my God. Look at that bloated, pasty person . . . who happens to be ME.” My bathing suit looked not edgy, but dodgy. My bod looked not studly but stuffed-ly. My hair was a mess. The dark clouds of self-loathing gathered round me.

And then, for no particular reason, I heard myself say to myself, “No, that’s not true.” I listened, entranced, as the voice went on.

“You don’t look like shit," it said. "You look fine. And, hello? The whole reason you’re here is because you are acting in a proactive, positive way. If you did this every day of your life you’d be worthy of the cover of Men’s Health. Take some credit. So, Inner Critic, just shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

My Inner Skeptic had emerged from unknown parts to take out my Inner Critic. And I felt great!

What your Inner Skeptic can do for you

Since that breakthrough moment, I’ve tried calling on my Inner Skeptic at frequent intervals. Whenever I feel kind of .... disturbed, I'll ask Inner Skeptic what he thinks.

Inner Skeptic favors phrases like, “that’s not really true.” And, “that sounds like a big generalization.” And, “that person is not really credible.” Inner Skeptic sounds very convincing when raising these quite reasonable objections.

It turns out that Inner Skeptic is useful not just for promoting positive body image, but also for dealing with the cranky pessimism that’s become our normal mode of discourse. You know, the kind of "the world is awful blah blah blah" that's not actually accompanied by any useful action. Inner Skeptic doesn't think that things are always peachy (he's a skeptic, after all)--but he's not impressed by ill-formed generalizations.

So when you feel down, or put-upon, or self-loathing, or when the conversation around you seems inordinately negative, invite your Inner Skeptic to intercede on your behalf. Be a New Yorker and love it!

Less is more? More is more? Which is it?

2006-12-02T06:13:00.000-08:00

A trumpet call please!

Hey, gang, guess what I just did? I just wrote 50,000 words on my hot new novel, Manhattan Husbands—all during the month of November, as part of National Novel Writing Month (www.NaNoWriMo.org). And during this very same time I was also beavering away at my long-awaited self-help book for lawyers, The Creative Lawyer.

Cool, huh? I’m just alive with energy and focus and what’s up with that? Sure, there’s a bit of cheating (repackaging old worksheets, finding old entries from my Julia Cameron-style “Morning Pages” to repurpose as plot) but that’s okay because the whole key in writing is just to crank that s**t out! My days have an easily understood core purpose. I just think, using an internal tone of voice most commonly associated with the Robot on Lost in Space: “Word count too low. Must write more.”

More is more!

A quick trip down memory lane

But there have been times in my life when less is more. In 2001, for instance.

During the bleak year things were not so great with my life. My internet company had collapsed after a tension-filled death spiral, my legal career was drifting ever further behind me, I was paying my mortgage on credit cards, and I had no ideas left in my head. Nothing! My big dreams—I’d already pursued them without significant results other than the depletion of my savings and the hobbling of my self-esteem.

Mind you, I did have goals at this time: I wanted to get a job in a foundation or nonprofit organization. I wanted to work out more. You know, the usual. But I didn’t experience much positive feedback and I found it difficult to pursue anything consistently. I frequently felt listless, unhappy and burdened with the profound sense of missing the boat. And then our beloved dog Astra died of kidney failure when she was only three and a half. I spent much of the year in a dark, empty place.

Periodically, I would vow to give things the old college try. “I am Michael Melcher!” I proclaimed to myself on multiple occasions. “I get things done! I have great ambitions!! When life gives me lemons I make lemonade!!!” Etc. So I’d wake up, push myself to go to the gym, make my balanced breakfast, write down my list of people to network with, make calls, send emails. This effort would typically last about a day and a half. And then I would find myself lying on my bed at three in the afternoon, letting the answering machine pick up calls.

Long story short, I was not ready to launch my big new thing. It wasn’t just that the world refused to beat a path to my door on the Upper West Side. I was going through internal change as well. I wanted to be out in the world, making it. But something inside me was slowing me down, necessarily. I wanted to get back on the ladder to success. But something was holding me back until I was in a position to find the right ladder.

Cocooning happens

I’ve seen this phenomenon in lots of clients and friends over the years—it’s the cocooning process. There are times when the thing we need to do isn’t to assemble the troops and march out to victory. There are times when we, instead, need to slow down, regroup, focus inward rather than outward, and let growth happen without deciding ahead of time what form it will take.

During my cocooning time, it was hard to imagine that a time would come when I’d wake up filled with a sense of purpose again. But guess what? It came.

Happiness is not always logical

2006-11-12T10:55:00.000-08:00

Being in the happiness business, I have devoted a fairly large chunk of my life to the task of decoding how to be happy. In career, in relationships, in one's heart, wherever. Whence cometh happiness, after all? Does happiness come from working through tough issues in your primary relationships? Or does it come from doing 45 minutes of cardio each day? Does happiness come from letting go of career expectations and flowing along with the universe? Or does it come from sticking to goals long enough for them to bear fruit? It's an exhausting optimization problem. Does happiness come from starting sentences with "I" (as in "I feel") rather than "you" (as in "you suck")? Or does it come from finding new friends?

There's happiness that you attempt to lure into your life. And then there's the happiness that shows up unexpected, a loud, upbeat out-of-towner who drops an overstuffed duffle bag in your front hallway, slaps you hard on the back, and bellows, "Let's go to Ollie's! I'm starving. And don't forget to set the DVR for 'Lost'." This is what I experienced last week, when my personal happiness index ZOOMED up significantly.

It seems clear there were two specific reasons for this:
(1) I started using my "GoLight" for 30 minutes each morning
(2) The Democrats won the elections.

Reason one: my GoLight.

A year ago, I ordered a so-called "light box" from an online company. I have not slept all that well for years (not badly, but just not all that well, I know, it's kind of sad). I bought my GoLight having tried somewhat more mainstream approaches to improving sleep, such as exercise, therapy and cutting down on caffeine. I put on my GoLight around 7 pm, mood improved and I seemed to get a second wind in the evenings. It worked, sort of but not hugely, and then I stopped using it. Recently, I gave the GoLight another go after a fit of astounding irritability that I experienced following my return from a business trip to Raleigh/Durham, Hong Kong and Los Angeles. Only this time I changed some of my answers to the online test and was instructed to use the GoLight in the morning, not the evening. Within a day or two I started falling asleep with ease. And sleeping better. This has continued for a solid two weeks now. Plus it's cheery to look into a blue light as I eat my breakfast.

Reason two: the elections

Did half the country just have a huge exhale of relief? It sure feels like it, judging from the letters to the New York Times. There's just something about not feeling that your country is sliding endlessly downward into insanity, intolerance and environmental collapse that cheers one up. For the first time in years, I don't feel a sense of dread when I pass a blaring television at the gym or at the airport. Apparently, this persistent low-level unease I've experienced for years was based on something--I was depressed about the state of the world! And now I have hope. Elation would not be too strong a word.

I compare these instant improvements to the thousands of hours I've spent over the years pondering, basically, what kinds of adjustments I should make in my thinking or behavior to be happier.

Sometimes, it seems, happiness just happens.

Book deal!

2006-11-02T06:00:00.000-08:00

Well, guess what? I have a book deal. "The Creative Lawyer," my self-help book for lawyers, the one I've been talking about for like five years, is going to be published by ABA Press. So now I have to write the thing.

I'd almost forgotten all about it. Well, not really. But, having experienced interest-then-rejection many times, I had grown kind of sick of the topic. Amazingly, however, once the contract process was underway, I rediscovered all my pent-up interest in the topic. I'm into it!

The advantage of writing the book five years after I got the idea is that now, having worked as a coach with hundreds and hundreds of people, I am very confident that I know what I'm doing. So I expect brilliant and witty ideas to flow effortlessly from my mind onto the page. And if they doesn't, I have all kinds of tricks up my sleeve to force myself into submission. Come February 28, it'll be done!

Gretchen's Happiness Project

2006-11-02T05:57:00.000-08:00

Check out my friend Gretchen Rubin's blog, www.happiness-project.com. She's spending a year attempting to follow every nostrum about how to be happy, from a variety of sources.

Ugly Betty and the Amazing Right-Brain File

2006-09-28T06:20:00.000-07:00

My television issues

Those of you who know me well are aware that I have a bit of an a-tee-tude about television. Aside from Project Runway, I'm not really into it, have a pronounced aversion to legal and crime dramas (or "legal" and "crime" dramas as I think of them), and really loathe CNN and other pseudo-"news" programs, especially when I they are broadcast at top volume in airports to crowds of slack-jawed, gullible people. Hmm, I guess that's a lot of a-tee-tude.

But today I am changing. I am opening up the dikes to mass media. I'm letting pop culture flow into my Upper West Side classic-five. Because it's the premier of Ugly Betty!

Ugly Betty rules!

Ugly Betty is a show with America Ferrera (last seen in Real Women Have Curves, Spanglish and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants .... yes, I saw it) playing a dorkster from Queens named Betty, who works in a Vogue-type place in Manhattan. Come to think of it, this Devil Wears Prada business is EVERYWHERE this year. And I just got back from Milan -- more on that later. Coincidence? I think not.

Ugly Betty is based on a fabulously successful Colombian telenovela called Yo Soy Betty La Fea and I can't wait for it to get started. There's a great photo of the actress in today's New York Times on the front page of the arts section, where she is undergoing a beauty treatment, Betty La Fea style -- she's wearing plastic-framed glasses, gigantic curlers in her hair and a flowery red and pink robe that looks like it's made of oilcloth. The walls of the salon are hospital green and in the background a red teddy bear decorates the counter among stacks of combs, brushes and vials of nail polish. Love it!

(Ignore, however, the pointless review by tiresome film critic Virginia Heffernan. A sample sentence: "Commedia characterization on pseudorealist television can be exhausting: just as not every rich person has to wear an ascot, not every provincial girl has to dress like a mental patient." Just give it a rest, girl!)

Into the Right-Brain File

This is the kind of article that goes RIGHT IN my right-brain file. What's a right-brain file, you ask? A right-brain file is a file of stuff that for whatever reason triggers your interest. In anything. It could be a news event, an article about a person, an ad for something, a travel brochure, an announcement of a lecture, some barely legible scrawled note you made after a revealing dream, whatever.

Building a right-brain file is a great way to figure out what you really want to do with your life, now or in the future. Creating a right-brain file is based on the truth that finding your true interests is rarely a logical process. Thinking about things harder rarely works. And insights rarely come announced as such. As Herminia Ibarra writes in her must-read book, Working Identity, many visions start out as a tingle, an inkling, a wondering, a twinge of interest. Not as fully cooked, or fully convincing, ideas. The right-brain file is a great way to let these various idea-ettes develop at their own speed.

The trick is to cut out the article (or whatever), toss it in the file, and NOT think about it. That's it. You do the analysis later. At some point, you can go back, sift through, and ask yourself, "what does all this say about me?" It's like making compost. You throw in a bunch of stuff, wait a few months, and then one day your kitchen scraps have been magically transformed into something fertile.

Today, a bonanza of right-brain inspiration!

I am motivated to write this post today because today the first arts page of the New York Times has THREE articles that ALL must go into my own personal right-brain file. One is the aforesaid mention (with glam photo) from Ugly Betty. The second is an article about how Sacha Baron Cohen's new movie about Barot the purported Kazakh is playing in Kazakhstan. The third is a story about Shondra Rhimes, the show runner for Grey's Anatomy. (Another show that makes it through my a-tee-tude, anti-TV screen.)

What do all these things mean? Who knows? Tossing the articles into the right-brain file is all the work I need to do today. Besides watching the premier of Ugly Betty!

Relaxing around the home, Michael Melcher-style

2006-09-24T12:35:00.000-07:00

Greetings, loyal audience,

I am not the best person for relaxing. I'm a high-energy kind of guy.

Most normal relaxation-type activities don't really work for me--picnics, watching TV, watching brooks babble by. With time on my hands, I often feel a little panicky. (Or, as my family insistently describes it, "nervous." "You're so nervous," they declare, everytime I shlep across the country to visit one of them. "Why are you always so nervous?")

Mind you, this doesn't mean that I am actually productive all the time. Quite the opposite. It means that during my occasional downtime, I engage in a lot of low-level, completely useless, Hamlet thinking. "Should I go to the movie or do the laundry?" "Should I go the gym or rearrange my closets." "Should I call someone? But who?" I can go on and on like this for hours. And even when I sort of decide things, I can change my mind--I have been known to walk out of my apartment, and back, two or three times within a period of 20 minutes. This does not lead to marital bliss, incidentally, since nothing incites my three dogs to their shrillest, most aggressive barking than when I leave and unexpectedly come back.

However, like anyone, I do need to relax, desperately! Cause I got a lot going on! When I don't relax, I can get kind of...crabby. And confused. And prone to states that are unsuitable to being the Life Coach to the Stars, like feeling put upon, distracted, and pessimistic. It's shocking but true. I'm not proud of my limited ability to relax. No sirree. I hate all the faux constant busy-ness of contemporary life--don't count me on that side.

So how to relax effectively is a theme constantly in my head. And never did I need to relax more than this weekend. I just returned from a nine-day trip to Italy to attend a friend's wedding and try to do some business. And nine days from now I will be zooming off to Hong Kong (by way of Raleigh) and California to do a bunch of workshops. Much time zone changing and evil plane travel. With my mental and physical health in mind, I scheduled a weekend of down time upon my return. However, then the inevitable question arose: what will I do during this critical weekend? Something, God help me, besides checking email, which has got to be as opposite from true relaxation as anything.

The answer came in two parts. First, I lucked out and found a great book to read on my 8-hour flight back from Milano. Paul Auster's new novel, "Brooklyn Follies." Loved it! Oh, the joys of reading. Reading has been something I have counted on my whole entire life, ever since I mastered "Story Wagon" at age five. Yet, weirdly, I often don't have anything good to read.

Why? It turns out that good books, like good food in your refrigerator, don't just pop into your life. You have to do a bit of planning. Research, even. They're out there--but you gotta find 'em. Thus motivated, I went to Barnes & Noble to see what there might be for my upcoming 16 hour trip to Hong Kong. And I totally scored again--a well-written book on Bombay, the new novel, "Calamity Topics in Particle Physics," along with "What's the Matter with Kansas?," (the book that explains how the Republicans have taken over everything and what to do about it), and my most unexpectedly delightful find, "Julie and Julia," a book about a woman who spent a year making every recipe in Julia Childs's classic, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." Why? Just cuz it seemed like a fun idea.

This last book, frothy but thoughtful, is awesome. And it brings me to my second form of relaxation... cooking!

Something I've known for years but not always put into practice is that cooking is a great way to unwind from a day, week or lifetime of stress. I can't say it feels like that when you are trooping home with plastic bags leaving welts in your palms from your trek from Fairway, but it really is true. Cooking is, after all, an act of creation. So it's the perfect antidote to the soul-numbing activities of checking Treos and dealing with office politics, paying bills and peering over cubicles. Plus, you get to eat what you create, which is always fun. Cooking at home is almost always more nutritious, delicious and cheap than anything you'd get in a restaurant. (New Yorkers often dispute the last point about cheapness, claiming that cooking at home is expensive, often way more expensive than going out. I will not even honor this with an argument. These people are delusional and probably lazy. Eating at home is always cheaper.)

So I've now spent two entire days in a kind of fugue state between reading about this funny person cooking Julia Childs recipes and cooking various things myself, with occasional forays into minor household administrative activities like doing my Quickbooks and opening mail.

So far I've made (and eaten) the following:
-- biscuits (made with Bisquick)
-- mashed sweet potatoes with lemon and orange zest
-- peach cobbler (made with Sylvia's-brand mix along with fresh peaches and Splenda)
-- goat meat stew with fingerling potatoes
-- lentil salad made with green French lentils and warm vinaigrette, following the instructions on the box
-- and (in a moment), some kind of marinated goat liver dish.

(Okay, a word about the goat meat, in case your wondering. I am a carnivore, but love animals, including the ones I'm eating. So my one consistent philosophy in dealing with this core hypocrisy is to buy meat that was once part of an animal that had a reasonably good life. This means that I will buy anything that appears to have eaten grass in a meadow for a reasonable period of time. This is why I eat beef but almost never chicken. Unless it grew up in the Hudson Valley or somewhere similar. The farmer's market had goat meat so I thought, why not?)

Anyhow, now I feel great! And relaxed! And sort of creatively whole, enough to tap out this little piece.

Plus, I am all bonded with my dogs, Luna, Splash and Jackson. It turns out that dogs are never more fascinated than when you are cooking a series of interesting dishes that they will surely taste. They are there, rooting for you, at every intriguing stage.

Latest life secret: Making a practice of non-attribution

2006-08-19T09:01:00.000-07:00

Those pesky non-replies

Changing your career (and life) involves seeking out the advice and assistance of a lot of people. You have to do a lot of initiating and it’s not always clear what is happening on the other side. This can lead to frustration. One of sentences spoken most frequently in my charming office in the Flatiron district is:

“Well, I sent an email to that person, and he didn’t answer.”

This is usually followed by a kind of sigh that contains exasperation flavored with a whiff of failure and a heavy undertone of disapproval.

There are many alternate versions of this sentence: someone didn’t follow up; someone didn’t return a call; it was a great interview but nothing’s happened yet. Blah, blah, blah.

What's really going on

From my heady perch as New York’s life coach to the stars, what I know is that these folks are getting all wrapped up in their own internal perceptions of what’s going on, which often has little to do with reality.

There is an inherent asymmetry to looking for a job, starting a business, or getting people enrolled in your new idea. Other people are busy, they are attending to their preexisting list of things to do, and, shocking as it seems, they all have their own issues. All this means that time passes more quickly for the asker than the asked, and your greatest priorities are not necessarily theirs

I tell my clients that a lack of response isn’t the same as a “no,” and that they should assume a 5:1 ratio of output to response. In other words, until you’ve made five attempts to contact someone, don’t start assuming they don’t want to deal with you. It’s awkward, I know, but whatever, it’s life.

The power of non-attribution

A sales expert with very high emotional intelligence recently put it this way: “I try to make a practice of non-attribution.” This statement was in response to one of my colleagues who wondered what the heck was going on when a great initial meeting didn’t seem to lead to anything. “Maybe they were busy,” he said. “Maybe they have other things going on. I don’t know and you probably don’t know. Most of the time, I can’t know. So I try not to make attributions. It’s easier that way.”

I really dig this phrasing—“making a practice of non-attribution.” When you start attributing motives to people, you weigh yourself down. You complicate your thoughts and your interactions. You make yourself responsible for a whole other story line. You spend a lot of time strategizing rather than just, you know, doing stuff.

In contrast, when you avoid attributing motives, you lighten your own load. You take your own ego out of the equation. You increase your energies. So try it—the next time someone else makes you feel irritated, jerked around, ignored (and of course, they’re not making you this way, you’re making yourself that way) … see what it feels like not to attribute a motive to them. It works.

The Devil Wears Prada and has an Awesome Career

2006-07-22T07:01:00.000-07:00

During one scene in the movie, The Devil Wears Prada, the Ohioan father of the purported heroine, Andie Sachs, plaintively says to her over dinner at a downtown restaurant, “I just can’t believe that someone who was admitted to Stanford Law is doing this kind of job.”

This comment led to much merriment, at least in my own head. Oh, the illusions we have. “Are you kidding?” I thought, having spent a good number of years at Stanford Law myself. “Her job is way better than going to Stanford Law School.”

Therein lies my core thought about this up-to-the-minute movie, which is a kind of Working Girl for people who grew up watching Party of Five (actually, I suspect that itself is a dated cultural reference… Help me out, people. What’s the right phrase -- “for people who grew up with The O.C.?” Okay, moving on.)

The thing about this movie is that although you are supposed to be horrified by Meryl Streep’s meanie character, Miranda Priestly, she’s actually the highlight of the drama. Although the author of the (very poorly written) book and presumably the screenwriter intended this to be a morality lesson of what happens when you are a bitchy powerful woman (answer: you end up loveless and surrounded by sycophants), it doesn’t come out that way. Instead, the lesson I draw is that if you work really hard, get over your ego issues, and focus on what you are doing rather than what you think you are supposed to be doing, you can have great career fulfillment. Furthermore, a career that engages you, however odd it seems to the outside world, is ultimately more reliable than boyfriends or husbands.

Whenever the character played by Anne Hathaway (who’s basically a new Sandra Bullock making better career choices) complained about her job, grimaced in frustration or talked about her beloved college articles about a janitors’ strike, I found myself checking out. “Whatever,” I thought, much like her anorexic colleagues. I wanted more makeovers, more coats-flung-on-desks, and more scheming backstage corporate machinations!

Perhaps I have so little patience with the complaints of a 20something fictional character because they remind me of how much time I spent in my 20s and early 30s obsessing about how things should be in my career. I would have been better off trying to understand the world of employment for what it was, engaging in it, and making the best of it. In a lot of ways, thinking is overrated and doing is what actually brings contentment.

In the end, Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly doesn’t look defeated, even though she’s apparently been ditched by her third husband, will soon be written about on Page Six, and is raising twin girls that will surely end up as shallow and annoying as the Bush daughters. She looks triumphant. She knows who she is and what she does, and those are goals worth striving for.

A quick trip to China ... and those lingering myths of business travel

2006-07-01T20:00:00.000-07:00

In Shanghai again (sigh)

Well, I find myself in Shanghai again. Cathay Pacific, The Four Seasons Hotel… I know what you’re thinking. “Alors, how does Michael stand it, the utter ennui of trans-Pacific travel.” Just a good attitude, I guess. With a positive h a-tee-tude I can find my highest AL-tee-tude. Etc.

I’ve come to help facilitate a big corporate event for Leaders Quest, the organization I went to China with in March. Only this time I get paid. And once again I find myself confronting one of those indestructible myths of travel, the ones that you swear you’ll never forget and then do exactly that.

Let's briefly review some of the leading ones:

Myth #1: “Since I’ll have a lot of time on airplanes, I should bring along one of those books that I’ve never been able to read, but feel I should, like Jude the Obscure or Beloved.”

Myth #2: “I’ll work out every day and come back in better shape than I left!”

Myth #3: “A business trip is a great opportunity to really enjoy myself, relax AND get paid for it.”

This last one is the relevant one today. It turns out that working overseas actually involves a lot of WORK. And precious little time for shopping, exploring charming new neighborhoods or working on my exciting new novel. Oy!

Still the life coach to the stars

Back-patting is in order, however, for what I did yesterday. I modeled good life-balance behavior. What did do to merit this?

I went to yoga! In Shanghai! On my business trip! And I even took a 90-minute class, which is a major time commitment for me given my rather short attention span. Go, Michael!

I found a place on the internet called Y+, which turned out to be a gorgeous, internationale, sumptuously appointed yet spiritually open studio. A single-class pass cost what I assume is someone’s monthly salary, but it was awesome.

Quien es mas obnoxious?

When competing for the title of Ugly American overseas, businessmen are the perennial favorites. Shuffling from country to country, cramming their wheelies into your overhead rack space, talking stock prices on their cell phones while dribbling sandwich crumbs onto their laptop PCs … you get the picture. However, there’s a new contender for the crown--those self-absorbedly cool, post-college, Asian-wannabe hipsters whose every atom goes into the process of broadcasting their unique (not) identities. (Of course, I was never that way.)

Here’s a picture of the guy who stood behind me in Starbucks: mid-20s; soul patch and goatee; wearing black kung fu pajamas and sandals; punching out text messages as he ordered his drink; and dragging a high-end longboard (a four-foot skateboard) behind him. In Starbucks Shanghai, I should repeat. He repeated multiple times that he wanted skim milk several times. Or at least I THINK that’s what he said because his Chinese, that he was so insistent on speaking, had no tones! I wanted to slap him! Or at least expose his uncoolness. Which I'm now doing, because no one hides from the blog.

To review:

Speaking Chinese well or just being culturally open: cool
Speaking Chinese without tones and pushily insisting on skim milk, while dragging a longboard around Starbucks and wearing kung fu pajamas and having a gross goetee: NOT cool!

My fave career self-help books that are not career self-help books

2006-06-18T17:07:00.000-07:00

When I was about 10 years old, my mother, sister and I went to our first-ever used book sale. With great literary perspicacity (a trait I had never seen before and can't say I've seen since), my plucky mom picked out 6 or 8 shopping bags full of great books, priced at a dollar a bag, which formed the core of my reading syllabus for the next few years.

One of these books was the 70s classic, "When I Say No, I Feel Guilty." I read it avidly (the concept of "the broken record" still sticks to me... something about how to say "no" without feeling guilty) and from then on was HOOKED on self-help lit! Now, as a world-famous career coach, I continue to explore this realm while getting to deduct it as well.

Many of the books that have helped me most in career development are not specifically career-development books. Perhaps that's why they're so good--they avoid the tedious lists and overenthusiastic stating-the-obvious of a lot of career-specific titles. Here are some of my favorites:

Julia Cameron, "The Artist's Way." This is still the single best book on personal development and transformation I've read. She is definitely channeling something way bigger than she. This is much better than her later title "The Artist's Way at Work."

Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, "Finding Flow." A cogent, readable analysis of what kinds of experiences make life worth living, and how to create them.

Rosamund and Benjamin Zander, "The Art of Possibility." How to see past self-imposed obstacles to create art, happiness and a better life. He's the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic and developed many these ideas working with musicians.

Dan Pink "A Whole New Mind." My newest fave read! My clients across the land are grooving to his suggestion that meaningful careers for our time will involve innovative combinations of right- and left-brain skills. (See my previous blogs for a review of this.)

Martin Seligman, "Authentic Happiness." Techniques to retrain your mind to see the glass as half-full rather than half-empty.

Talane Miedaner, "Coach Yourself To Success." One hundred and one tips that, surprisingly, work toward getting your life in synch with what you want.

Srikumar Rao, "Are You Ready to Succeed?" A recent read. How to get out of your own way (notice a recurring theme?). Also reviewed on this blog.

Twyla Tharp, "The Creative Habit." An awesome book, about all kinds of creativity, written by super-choreographer Twyla Tharp. (Fun fact: she works out at Gold's Gym every morning at 5 am. She says, "The workout begins when I get into the cab.")

Don Riso, "The Wisdom of the Enneagram." A personality archetype system for understanding individual passions, preferences and temperaments. Back of, skeptics! The enneagram has made a huge difference in how I understand myself and what careers will work for me. Great for relationships, too.

Okay, this is kind of cheating BUT

2006-05-23T19:26:00.000-07:00

check out the informative and amusing post about "Purity Rings" written by my very own Jason Mazzone:

http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2006/05/george_bushs_virgin_brides.html#more

Career experiments gone wild!

2006-05-05T11:30:00.000-07:00

Of the many pillars of wisdom that hold up my position as career coach to the stars, perhaps the most important is this: the only way to figure out what you really want to do with your life is to experiment. This idea is discussed at length in Herminia Ibarra's book, "Working Identity," which is the title I most frequently recommend to clients.

The thing about experiments is that you can never really predict how they are going to come out, and that's a good thing! When you create experiments--whether they be an informational interview, a class in vegan dessert-making, or a trip down the Amazon--you combine intention with an openness to serendipity. So often you'll get great insights, although on completely different topics than the experiment was intended to address.

Here's an example from my own fascinating life.

A few weeks ago, I signed up for a novel-writing class run by a woman named Elizabeth Merrick. I signed up for this because for some time I've carried around ideas for a soon-to-be-bestselling novel called "Manhattan Husbands," but wanted some structure to, you know, actually write it.

Each of us (me and nine women) was paired with a partner. My partner turned out to be a woman who had introduced herelf as a shoe expert and poet on the first day of class. "A shoe expert?" I exclaimed to myself. "Oy!"

I met my shoe expert partner, Meghan Cleary, in her office, a funky surprisingly nice place in the Village at the end of one exhausting day to discussed our writing assignment for the week. Meghan was quite fascinated by business and wanted to know about my marketing, media plan, rates. Somewhat shyly, I shared with her my new, improved rate structure--not wanting to overwhelm her with my gargantuan business savvy.

She reflected silently for a moment. "You should add another thousand dollars to your day rate, at least. And you definitely need more press coverage and media attention. You can make way more than you're making." Etc. etc.

It turns out that Megan (www.missmeghan.com) really IS a shoe expert, and a famous one, and one who charges and gets beaucoup bucks for her work. She's written a book, marketed it, has been all over the shoe-related and general press, and fields calls every day from leading department stores and manufacturers wanting a piece of her! Before launching this business, she'd done a couple of start-ups and worked for years in marketing for places like Deutsche Bank. And she gave me a lot of trenchant, very useful marketing, branding and general business advice.

So, to sum up:
Experiment: take fiction writing class to see if my book idea has legs
Result (so far): got great ideas about how to make more more MORE money in my coaching business, and also achieve fame.

Lesson: don't overthink your experiments! Just do them, and see what happens.

Michael-in-China-in-pictures

2006-04-11T17:51:00.000-07:00

Hiking up to the Miao villages in Leishan (Guizhou province)

Miao reception line!

Happy old ladies!

No tour of China is complete without a trip to the Chengdu engine-block factory!

Kids in Guizhou, vamping for the camera.

The secret of my international travel success--my high-tech squishy neck pillow!

Long live the 10-course meal!

Jin Xing -- Shanghai's best-known female dancer. Star, entrepreneur (founder of Shanghai Dance), impresario, cultural critic, concerned mother of three, and former man!

Aboard the 300-mph magnetic-levitation train from downtown Shanghai to the airport!

Juniors at a public high school in Shanghai. None of these kids has any siblings.

Hey, what happened to the just-in-time travelblog?

2006-04-04T17:56:00.000-07:00

Faithful readers,

No, I'm not still in China. Yes, I have much to report. And yes, I have committed the cardinal sin of blogging (so I hear) -- not updating regularly!

I have an excuse, I swear -- there is a mysterious firewall in my apartment that stops my shiny, pretty, PowerBook G4 from accessing blogger.com!

Am working to resolve issue -- please return!!! I have VOLUMES of witty brilliance to share and I promise something really good!!!!

Your host,

Michael

Beijing gets ready for its close-up

2006-03-11T19:54:00.000-08:00

24-hour party people, Beijing version

Sometimes staying in a nice hotel gives you a very limited view of reality. But in Beijing staying in a nice hotel gives you a pretty accurate picture of one aspect of contemporary China, its headlong rush to the future.

Staying on the sixteenth floor of the Hilton, I had a very clear viewÂ—literallyÂ—of China on the move. From my room I could gaze down on a giant construction pit for one of the zillion new skyscrapers being erected all over Beijing. Lines of men in hardhats hammered away underneath two giant yellow cranes swinging their cargo back and forth. (These looked scary and oddly friendly at the same time, bringing to mind a favorite book from my childhood, "Mike and His Steam Shovel."”) Perhaps classical Chinese paintings done a thousand years from now will feature the motifs of these industrial cranes, replacing the swans and mountains of Guilin that have represented ChinaÂ’s essence for the past few hundred years.

"I'm ready for my close-up, Max"

China has been on a roll for a while, now, but preparation for the 2008 Olympics has given things a whole new push. China is getting ready for its close-up and it wants everything to be perfect. There's a lot left to do--—building several new subway lines, opening a new airport, eliminating air pollution--okay, we might put that last one on hold. But things are happening. We read about this all the time in the states but it's quite another to be in the thick of things, watching construction gangs move piles of pipes at two in the morning.

China has many problems and challenges, but laziness and a sense of entitlement do not figure among them. If American parents are pressuring their kids to achieve now, that'’s nothing compared to how they would be if they could actually see the competition up close.

And speaking of American parents...

One night in Beijing I had dinner with an American friend from business school, her husband and her two daughters. I'll call them Susan and Todd.

Susan and Todd have lived in China for about 18 months now. They used to live in Palo Alto and one day decided to move to China. That was basically the decision process. They didn'’t know what exactly they would do, and their kids were not thrilled, but it was an idea that had been percolating for a couple of decades so they did it.

From my brief visit, I concluded that they have created an extremely fabulous and meaningful life in Beijing. They started a media company that appears fun and successful and their daughters, who are ten and eleven, speak Chinese fluently with perfect "biaozhun" accents. They can read and write as well. The kids never watch television, except for Chinese-language shows. I know what you'’re thinking, and you're right: two fewer places for everyone else at the top colleges when these two girls apply.

Their house is gorgeous and totally reflects their own esthetic and experiences. And perhaps most significantly, the experience of living together overseas and creating a new life seems to foster a kind of intimacy among parents and children that I rarely see back home--what people are thinking when they talk about quality time.

Of course, not all expatriate families are like this. Having seen many over the years, I can accurately assert that many are somewhat paranoid, critical of local cultures and get little out of the experience. But Susan and her husband show how wonderful this kind of international experience can be.

Though their move seems dramatic, I think that it's much more possible than most people would think. In the past 20 years, world travel has become about 10 times easier than it used to be, thanks to email, ATMS and better flights.

And there are clearly opportunities in one of the world's fastest growing economies. Things are happening here--I am not sure exactly what they are, but they're definitely happening! Talented people who are comfortable with a certain amount of risk and uncertainty can find a much more ample space for expressing their interests and skills than might be the case back home.

Next stop: Shanghai

"Brokeback Moment" and America's next Oprah moment

2006-02-27T15:40:00.000-08:00

The Oscars are coming and I, along with everyone, is predicting the same thing: "Brokeback Mountain" will walk away with most of the major prizes. I thought the film was beautiful, brilliantly made, and moving but this is only part of the story. "Brokeback Mountain" is going to clean up because the movie happens to be at the right place at the right time to express a much bigger cultural phenomenon: America's Oprah moment regarding gay rights and acceptance.

What do I mean by this? Let me start by briefly reviewing our cultural history.

Two decades ago, Oprah Winfrey burst onto the national scene. An Oscar-nominated turn in "The Color Purple" more or less coincided with the national broadcast of her talk show, which previously was local to Chicago. About five seconds later, she became anchored to the national consciousness and we haven't let go since. It's hard to imagine an America without Oprah Winfrey--who else would we aspire to be friends with?

While Oprah is great (love her!), her success isn't really about her. It is about what she represents to an entire culture, and what that culture needed at the time she showed up. Media may influence the culture but often it lags behind it. This was the case in terms of race in the mid-1980s. Before Oprah came along, African-Americans had a limited presence in the media. To the extent they were included in television shows or movies, they were mostly tokens. They were people to look at, not people to connect with. (How easy to forget that MTV for years was essentially all-white, and that it was Michael Jackson who integrated it!)

By the time Oprah came around, people--meaning the white majority as well as other minority groups--were yearning for more authentic connection across race that they didn't find in the media. They wanted, on some level, a more real expression of certain basic principles of our society--justice, equality, acceptance regardless of race. The culture needed someone to be Oprah, and she stepped up to the plate. Tens of millions of people greeted her with open arms. Most American still live in racially segregated neighborhoods and attend racially segregated skills, but in this limited way we now connect across race.

What does this have to do with "Brokeback Mountain?" This year is the Oprah moment for gay acceptance. For twenty years, Americans have steadily become more comfortable with homosexuality and bisexuality, and the idea that different people are just different, not evil. At the same time, gay people themselves have become more out and more proud, and focused more on living our lives rather than fitting into someone else's image of what we are supposed to be. This is the state of the culture as a tearfully romantic movie about two super-attractive cowboys has coming riding into town.

"Brokeback Mountain" is a colossal hit because it's the country's stand-up-and-be-counted moment. It's a cultural touchstone, a chance for people to define themselves as for or against, as with the program or against it, as part of the solution or part of the problem. And as it turns out, tens of millions of people are quite comfortable saying where they stand.

It's not at all paradoxical that all this is occurring a year after Republican (and some Democrat) politicians stoked fears of gay marriage to rustle up election victories in Ohio and therefore the nation, and in the same year that the president tried to write discrimination into the Constitution. The political world came up with one result, but the culture has come up with another.

Why everyone needs a personal assistant

2006-02-26T08:52:00.000-08:00

Nothing has quite so captured the imagination of my public than my recent hiring of a personal assistant. “How very Hollywood!” people think. “How indulgent!” and of course, “Is Michael pioneering the next big thing? With his finger constantly on the pulse, as it were? Do I need to get in on this before it’s too late?”

The correct answer is, of course, the last one. Personal assistanthood is not new to me; it’s just that I was usually on the other end of the pay-stub. With the hoary benefit of hindsight, I realize now that I have been a personal assistant numerous times in my life, such as my college “research assistant” job working for Prof. Catherine Clinton, where I spent a fair number of delightful hours picking up photos from the film store and reselling complimentary publishers’ copies of books to used bookstores for big bucks. And certainly, being a first- or second-year corporate attorney at an elite, white-shoe law firm is much like being a personal assistant.

Why is there so much personal assistanthood in the world? Well, because hiring a personal assistant can really change your life. Everyone imagines how freeing it would be to have someone go to the post-office on your behalf or pick up the dry-cleaning, but those are merely the most pedestrian, unimaginative value-adds.

Here are some of the things that my personal-assistant-to-the-Star, Jennifer Tuttle, has recently done for me:

--Gone to the bank to pick up two rolls of quarters (laundry money)
--Made FedEx refund me $132 for a package sent to Tasmania that arrived five days late
--Helped me figure out my 2006 corporate workshop pricing (“Go higher!” she insisted.)
--Updated my contacts and filed my filing (n.b. this takes several hours a week, which explains why for years I put off and dreaded these tasks. Now my business SINGS with efficiency!)
--Did secret competitive research into how much other coaches charge, by posing as a PriceWaterhouseCoopers consultant with an MBA and CPA
--Had a lively discussion with me on the merits--nay, the necessity!--of my purchasing a Hugo Boss suit
--Discussed with me the merits--nay, the necessity!--of creating a “reel” of me in action to share with agents, television bookers and high-end speakers bureaux, which—conveniently—she and her talented boyfriend Ryan can put together for a reasonable fee.

It is no surprise that Jennifer herself has an extremely busy, productive life as an actor, singer, film producer and now reel-creator-for-self-employed-people. She needs a personal assistant herself.

I would go so far as to say that personal-assistantness is a core economic principle for our age, much like the Keynesian “money multiplier” that I learned about in college. Forget your Razr V3 phones and myspace.com accounts—this is the hot new thing!

Bill Clinton, global superstar!

2006-02-13T11:26:00.000-08:00

(Photo: my mom, following the Clinton trail)

Here’s a truism of contemporary travel: wherever you go, Bill Clinton has already been there.

On my recent trip to India, this maxim held true. On a quick visit to the sumptuous Oberoi Amarvilas in Agra, a palace of a hotel that is the spitting image of the Alhambra in Granada, Spain, my mom and I ran into Bill’s smiling photo in the lobby. Bill’s photo also greeted us in Jaipur, Delhi and Bombay.

I’ve seen Bill Clinton’s photo in Hanoi, Shanghai and Istanbul. I’ve seen it in Moscow, Buenos Aires and Paris. He traveled a lot as president and he continues to do so, and wherever he goes the paparazzi are snapping away. He’s the global It-Boy.

Foreigners love Bill Clinton. From Amman to Zanzibar, mention his name and the locals smile. I have never heard a single person oversees say anything negative about him. Ever! He's basically our Gorbachev--revered abroad but not at home as a historic, powerful figure. What gives?

Why foreigners love Bill

People overseas like Clinton because he’s the face of a positive America. He's considered brilliant and powerful but also someone who actually cares about foreign people and foreign countries. He’s remembered in numerous countries (e.g. Ireland) as a peacemaker. And he knows his stuff—his view of the world marries business, economics, government, diplomacy and a clear understanding of global problems. He’s able to help businesspeople understand and contribute to the resolution of social problems, and he’s able to help government and nonprofit people understand the value of free-market economic growth. His speeches are filled with substance, rather than the tedious and often dangerous clichés of our current president.

From their somewhat distant vantage point, foreigners see the legacy and gifts of Bill Clinton a lot more clearly than most Americans do. Across the world, Bill Clinton lives!

An aside

A skinny teenager working at a tourist shop in Kerala inquired, “I must ask you one question: what do you think of George W. Bush?”

“I loathe him!” I responded, my arms flailing to convey my angst and frustration. “I can’t stand him. He’s awful.” I shuddered involuntarily, as we liberals often do nowadays.

The salesman’s eyes twinkled and he bobbed his head left and right. “Every American people coming here is saying same. Why then is he president?”

Why indeed. “Because all the people who vote for George W. Bush are the kind who never leave the country! Just as he never did before he was president!”

This just in...

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What I'm reading now ... Are You Ready to Succeed, by Srikumar S. Rao

2006-01-29T17:53:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine recently asked, “How can a cycle-rickshaw driver in India be happy?”

This question was not a hypothetical one. This person had recently traveled to India. One detail that struck him most was his interaction with a cycle-rickshaw driver in Varanasi. My friend told a joke, and the driver—scrawny, prematurely aged and extremely poor—burst into a wide, authentic smile.

Was the rickshaw driver a happy person, despite a life of grinding poverty? I have no idea. But he made me think.

“The question isn’t how can Indians be happy,” I said. “It’s how can Americans be so unhappy.”

We looked around at the breakfast crowd at Balthazar—surely a place of “making it,” New York-style. The patrons sure looked busy, but they didn’t seem all that happy. Shouldn’t we be a whole lot happier, given how much better off we are than most of the world?

All of which brings me to a book I recently read, Are You Ready to Succeed, by Srikumar S. Rao. He analyzes why people are so unhappy with their jobs and lives in the U.S., and what they can do to change things.

Rao’s book is based on a popular course he’s taught for the past decade at Columbia business school. Whereas most books that dare to use variants of the word “success” in their titles focus on mastering the external world, Rao’s book is all about mastering yourself. He rejects the core Western belief that achieving more of something (more money, more recognition, more free time, more skinniness) will make you happy. Instead, his goal is to help you transform your life by dealing with your biggest impediment to happiness—you!

If I can boil Rao’s prescriptions down to two basic elements, they are: (1) mastering your own mind, and (2) accepting the idea that the universe is a cooperating, positive force rather than an indifferent or antagonistic one. The book argues that one’s perception of reality is merely a construct and that it’s possible to change this construct, for positive results. Many of the exercises in the book aim to help the reader master his or her mind, by reexamining our stories about how our life actually works, overcoming negative chatter, surrounding to reality rather than fighting it, and so forth. Ironically, it’s by achieving self-mastery that we finally are able to achieve what we want in life.

Rao establishes up front that all of his insights have come from other, greater teachers. His book is consistent with principles of acceptance and detachment found in Taoism and Buddhism, as well as the teachings of numerous Christian, Muslim, Jewish and nonreligious sages over the centuries. As I read the book, I was reminded of a number of other influential works, including The Artist’s Way (Julia Cameron), The Power of Now (Eckhardt Tolle), Wishcraft (Barbara Sher), Finding Flow (Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi) and Authentic Happiness (Martin Seligman).

What Rao contributes to this literature is a coherent definition for what personal mastery actually is, and a coherent plan for achieving it. Hence, I’m reading it for the second time, and this go-round actually doing all the exercises!

Rao is clearly focused on an educated, professional audience, the types who are likely to be skeptical of books like this and therefore the ones in most desperate need of their teachings. I recommend it. If you’ve ever wondered why, no matter how you try, you always seem to fall short of “making it” in a way that is personally meaningful, this book offers plausible explanations and workable solutions.

A New India, or just New Year's Eve? (Part 2)

2006-01-21T06:25:00.000-08:00

The party gets going…

Our first day in India was New Year’s Eve. We were resigned to letting jet lag claim us but, as night approached, Cheryl and I started to get that old New Year’s Eve feeling of “hey, we want to do something!” Our hotel was holding a major fete, stretching across its three restaurants and all public spaces. But despite the lure of the thumping bass notes, the thought of paying a hundred bucks for dinner and the possibility of getting caught on the ActionCam being broadcast in the lobby were deal-breakers. And frankly, the handful of early attendees made it look more like the Davis Polk employee Christmas party than a must-attend international soiree. So we hoofed it to a nearby mall.

First we dined at “Punjabi By Nature,” a packed restaurant where we sampled various tandoori delights to the background of American rap music. I allowed myself a Blue Lagoon cocktail and a big pile of naan to get into the mood. Then we popped by the record store to check out the latest in Indian pop music. “What’s essential? What should we bring home?” we demanded. It turns out that Indian record-store guys are like record-store guys all around the world. They conferred and debated in Hindi and then ran around the store pulling out various party mixes, soundtracks and bangra hits. I demurred on Fifty Cent’s “Get Rich or Die Trying” but did purchase “Everybody on the Dance Floor!” Then we wandered over to Passion for Tea, a tea shop that featured employees in Baskin Robbins-type caps and a karaoke machine! Though nearly empty, this was clearly the place to be!

It’s showtime in New Delhi!

A young guy in a brown polyester suit manned the machine. His commitment to singing song after song in the face of complete public indifference led us to believe that he was the MC. Though he had some melodic challenges (“Hotel California” is a stretch for the best of us), he did maintain a consistent level of enthusiasm, and we respect that! He gladly yielded the mike, and Cheryl and I stepped up to sing “Take Me Home Country Road.” The crowd, ever-growing, responded with cheer and enthusiasm to the slick New Yorkers, and hip Indian girls burdened with boring dates boldly made eye contact with me. I later attempted “The Greatest Love of All” with far less success, but my voice-cracking didn’t seem to matter. No attitude here, the party was on!

The average age of the crowd dropped with the mercury as the night wore on. Yuppies gave way to twenty-something couples, who were replaced around midnight by skinny adolescents wearing low-rise distressed jeans, rocker t-shirts and international teen expressions of utter ennui. Still, we all managed to blend and appreciate our diversity in the big crazy world that is modern India.

We chatted with the MC. He revealed that he wasn’t a tea shop employee at all, but rather a college grad working in his family’s plastic bags manufacturing company. Passion for Tea was his personal clubhouse. After a long day manufacturing bags, he came here to chill and be artistic. As my personal trainer Doug might say, “Nice.”

Equally fascinating were the karaoke videos themselves. Instead of the usual blond people walking around Japanese parks ponds in Japan, each one featured—perhaps as a special Korean branding device?—three rubberish grey cartoon characters who performed ever-changing aerobic routines to the rhythm of the music.

These rubber characters were transfixing, yet their weirdness raises a broader question: where the hell were we? Were we even in India? Or were we just gross tourists hanging out with Western wannabees? What’s real in India?

What's real, anyway?

Even though I tend to resent these kinds of question when I get them from other travelers (especially “sandalista” types—Euro, American or Australian backpackers who talk about “sustainable travel,” rarely wash their hair, and seem appalled that I have an American Express card) I have to admit they are legitimate. When I read articles written about other parts of the world, the reporters always seem to be interviewing doctors, professors and architects even if they’re in, like, Kurdistan.

It’s easy to think that India is on the fast-track to the first-world when you eat at “Punjabi by Nature” or read Thomas Friedman’s book, “The World Is Flat” (currently the number-one seller in English-language bookstores in India). We Americans make all kinds of excited generalizations about whatever country is in the news, and now it’s India. We hear regularly about the hundreds of millions of people in India’s middle class. We see Indians increasingly as smart and successful people. You can hardly throw a Frisbee on U.S. campus without hitting an Indian person with an 800 GMAT. Columnists like Thomas Friedman and Nicholas Kristoff exhort American kids to get off their fat, lazy asses, given the fact that hundreds of millions of Indian and Chinese kids are busy studying and planning their entries to the Intel Talent Search rather than playing Grand Theft Auto. India is happening!

The context…

Those facts are true, but here some others: only five percent of Indians speak English “comfortably” (in the words of writer Gurcharan Das, the former CEO of Procter & Gamble India, and author of the great book, “The Elephant Paradigm: India Wrestles with Change”). Another ten percent operate in English with minimal proficiency. Eighty-five percent don’t speak English at all. There are close to 200 million people in the Indian middle class (more on this later); at the same time, 260 million Indians live on less than a dollar a day. Seventy-six percent of Indians don’t have access to flush toilets, and more than 40% of the country is illiterate, including more 50% of women. (These are mostly 2002 data.) Out of 162 countries, India ranks 127 on the UN’s human development index. So India isn’t Europe, it isn’t Taiwan, and it isn’t Mexico.

That being said… we Americans had better get off our fat, lazy asses because change is a-coming.

India is different now. It’s more prosperous, more worldly and, most of all, more confident. In the late 80s, I heard a lot of things like, “We have five thousand years of civilization, what else could we need?” You don’t hear this much anymore. Instead, you hear the buzz of activity: new construction, GMAT coaching schools, and social and political change, in addition to the economic ones.

A key part of this is the emergence and growth of the Indian middle class. Observers say that the growth in the middle class is the key to transforming a poor country, and they are right. The middle class increases in numbers when poor people move up. The average middle class person in India, placed in the U.S., would seem really poor in material terms. But being middle class really has to do with aspirations and values—using education, hard work and savings as methods of moving forward—and as far as I can tell, the 200 million or so members of the Indian middle class have these in spades.

One middle-class story

I’ll give you an example—a friend from my foreign service days I’ll call Pradeep. He never graduated high school, and his wife is illiterate. Seventeen years ago, Pradeep was a contract laborer for the U.S. Embassy. He worked as a gofer and earned 20 rupees a day (less than US$2). Now, at age 43, after nearly 25 years of service, he’s risen to data entry clerk, and is an employee of the embassy rather than a contractor. He earns about US$300 per month.

But here’s the thing. Pradeep is building a house. His son and daughter are in private schools on an extended day program. They go to school from early morning until 5 or 6 pm. After homework and dinner, they are allowed watch cartoons for half an hour before they go to bed and start all over again. Pradeep’s household does not have a car, does not have a washing machine, and has extremely few material possessions. But they basically have everything they need to move ahead in life. Pradeep used to be poor and now he’s not. His wife is illiterate, but his daughter reads Harry Potter. I’m confident both his kids will go to college. The family is movin’ up.

Return to India! (Part 1)

2006-01-16T01:58:00.000-08:00

I’m in India and have so much to tell. But first, let’s talk about me!

I usually think that the biggest benefit of travel is that stepping out of your normal world changes the way you look at yourself. Usually upon my return from some place foreign, I’m all set to launch the newest New Michael Melcher. This trip, however, gave me an opportunity to do something even better: revisit the Old Michael Melcher, or at least a particular vision of myself I’ve been carrying around for a couple of decades.

I shall explain.

First, a bit of background…

My first real job was as a junior office in the Foreign Service. Just months after I turned 24, I was dispatched to Calcutta with a black passport and a zeal to see the world. As an employee of the U.S. Information Agency, I was charged with public diplomacy, which consisted of informational and educational…well, it wasn’t all that clear what I was charged with, which turned out to be part of the problem. Anyhow, I did spend nearly a year in India, mainly in Calcutta with two months in New Delhi. Afterwards I went off to Taiwan.

Living and working in Calcutta were difficult for me or, as we say in resumes, “challenging.” I had a difficult, WWII-vet boss (and was inexperienced in “upward management”), went through big culture shock (despite my image of myself as an experienced world traveler) and was pursuing a dramatic, long-distance relationship, which I had—naturally—started just a few weeks prior to leaving the U.S. At the four-month mark I got really sick, which depleted my remaining reserves of confidence and peppiness. And there were some additional factors, such as institutionalized homophobia of the Foreign Service under the Reagan administration. (In a bizarre, Kafkaesque scene, the U.S. government once put a friend on mine “on trial” for being gay, with the intention of yanking his security clearance and thereby ending his career. Though he managed to keep his job, this is not the kind of thing that encourages one to make one’s career with the government.)

Anyway, even though things improved quite a bit at about the halfway point, I was very relieved to leave India. A year later, I left the Foreign Service altogether. Because things had not worked out the way I wanted them too and I had gone through moments of pain and confusion, I tended to think of my Foreign Service experience as a sort of personal and professional failure. When I’d recount my time overseas, I would mention a few interesting anecdotes but typically emphasized the negatives. If people exclaimed about the unusual and interesting aspects of my experience, I would often make (or think) self-deprecating rejoinders.

I also made the great error of youth, which is to over-generalize and over-personalize everything that happens to you. (It’s all about me, right?) I therefore made many of the inane assessments you can make in your 20s about work and life. I had fallen behind, had fallen off track, was not where I should be, had some explaining to do about my choices, blah blah blah BLAH. Now in my glamorous and enticing adulthood, even hearing myself think about this kind of juvenile negative self-absorption makes me tired!

Now, on to the insight!!!

Well, guess what? It turns out that story I have been carrying around since 1988 about my year in India is….wrong. It’s a significant misinterpretation of what actually occurred. Sure, the remembered episodes took place—assorted gastrointestinal conditions, culture shock, air pollution, low staff morale, a boss that told me not to speak Bengali to our Bengali constituents because it would be “counterproductive” (you figure that one out), not to mention the nagging, gross sound of crows outside my window every morning. But lots more happened as well!

This became quite clear during the five days I recently spent in Bombay with our wonderful hosts Ranjana and Sanjeev. Ranjana is a sweet friend from my Calcutta days who is now a high-powered (yet fun and caring) business exec. We hadn’t seen each other for more than a decade, since she was studying for her MBA in the U.S. When I lived in “Cal,” Ranjana was part of a group of American, European and Indian students and hangers-on who boarded at a place called the Ramakrishna Mission (nicknamed the Swamiramayana Dingdong Institute for Meditation and School of Hotel Management). I used to have bunches of them over to my enormous apartment for dinner, partly for company and partly to provide professional fulfillment to my cook, who found it boring to cook for me alone.

Ranjana and Sanjeev are the consummate hosts, attending to our every need—car, driver, cook, shopping tips, and most of all warmth and conversation. My travel companions—my mom, Trini and my friend, Cheryl—and I ran around Bombay doing various things but also spent several hours each day just talking with our hosts. What I discovered was that Ranjana and I could crack each other up for hours just remembering and reviewing that year. Some of it was recalling the internal dramas of the Ramakrishna mission crowd; my cook Jan Alam (who wrote “happy birthday Melcher” on the special cake he made for me); the boring, self-important people who hang out at Consulate functions; the tendencies of Bengali intellectuals and their foreign groupies to overhype everything related to Rabindranath Tagore; the diet contest I organized at the consulate, the female Indian student who stalked me when I got home. You know, challenging people and wacky experiences—your basic entertaining dorm chat.

We also talked about current things: economic and political reforms in India, the cultures of the nonprofit vs. private sectors, and the parallel between self-important Washington DC and Delhi on the one hand, and fabulous, free-for-all New York and Bombay on the other.

These conversations exploded the way I had been remembering my India experience. I saw a much more complex and positive reality. My year in Calcutta had been challenging, sure. Who wouldn’t be challenged? But all things considered, I did pretty well. I managed to create an interesting, vibrant life. I made good friends. I learned tons about India and the world in general. And I didn’t hurt anybody! Things didn’t work out that way I planned, but when do they ever? In fact, I’m going to give myself a post-hoc “A” for that year. Just because I can.

My two little coaching takeaway points from this:
(1) If you focus too much on how things are supposed to be, you miss the great things that are actually happening,
(2) It’s worthwhile to reexamine the stories you tell about your own life. They might be totally wrong.

Calcutta in the late 80s was really a trip! I’m glad I was there. :-)

Owen the hippo and his best friend Mzee (the tortoise)

2006-01-14T12:38:00.000-08:00

In case you haven't yet seen this teardabilicious story, read on:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0105_060105_hippo_tortoise.html

How to get a job (secrets from Craigslist)

2005-12-26T08:30:00.000-08:00

Recently, I accomplished my longstanding, Hollywood-living-style goal of hiring a personal assistant. In addition to changing my life, going through the hiring process reminded me of something I've articulated before--if you want to know how potential employers decide whom to hire, try hiring someone yourself.

I placed an ad on Craigslist seeking a personal assistant. I listed a number of the tasks I wanted performed--basically, anything that frees me up to do higher value-added things--as well as some basic characteristics, along with the salary description and projected hours. I asked that candidates send an email describing why they were qualified and why they wanted the job.

And the torrent was unleashed! In the next 24 hours, I received more than 100 responses. A bunch of them were from clearly qualified people and it was hard to see how I would even select among them, so I took the post down. I felt some duty to make a rational decision, both for my own interests and to reward the best candidates, so I selected using a process of elimination.

First to go were any resumes that were simply attached without explanation. If someone wasn't going to spend five seconds to write any kind of cover, I didn't feel an obligation to review them, nor did I sense any great likelihood that they'd be any good. Next to go were those resumes that had a one or two sentence cover email of the generic, "here's my resume, I look forward to hearing from you" variety. Same reason.

Also dead-on-arrival were cover letters with major typos or grammatical errors. (Two applicants with B.F.A.'s from NYU in screenwriting wrote cover letters filled with sentence fragments and typos.) You get a wide variety in Craigslist, so these were divided between people who were merely sloppy and those who seemed to lack certain basic educational skills. Though I felt sad for the latter, I was not going to hire them.

I still had a hefty electronic pile to process. So I began identifying the ones that I actually liked, as opposed to ones that I could get rid of without guilt. There were a number of extremely, if not bizarrely, qualified candidates, including a lawyer who had gone to Oxford. So at this point I began to look for "fit" -- some sense that this job would be match for them. (If it wasn't, I would expect them to lose motivation or eventually find something else.) So the next group to get booted were candidates who, upon greater perusal, were probably looking for (or clearly needed) full-time jobs. Thus, several recent graduates of Vassar were screened out.

At this point, I had about a dozen candidates who met the criteria: they seemed professional and reliable, and they also seemed to want this type of limited part-time job with someone like me. Looking more closely again, I distinguished between the ones who thought it would be interesting to work around a cool career coach (hooray!) versus those that indicated the need for career coaching themselves (too high maintenance).

Finally I picked three women and one man for phone interviews. I added one more when she made a follow-up inquiry (extra points for effort). I asked four basic, "behavioral-style" questions: I asked them to illustrate times when they'd shown resourcefulness; done things that required trust (like handling money); performed tasks that were tedious but managed to get them done; and handled some kind of office-technology-software issue. Most did very well on these questions, although one found them difficult.

Then I decided on my two finalists, whom I met for in-person interviews. The first one was great. The second one arrived 15 minutes late. Easy choice.

So the big takeaway point here is: in the end, basic professional behavior and tailoring one's application for the actual requirements of the job can make a big difference, even with a giant internet pool like Craigslist. Employers are really looking for a reason why a candidate can fit a particular position; the more you articulate how that works, the higher your chances are for getting the job.

What secrets does my DNA hold?

2005-12-08T14:00:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting on the edge of my seat...

A few weeks ago, I received the DNA testing kit I'd ordered from the National Geographic Society. I scraped the inside of my cheeks with the little scraper-thing, deposited the tip into tiny test tubes, and mailed them off! Now I'm waiting for my DNA code to be received, split and classified.

For those who haven't followed this particular scientific development, there are now all kinds of services you can use to trace your origins and determine your ancestry. And apparently, there are many surprises since our ethnic identity, like so many other things, is basically just a convenient label for much more complex and hard-to-classify mixtures.

My initial motivation was to answer the age-old question: is Michael Melcher secretly Jewish? (I'm Catholic on both sides... or at least that's what they tell me.) Did I have some ancestors who couldn't quite take the heat, so they switched over? Like many Americans, I have only the vaguest idea of my ancestry beyond my grandparents. I have a Mexican line (with a Basque surname) and a German line but am not really sure what-all is going on there. So this is an opportunity I could not pass up!

The National Geographic test takes you WAY back -- apparently all the way to your emigration from Africa, 60,000 to 120,000 years ago. I have no idea how they actually determine this, but I am quite eager for the results!

Stay tuned!

What my dentist and Pauline Kael have in common...

2005-11-30T14:56:00.000-08:00

I have the best dentist in New York City. During a recent visit to his office, I was reminded of some advice I heard several years ago from the former New Yorker film critic, Pauline Kael.

First, some background about my dentist, Dr. Jonathan Ferencz. It's not your typical gross, underinvested medical practitioner office. His office is gleaming but sedate, has a view of the Empire State Building, a professional and friendly staff, and really good magazines. (No old issues of "Modern Maturity.") And his appointments always start on time. ALWAYS. I initially came to Dr. Ferencz for an implant, my final resting place after a long and painful journey that had featured a botched filling replacement, multiple failed root canals, a strange pus-filled bubble in my gums (don't ask) and a split molar that had to be removed by an oral surgeon. Oy! But these worries were forgotten when I was placed under his capable care. He charges significantly more than my previous dentists but it's more than worth it.

Why do I bring this up? Well, after this morning's appointment (gold inlay following a distal crown lengthening by the periodontist), I was reflecting on how, even though going to the dentist is kind of scary, it's not really scary when you have complete confidence that your dentist knows what he or she is doing. And of course, this is true generally--trust is worth a lot. It's really quite an amazing experience when someone takes his or her profession seriously enough to do their best, and make investments to deliver high-quality service.

Which brings me to Pauline Kael. Some years ago, when I was living in Calcutta, I happened to see a video interview with her. Someone asked her about the career of being a film critic, and she said something similar to the following:

"Ninety percent of the people in the world are just punching a clock at work, whether they're film critics or bricklayers. But the remaining ten percent do really amazing work and contribute something meaningful. So in thinking about your career, you ideally want to aspire to be part of the ten percent, rather than looking at the ninety."

I've followed this advice over the years. I've been in some careers that are prestigious, and other careers that are nontraditional if not bizarre, but in every case I've found her words to be true. Ignore what most people do. Instead, if it's something that works for you, aim to be your own best self. It doesn't matter if you are selling real estate or decoding DNA. Be part of the ten percent, not the ninety, and stop worrying what other people think.

Be like Dr. Ferencz!

What I'm reading now... A Whole New Mind, by Dan Pink, and I Am Charlotte Simmons, by Tom Wolfe.

2005-11-28T09:22:00.000-08:00

One characteristic I still retain from my childhood is that I read a lot of books. In a media-saturated world, books are still the best source for interesting and well thought-out ideas. I'll post some of my current and long-time favorites here. I'm also listing, where relevant, my inspiration for reading particular authors.

Nonfiction
A Whole New Mind, by Daniel Pink. Pink argues that traditional employment over the past 50 to 75 years has focused primarily on left-brain jobs--things like finance, law, software development and medicine. But as a result of automation, the growth of Asian economies and a higher level of prosperity, these jobs are going away and in any case are no longer stimulating. He argues that going forward, employment will incorporate six right-brain skills, including design, story telling, empathy, and symphony (i.e. synthesis). Although I was initially skeptical of Pink's macro assessment of the world, every one of the chapters on right-brain skills described my own personal and career evolution.

Fiction

I Am Charlotte Simmons, by Tom Wolfe. Wolfe's treatment of college life at a thinly disguised Duke University is very witty and unexpectedly riveting. A great airplane read, although, to be brutally honest, less true to life than The Student Body, the novel about a non-disguised Harvard College that I co-authored several years ago under the pseudonym, "Jane Harvard."

Unleashed upon the world...

2005-10-26T10:53:00.000-07:00

Greetings!

The Michael Melcher blog is here! Look out, world!

Okay, let me go and find some stuff to put on here. Not to worry, this will be a HIGH-QUALITY production. I'll do the editing so you won't have to!

-- Michael

The man, the mystery

2005-10-01T09:57:00.000-07:00

portrait
Originally uploaded by michaelmelcher.