A Good Question

I caught the end of the talk by David Brooks on Minnesota Public Radio's presentation of the Aspen Ideas Festival. He presented a question he learned from someone who does a lot of hiring. "What is the one question you ask," he asked the hiring expert, "that gives you what you want to know." The answer:

When did you tell the truth even though it hurt you?

I'm impressed by the thoughts this can raise. I have a hunch that many would probably be taken aback by the question. It is a surprising way of finding out what kind of a person the interviewee is.

I wonder how I would answer it in a quick response?

More Sensible Information from Research

I was always told to be truthful. Honest. I was. At least that's what I think it was all about. George Washington and the cherry tree being the paradigm story.

Which was a lie. It never happened.

Anyway, one of the hallmarks of a life in recovery is to be honest. Tell the truth. Be open and up front. Now, it appears, according to USA Today, that research has proven that telling the truth isn't just good morality, it's good and healthy, too.

The study found that those who lied less reported being healthier, both mentally and physically.

When participants in the no-lie group told three fewer minor lies than they did in other weeks, for example, they experienced, on average, four fewer mental-health complaints and three fewer physical complaints. Mental health complaints included feeling tense or melancholy; physical complaints included sore throats and

Actually, it makes sense. One of the researchers noted that when people lie it increases stress. Tension and uncertainty go up. (Which I guess is partly how lie detectors work.) We know that lowering stress and tension in one's life leads to better healthy so it should really be no surprise that at least at this level truth and health are related.

Unfortunately if parents try to use this tack with their children, telling the truth will become like eating healthy. A good idea, but not what they want.

Link

For Love or Money- Listen to the Heart

from Michael Bungay Stanier's email newsletter, Outside the Lines, came these two quotes yesterday...

"When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons. In vital matters, however, such as the choice of a mate or a profession, the decision should come from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves. In the important decisions of personal life, we should be governed, I think, by the deep inner needs of our nature."
-Sigmund Freud, Austrian psychiatrist

"Everyone should carefully observe which way his heart draws him, and then choose that way with all his strength."
-Hasidic Saying

Little did I know that these would have a meaning in today's top news story on all three networks' evening news shows.

Baseball and Steroids. The Mitchell Report has been released and while it is not a surprise to most baseball watchers, it is big news. If we lived in a different age this would make the "Black Sox Scandal" of the early 20th Century look like a Sunday School picnic. I think in many ways it will make or break some real issues in baseball today. Will they "scapegoat" one or two or will they come down hard and heavy? Will Major League Baseball "bite the bullet" and do what's right or will it be another hypocrisy reminiscent of their response to Pete Rose?

Bonds. Clemens. Giambi. Tejada. Vaughan. Pettite. Name after name. (USA TODAY link.) As some have said, it is an All-Star roster. Lawyers are already involved. MLB will be cautious.

And baseball will be tainted. Or at least it should be. This is NOT a pretty picture. It is one mroe example of the extreme that occurs when money and greed and our human desire to be great and to be entertained by those who are larger-than-life takes over. That's why those quotes I received yesterday are so powerful in this context (as well as others, of course.)

Freud might say that these decisions to use steroids has been spawned by our inner human nature- but not our better nature. We can be led by that inner sense in good and bad ways. Be bigger and more powerful. Or be a better human being. Make lots and lots of money or stand on the sidelines and watch.

But the heart, the true and hopeful heart is another story. The true heart is one that knows right from wrong and that in the end we are lesser people if we choose the "wrong." Whether we get caught or not, we are diminished when we hold back on our secrets, when we betray our own better nature- the heart- and follow the other ways. We lose some of our humanity- and sadly we may never even know it's gone.

I hope that this report is not just another 15-minutes of infamy and then we, the baseball loving crowd and the headline loving news and the money loving owners, go back to the way things have been. A slap on the wrist here; a nod and wink there. Bonds already has the reputation, let him be a scapegoat. Clemens is a courageous pitcher, look the other way.

It can't happen that way. The record book that baseball and its fans revere will have a new cover that is simply a question mark and an asterisk.