PREFACE
Stress had become my new norm and anxiety was my new best friend. I was stuck in limbo, paralyzed by what I perceived to be an insurmountable problem: a complex, increasingly uncertain, highly unpredictable, interconnected, fast life full of shocks and surprises. The more I thought about trying to plan my future, the more stressed and anxious I became. Each path that lay in front of me looked worse than the other.
Every two weeks, it seemed, my boss (who is actually a good guy) walked into my office and, seated comfortably, asked if I had “found anything yet,” because he wasn’t sure how long he had before he might have to lay me off. He wasn’t being mean; he wasn’t sure how long he had himself, and he was trying to be genuinely helpful in the increasingly uncertain world of corporate America.
It’s not supposed to be this way, I thought as I walked into my house in the suburbs of New Jersey one evening, after a two-hour commute from the city. Something just doesn’t feel right. I mean, I did all that I was supposed to do.
When my family moved to the United States in 1979 with only $75, we embraced the American dream. My parents had two jobs, working seven days a week for years. As I got older, I helped as well as I could by delivering newspapers, mowing lawns, and eventually helping to run our family’s Dairy Queen store, which we bought using some family loans and money we saved after coming to America. I put myself through college and got a decent education—even an MBA—by going to school at night. After college, I went to work for a big company, surviving and at times even thriving, for twenty years. I was a number one sales rep, an innovator who started new initiatives and produced solid returns for the company. I worked hard, getting up early and going to bed late. I stuck to my to-do lists, read all the great books, eagerly sought advice from smart mentors, and just kept delivering results as well as I could. I thought I was doing well.
I believed in the idea that if I simply worked hard and smart, I would be successful and happy. I followed all the rules and did all the right things—even got a thirty-year fixed mortgage for a house I knew we could afford. So why did I now feel I was not keeping up? Why was I always worried? A constant chatter of overthinking was keeping me up at night. I felt constantly tense, anxious, and pessimistic about an uncertain future.
It may seem strange, but as I walked into work in New York City each morning, my greatest triumph came from seeing the green light appear on the turnstile as I swiped my corporate ID, signaling that I was still employed. But that little triumph quickly wore off when I got into my office, where I was supposed to be creating, innovating, and driving new opportunities and ideas for our business. How could I move forward when I felt so uncertain about my own job, about the economy, about world events? Even the new ideas I was considering proposing to my boss felt as though they wouldn’t pass the huge hurdle that my own overthinking mind threw up against them, leaving me to shrug and stop trying.
I always used to be enthusiastic and positive. How did I start overthinking and, as a result, feeling so worried?
As I lay awake in bed for most of the night, my mind couldn’t deal with how to cope with the uncertainty I noticed everywhere I looked: I’m paying more for my two kids’ day care than I did for one year of college not too long ago. How am I going to be able to afford $200,000 for each of them when they’re ready for college? I know college is years away, but where am I going to get all that money? I’d love to save on the day care and send them to the public school, but like so many local governments in America, my town is broke and doesn’t have a full-day kindergarten. How am I supposed to look after my aging parents with both my wife and I working? They don’t have a 401(k); they’re just a hardworking older couple who run a tiny Dairy Queen ice cream store.
But it wasn’t only economics making me feel this way; it was everything. I had lots of friends on Facebook but I somehow felt as though I didn’t really know them anymore. I couldn’t remember the last time I had gotten together with friends solely for the purpose of shooting the breeze. And although my kids are fairly good at playing Angry Birds on the iPhone, will they be able to have a decent conversation with someone during a job interview? Will they have the hustle and the hunger to compete for jobs against the kids from Shanghai or New Delhi?
Of course, turning on the TV or reading a newspaper didn’t help one bit. From the chaos in the Middle East to the debt crises here at home and in Europe, I continued to get more anxious and pessimistic.
Did someone change the formula for life?
Everything I thought was certain was no longer so. There was uncertainty at my job (if I continued to have a job); stress in trying to balance home, kids, and work; unpredictability in starting a new business with my wife; and the challenge of helping my parents figure out their retirement. I felt overwhelmed, underprepared, and always worried about an increasingly uncertain future.
I was stuck. Paralyzed. Frozen. I stopped making any decisions or choices. At work, I stopped coming up with new ideas and I felt disengaged. Everything was so uncertain and moving so fast that I just didn’t know what to do. I thought about moving to another job or another company, but I held back because I thought about all the negatives of an uncertain new career path. I overanalyzed everything and felt in control of nothing. As a result, my career stagnated and I felt like I was slipping down a spiral of anxiety, frustration, and self-doubt.
The root cause of my inability to move forward was that I felt as if my life—at home and at work—no longer had any order to it. I used to know the formula for life and work, but now everything was different. I was trying to identify the new rules in a changing world. I was trying to define the right path to success. But I was having trouble planning for next week; how was I going to plan a five-year career track? I couldn’t figure out the direction to take in my life so became stuck. I felt as if I no longer had control over my own destiny.
Then something unexpected happened that changed my life forever. My friend Ben asked me to accompany him on his first business trip to India, and I said yes.
I was born in India and lived there for a part of my youth. More recently, I had been there for family weddings, to visit relatives with my wife, to introduce my kids to their distant cousins, and occasionally for work. I was delighted to take a week of vacation from my job to help Ben figure out how to do business in one of the world’s most populous and rapidly growing economies.
Ben’s face became more perplexed as the week wore on and he experienced all that is India—cows on the road; confusing business meetings; the way people pray, shop, or stand in line (what line?); the way life keeps moving, fast.
As we prepared to leave India and we reflected on his busy week of meeting people and trying to understand the culture, Ben asked, in an exhausted voice, “How does anything get done in a country that is filled with so much craziness and confusion—on the roads, in meetings, in daily life—whether it’s going to the market to buy food, competing against so many others to find a job, getting a postage stamp at the post office, or trying to do a business deal? There is so much chaos here. How does it work with a billion people? I just don’t get it. How do people figure out what to do when they have no idea what’s going to happen next?”
I answered, “Well, that’s India for you. It’s a chaotic place. But let me ask you this: Have you ever been to an Indian wedding in the U.S.?”
“No,” he said. “Why do you ask?”
“Because an Indian wedding will teach you how to deal with uncertainty,” I answered. “Here’s what I mean. You go to an Indian wedding and you experience an all-out attack on all your senses. There’s confusion everywhere. People are running late; you don’t know what’s going on. So many colors, smells, music, dancing, and new outfits you’ve never seen before. Some people arguing, others laughing, some drinking, some praying. Marigold flowers everywhere—in a vase and all over the floor!
“There’s a horse or an elephant (yes, even at Indian weddings in the U.S.), and you’re not quite sure, but it’s not for the kids. Nothing ever goes according to plan or according to what is written on the invitation. You feel like you have no control and no idea what’s going to happen next. Instead of a celebration, it feels more like a riot. It’s total chaos. But five or eight hours later, two people get married! They do get married!
“What you have to remember is that, while you may not be able to know what happens next and you feel as though there’s no order to anything, two people will get married, and everything will seem perfect when it’s all over. It all works out in the end. Just accept it. You just have to let go and go with the flow that leads you up to the end. Enjoy the ride! If you focus too much on trying to figure out or control what comes next, you’ll miss the best time of your life and it will all be over before you know it.
“You have to change your mind-set and embrace the chaos,” I exclaimed.
And so Embrace the Chaos was born!
As I returned home to the suburbs of New Jersey, to my own life and career uncertainty, I reflected on my talk with Ben. And suddenly I realized that what I was trying to tell my friend to do in India was exactly what I needed to do to help reduce my stress and move forward in my own life, in my own career, right here at home in America. I was spending too much time worrying about the noise of the wedding rather than enjoying the spectacle.
To be honest, I didn’t feel as frustrated or anxious in India, even though things are so much harder there. India is a country of more than 1.2 billion people living in a country about one-third the size of the United States. Add to this the complexity of many languages and customs as well as a highly fragmented and complex economy with lots of chaos. Frankly, the place just shouldn’t work at all. Yet, according to one international rating (the Happy Planet Index), India far outstrips the United States in happiness. What was the secret sauce they had that I didn’t?
In order to learn how to embrace the chaos of my life in the United States, I realized, I would have to reclaim my past. I would learn how to move forward in chaos from the most chaotic place I knew: India.