Being authentic and happy is hard...then it's not.

I used to be unauthentic.

So much so that when I was invited to talk at conferences I would send them a picture of George Peppard (Hannibal from the A-Team) to use in the conference program. The reason is I did this is because I looked very different from everyone else in the project portfolio industry, and I thought that would be a big negative. 

Here’s the picture of George I used to use, that’s me in the middle back then, and on the right is me now. The irony is that I actually look a little bit like George Peppard today! 

The problem I had created in my own head was, that I had designed the worlds most widely adopted project portfolio management standard for the British government, which was adopted by large companies and other governments worldwide. However, in parallel, I was also running around the world painting music live with famous bands during their performances - such as Black Eyed Peas, Iggy & The Stooges, Deep Purple (and 93 others).  I felt that the portfolio management consulting industry would view me as less credible for doing that, and the way I looked would certainly not fit in....so I did all I could to prevent people from finding out. (a ridiculous mentality when I look back - but it's true).

The pressure of managing two versions of me took its toll and I was very unhappy for a good few years. The pressure grew so much that one day it smashed the wall between the two versions of me down, and in so doing allowed them to unite... finally I was authentically me, and it felt great.

That is when the magic started to happen. 

From that moment on, the world changed. Authenticity and happiness became central to my thinking, work, and especially my team. I always make sure that my team has the opportunity to be their true self, regardless of how weird that might be. In fact, in my experience the greater the “weirdness factor” the better. Speaking of weird, I later read about the CEO of Zappos, Tony Hsieh - one of the interview questions at Zappos is “On a scale of 1-10 how weird are you?” So it turns out my thinking was spot on. 

During the consulting assignments, I started measuring the happiness of the team before and after my work was completed. I worked at the Office for National Statistics, one of the projects in the portfolio was the National Well-Being programme, it measured the well-being of the UK, because the Prime Minister felt that well-being measures should be considered in parallel to GDP figures. 

This got me very interested in behavioral psychology, and how positive words could influence our outlook, behaviors, and well-being. Shortly after I met my dream girl, and moved to New York to be with her. Within 3 months of being in New York and surrounded by street signs that were telling me to Stop, and Don't Honk $350 Penalty, I had an idea about inspiring people, about making them smile to brighten their day using positive wording on street signs.

I called them Happy Street Signs.

As fate would have it I happened to meet Tony Hsieh and Jenn Lim (authors of Delivering Happiness) at an event called Summit - it was on a mountain in Utah and I booked 10 minutes with them. Even though the idea for Happy Street Signs was very early, and my mock-ups of the happy street signs were really terrible, both of them liked the concept and invited me to Las Vegas look into the potential of Happy Street Signs being installed the area where Zappos was headquartered. 

The idea was still incredibly embryonic when I went to Vegas. I didn’t have a design, or the concept ironed out, the truth is I really didn't know what I was doing at that stage so we didn’t progress. I was disappointed at the time, but the great thing about that experience is Tony and Jenn inspired me to go into a much deeper obsession with the Happy Street Sign concept, to get the design nailed and figure the whole thing out.

Then a year later, 50 volunteers were running around New York City at 6:30am installing 200 of my government grade Happy Street Signs, all of which contained positive phrases such as Honk Less Love More, New York Loves You, Dream Believe Achieve Repeat, Big City Big Smile (and more). You're probably wondering if this was legal, the answer is no, it wasn’t, and I don't recommend any does this. If you want to read more about this project, Time magazine did a really cool article here. 

I've never done anything illegal before and so I wanted to officially (and legally) install Happy Street Signs in a city to enhance feelings of well being. So I went to the schools and a juvenile detention center in Newark to run workshops with young people to give them the opportunity to design the phrases to go on the Happy Street Signs in Newark. I then figured out a way to coincidentally meet with Mayor Baraka, I had 30 seconds to pitch the project to him, he gave me his cell number on the spot, within a week we had lunch and he agreed to support the project. Almost a year later Mayor Baraka and I were at a press conference installing the first of 200 Happy Street Signs in Newark...all of which contained inspiring words from the young people of the city.

The signs were installed with the support of the community group called The Newark Anti-Violence Coalition, and members from the gangs who helped run the pedestrian surveys under the signs. CBS Saturday morning did a national segment about the project - you can watch it here.

The results from the pedestrian survey were very positive, out of the 746 people we surveyed 93% of people liked the signs and wanted to see more (once a statistician, always a statistician). 

Whilst this is a very quick overview of a decade of work, the point is that it wasn’t until I made the decision to be my authentic self that I became happy, and that's when dreams started to manifest. I used to be scared of not being accepted if I was truly me, but all along the opposite was true...being my authentic truthful self is what the universe wanted to see before it would conspire to help me achieve my goals; and so this is how I live my life today, with my family, my business, my conference talks, and the teams I work with.

The reason I’m telling you this now is, on April 15th I invited Jeff Brown to speak at the Minnesota Project Management Institute dinner, on the subject of "Your Authentic Happy Self”. I saw Jeff speak and was inspired by his story. He was previously an early Apple employee and in the early 80’s Steve Jobs asked him to tell him what tech would look like in the year 2000 (that must have been fun!). Since then he’s been working in the Happiness space helping companies to measure and enhance their happiness. To attend in person, or online click here

As coincidence would have it, Jeff also knows Jenn (who I met on the mountain) she is the CEO of Delivering Happiness. It really is a small, happy world. Check out Jenn's talks here, they too are very inspiring.

I’ll leave you with the question from a Zappos interview, feel free to put the number in the comment… "How weird are you out of 10?

Best

Craig

PS: If you're having difficulties being your authentic self and want to talk about it, you're welcome to connect with me.

Craig is the Founder & CEO of Course Conductor, a B2B customer review platform that makes it easy for training buyers to invest in the best training courses from the best vendors.  He is also an executive portfolio consultant and co-author of the world's most widely adopted portfolio management standard (Management of Portfolios); which has helped organizations make an estimated $1 trillion dollars worth of wiser project investments. 

Superpower: Sound color synesthesia: Craig has painted music live on stage during the performances of Iggy & The Stooges, Deep Purple, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, John Batiste, Buena Vista Social Club and many more.