Secret sauce

I met a pianist last Sunday. When he told me he was 65, I almost flipped. He happened to be a Judo trainer as well. Wow! He looked 45.

Another friend of mine, Jazz musician and software expert, also looks young for his age. What’s the secret sauce? Shirley MacLaine doesn’t look 78.

You might say, oh well, actors and actresses take care of themselves.

How about us? Don’t we want to take care of ourselves?

We are actors of our life scripts. That’s the secret sauce.

Stand in front of the mirror, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.

Breathe in , breathe out. Sing out loud, in and out of the showers.

Most New Year resolutions are health-related e.g. losing 10 lbs….

But the goal must be rooted in the subconscious and lived out habitually.

I am sure the pianist had logged in 10,000 hours of Judo practice (he broke many of his bones, just like Jackie Chan).

Still, he wore cross-training shoes, jeans and stretched short sleeves. I am sure he could hang out with his son (who was trying out for the US Olympic Judo team) and be mistaken as “one of the boys”.

Our life expectancy has increased to around 77 years. Like companies , we are “Built to Last”.

Take aways from most admired companies: agility, flexibility and discipline to follow through. Front-line employees are empowered and educated to make judgment calls.  But most importantly, leaders must be able to take a step back and do a pre-morterm analysis (the O ring in Challenger, the release valves in TMI nuclear reactor).

Problems are systemic, built up over time like dental plaque .  Meanwhile, people are creatures of habits i.e. taking the path of least resistance. Voila! Recipe for disaster. Everyone is just doing his or her job logging in 10,000 hours of minimum wages.

I noticed the pianist fingers on the key boards after he had told me who he was (Judo trainer).  I tried to see if he could still manage those graceful spreads. He did play a bit harder than most. Strength and swiftness, controlled yet flexible.

Our time is now. Use the opposite force to our advantage. We have tried to use our own one too many. Try it the other way. Be agile. Be flexible. Be open-minded. It might work. It’s the secret sauce I have seen in musicians and martial-arts experts. When you are multi-talented, it triggered something else, some place else in the brain. Use it.