I walked around with my interviewer Antoinette as she led me down a long hallway and up a flight of stairs. On the way she said hi to every single person by name and they said hi to her by name, too. I felt like we were on a red carpet. “With a thousand people working here, how do you know everyone?” I asked her.
“Easy,” she replied. “We have the ten-foot rule. You say hi to everybody within ten feet of you. It’s based on asking customers how you can help in a store. Our name badges have our names printed in big letters and we hang them on our shirt collars so they’re easy to read. It’s like those HELLO MY NAME IS stickers at parties. Except we wear them all the time.”
The culture wasn’t for everybody.
But I loved it immediately.
The Bench Test is immersing yourself in a new situation and observing your reaction to make sure your decision is aligned with your authentic self.
The Five People Test
“The company is the five people you sit beside.”
My leadership professor at Harvard said this all the time. What did he mean? The five people on your team, the five people you eat lunch with every day, the five people telling you all about the company—they are the company. They create and help articulate your view of the company.
“Are your friends making you fat?” asked The New York Times, with an article and research studies concluding that even our weight may be based on the weight of our friends. Hang out with fat people? You become fat. What if they hang out with fat people? They become fat. Then you become fat. Sad but true. Some studies have even suggested you’re the average of your friends’ height and their attractiveness. Makes sense when you see old married couples that look the same. Or people who look like their dogs!
Researchers Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler write in their bestselling book Connected: “We discovered that if your friend’s friend’s friend gained weight, you gained weight. We discovered that if your friend’s friend’s friend stopped smoking, you stopped smoking. And we discovered that if your friend’s friend’s friend became happy, you became happy.”
Bestselling author James Altucher took the idea even further in the main points of his “The Power of Five” article: “You are the average of the five people around you. . . . You are the average of the five things that inspire you the most. . . . My thoughts are the average of the five things I think about. . . . My body and mind are the average of the five things I ‘eat.’ . . . I am the average of the five things I do to help people each day.”
Remember this: You are the average of the five people around you! You’re the average of their intelligence, you’re the average of their looks, you’re the average of their positivity, you’re the average of their creativity, you’re the average of their ambition.
So what’s The Five People Test?
Take a look at the five people closest to you and remember you’re the average of them.
There’s you in the middle.
Want to know how positive you are? Average the attitude of the five people you spend time with most.
Want to know how strong a leader you are? Average the leadership qualities of your five closest peers.
Want to know how confident you are? Average the confidence of the five people you hang out with most.
Sure, it’s an approximation, but The Five-People Test shows us who we are . . . to ourselves. It’s one of the three tests you can use to find your authentic self.
As American philosopher William James said, “Wherever you are it is your own friends who make your world.”
5
The 5 greatest regrets of the dying and how to avoid them
Bronnie Ware is an Australian palliative nurse who spent years taking care of the dying in the last three months of their lives. “When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently,” she says, “common themes surfaced again and again.”
She eventually put together the five most common regrets from people moments away from their last breath and posted it online. It went viral, and the story was picked up by The Guardian and The Daily Mail, among others.
So what were the greatest regrets she heard from patient after patient? Didn’t make enough money? Didn’t work enough hours? Not enough vacations? Not enough homes?
No. You know that by now. The 5 Greatest Regrets of the Dying are:
Every time I read this list I am stunned into silence for a minute. I think how many of these regrets I would have if I died today. There are always a couple I can work on, and this list serves as inspiration. But one thing I also notice is this entire list relates to authenticity. Directly. It’s all about being you.
What happens if you be you and be cool with it? Well, I would argue if you’re being yourself, then:
You do live a life true to yourself.
You do overvalue your time and find a job that fits your life.
You do express your feelings.
You do keep in touch with your friends.
You do let yourself be happier.
Being you removes regrets from your life.
Authenticity removes regrets from your life.
Here are a few additional observations from Nurse Bronnie that were shared in The Guardian. Notice how they relate to authenticity:
“I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me—This was the most common regret of all. When people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honored even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.”
“Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.”
“I wish that I had let myself be happier—This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realize until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content. When deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.”
6
“When there are no enemies within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.”
There is nothing as gratifying as living a life where you are you. Because you can’t be who you’re not.
The Bhagavad Gita, the sacred Hindu text, says it’s better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection. Pretending to be Better You instead of Normal You means spending energy focusing on this person and then acting them into existence. How exhausting! If you were a computer, this would be spending brainpower to flash a beautiful screen saver at everyone walking by. It takes time and energy. And goes against your natural desires and dreams. It’s also impossible to thoughtfully do both at the same time. Don’t get us started on multitasking, right?