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.

Elevate Your Mood – Count Your Blessings

If you want more energy, think about what you are grateful for. That isn’t just a fairytale. Researchers from Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Department have concluded after looking at rings of research that the single most way to elevate our moods is to count our blessings. The most effective thing I’ve found is to think about one thing you are really grateful for and then embrace it, lick it, smell it, and feel the feeling of gratitude. Let it come over you like someone is pouring hot warm syrup, and really feel your gratitude. That is when you will feel good!

Chocolate, Sex, and Sunshine are Drivers of Optimism

I wrote an article some time ago called, Chocolate, Sex, and Sunshine. I know it sounds crazy, but they are actually drivers of optimism. You see the antioxidants, and flavonoids in chocolate stimulate comfort chemicals in our brain that elevates our mood. And sex, no not the promiscuous random or casual type, but sex in a committed marriage that is frequent makes people more healthy, have stronger immune systems, better emotional relationships, and more optimism, and yes, Dr. Oz agrees with that. And sunshine gives us Vitamin D. As a person who has been out in the sun all his life we are smart to be cautious about skin cancer. On the other hand, lots of people today are sunshine deprived and Vitamin D is essential to our immune system and our full functioning. If you want to read the entire article just let me know via email and I will send it to you. I would be very interested in your response.

The New Normal vs. Old Normal

Saturday, I was at Chapman University in Orange County as a delegate for The Innovation and Humanity Summit. I was able to address the group, along with a panel that included the senior vice president of strategy for Pepsi, a genius professor from Northwestern University Kellogg Graduate School of Management, who is the founder of their Kellogg Innovation Network, and a brilliant strategy consultant from Santa Cruz, whose article on innovation appeared on the cover of the Harvard Business Review recently.

We were talking about the new normal versus the old normal. The easiest way to explain it is this; the old normal is the Hummer.  That’s what you get when you view business purely as a materialistic enterprise. When your vision is nothing but numbers you produce vehicles like the Hummer. The new normal is represented by the Prius. This is the development of products that consider people, the planet, and sustainability. Toyota has sold over 1 million Prius’s and now intends to create a whole line that will include cars of many shapes and sizes.

The old normal rewarded hard work, loyalty, and productivity. In the new normal it doesn’t matter. You can be hard working, productive, and creative, but be downsized with a huge knife in your back no matter what. This is business operating at its worst. There were some things about the old normal that were good, and therefore we need a new normal. All we’ve done is succeed in creating a work force of frightened zombies; people who feel they have no control over their economic destiny and therefore are shut down. Fear is rampant in our work place. Executives feel off the status while workers feel off in security. But, fear has made us un-creative, non-collaborative, and pessimistic. If the way that we conduct business produces fear, then we are conducting business in a way that prevents us from being prosperous. It is a vicious cycle.

The answer is that nobody is going to take away our fear but ourselves and the only way to take away our fear is to realize that we are all entrepreneurs; all the CEO’s of our own lives. Our current job is not our career. The people who understand this the best are some of the leaders of Chapman University who have installed entrepreneur classes throughout their curriculum. That is right! If you take dance or music you will study entrepreneurism so that you can set up your own dance/music studio and create your own economic engine. Everyone it seems is going to need to know something about marketing, finance, and about creating value in demand.

We all need to become brands of what it is we do that creates value. I believe that the only way to overcome our fears to become more independent economically. It is great that a university in Southern California has recognized that and is helping to train a new generation of workers who have the self-confidence to take care of themselves.

An Economic Revolution

A few mornings ago I was on 2 morning shows on Fox 5 and CW 6 talking about my participation and innovation in the Humanity Conference that is coming up. I will be speaking there with 40 other world-renowned experts in sustainability, social innovation, and a new form of enterprise. It is a very exciting time. The world is going through an economic revolution and there are many good people doing good things to create a better world.

We are in a Productivity Bubble

We are going through a productivity bubble. Large corporations are announcing their bloated earnings through Wall Street analysts this week. What has happened? Companies are making money by wide margins; wider margins than normal because they have laid off so many people. Productivity is four times higher than normal because so few employees are being paid to produce the revenue that companies are generating. In the end this is only exploitation.

Education – Our Greatest Investment

At a time when education budgets are being eroded it is actually a time to recommit to education. Education is the one thing that leads everyone to a better life, more life satisfaction, stronger marriages, a longer life, and less crime. The more educated people are, the more they contribute to the economy. It’s a virtuous cycle. It is time to commit to equal levels of education. The Hallam Charter schools send nearly 100% of their graduates to college. Education is our single greatest investment. We are foolish indeed to shortchange it.

Haiti – Our World is One of Suffering

Haiti – The death and suffering are beyond understanding. Anytime like this some question God. If he is all powerful how could he let this happen? Our world is one of suffering. Sometimes intensely personal and sometimes hugely tragic, but the central theme of spiritual experience itself tells us that God is transcendent. In this way, God helps us transcend suffering. God is not causing and controlling us, but inspiring us to be his hands of compassion.

What I Really Value

I’ve done some thinking over the holidays and I’ve thought a lot about focusing on my values. By values I don’t just mean honesty, integrity, and cleaning up after myself. I mean my relationships, knowledge, and experiences.

How can we prune the overgrowth of relationships that clutter and exhaust us, and deepen the relationships that give us energy, inspiration, and comfort? Most of all, what can we do to insure that we have the time to waste on the people we most value? Wasting time together is one of the most defaming acts of love people can do. When people enjoy each other without having to accomplish something it celebrates the intrinsic value of the relationship.

I am also going to be more mindful of the experiences that enrich me and relish them more generously. I’m going to guard my attention so that I invest my mind on learning things deeply enough to generate new ideas, thoughts, and directions.

So that is what I mean by values; to do less with things that just show up and invest more in people, experiences, and knowledge that I value.

System Failure is Happening Right Now

I recently sent out a new blog called Stupidity or Sustainability. It is about the nature of sudden change, and how things just don’t indefinitely get worse and worse, little by little. At some point the whole system collapses, the banks fail, we can’t get any loans, and everything runs into foreclosure. That is simply the concept of system failure. It is happening in nature right now. Not in the future, right now! Lots of people don’t like to face it because it means change, but it could mean good change. I’ll let you read the blog.

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