We Can Create Our Future

I love to surf. I talk about it all the time. It’s not that I am a great surfer. Far from it.  I am one of those journeyman surf dudes who “mind surfs” much better than I actually surf.  But as they say, “Only a surfer knows the feeling.”  The feeling is everything.  The ocean, the porpoises, and the screaming sensation of speed when you’re in the right place on the right wave.  But I am also 60 years old.  Damn.  I’ve noticed that this winter I have been more tentative than ever to take on bigger, overhead waves.  I’ve been super careful not to paddle into anything I didn’t have a 95% chance of riding well.  That’s being too careful.

I began to notice that when I saw a set of waves coming and I was paddling outside to either catch it or get over it, my mind was telling me fear stories.

“Don’t even think about it.  It’s too steep.  It will close out for sure.  It’s going to pitch…Ah!”

When my mind is going off like that I can feel the fear rise from my toes to my newly freaked out face.  Then all I want to do is survive.  Not surf.  Survive.  So what happens is I let too many perfectly good, potentially thrilling waves go by.  Then I sit outside in the calm water silently cursing myself.

“You wimp.  You old, clumsy sorry excuse for a surfer…”  No I am not kidding.

The reason my mind hits the fear button as soon as I see anything out of my comfort zone is logical.  I’ve had a few bad wipeouts and hold-downs earlier this winter.  In I went pin-wheeling head-over-heels down the overhead wave face and was rag-dolled under the water until my lungs were burning for air. That makes an impression. But the real risk is minimal. I surf deep-water breaks, which means I won’t hit the bottom.  I’ve got a new surf leash so I won’t lose my board, and if I did the swim in is easy.  I’m not afraid of the real risk.  I just hate the few seconds a violent thunderous wipe generates and the “I blew it” self-talk that rings in my head.  So I started playing it safe.  Way too safe.  Then I had a breakthrough.  A life lesson.

I was talking to the renowned sport’s psychologist Dr. Jim Loehr. According to Dan Jansen, the former Olympic speed skater, Jim’s coaching was essential to him finally winning a gold in his final Olympic race. Jim has coached 16 #1 athletes in the world. He’s the real deal.  So Jim was telling me about the power of asking yourself the right questions to take charge of your private voice.  He’s found that for anyone in stressful situations from elite athletes, Special Forces soldiers, to CEOs facing a crisis our private voice will determine success or failure.  And one the easiest ways to take control over the script our private voice is speaking is to change the questions we ask ourselves. In my case it was as simple as changing my voice from “No way” to “How?”  He suggested the next time I find myself paddling furiously outside to meet an oncoming bomb I simply ask, “How can I catch this in the right spot?” “Yea, whatever,” I thought.

So three days later on a bright, glassy Southern California morning the waves were pumping.  A storm in the Gulf of Alaska had sent a vigorous impulse down the coast and solid ten foot faced waves were pumping through with an occasional rogue a bit bigger.  It was crowded.  Many of the young, hot, zero body fat guys were ripping the break apart. I was paddling up and down the reef as usual in frantic search for solitary waves.  Then it happened.  (Of course this story has a happy ending.)  I was already sitting outside when a dark green extra large wave popped up on the horizon.  I started paddling.  I was the only one who had a chance of getting out deep enough to spin my board around and stroke into it.  But I felt Mr. Panic crawling up my legs to my stomach.  Suddenly my mind shouted, “How?”  Just how.  I immediately adjusted my line of paddle slightly to the left, calmly turned, two stokes and I was in.  The wave face suddenly got bigger and steeper as I dropped but my fin and rail bit into the wall and I slung myself under the feathering lip and there in front of me was a watery, green highway.  For nearly 100 yards I turned up the face and back down gathering and scrubbing speed in a primal rhythm that simply stokes your mind, body and soul.  I left the water as one giant human smile.

What a lesson. Since that mind-bending wave I’ve given several high-risk speeches and sales presentations.  I now prepare with “How can I help the people I am talking to?”  That question, “How?”, tied to a motive of service is emotional liberation for me.

All of us deal with our inner voice.  And Jim’s point is to “own it.”  Become the positive narrator of your life by listening to that fearless inner essence that is the “who” that answers the question, “Who am I?”

If you have similar stories of personal liberation, we’d all like to hear them.  The mind is a beautiful tool when wielded well.

Liberty and Health Care—The American Dream

Is the Right, right? That’s the question we all need to consider. Today we hear the urgent hand-wringing cry that true health care reform that would protect all Americans and lower the cost burden of health insurance on our businesses is both unaffordable and un-American. Well is it? Consider the ideal of the American Dream. The fundamental promise that where we start in life doesn’t determine where we finish. Let’s look at the core ideals of our founding and then whether our national priorities need to re-enthrone what we are all about. Let’s begin with liberty.

Liberty is more than an absence of laws. That is simply anarchy. If liberty contained no other values than the freedom to be left alone we would create a “Lord of the Flies” society where those with power simply impose their will on those who have fewer resources. Our American concept of liberty is found in equal protection of the law. The ideal is that all of us have an equal chance at a decent life. No, there are no guarantees of personal wealth and effortless bliss. We have a staunch revulsion toward income redistribution and protecting people from the consequences of their own poor choices. But we also have passion for fairness; we hate bullies and raw deals. We are also audacious and outrageously optimistic. In fact, we are so bold that our founders created a nation based on the idea that we should strive for a society that created the greatest opportunity for personal happiness. They well understood no one could hand us happiness on a silver platter or even a check for a zillion dollars. In fact, it is actually the true pursuit of happiness that makes us wise enough to eventually see that the effort-filled journey comprised of learning, doing and loving is what makes us happy. Happiness is found in its genuine pursuit. Amazing.

But the founders and wise successors like Lincoln also understood that our quest to build a society with maximal opportunity required us to reduce the causes of avoidable suffering. Avoidable suffering is usually caused when powerful interests oppress the less powerful because it makes them richer. The practical wisdom of our founders understood that the concentration of wealth and power is a force of gravity that if left unchecked concentrates political influence, which destroys equal protection of the law and the basic underpinning of society to create a level playing field for all. This requires a genius-like balance. If government gets too big then its vary corruption by private power amplifies their power. But if government is too weak then the hidden aristocracy of the financially powerful will inevitably exploit the unrepresented common citizen.

So a proper role of government for the best society is to continually renew efforts to create fairness and legal equality for all citizens. This is not child’s play. The forces we deal with are titanic and those who use the propaganda of bumper stickers to convince us voters to support the very policies that hurt our own chances for happiness are clever and loud.

This is what we know from worldwide research (World Values Survey). A level playing field for citizens to pursue happiness is created when we have universal access to 1) quality education, 2) reliable health care, 3) clean water, air and land, 4) business capital, 5) infrastructure, especially transportation, telephones and the internet, and 6) equal protection under the law. In any society in the world if those six things are available citizens will thrive.

Today, we are hurting in a big way from providing three of six. Our education system is broken as each year we dump at least a million 18-year-olds into the streets degree-less, semi-literate and bound usually for jail. Our health care system has become an interlocking cartel that prospers from the status quo. Our banking system has little capital for job-building small business but plenty of dough for bonuses.

The core reason is actually the same. The concentration of power in too few self-interested people. In education we are crippled by accountability-resistant unions and archaic laws that starve funding from our poorest schools. In health care the anti-trust exemptions and corporate sponsorships of elections have vaporized honest competition and made real cost control impossible. And in banking the financial center has moved from Wall Street to Washington.

So what might we do? Government has proven most effective NOT BY DIRECTLY PROVIDING SERVICES but by passing new laws and effective regulations and enforcing them. These regulations must also include robust anti-trust provisions that prevent too-big-too-fail and too-rich-to-ignore special interests from compromising the regulation. As independent “I can take care of myself” Americans we have a revulsion against regulation. But research confirms that the right kind of regulation is exactly what permits equality of opportunity and high living standards. For instance, regulations that create an equal standard for all businesses generate innovation and breakthroughs. Cars would not have seatbelts or airbags, our rivers and air would be sewers, our drugs scary, our food unlabeled, our credit cards ruinous and our workplaces toxic if we citizens, through our government, hadn’t insisted on regulating the self-interests of those whose are willing to cause suffering to get richer. Every time we have tried to make America fairer for everyone in a big way, the voices of the powerful have wrapped themselves in the flag and pretended to care about yours and my freedom. Every time these voices told us that freeing slaves was confiscating the wealth of the slaveholders. It’s unconstitutional! They argued that prohibiting child labor would bankrupt us. They said unemployment insurance would make us free loaders and all highways should be toll roads. In the 1960’s they said giving African Americans the freedom to eat and sleep in any restaurant or hotel was a violation of property rights. These are arguments without moral merit. Not only because they strike at the very root of what makes us American, but also because we all deserve an equal chance at life.

Today millions of Americans are uninsured, underinsured or a layoff away from it. We must do many wise things to correct this. Government’s role should be to remove the grip of special interests and to create regulations and incentives to control costs and increase coverage. Doing nothing for all who are suffering is what’s un-American. After all, what kind of country are we?

In health care we need to consider 4 things:

1. Make all citizens part of one giant covered group where we all pool our collective health in one risk pool as this will reduce the overall costs to business and society as well as our individual costs.
2. We need a national citizen co-op to offer an alternative coverage to private insurers whose internal overhead and salaries have swelled 10% in the past year alone and whose profits have increased 250% in the past decade (Union Tribune).
3. Control costs by instituting quality control and six sigma practices like the Cleveland Clinic, Intermountain Health Care and the best of the best do.
4. Teach, promote and reward health and wellness lifestyles everywhere.

Perhaps the thing that makes me saddest about this whole health care debate is that there is no voice for moral priorities. We need to stop our talking points, pouting and fear mongering to use our innovative ingenuity to truly create a future where we can all thrive instead of being told we can’t by those who already have everything they need. That is the oldest lie in politics. I called my Congressman’s office and told them they better do something positive to change the future. Complaining and whining just don’t get it.