In the January, 2010 Vanity Fair cover story, Leslie Bennetts describes Meryl Streep as a woman who is vital, expressive and spontaneous – a personality trait that the late great psychologist Abraham Maslow would have recognized as one that the healthiest psyches share.  Bennetts, however, is more interested at first in Streep’s box office clout and the fact that she is rewriting Hollywood’s playbook on how to produce a blockbuster.

But the more interesting story isn’t about ticket receipts or even clout.  It’s about personality -- Meryl’s.  This is a 60-year old human being who’s profoundly healthy psychologically.

To start, the woman who has given us so many memorable performances is keenly objective, even detached about her self, her work and her image.(See Maslow Traits below. This is #7)  No self-absorbed “Star” here.  For instance, almost three decades ago, at the age of thirty-eight, Streep recognized and fully accepted the notion that her approaching middle age would slow if not stop her upward trajectory.  Thankfully, she was wrong.  

That objectivity is just the second healthy personality trait that Meryl Streep has.  There are nineteen in all and they’re Abraham Maslow’s – traits that he theorized, were evident among the top one percent of the populace in terms of temperamental strength.  Read on, for a description of seventeen more that Streep exhibits.  Each trait is numbered.

Most of all, in this and other Streep interviews you hear a high quality human being who is marvelously integrated (3), Meaning that she’s consistently true to herself and others.  She has high integrity for her own work and behavior and thus is easily the same, spontaneous, authentic person to everyone. 

You can also see the calm that high integrity brings to Streep in her photographs.  Accompanying the article, there are twenty-four mesmerizing pictures by Brigitte Lacombe and they reveal beguiling bits of Streep’s spirit.(5)  Which is natural for a healthy psyche – they are less guarded,(4).  They can be.  The photos also reveal a person of deep beauty coupled with modesty.  The pictures  capture one trait in particular – her kindness, or even more than that, her empathy… for us.  This is what Maslow would have called her identification with all humanity, (11).  It should be no surprise.  Streep’s vast range of performances confirms her ability to wholly become other characters. 

But few actresses and even fewer “Stars” can look at a camera with such honest, vanity-free goodwill towards others.  Not surprisingly, Streep’s favorite photograph of herself  is a different one – one where she has no make-up, no artifice, because as she puts it, “they scraped all the crap off my face.”

But it’s not just her self or the rest of us that Ms. Meryl sees so clearly and deeply.  Like all very healthy psyches, she sees everything with less baggage and in a penetrating way.  John Patrick Shanley, who wrote the play “Doubt” (Streep starred in the movie) says that, “on one level she is just like a big mischievous cat – like a cat who sits in the corner and watches everyone and her tail twitches.  She’s going inward and assessing outward.” Streep is a great observer and has almost a child-like freshness of perception.  That helps her see reality better and with less effort (1) than most of us.  How?  One way is that she simply shuts up and absorbs what’s going on.  Try it sometime.  You’ll be amazed at what you learn.

Shanley also describes a human being who is “completely open to free association… and she doesn’t assume she knows the answer.”  In other words, she’s comfortable with experimentation. She’s also fine with simply not knowing.  These traits are being open to experience (2) and being comfortable with mystery and the unknown (15). 

It’s hard to tell if Streep is an egalitarian or has what Maslow called a “democratic character structure” (12) but no one’s ever written that she’s haughty or arrogant.  She’s obviously creative (9) and can take abstract ideas and descriptions and turn them into tangible results (10).  But she’s also quite private (6) and very likely someone who likes her alone time.  A rarity these days, she’s a celebrity who shields her family and avoids the press.  To Bennetts, she’s even a bit camera-shy, declaring, “I hate having my picture taken!” 

As for love, Streep appears to have that trait as well – in that she has just a few, deep and enduring relationships (13) – notably with her mother, whom she quoted on the Golden Globe Awards, (where she won on her 23rd nomination) and with her sculptor husband, Don Gummer.  Despite all the movies, Streep has also reared four grown children.  We don’t know much about them except that they have inculcated her good sense to resist the prying, public eye.
 
Most of all, Streep comes across as a woman who is deeply accepting of who she is (14).  Part of that is demonstrated by her comfort with her own sexuality (she’s playing romantic leads at the age of 60!).  The healthiest among us are good animals with good appetites.  Streep is also quite comfortable with her growing power, no matter what directors or others want.  This is part of being confident and able to shoulder responsibility, (16).  Part of this for an actor is that she’s able to reveal herself more fully despite what others expect.  As Streep puts it in Vanity Fair, “As there begins to be less time ahead of you, you want to be exactly who you are, without making it easier for everyone else.”

Streep hasn’t made it easy for casting directors who may have wanted to pigeon-hole her.  The woman who seemed perfect for only tragic roles after Oscar-winning performances in “Kramer vs. Kramer” and “Sophie’s Choice” then wowed us with her comedic talents.  Because of her status as a cultural icon, this is a personal form of resisting enculturation or pushing back on what others would have you be, (8).  For the rest of us, we have to resist others’ opinions and expectations too. We ought to do this by rejecting advertisers’ pitches, faddish thinking and the current zeitgeist.   

Mike Nichols, who has directed Streep four times says that you can “feel” her excitement at each new day on the set.  Maslow called this a freshness of appreciation (17).  Streep takes it further, “I’m very fucking glad to be alive!”  Nearly everyone interviewed also describes a woman with an effervescent sense of humor.  Presumably, Streep’s humor is also “non-hostile,” giving her yet another trait (18).  It’s certainly unself-conscious.

Without speaking direclty to Meryl, I don't know if she's exhibited Maslow's nineteeth trait -- a greater frequency of peak experiences.  These are sublime moments that most human beings experience at least once -- moments of great sensory perception, where one feels great unity with nature or one's surroundings, moments that evoke notions of the divine and everlasting.  They are by their very nature moments that change one's perception of what's possible.  Top flight performing artists and athletes have more of these moments.  Presumably Streep has more than her share simply because of her talent, if not her healthy outlook, (19). 

Sadly, according to Maslow, people as strong and healthy psychologically as marvelous Meryl, make up make up just one percent of the population.  But that means there are still three million of them in America alone.  Be on the look out for them.  Then find a way to have them in your life, your work, your play.  They’ll rub off on you and make you stronger, happier and more successful at the one job that we all share – to be one’s self, well.

Check out Donald Van De Mark's series on the 19 Personality Traits of the Best Human Beings

Donald Van de Mark is a motivational speaker and has interviewed hundreds of leaders in business and politics including: Andrew Weil, MD, former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley, Jack Welch, Starbucks' Howard Schultz and Intel's Andy Grove, in his nearly 3 decades as a correspondent and anchor at CNN, CNBC and public television. He is the host of The Wisdom of Caring Leaders and The Wisdom of Teams, training videos used by corporations and schools to teach leadership skills.

Donald integrates practical tips from these great leaders to provide a riveting motivational speech on the personality traits of successful people.

Cheers from Sonoma,

Donald

Abraham Maslow's 19 Traits

1) Clearer, more efficient perception of reality
2) More openness to experience
3) Increased integration, wholeness and unity of person
4) Less Guarded: Increased spontaneity; expressiveness, full functioning; aliveness
5) A real self; a firm identity; autonomy, uniqueness
6) Need for privacy
7) Increased objectivity, detachment, transcendence of self
8) Resistance to Enculturation
9) Recovery of Creativeness
10) Ability to fuse concreteness and abstractness
11) Identification with Humanity
12) Democratic character structure
13) Ability to love, deep interpersonal relationships
14) Zest in living, happiness or euphoria
15) Calmness, serenity (even with mystery)
16) Responsibility, confidence to handle problems or stresses
17) Continued freshness of appreciation
18) Unhostile sense of humor
19) Greater frequency of “Peak Experiences”

Does your boss insist that you party?

Jack Welch does. Jack was my boss for five years in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s.  Back in 2001, I interviewed Jack for the third time, who as Chairman and CEO of GE, had been my penultimate boss at CNBC.  Here’s one of the last sound bites from that interview, “Welch: I think business is a lot about spirit.  When I think of spirit I think of energy, I think of excitement. I think of exciting others.  I mean what’s worse than a manager who sits around and manages people?!  I mean this is all about exciting people and making it more fun.

DVM: “But the world used to think and some still do that formality is part of big business, it’s what works.”

JW: “Formality is the killer of business!  Informality is what makes a company work, when everyone has voice, when the quality of an idea is not measured by the level in the organizational box, but only by the quality of the idea, this isn’t just about first names stuff.  This is about being able to try things, wing things.  This is about being able to celebrate.  Companies have a tough time celebrating, I mean every little victory, I mean - a ratings win at CNBC, get a keg, throw a party, do something!  This is where you spend your life!  Have a ball at it.  Why would you want to come to a place as a stuffed shirt and hang around a corporation?  It’s dumb, unless you had a ball at it!”

Jack is not just pushing keggers, he’s pushing spontaneous expressions of joy.  He's articulating two great traits of the healthiest psyches -- immediate and expressed happiness. Regarding spontaneity which is an under appreciated quality -- This is where young athletes with their leaping, hooting and hollering have it right.  This is where children are superior to adults.  This is where Julia Child with her great, loud “Oooooohs” and reactive squeals had it right. 

We’re all so scheduled these days that we often have to postpone celebrating until we find time on our jam-packed calendars.  To me, scheduling a celebration in the future for some bit of great news now nearly defeats the point.  I believe and have been taught by happy people that exuberance is not only justified, it is fitting.  Indeed, it coaxes more success. Good fortune requires recognition at the moment of awareness. 

Spontaneity is a key ingredient of joy and joy is fundamental outgrowth of a life well lived.

Check out Donald Van De Mark's series on the 19 Personality Traits of the Best Human Beings

Donald Van de Mark is a motivational speaker and has interviewed hundreds of leaders in business and politics including: Andrew Weil, MD, former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley, Jack Welch, Starbucks' Howard Schultz and Intel's Andy Grove, in his nearly 3 decades as a correspondent and anchor at CNN, CNBC and public television. He is the host of The Wisdom of Caring Leaders and The Wisdom of Teams, training videos used by corporations and schools to teach leadership skills.

Donald integrates practical tips from these great leaders to provide a riveting motivational speech on the personality traits of successful people.

Bill Bradley, the former U.S. Senator and basketball star described his life purpose to me this way, “I want to be a medium, or I want to be a vehicle for improving the quality of people's lives. Whether it's their health, or whether it's their spiritual well being, or whether it's their economic circumstances. That's where I get the deepest fulfillment, when I'm doing something that actually can improve the quality of life of other human beings.”

Abraham Maslow , a psychologist who studied motivation and exemplary people, reasoned that a healthy self-worth also makes a person less self-focused, more problem-focused and ultimately willing to take more initiative and carry more responsibility for the greater good.  He writes in his book, "Motivation and Personality," that self-actualizing individuals “customarily have some mission in life, some task to fulfill, some problem outside themselves which enlists much of their energies… this is not necessarily a task that they would prefer or choose for themselves, it may be a task that they feel is their responsibility, duty, or obligation… In general these tasks are non-personal or unselfish, concerned rather with the good of humanity in general, or of a nation in general, or of a few individuals in the subject’s family.” 

Think of George Washington who really wanted to be on Mount Vernon, his farm rather than the White House.  Think of your favorite friends who become trustees of friends' and family estates – when there’s little or no reward and a lot of headaches. 

A key reason that these strong souls are able to take on responsibilities small and large is that they work at it in a very planned way. In other words, they prepare.  

“More important than the will to win is the will to prepare,” is a favorite quote of Charlie Munger’s, the Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. So much disappointment in life stems from our inability to turn dreams into goals and then goals into realities.  And that is due in large part to a lack of preparation.  Preparation requires study, organization, provisioning.  I don’t know any successful person who is not organized and prepared.

Simply wanting and even exerting blunt effort for something is not enough. Carefully planned preparation that maximizes your efficiency and impact is what works. More important than the will to win is the will to prepare. And here’s the next and more subtle point about how the best among us prepare; top performers clearly distinguish between wants and goals or means and ends, but the best among us often take great pleasure in the means, the doing, not just the achieving.  As Maslow puts it, “Our subjects are somewhat more likely to appreciate for its own sake, and in an absolute way, the doing itself; they can often enjoy for its own sake the getting to some place as well as the arriving.” 
 
My partner, Damian Smith is a top flight ballet dancer.  He says that working with the great French ballerina Muriel Maffre “is all about the process” rather than the performance.  For Damian, working with Maffre is a glorious lesson in preparation – the deconstruction of the steps, Maffre’s rigorous focus on the “honesty” of every gesture and the fierce discipline she brings to each rehearsal.  Maffre’s devotion to her art is so exactly prepared and intensely personal that the performance is secondary.  Indeed, the fact that it’s witnessed by thousands is tertiary. Just before the curtain rose on their first major pas de deux together in 1996, Damian will never forget that Maffre whispered to him, “We do zis for ourselves, not zem.  We have invited zem to watch.”

Love of your daily duties and preparation for great goals will not only make your life's dreams attainable, it can make much of the effort, a joy.  No wonder the best among us are more joyful.  That trait will be the subject of another installment.

Check out Donald Van De Mark's series on the 19 Personality Traits of the Best Human Beings

Donald Van de Mark is a motivational speaker and has interviewed hundreds of leaders in business and politics including: Andrew Weil, MD, former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley, Jack Welch, Starbucks' Howard Schultz and Intel's Andy Grove, in his nearly 3 decades as a correspondent and anchor at CNN, CNBC and public television. He is the host of The Wisdom of Caring Leaders and The Wisdom of Teams, training videos used by corporations and schools to teach leadership skills.

Donald integrates practical tips from these great leaders to provide a riveting motivational speech on the personality traits of successful people.

The best people you'll meet have what Abraham Maslow called, a "democratic character structure."  They appreciate and see the humanity in every human being. Maslow wrote, "Most profound, but also most vague is the hard-to-get-at tendency to give a certain quantum of respect to any human being just because he or she is a human individual."  This is because the best people see into our hearts, they sense with their own hearts who we each are.  And thus they look past or through our superficial differences such as age, sex, race.

Abraham Lincoln, the democrat
As aware as he was of the racial divisions that tore America apart during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln looked right passed them when he met with individual African Americans.  The great black orator of that time, Frederick Douglass frequently commented on how Lincoln acted towards him, “I will tell you how he received me – just as you have seen one gentleman receive another… I tell you I felt big there.” 
 
Remember that the healthiest psychologically don’t lump people into groups the way the rest of us do.  They have a fresher, baggage-free perspective when they meet people.  Not only does this give them a truer view of an individual, it gives them a more egalitarian outlook.  Maslow called them “democratic people in the deepest possible sense… They can be and are friendly with anyone of suitable character regardless of class, education, political belief, race, or color. As a matter of fact, it often seems as if they are not even aware of these differences, which are for the average person so obvious and important.”

Lou Dobbs’ Hierarchy
There’s nothing worse than watching someone use their station in life to demean those of lower status. Lou Dobbs did it when I was at CNN.  Worse, he would skewer people in front of large office gatherings.  He once forced a small, fearful producer to stand on a chair while he yelled at him because “I want to talk to someone my own size!”  Lou is at least 6’3” and well over 200 pounds.  He’s a very smart, intimidating, former marine. 

People were right to be afraid of him.  Don't get me wrong -- Lou could be fun and very charming.  But his overall management style was built on intimidation.  And I don’t think that kind of leadership works anymore.  In my judgment it did not make the business division at CNN any better.  In fact, I think it made it worse. People often overreacted and rushed in their efforts to avoid criticism. 

People simply don’t make the best choices when they’re nervous or scared.  Great leaders know this. For instance, America's Cup champion Dennis Conner is a tough guy who works hard to not intimidate his crew mates. 
 
“Don't You Wish You Were as Smart as... "

Lou's hierarchical ways surfaced in other ways.  He liked to bring more senior people into his office to shoot the shit whenever he was bored.  One day I was walking by and got called in.  We traded some gossip as he paced behind his desk, smoking.  (Smoking was strictly prohibited at CNN by order of Ted Turner but Lou feared no one.)   Out of the blue, Lou turned and asked me, “Don’t you wish you were as smart as me?”  I demurred with, “I wish I was as powerful as you.”  He pressed his point, “Nah… Don’t you wish you were as smart as me?!”

I hesitated and then looked up at him and said, “Don’t you mean, ‘as smart as… I?’”

Lou narrowed his eyes and asked, “What’d I say?”

“Me”

Lou looked as if he couldn’t decide whether to thank me or hit me.  Mercifully, his phone rang and while he picked it up I scrambled out the door.  When faced with big bullies, a little grammatical judo is one way to use their weight against them.

Cheers from Sonoma,
 
Donald

Check out Donald Van De Mark's series on the 19 Personality Traits of the Best Human Beings

Donald Van de Mark is a motivational speaker and has interviewed hundreds of leaders in business and politics including: Andrew Weil, MD, former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley, Jack Welch, Starbucks' Howard Schultz and Intel's Andy Grove, in his nearly 3 decades as a correspondent and anchor at CNN, CNBC and public television. He is the host of The Wisdom of Caring Leaders and The Wisdom of Teams, training videos used by corporations and schools to teach leadership skills.

Donald integrates practical tips from these great leaders to provide a riveting motivational speech on the personality traits of successful people.

Empathy can make you rich.  Identifying with all of humanity can make you prescient.  Don't believe me?  Believe Charles Schwab.  At the end of the second quarter of 2009 his firm had $1.2 trillion under management.
 
Of course empathy can make you wise about others.  But it can also make you very, very successful.  Charles Schwab told me that he launched the discount brokerage powerhouse that bears his name because “I felt that the financial service business had developed a brokerage industry that wasn't empathetic towards customers, they were empathetic towards themselves.”
 
When a person evolves beyond his or her own neediness, they're automatically able to put themselves in others’ shoes.  This makes for a highly sensitive and just observer.  Because this is a perceptor who doesn't just see others and situations from their own, singular perspective.  They see others and the world from a variety of perspectives.  So, empathy gives them a huge advantage when it comes to anticipating wants, needs and opinions of others.  When studying mass behavior, it gives this evolved soul an ability to anticipate market wants and needs.  When asked what was the secret to his success as head of Merrill Lynch in the ‘70s, Donald Regan, Secretary of the Treasury and White House Chief of Staff under Ronald Reagan said, “That’s not a big conversation. It’s one word – anticipation.” 
 
Charles Schwab's empathy has been particularly powerful because it springs from one of one of mankind's fundamental drivers - goodness.  Schwab puts it this way, “I don't know what it was that got me to the point of thinking this way, but I felt it was about fairness. I think fairness, and maybe it was my early religious training. I don't know what it was that sort of instilled in me this sense of fairness, a sense of values. A sense that there is a human behind every business and it has to be the more you are more human, the more you can relate to your customer. And the more you relate to your customer, and where you are going to create and derive new services and relationships that will enhance your organization.”
 
Schwab's empathetic (or empathic) powers have made him prescient as he repeatedly shook up the clubby world of Wall Street.  He led the effort to cut brokerage commissions and he was the fist to offer:
 - 24-hour telephone access
 - online trading
 - mutual funds other than his own
 
And, in late 2009, he has launched four ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) charging no brokerage fees.  “My vision happens to be that every American is an investor for their long-term assets, their retirement assets.  They'll get better returns.  They'll have better incomes.  They'll have more choices when they get older. They will have more choices while they are going through their life cycle. Whether it's choices for the kids through education, choices for a second home or first home, whatever it might be. It is all about having where-with-all, financial where-with-all to have these choices as we go through life's wonderful opportunities.”
 
Abraham Maslow called this trait an “identification with all humanity” and wrote that the best among us, "have a a deep feeling of identification, sympathy, and affection for human beings in general.  They feel kinship and connection as if all people were members of a single family."  Because of this, he wrote, they "have a genuine desire to help the human race."
 
That's exactly the desire that Schwab articulates.  It's exactly the quality that has also made him one of the most trusted pitch-men in the history of advertising.  In the world of TV personalities and pitchmen, there is a something called a "Q" rating for likeability and even trustworthiness.  Schwab's Q rating is sky high.  Most CEOs, indeed most company founders and even professional sales leaders are not nearly as well liked or as successful at gaining their customers’ trust.
 
Identifying with all humanity, having a kind of global empathy is a personality trait well worth developing beyond the riches it may help you achieve.  But beware, it will make you dutiful -- taking on responsibilities large... and small.  My step grand-mother "Nan" would pick up litter.  This was a woman who was waited on hand and foot and yet she felt no qualms about picking up discarded dirty napkins at many a grand-child's graduation.  Those who are empathic towards others are outwardly focused, problem-focused, not self-focused.  Indeed, the most highly evolved human beings identify with others outside their cultures, beyond their generations, they even have empathy for for animals and the environment. 
 
Healthy psyches are not focused on themselves.  They don’t divert every conversation to their needs, wants and problems.  They are focused on others and more specifically about helping others and solving their problems.  Remember, your grand-mother’s counsel not to talk too much about yourself.  It's good manners and it’s a good indicator of mental health to see how much someone dwells on himself.
 
Here is where your newly heightened awareness and better reality recognition are going to be very valuable.  Listen closely to what those around you talk about.  Watch carefully how they behave when an opportunity to help out arises.  When you tell a story about some event or about someone, see if the person to whom you’re talking relates it back to themselves.  When it comes to actions, notice those who makes an effort when they don’t have to, as Nan did. 
 
Surround yourself with those who care about others and who do positive things for the greater good.  It will make you a better (and maybe even richer!) person. 
 
Cheers from Sonoma,
 
Donald

Check out Donald Van De Mark's series on the 19 Personality Traits of the Best Human Beings

Donald Van de Mark is a motivational speaker and has interviewed hundreds of leaders in business and politics including: Andrew Weil, MD, former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley, Jack Welch, Starbucks' Howard Schultz and Intel's Andy Grove, in his nearly 3 decades as a correspondent and anchor at CNN, CNBC and public television. He is the host of The Wisdom of Caring Leaders and The Wisdom of Teams, training videos used by corporations and schools to teach leadership skills.

Donald integrates practical tips from these great leaders to provide a riveting motivational speech on the personality traits of successful people.

Do you call the gambling industry, "gaming?"  Do you now call soda or bubbly water, "sparkling?"  Does your teenager use the word, "like," three times in every sentence she utters?

Here’s a sobering truth about you, indeed nearly human beings.  Most of us let others – friends and parents, politicians and pundits, advertisers and celebrities influence what we wear, how we speak, what we believe and often even what we think of our selves. 

Think about the insidious salesmanship of our age.  Did you:  Swallow handfuls of Vitamin E capsules in the ‘80’s, guzzle quarts of water during the ‘90’s, buy a Land Rover in the last ten years, how about an “abdominizer”?  Do you indulge in trashy magazines about vapid celebrities?

Healthy psyches are better able to resist marketers and other would-be influencers.  They also seem inoculated against current cultural biases.  They are more timeless and global in outlook or as psychologist, Abraham Maslow, put it, “They are members-at-large of the human species.” First of all, these individuals are self-accepting, self-defining and self-directed that they stand apart from their cultures, their times.  Just as their commitment to realism helps them resist current culture so does their autonomy.  In other words, they have such a strong and clear sense of self and personal morality that they have a kind of personal force field, protecting them from the invasive marketing and media messages that bombard most of us every day. 

The strongest and happiest individuals march to their own drummers and while they fit in with the rest of us on a day-to-day basis, left to their own devices, they can seem detached, aloof, eccentric, even rebellious or odd.  Think of the photo of Albert Einstein sticking his tongue out at photographers.  In Walter Isaacson’s wonderful, “Einstein, His Life and Universe”, the great physicist attributes his original, rebellious theories to his “impudence”.  So strongly individual and so mightily focused on their goals, these characters can seem out-of-sync and often out of fashion. At Abraham Lincoln’s famous 1860 speech at Cooper Union, an observer noted that, “one of the legs of his trousers was up about two inches above his shoe; his hair was disheveled and stuck out like a rooster’s feathers; his coat was altogether too large for him in the back, his arms much longer than sleeves.”

The hit AMC series, “Mad Men” is wonderful for many reasons.  For me, one of the best is that it reminds us of how differently we viewed and treated each other just a few decades ago.  It’s a vivid portrayal of strongly held assumptions and beliefs about women, race, sexuality, fashion, marriage and so much more, which we now largely reject.  Keep “Mad Men” in mind every time you take a strong position on current social and political issues.  Hell, think how our economic outlook has changed in just the past two years.

To help resist the ideas, biases and short-sighted thinking of the day:

• Turn off the media for a portion of every day 
• Tape or Tivo your TV programs so you can speed through the ads
• Shut off all news and marketers messages for at least one week a year - that's a tip from Dr. Andrew Weil, the holistic medicine pioneer
• Dig into your closet and put on some great piece of clothing that you haven't worn in years
• Retreat regularly to areas without billboards and other media and sales messages: the beach, parks and wilderness
• Best of all, go to our glorious national parks and let your soul breathe!

Check out Donald Van De Mark's series on the 19 Personality Traits of the Best Human Beings

Donald Van de Mark is a motivational speaker and has interviewed hundreds of leaders in business and politics including: Andrew Weil, MD, former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley, Jack Welch, Starbucks' Howard Schultz and Intel's Andy Grove, in his nearly 3 decades as a correspondent and anchor at CNN, CNBC and public television. He is the host of The Wisdom of Caring Leaders and The Wisdom of Teams, training videos used by corporations and schools to teach leadership skills.

Donald integrates practical tips from these great leaders to provide a riveting motivational speech on the personality traits of successful people.

The healthiest and happiest human beings I’ve come across make a self-determined or autonomous life look easy because they have something the rest of us struggle with – self-acceptance.  From childhood pals who were reared by remarkably supportive parents or from successful people who I’ve interviewed who have grown to accept themselves, these individuals fully understand and appreciate their own natures and they fully accept the nature of mankind, farts and all.
 
You may think that you just read a typo. 
 
You didn’t.
 
Enjoying deep satisfaction with life (your highly individual life), first requires a recognition that you are an animal, with all the earthy appetites and functions of beasts.  The good news is that you can and ought to enjoy your animal instincts and acts: eating, sleeping, moving (exercise), sex and, yes, even bodily excretions!
 
As one of my best friends, (who wishes to remain anonymous on this point and who honks loudly when he blows his nose) happily posits, “Expulsion from all bodily orifices is pleasurable!”

The late great 20th century psychologist, Abraham Maslow had this to say about ninenty-nine percent of us, "Even the normal member of our culture feels unnecessarily guilty or ashamed about too many things and has anxiety in too many situations. Healthy individuals find it possible to accept themselves and their own nature without chagrin or complaint or, for that matter, without even thinking about the matter that much.”

I’ll never forget when Sandy McAfee, one of my favorite lifelong friends and now in his robust eighties, once photocopied and distributed an obscure medical magazine piece about how farting frequently and even forcefully was a sign of good intestinal health.  The gist of the article was that pushing gas was not only quite necessary, but that a diet that produced gas is healthy and that holding it in is unhealthy.  I was a teenager at the time and loved it, still do.  I especially loved the fact that a pillar of the community such as Sandy distributed this important news to many a shocked matron.  A guest physician on “Oprah” once described how a diet high in whole grains, beans and other methane-producing foods was healthy.  Oprah grimaced.  She could have and should have laughed with glee.
 
Maslow found that the very healthy psychologically are lusty and enjoy the simplest physical experiences.  They are good eaters and good sleepers.  I've found that they're nearly always exercisers and know that moving blood around the body sets off a cascade of reactions that increases health, happiness and longevity.  They have strong sexual appetites and are not ashamed about it.  They’re often fierce competitors and love to win.  They recognize their own animal natures – the dangerous as well as the sensuous and gracious.  And they do so with what Maslow called, “the stoic style… They can take the frailties and sins, weaknesses, and evils of human nature in the same unquestioning spirit with which one accepts the characteristics of nature… nature as it is and not as they would prefer it to be” 

 
I remember being in the Upper Canada College Preparatory School library reading about and looking at pictures of Auschwitz and Buchenwald.  I was ten or eleven years old and the deep sense of dread that I felt then about what humans are capable of remains with me to this day.  This dark side of human nature is a very hard truth to swallow, but once you do, and it need only be once, then you are forewarned and forearmed.
 
Accepting our propensity for evil is also helpful for accepting your own personal failings, large and small.  When you commit shameful acts – we all do, then it’s easier to remember how much worse others have behaved, and then to grasp a bit of grace and forgive yourself.  As the late founder of the City Church of New York, Rev. R. Maurice Boyd used to quote, “Look back on your own transgressions in life with ‘tender contempt."

If you learn to accept your own true nature, then you should also become more integrated.  Meaning you will become more genuine to others.  You will lose artifice and become the same true self to everyone you know, from bosses to children.  This is just one of the great benefits of self acceptance.  And if you are truer to yourself then you are also more free to express yourself.  You won't have to edit your thoughts or words.  Think of Julia Child who would spontaneously blurt out her joy and pain, exasperation and fascination.  Think of Jack Welch who recommends rolling out a keg at even the smallest wins in business.

Self acceptance is not easy to achieve.  For children, it's imbued by supportive parents, teachers and role models.  For adults, it takes introspection and often the help of a good psycho therapist.  (And good ones are hard to find.)  Then it takes courage to put yourself on a path that is truly yours.  If you do find your path that's where the next great trait of the best among the successful comes in -- autonomy.  An autonomous, self-directed life -- that's the subject of our next installment.

Cheers from Sonoma!

Donald

Check out Donald Van De Mark's series on the 19 Personality Traits of the Best Human Beings

Donald Van de Mark is a motivational speaker and has interviewed hundreds of leaders in business and politics including: Andrew Weil, MD, former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley, Jack Welch, Starbucks' Howard Schultz and Intel's Andy Grove, in his nearly 3 decades as a correspondent and anchor at CNN, CNBC and public television. He is the host of The Wisdom of Caring Leaders and The Wisdom of Teams, training videos used by corporations and schools to teach leadership skills.

Donald integrates practical tips from these great leaders to provide a riveting motivational speech on the personality traits of successful people.

Jobs are lost.  Investment portfolios are down.  And those are just the cyclical traumas.  The more unnerving truth is that everything’s changing and the changes seem to be accelerating: Technology, media, the acceptance of gay people, the rise of women to real power, Communist China as a formidable capitalist, a globalized, multi-racial America… and most of all: a BLACK man in the WHITE House!  A black man who saves Wall Street, who is changing the way we respond to pollution, the way we interact with the world, the way we buy and distribute health care.
 
Making it all the more of an affront to those who resist evolution – is that Barack Obama won’t play his part.  He’s a black man who appears more: intelligent, grounded, successful and noble than any of his white competitors. It’s a world turned upside down.  To those who resist change, it’s felt as an attack on their ideals, their status, their world view and even their grip on reality.  That is scary!
 
That fear then morphs internally into anger and that is understandable and completely natural.  But make no mistake.  It is reactionary to its core.  As such it is powerful and dangerous.  It springs from the oldest part of the animal brain – the reptilian stem.  It’s very much part of all of our natures – and when activated by fear, we have little control over it.  Congressman Joe Wilson admitted as much when he said that yelling “You lie!” at the President during his speech to Congress was “spontaneous.”  At that moment, Wilson is the crocodile snapping at splashing prey, he is the front line soldier firing at sounds in the dark.
 
It’s important to remember that his appalling outburst comes from a southern conservative – the kind of person who reveres rank and is schooled in good manners.  All the niceties of our mammalian and analytical brains are no match for the reptilian stem when we are scared and mad -- in both senses of the word.

Resistance to change twists even the most sophisticated minds.  I know of bright, discerning, globally-minded individuals who loathe Barack Obama.  They honestly believe this elegant, calm moderate is ruining the country.  Their children are shocked at their parents' reaction and whisper that it can only be latent racism.  It may be that, but I believe it’s simply that those who do not accept the reality of change become ever more isolated, fearful and angry.
 
The problem for Joe Wilson and millions of older, white, straight traditionalists is that their world is rapidly shrinking.  The local newspaper is a shadow of its former self, or gone.  The computer is ever more baffling.  Employers push diversity. Young people are coarse and demanding.  Even money doesn’t insulate anymore.  Brown people, gay people, strange invaders of all shades and persuasions now populate the media and workplace, if not one’s own neighborhood. Just like Clint Eastwood’s, Walt Kowalski in the movie Gran Torino, the islands upon which these static personalities sit, grow smaller.
 
It reminds me of America in the early 1960’s which is so brilliantly portrayed in Matthew Weiner’s Mad Men.  The world is shifting beneath people’s feet.  Everyone’s a bit off balance.  We know how history plays out.  Women and African Americans demand opportunity and dark, fearful forces fight back.  Blood is shed.
 
Change is exciting.  Change can be liberating.  But change can also be dangerous, because those who refute it often have no control over their reactive, reptilian and sometimes violent responses.

Check out Donald Van De Mark's series on the 19 Personality Traits of the Best Human Beings

Donald Van de Mark is a motivational speaker and has interviewed hundreds of leaders in business and politics including: Andrew Weil, MD, former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley, Jack Welch, Starbucks' Howard Schultz and Intel's Andy Grove, in his nearly 3 decades as a correspondent and anchor at CNN, CNBC and public television. He is the host of The Wisdom of Caring Leaders and The Wisdom of Teams, training videos used by corporations and schools to teach leadership skills.

Donald integrates practical tips from these great leaders to provide a riveting motivational speech on the personality traits of successful people. 

“They won.  We lost.  Next.”  Barry Diller

Barry Diller, who has led TV networks, movie studios, home shopping empires and now a variety of online companies, is a person who demonstrates an eagerness for experience.  I worked directly for this mercurial mogul for nearly a year when he was running QVC.  During that time,  we unsuccessfully tried to take over Paramount Communications and then CBS Television. 
 
Diller loves change and loves shaking up his staff so much so that we were always scrambling to incorporate the latest technology and information systems.  He loved to travel: planes, boats  and helicopters.  You haven’t lived until you’ve choppered into mid-town Manhattan. His appetite for new experiences pervaded his life in large ways and small.  He wanted to ride the wave of technological disruption in retailing  and  I once watched him roam around a small table, sampling three different dinners in his apartment at the Waldorf-Astoria.  He was always experimenting, always looking forward to the next opportunity.

In late December, 1993, I issued a press release for Diller where he only tersely accepted defeat in his $10,000,000,000 battle for Paramount before announcing his intention to tackle another.  Read, word for word, by two of the three network news anchors that night, Diller said, “They won.  We lost.  Next.”
 
The strongest individuals thrive on steep learning curves and get bored of the status quo relatively rapidly.  Sabeer Bahtia, who co-founded Hotmail, told me that creative and ambitious people look for their next job within two years of landing their current positions.  I challenged him, until I realized that throughout my career, I had done just that.  I may not have moved within two years, but within a couple of years, I was always at least preparing for the next move.
 
Being open to new experiences is why these happy high achievers are also good at getting outside their “comfort zones,” because for them, doing the same old thing is uncomfortable.  They don’t just accept, they welcome constant change and the exhilaration of being slightly off balance.
 
One last note about this trait: I know of it well. Among my dearest and oldest friends is the McAfee family of Pepper Pike, Ohio.  In our shared Canadian summers, they have been beacons of health and happiness to me.  One reason I’m sure is that they’re always game to try new things.  Nina McAfee, the matriarch, is always organizing new adventures: bicycling, concerts, rafting, plays, kayaking, parasailing. As I grew up, the McAfees skied every mountain in the west, cavorted with wildlife in The Galapagos Islands, read  most of the best-sellers and tried every new board game.  My family gathered year after year at the same sunny watering holes and drank.
 
Trust me.  Being open to new experiences is better.

Check out Donald Van De Mark's series on the 19 Personality Traits of the Best Human Beings

Donald Van de Mark is a speaker and has interviewed hundreds of leaders in business and politics including: Andrew Weil, MD, former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley, Jack Welch, Starbucks' Howard Schultz and Intel's Andy Grove, in his nearly 3 decades as a correspondent and anchor at CNN, CNBC and public television. He is the host of The Wisdom of Caring Leaders, a leadership skills training video used by corporations and schools.

Donald integrates practical tips from these great leaders to provide a riveting motivational speech on the personality traits of successful people. 

I just saw Nora Ephron’s “Julie and Julia.” I was charmed and delighted by Meryl Streep’s portrayal of the cooking icon, Julia Child. But even more so, I was impressed with Julia Child: her fearlessness, her egalitarian nature, her global outlook, her expressiveness, her joy, her sense of humor, her disregard for convention, her determination, her hearty appetites, her love-soaked marriage, her self-directed life… I could go on and on.

In an interview that Streep did in the U.K. with John Hiscock, she talked about the woman she portrays:  “Julia’s approach to her day was one of energy and appetite and a blanket determination not to let troubles get you down. It’s a great quality and she really had it… When you talk about passion, Julia Child just didn’t have it for her husband or cooking; she had a passion for living. What was compelling about her was her joie de vivre and her unwillingness to be bogged down in negativity. She loved being alive and that’s inspirational in itself.”

Why and how was this six foot two inch, far-from-pretty, diplomat’s wife so in love with life? I believe she was for several reasons, not the least of which is that she was, a success. But she was a success at life and love as well as cooking and writing because she shared several of the personality traits of the psychologically healthiest human beings. I touched on some of them above, but here’s a more explicit list:

1. She and Paul were global not national or provincial in outlook
2. She treated everyone with a healthy dose of respect, and idolized no one
3. She was comfortable, even excited with the unknown
4. She was a good animal with hearty, shameless (in the good way) appetites
5. She recognized the reality of all situations (remember her comment to her sister as they gazed at themselves dressed up for dinner!)
6. Her light-hearted and non-hostile sense of humor
7. She and Paul’s disregard for 1950’s convention, such as McCarthyism and professional limitations on women
8. Her blurt-it-out expressiveness
9. Her deep, enduring love affair with Paul, her husband
10. Her joy

These are not complicated, God-given or DNA infused qualities. These are traits that you and I can develop. I'm not going to get into tips and techniques on how to develop these traits here -- that's part of other blog postings and a book I'm working on.

What I want to get across in this short essay is that you and everyone should be thinking, feeling, behaving, and most of all being more like a Child -- Julia Child!

Cheers from Sonoma,
Or as Julia might have said, “Bon Appetit!”

Donald

Donald Van De Mark series on the 19 Personality Traits of the Best Human Beings:

• Introduction: The Good Among the Great: Personality Traits of the Best Human Beings

1. Superior Reality Recognition

• The Clearer, More Efficient Perception of Reality
• Andy Grove, founder of Intel absorbs reality
• The Role of Reality and Choice in Your Destiny

2. Open to New Experiences

• Healthy High Achievers and Curiosity
• Knowing Your Desires and Letting Them Guide You

Donald Van de Mark has interviewed hundreds of leaders in business and politics including: Andrew Weil, MD, former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley, Jack Welch, Starbucks' Howard Schultz and Intel's Andy Grove, in his nearly 3 decades as a correspondent and anchor at CNN, CNBC and public television. He integrates practical tips from these great leaders to provide a riveting motivational speech on the personality traits of successful people. Donald is also the host of the corporate training video, The Wisdom of Caring Leaders.