We all have many preferences.  My preferred color is red.  Years ago my wife preferred blue, but she has improved.  Now she likes red and pink.  One of my favorite foods is blue cheese.  Many people can’t stand the stuff.  I occasionally try a sip of white wine, but alcohol contains lots of calories wrapped in a horrible taste (notably red wine), and doesn’t relax me in any way.  For some, wine is the focus of their lives.

We live out our preferences by acting on them.  I drive a red car, enjoyed blue cheese on toast for breakfast this morning, and when I was young lost a number of friends because my wife and I failed to serve alcohol with dinner on several occasions.

I imagine that few people share all three of my preferences.

But I do have one strong preference (or bias) that I would like to persuade you to share.  This is my bias in favor of saying “yes.”

My three older children are now in their fifties with families of their own, but I still remember when they were three, or five, or fifteen, with nothing better to do than ask me for things.

“Daddy, Daddy, I’d like some blue jeans.”

“Shut up kid.  Red jeans look better.”

“Daddy, Daddy, I want some Cheerios.”

“Shut up kid and eat your blue cheese and marmalade.”

“Daddy, Daddy, can I have a sip of wine?”

“Sure, kid. Ten years after I die.”

Those are fantasies, of course.  But I’m making the point that, all day long, my kids asked me for things.  It wore me out.  Our conversations became shorter and shorter.

“Daddy, Daddy . . . “

“No.”

Just like my own dad before me, I don’t like to turn people down.  My dad’s style was to get so angry when I asked for something that I finally stopped speaking and started sneaking.  His style worked, but I never thought it was optimal, especially from a kid’s point of view.

So, many years ago, I decided to change the script.

“Daddy, Daddy . . . “

“Yes to whatever it is you want.”

“Huh?”

“I trust your judgment, so I say “Yes.”

“But I didn’t even tell you what I wanted.”

“I trust your judgment.”

After they started to believe me, something strange and wonderful happened.  First, my kids and I enjoyed a much closer relationship.  Even better, their judgment improved.  They stopped asking for the sun when all they really needed was the moon.  More and more they learned to trust their own instincts instead of trying to discover mine and argue with me about them.

Best of all, I consciously began saying “Yes” to my wife, my friends, and my business associates.  We all enjoyed each other’s company a lot more, and “Yes” opened my life to many superb experiences.  For example, when my daughter invited me to be her “date” for a friend’s wedding last Saturday I said “yes.”  We enjoyed a wonderful day together.  And the wedding, on a small Laguna beach, was absolutely delightful.

I’m not suggesting that you say “yes” to everything.  I do suggest, however, that unless you have a good reason to say anything else, you set your bias, as I do, on “Yes.”

You will love your new self.

Yes?

Alan

We live in a world of structures – offices, homes, and buildings of many types. Structures provide shelter and comfort. But they can be a trap.  When I met my second wife Susan she had been living for eleven years in a house she disliked.

“We thought we would just live there for a year, then sell it and buy the slightly more expensive house we really wanted,” she said.

There are other structures that invade and pervade our lives – the habits which are imprinted on us through repetition.

A habit is first a cobweb, then a cord, finally a cable. This is why, in forming habits, we should be careful.  Soon enough our habits will become a boundary beyond which we will seldom travel.

During the past few months I’ve shared many meals with my friend Jim.  While I like to try new foods, Jim was very clear at our recent lunch.

“I will never eat anything that I haven’t eaten before,” he said.  “I never try anything new.”  Jim eats sparingly.  He also works out for more than two hours a day.

I guess I’m never going to feel the endorphin rush that Jim must enjoy, because I’ve never exercised every day, or lately even every week.  I know I should exercise but Jim is defined by his habits and I by mine.

Recently, however, I have, to my surprise and delight, changed my long standing eating habit.

For more than seventy years I have lived to eat.  Before breakfast I started thinking about lunch.  During lunch I salivated over dinner.  At dinner, well, I often ate so much that I couldn’t consider ever eating again.  Until about eleven pm.

Now I eat to live.  I stopped following my parents’ admonition to “finish everything on your plate.”  I now eat until I’m full, or almost full.  I leave food on my plate – especially at restaurants.  Sorry, Dad, I know I’m wasting money.  Sorry, Mom, I know I’m abandoning all those starving children in (fill in the country). Of course, as I remember it, the food left on my plate never fed a single starving child.  It always went either to the dog or down the garbage disposal.

I’m also beginning to organize my life in another constructive way.  Years ago when I left for a two-week vacation I hid my car keys in the closet.  When I returned I couldn’t find them and had to change a lot of locks.  (I found my keys two years later, on the shelf of my bedroom closet, just above eye level.)

I’m now working on organizing my hearing aids. Before going to sleep I used to leave one in the bathroom and the other on the nightstand next to my bed.  Or somewhere else.  But as I rushed to leave my house in the morning I found myself scrambling to find “the other one.”  (Whenever I misplace something I always find it in the last place I look.  If I find it at all.)

Now I’m leaving both hearing aids in the same little saucer on my nightstand every night.  I’ll have to create some other kind of excitement in the morning.

One of my habits for the past five years is to post this blog every Tuesday morning.  That means I have to finish writing and editing by late Monday.  My habit is to always meet a deadline, but I seldom finish any task early.

But this blog is finished.  I’ll write about meeting deadlines another time.

Alan

I occasionally watch poker on TV.  Some players are professional, some are amateur, but they all share the same challenge – to play the hand they’re dealt.  If their first two cards are aces, they play two aces.  If their first two cards are a two and a three, they start with a weak hand.  Regardless, no one can ask for a different hand.

That’s exactly what we face every day.  We don’t control what happens to us (the hand).  We do control our reaction to it (how we play).

This morning I read an article in The Atlantic entitled, “What It Takes to be a Trial Lawyer If You’re Not a Man.”  I emailed the article to several excellent female trial attorneys.  J.F. responded, “It helps to remember it cuts both ways – sometimes your perceived weaknesses can be strengths, if you figure out how to play your cards well & are willing to be a bit lucky.”

That’s why J.F. is a successful trial attorney.  She recognizes both her weaknesses and her strengths. She remembers her ultimate goal is to serve the best interest of her client.  She plays the hand she is dealt, and is willing to take a chance.

Years ago I asked a woman for a date.

“Sorry, Alan, I only date guys who are blond, blue eyes, and six foot three.”

“Thanks for telling me,” I said.  “I might be able to do something about blond hair and blue eyes, but I can’t do much about my being five foot eight.”

I played the hand I was dealt and never saw her again.  Fortunately, other women like men who are my height.

Sometimes we can influence the hand.

An outstanding New York trial attorney I hired told me that his firm was asked to take on more than five hundred new cases a year but they accepted only fifty.

“A case has to meet three criteria.  First, it has to be within our area of expertise.  Second, the client has to have a reasonably good case.  And finally, the client has to be able to pay our fees.”

The same attorney also said, “Our job is not to win for you at trial.  Our job is to represent you so well that the other side will settle on a reasonable basis.”  A year and a half later that is exactly what happened.

Can you stack the deck in your favor?  Just a bit. I heard a comedian in Scotland joke, “I’m on a seafood diet.  I see food, I eat it.”

Me too.

I never buy cookies at a grocery store, which is why I never eat cookies at home.  I don’t see them.  Of course, for a party I’ll buy desert.  But not cookies.  It’s too easy for me to eat just one.  Or two.  Or, well, three.  It’s not so easy for me to sneak a slice from a chocolate cake, which is what I usually buy.  And when my guests leave I insist they take all leftover cake with them.  I know what happens if they don’t.

Once I was playing poker with a group including my father.  He had the best poker hand you can get – a royal flush.  He didn’t bet much because he didn’t want to scare off the rest of us.

Of course, Dad won.  It does help if you hold the right cards but, regardless, you have to play the hand you’re dealt against the hand that was dealt to someone else.

Alan