Finding Your Center of Gravity

In aikido, we learn that it's crucially important to find what's called your nen. Nen literally means one-point, and it refers to your physical center of gravity, a point two inches below your navel. When you're fighting, if you find your one-point, it's much harder for your opponent to push you off balance. Metaphorically, nen refers to a line that connects your personal energy to the energy of the universe. It's the sense of cosmic balance that keeps you from being pushed over psychologically, by fear or overconfidence.

Finding your one-point is as crucial in life as it is in aikido. If you're not centered in yourself, any little thing can push you off balance. Picture yourself arriving at your office in the morning with one major item on your to-do list. You're focused, you're ready to tackle this project.

And then the e-mails start streaming in—your boss wants this assignment done by Friday. Now you're worried that you won't be able to finish in time. You're thinking about how much pressure your boss has been putting on you this year. Then you get another e-mail. Your colleague wants to get lunch, and you know what that means—an hour of listening to nonstop complaints. You can already feel the headache starting to throb behind your eyes. Next, it's your spouse texting to remind you to stop at the store on your way home, which is annoying, because you definitely weren't going to forget. Sure, you forgot yesterday, but today you've got a reminder on your phone. And so on. Before you know it, all that focus and purpose you walked in with is gone.

That feeling of being buffeted from side to side by whatever's coming at you—that's the feeling of losing your one-point. It can happen on that kind of small scale, over the course of a day, and it can also happen on a larger scale, over the course of a year, or a lifetime. Your parents pressure you to go out for the soccer team because they think it'll look good on your college applications. You join a community choir to get closer to someone you find attractive. You take a job because you need a job, and then five years later you're stuck in a career you didn't particularly want.

Some outside influences are positive, of course. Some people encourage us to be our best, like the friend who makes a pact to go to the gym together once a week, or the spouse who always believes the best is possible. But all too often, we're influenced by other people's expectations in a way that really has nothing to do with what we really want. And because we want to please these people, or we fear letting them down, we let them push us in one direction or another. And we end up off-center. We lose our one-point.

Staying Centered through Good Times and Bad

Investor Warren Buffett is famous for his low-key style. His annual letters to shareholders in his company, Berkshire Hathaway, are full of simple, down-to-earth advice, like: never overpay for an investment; always take a long-term view; never imagine that you can predict where the stock market is going next. Reading those letters, you'd think that being perhaps the world's most successful investor was just that simple. Buy good companies, at a discount if you can, and hold on to them for a long time. Apparently, that's all it takes to generate double the return of the S&P 500 over the course of 50 years.

And maybe it is—but it's sticking to that simple plan that's the hard part. Most people don't have the discipline to follow those simple rules in good times and in bad. They'll jump on the bandwagon of the latest shiny new IPO, and they'll overpay for that investment. They'll panic when the market starts to go south, and they'll forget their long-term view. They'll let ego or fear push them off their one-point, and they'll make a bad call.

Buffett has famously said he never invests in a company he doesn't understand. Often, that means that he favors businesses that continually, reliably produce cash, like insurance companies. It also means he tends to avoid jumping on the latest high-tech fad. That doesn't always make him popular. For example, in 1999, he gave a speech to a conference full of high-flying investors hyped on the dot-com boom—explaining why the boom wouldn't last. People dismissed him. He was right.

His personal style is just as simple and straightforward as his professional style. He favors burgers and fries, Heinz ketchup (he's an investor), root beer floats. For decades, he's kept his own salary steady at $100,000—a handsome sum, but nothing compared to the lavish salaries most CEOs enjoy.¹ He consistently gives credit to the colleagues at all levels of his business who have helped him achieve his enormous success. In his 2014 letter to investors, on the fiftieth anniversary of his taking over management of Berkshire Hathaway, he noted that investors attending the company's annual meeting could probably save some cash by flying into Kansas City instead of Omaha.² Think about that: This is a billionaire who still thinks about how to save a couple hundred dollars on a plane ticket.

Buffett's illustrious career is a great example of the power of holding to your one-point. He has said that you don't have to be a genius to be a successful investor; “what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing.”³ What you need is nen: a psychological center of gravity that keeps you steady when the world around you is wavering. Listen to the way Buffett describes his life's work:

I feel like I'm on my back, and there's the Sistine Chapel, and I'm painting away. I like it when people say, “Gee, that's a pretty good-looking painting.” But it's my painting, and when somebody says, “Why don't you use more red instead of blue?” Good-bye. It's my painting.⁴

That is a perfect description of what it means to hold to your one-point. It's my painting. How often do you let yourself be swayed by someone else's opinion? How often do you pick up that red brush because of a comment, a suggestion, or a complaint?

Finding Your One-Point by Stepping Away

For years I put work ahead of everything else in my life. My twenties flew by while I was living, studying, and working in Japan. My thirties were a blur, moving back to America, starting and running successful companies. By age 42, I was completely burned out. I had achieved significant professional success. But I was lonely. And I'd never taken a two-week vacation in my life.

I know I'm not alone there. A recent survey by the executive search firm Korn/Ferry found that only 3 percent of executives across a range of industries were willing to completely cut themselves off from the office during vacation.⁵ Why? What are we so afraid of? For me, I was afraid to delegate. I thought that only I could make all the necessary decisions and take care of all the important clients. So I kept pushing myself—until I finally hit the wall and I was no longer good to anyone: myself, my family, my friends, my staff, or my clients.

Finally, at age 42, I took a real vacation. For three weeks I traveled and rested and recharged. This was the first time in my life that I left my laptop at home and didn't look at e-mail, answer phone calls, or worry about work. I completely unplugged. My stress level dropped to near zero. I had fun, for the first time in many years.

That vacation showed me that my priorities were all wrong. I had put my own well-being way down on my list of priorities, behind my job, my family, my friends, and a host of other distractions. And the irony was, by not taking responsible care of myself and constantly putting my job at the top of the list, I was actually limiting my professional success.

When I finally stepped away, the disaster I was afraid of did not materialize. Quite the opposite, in fact. My staff thrived, my clients were exquisitely happy, important decisions were made with more creativity than I could have summoned—everything went great, and I came back refreshed and ready to work harder and smarter than before.

In Stephen Covey's bestselling book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, he explains that one of the fundamentals of being productive is to take time off to rest. To exercise. To go on vacation. That time is not money. Because no matter how busy you think you are, if you don't take quality time off, you won't have the energy, creativity, and vigor to fulfill your other business and personal priorities in earnest. Your well-being cup will run dry.

So how do you keep your well-being cup full? Start slowly. Start by setting boundaries, such as staying off the Internet before 8:00 AM or after 7:00 PM. Stop working on the weekends. As I've been begging you to do throughout the book, remove wireless e-mail from your phone—trust me, you don't need it. And for your own sake and the sake of everyone around you, take a vacation. Sometimes you need to step away in order to recalibrate and find your one-point again.

Maintain Your One-Point and You'll Achieve Integrity

Integrity has nothing to do with morality. I learned a great definition of integrity through a leadership development and executive coach training program I completed with Accomplishment Coaching⁶ years ago: Integrity is about the alignment of three things—your intentions, your speech, and your actions. Maybe that's why it's so easy to love grifters and con men in movies like Dirty Rotten Scoundrels—they're honestly dishonest. Compare that to the heads of major banks who claimed to be responsible corporate citizens creating solid products and helping the economy, all while doing the exact opposite.

Finding and maintaining your one-point is the first step toward achieving integrity. For years, I stayed on in corporate America because I loved the excitement of making a big deal, and I liked raking in the big commissions they brought. But I wasn't in integrity. My intention has always been to make a positive difference in the world. I talked up those ideals all the time. But my actions weren't in alignment with my intentions and my speech. I wasn't in integrity.

For someone else, that job would have kept them in integrity. If I had been a person whose primary intention was to provide a good life for my family, then I would have been in perfect integrity by following through on that intention with my words and actions. But that wasn't me. Staying at that job was pulling me away from my one-point and pulling me out of integrity.

It's easy to tell when someone is out of integrity. You can sense it when you watch some politicians on TV (okay, a lot of politicians). You can feel it when you talk to a friend who's settling for the wrong job or the wrong relationship. You can definitely feel it in your gut when you're out of integrity. It's an uncomfortable feeling. We hate it when we see it in other people, and we hate it even more in ourselves.

Sometimes we hate it so much that we can't even admit to ourselves what's happened. When a reporter for Stars and Stripes, a military newspaper, revealed that NBC anchorman Brian Williams had exaggerated a story about being in a helicopter that took enemy fire, that was bad enough. He had strayed from his one-point and forgotten the most fundamental principle of his profession. But what was worse was how he responded to this scandal. He couldn't admit that he had lied.⁷ In his on-air “apology,” he said he “made a mistake in recalling the events of 12 years ago.”

If you watched that apology, you felt that uncomfortable feeling we all get when we see someone who's out of alignment with themselves. Imagine if Williams had, instead, frankly apologized. What if he had said that his head got too big, he lied, and he was sorry? Wouldn't that have been more satisfying? Wouldn't that have ended the scandal much more quickly? Each time Williams told that exaggerated story, he was out of integrity. But if he had truly apologized, he would have brought himself back into integrity and returned to his one-point.

Sometimes You Have to Make a Change to Remain Yourself

My consulting client Amanda came to me at a really difficult time in her life. She was a high-achieving professional who was not used to failing at anything. But she was going through a difficult divorce and struggling to keep her head above water at work while taking care of her 10-year-old daughter.

I encouraged her to leave her job and start her own consulting business. And I told her she should do it right away—even with everything else that was going on.

That may sound like crazy advice. But when I spoke to Amanda, I could see that part of the reason she was struggling was that she did not feel like she was leading the life she wanted or intended to live. Her divorce was, to some extent, out of her control—she could control her own behavior as she went through this difficult time, but she couldn't control her spouse's behavior, and she couldn't singlehandedly keep a marriage together. What she could control was her own work life, and that was out of balance.

Amanda was the kind of person who cares deeply about living a life that's aligned with her values. She felt uncomfortable working for whatever client came through the door—she wanted to be able to choose projects that she could feel fully engaged in and devoted to. Her current job wasn't giving her this kind of control. And feeling that lack of control in two such important areas of her life was pushing her dangerously far from her one-point.

As difficult as it was, leaving the security of that full-time job and beginning to work as a consultant was the perfect move for her at that moment. Setting up her own business allowed her to choose projects she was passionate about and felt authentically excited by. And it gave her the chance to take back her sense of control and autonomy, which was crucial to her well-being. Quitting her job and striking out on her own was the best way for her to take responsible care of herself.

It would have been easy for Amanda to let herself be pushed and pulled in all directions by the tumultuousness in her personal life. Between her divorce and her daughter, she certainly had plenty to worry about. And many people would feel that her highest priority at that moment should have been providing stability for her daughter. For some people in that situation, focusing on their child would have been the highest and best priority, and the best way to hold to their one-point.

But not for Amanda. She was committed to living a life that matched her values, and she wasn't following through on that in her actions. She was off-center. And that off-centeredness was actually creating instability and conflict for her. When she left to start her own business, it was stressful, but it was a move that allowed her to live a more authentic life and hold on to her one-point. And that ultimately allowed her to be a better parent to her daughter.

For some of us, returning to one-point is simply a matter of reminding ourselves what our priorities and intentions are, and remembering to live intentionally to support those goals. It might be as simple as cutting back on TV in the evenings so you can spend more focused time with your spouse, friends, or family. Or maybe you need to set aside half an hour in the mornings to set goals for the day, so that you don't let e-mails and other interruptions keep you from moving your work forward.

But in some cases, finding your one-point may require a more radical change. If you're working at a job that pays the bills but doesn't align with your values; if you've settled for a relationship that lacks a true connection; if you're living halfway across the country from the family you claim is a top priority, it's time to take a clear look at where you are and where you need to be. Change can be scary, I know, but you will feel a deep sense of relief when you're able to align your actions with your intentions and return to your one-point.

Michael Veltri, Super-Spy?

I felt that sense of deep relief when I said no to the FBI and told them they couldn't put undercover agents in my class. As cool and glamorous as an undercover operation sounded, I knew in my gut that it wasn't the right thing for me to do.

My intentions, and the messages I gave to my students, were all about helping my students make the impossible possible in their lives. I asked my students to trust me and allow me to help them reach their full potential. I told them I was 100 percent committed to them and to the work we did together. I couldn't then turn around and betray the trust of a student—not even for a good cause.

It would have been easy to let the idea of helping my country or the glamour of participating in this undercover sting pull me off my one-point and seduce me into betraying this core principle. But by maintaining my one-point, my focus, my grounding, my roots in what I truly believed, my healthy priorities, I was able to make a decision from an uncluttered mind. And I was able to make the decision that kept me in alignment with my deepest values—the decision that kept me grounded in my nen.