Energy.

Ari Weinzweig on the magic in behaving like a human being ...

Done regularly, the 10/4 Rule increases energy, improves inclusion, and could even enhance the health of everyone involved (yes, both the person greeted and the greeter). Erich Fromm writes that in a modern sense, we can experience resurrection in a nonreligious form as “the transformation of this reality in the direction of greater aliveness.” The 10/4 Rule is just that. It is regenerative in the literal sense of the word. Because the lives of all involved are enhanced by doing it, the 10/4 Rule literally creates energy!

In that sense, the 10/4 Rule is a manifestation of what business writer and creative thinker Carol Sanford says is the value of knowing about what she calls “nodes.” In Sanford’s systems thinking, nodes are

those places within a specific system where the introduction of new energy or a different quality of energy will enable an evolution and expression of its potential … Nodes are about energization, like acupuncture points rather than superhighway cloverleafs. … the fundamental approach is the same regardless of the size of what you are thinking about ...

The 10/4 Rule is a great example. In the scheme of all we do, it seems tiny. And yet, done well, it opens channels of organizational energy and connection that have an enormous impact.

One of the beauties of the 10/4 Rule is that once one starts doing it … well, we will almost all end up doing it all day. The other evening, working the floor at the Roadhouse, I tried to keep track of how many times I 10/4’d (as one might say in “Zinglish”) in an hour, but I gave up after I got to about 40 in the first 15 minutes. The point is you can get a LOT of reps in a relatively short time. In truth, many people who have worked here for a while will tell you that they soon start practicing the 10/4 Rule everywhere they go. This means that the impact of implementing it is far bigger than I could ever have originally conceived. Decades of doing it here at Zingerman’s has likely impacted the energy of the whole Ann Arbor ecosystem.

Done mindfully, the 10/4 Rule is not boring or tiring. As poet Gary Snyder says, “Repetition is not necessarily an enemy. Because every time you do something it’s different.” In this sense, doing the 10/4 Rule is like an all-day practice of purposefulness. Poet Marie Howe writes that “every poem has that silence deep in the center of it.” Reflecting on all this in recent weeks, the 10/4 Rule strikes me as the silence somewhere in the center of a poetic approach to customer service. Not in the physical sense of being “at the center,” but rather in the spirit of poet and potter MC Richards who writes about “centering” as “the discipline of bringing in … rather than of leaving out.”

Writer Seth Godin shared this in his morning missive the other day:

I worked with [science fiction author] Arthur C. Clarke at the very beginning of my career. He’s most famous for saying, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Magic isn’t such a bad thing. …

Patience.

Ari Weinzweig on patience and positivity ...

The absence of patience is making the importance of its presence ever more clear. Impatience under pressure can lead to reckless actions that can exacerbate issues rather than calm them down. Like so many important things though, it’s easier to promote the idea of patience than it is to practice it, all the more so when we’re under extreme pressure. Commenting on the current state of the world, writer Wendell Berry says, "You can describe the predicament that we're in as an emergency," he says, "and your trial is to learn to be patient in an emergency." Whether we’re leading companies, countries, corner stores, or classrooms, it seems important, now more than ever, to pull patience, and ourselves in the process, back from the brink. 

Language makes a difference ...

The language we use has a big influence on the way we think. More nuanced names for what a simplistic approach sees as the same thing encourages a meaningful increase in attention and awareness. As one example, Irish author Manchán Magan, who like Patience Gray lives in a remote rural setting, writes about 32 words for field in the Irish language—the list includes different words for, say, a field of corn-grass, a field for cattle at night, a field for games or dancing, a field with a fairy-dwelling, and 28 others. Perhaps, I started to see, we would do well to say the same for patience. Patience with people you work with; patience with relatives; patience with close friends and patience with people just met; patience with ourselves; patience with things way outside your influence, like the weather or world affairs; patience with delivery people not showing up; patience with learning a new skill; and patience with the inevitable reality of Natural Law #11 that it takes a lot longer to make something great happen than most people think. Thinking culinarily, there might be patience for making stock or patience for pounding (as Patience Gray liked to do) basil and pine nuts for pesto. 

Dissatisfied.

Gaulli, Triumph of the Name of Jesus, 1679

Your life is shaped by the end you live for.  You are made in the image of what you desire.  We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves.  Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.  The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.  Paradoxically, I have found peace because I have always been dissatisfied. My moments of depression and despair turn out to be renewals, new beginnings. If I were once to settle down and be satisfied with the surface of life, with its divisions and its cliches, it would be time to call in the undertaker.  So, then, this dissatisfaction which sometimes used to worry me and has certainly, I know, worried others, has helped me in fact to move freely and even gaily with the stream of life. 

Thomas Merton

Think.

Asia, "Days Like These"

Thanks for the inspiration, Kurt ...

Positivity.

Your father will offer the best advice when he tells you it takes an act of will to choose a positive outlook, regardless of evidence to the contrary. As individuals we are weak, but as an interdependent collective we're capable of creating a powerful vision for the future. Quantum physicists will prove what Buddhism has taught all along: out of chaos comes order, out of order—chaos. Long before scientists confirmed it, the ancient Kahuna of Hawaii have known that thought is material and that the material future is borne of our thoughts. Positivity attracts positivity. You will know that no great world solution or, for that matter, great artwork has ever come of negative thinking.

Tina Weymouth, from a letter to her younger self

Contemplate.

Wretched men cringe before tyrants who have no power, the victims of their trivial hopes and fears. They do not realise that anger is hopeless, fear is pointless and desire all a delusion. He whose heart is fickle is not his own master, has thrown away his shield, deserted his post, and he forges the links of the chain that holds him.  Contemplate the extent and stability of the heavens, and then at last cease to admire worthless things.

It follows that those who have reason have freedom to will or not to will, although this freedom is not equal in all of them. Human souls are more free when they persevere in the contemplation of the mind of God, less free when they descend to the corporeal, and even less free when they are entirely imprisoned in earthly flesh and blood.

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

Whatever.

Thank you, Drew.

Frank Sinatra, "Too Marvelous for Words"

Thanks, Dad! 

Powerful.

Hansen, Six Poppies, 1988

There is no greater block to world peace or inner peace than fear. What we fear we tend to develop an unreasoning hatred for, so we come to hate and fear. This not only injures us psychologically and aggravates world tension, but through such negative concentration we tend to attract the things we fear. If we fear nothing and radiate love, we can expect good things to come. How much this world needs the message and example of love and of faith!  If you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a defeatist or negative thought. Since we create through thought, we need to concentrate very strongly on positive thoughts. If you think you can’t do something, you can’t. But if you think you can, you may be surprised to discover that you can. It is important that our thoughts be constantly for the best that could happen in a situation — for the good things we would like to see happen.

Peace Pilgrim

Thank you, Jessica.

Tony Bennett, "If I Ruled the World"