Last night I met with some top notch people. Actually, the official purpose of the evening was to review a book we all read called “The Start-Up of You”. That fully makes it a book club. I’m not even ashamed to say that. It was a Sunday night, whatever, no one does anything classically cool on a Sunday night.
More important is that I really enjoyed that little bit of time and it gave me the opportunity to talk with some interesting folk.
What does it mean to revolt against yourself? It means to constantly be challenging your own definitions and your own direction.
In “The Start-Up of You”, (written by Reid Hoffman who is responsible for LinkedIn), there is a section about having a Plan A and Plan B for your life’s direction.
I’d hereby like to throw out the phrase ‘career direction’ because no one has a career anymore. (Hopefully, just a lot of cool projects from graduation to physical death).
We all just have life, and within life we have work, love and play in all forms and expressions. Anyway, according to Hoffman, Plan A is your current direction and Plan B is a slight alteration based on market realities, changing passions and circumstances.
I figure the best way of managing this is always to be revolting against your current position and planned future.
And it goes beyond just questioning various aspects of your life. A revolution is careful, planned, passionate, sometimes violent, and occasionally sudden. A revolution is impactful because something almost always changes as a result.
And isn’t change needed all the time?
To clarify, I’m not suggesting you actually engage in violence. OBVIOUSLY. Haha, more so I am advocating some sort of passionate and acute effort against the grain, especially in your own life.
For example, if you’re a designer for an ad. agency and want to eventually be creative director, why not investigate being a marketing manager at one of the brands you work for? It will either eliminate this as a possible Plan B, or change the way you see your current Plan A.
Maybe Reid went into this in the book. I don’t know. I tend to skim read because Tim Ferriss told me to. (I take direction well).
Ok, that was a tangent, back to the point. Let’s all try revolting a little or revolting a lot, it can’t hurt and it will likely be fun.
Pause on the sport for a second. Last month I had the chance to interview 
Why I hope Lance says he’s sorry.
Which is no surprise. As a colleague pointed out, Oprah is one tough lady. She’s not going to give you airtime for anything less than the truth.
His full interview will air in a few days and I’m sure it will answer many questions. Did you Lance? For how long? Who did it involve? Why Lance?
I’m interested in the answers. His tale with its storied peaks and valleys would intrigue anyone, sports fan or casual observer.
But I want a lot more from Lance.
When I was a teenager I had big sport dreams. (I still do, they’re just different). For my birthday one year my Mom, a runner and cyclist, bought me Lance’s first book: It’s Not About the Bike.
I poured over its pages, re-read chapters and still finished it in mere days. I felt nauseous when I read about his bouts with chemo, grit my teeth when he described training on the Pyrénées in pouring rain when no one else would. I also liked the details about his family.
I cared about Lance.
One night a few years later I couldn’t sleep and so I pulled out the book again and started reading. I became so enthralled and fired up that I went to morning practice on no sleep. I think I even forgot to eat.
Up until fairly recently I didn’t believe he cheated. I think a lot of people didn’t because we didn’t want to. We accepted his story so organically that the suggestion it might be based on chemical elements was hard to absorb at first. But after time the evidence was just too much.
I hope eventually Lance will say he is sorry, and for more than the appeasement of our broken hearts.
His lie was so elaborate. We all wanted to believe in his ascension to history and he let it happen.
He also made a lot of money. Sure, he has raised hundreds of millions through Livestrong, but he sold the cancer survivor story and was paid handsomely for it.
He killed the bike. At least for the time being it is hard to watch a cycling event of any discipline without the slightest pause for thought. Pause to wonder about who rides clean.
More than anything I hope he apologizes for himself. The weight of such a dreadful scheme must be appalling. And then after some time spent self-loathing maybe he’ll do what I always thought he would and keep fighting. Not against the insurmountable evidence but to fix the sport that gave him so much.
And I don’t care why he does it. Someone who took a lease on our trust like that must be incredibly selfish. If he joins the anti-doping movement for the purpose of his own legacy, so be it.
I don’t believe in Lance anymore. At least what he used to stand for, but I do believe he can stand for something else. And I hope he does.
For me, an apology is just the start.