Imagine you’re visiting a very successful restaurant. You sit down and peruse the menu. As you wait to order, a personable man walks up with a pitcher of water. He fills your glass and chats with you before moving on to another table.

What’s odd about that? In this case, the restaurant is Zingerman’s Roadhouse, and the man who’s pouring your ice water is Ari Weinzweig — owner and CEO of a food enterprise worth over $65 million in annual revenues. 

Mingling with customers is typical of Ari’s unorthodox leadership. He believes that traditional decision-makers are often too far away from the actual work. His hands-on customer research has been dubbed “management by water pouring.”

No wonder he’s one of my favorite writers and thought leaders! 

Ari Weinzweig is co-founder of Zingerman’s Deli in Ann Arbor, and has become a friend over the past few years. I strongly encourage my clients to read all of Ari’s books, and I recommend they absorb them slowly. Like many busy people, I consume most books on audio while driving. But with Ari’s books. I make it a point to read a paper and ink version — and typically only at home in the morning.  

There are two reasons for this “old school” approach. First, Ari’s books are big (the current hardcover I’m reading is 600 pages) and not “travel friendly.” Second, and more importantly, his books are so chocked full of great content and insights I want the time for thoughtful reflection and absorption.

The Power of Beliefs in Business

I’m currently enjoying Ari’s The Power of Beliefs in Business, and I think it’s his best work so far. Concurrently, I’m reading Change the Culture, Change the Game by Roger Connors. It also references the concept of beliefs, but not as richly as Ari’s book. Digesting the two simultaneously has propelled me to reach a jarring conclusion: Most of my beliefs are not my own.  

What do I mean by that? As I wrote in my last blog (Beliefs Part 1), many of my beliefs belong to my past and came primarily from my parents, upbringing, and peer group. In most cases they no longer accurately reflect how I view the world.

Old Beliefs and Mental Ruts

The thoughts and reactions that pop into my consciousness in any given situation are often decades-old behavioral responses from the mental “ruts” I’ve worn into my brain through habitual actions. 

This awareness that my repetitive thinking and responses are “preprogramed” from long ago is unsettling. Until reading Ari’s book, I assumed I was on a journey of growth and maturity — an upward trajectory of thoughts not dictated by my past, but rather, independently developed through my unique experiences.  

However, I now see more and more how my parents and my past experiences predicated my current choices and actions. I have traveled far on this life journey, but there is so much more development in front of me … and the best place to start is to respectfully put the past behind me.  

Monitoring and Managing Beliefs To Better Serve Us

The concept of monitoring and managing which beliefs serve us versus those that don’t is not new. Earl Nightingale (whom I credit for much of who I am today) referred to this early in his writing: “What we think about we become.”  

We may agree with that intellectually. But how many times have you caught yourself asking, “What the heck was I thinking?” This happens when our thoughts are deeply rooted in our subconscious, and the deepest of all were established when we were very young. As adults, the only way to change this pattern is by the repeated application of a new set of beliefs to rewrite the old code.  

Examining Beliefs About Retirement

This brings me back full circle to my passion — helping people Replace Retirement with Intentional Living. Whether you excel or not in your second half hinges on the question: “Whose belief is it that we should retire at 65?”

Was retirement engrained in society over thousands of years? No. Was retirement taught by the great religions over millennia? No. The beliefs we now have about retirement are byproducts of the Industrial Revolution and served a political and economic agenda of the 19th century — not us in the 21st.  

I ask you, does what you believe about retirement serve your highest purpose and enhance the world you live in? Or is it old, leftover thinking designed to get you off the road and quietly stored away because you no longer have value?   

I believe we should Replace Retirement with Intentional Living!