Wish you were here...

I'm taking a seminar that looks at the existing paradigm of success/failure that we as human beings are stuck inside. Its not that we chose to be here. On the contrary, this is an inherited paradigm that we are taught to buy into because it is so embedded in our cultures that it is all but invisible to us. There is nothing overtly wrong with this paradigm of success/failure outside of the fact that it is designed to have us fail. Yes, that's right, I said fail.

For the most part, we do not generally reach out to other people in a meaningful way. We are locked inside our heads with our thoughts, feelings, judgements, upsets, joys, fears and the rest. We do not embrace connecting and sharing with each other in those areas of our life because it can be painful, embarrassing, make us look the fool, etc. However, we do reach out to other people in the areas of success and failure - but only so much to see whether or not we are beating someone or being beaten by someone. Success is relative and fleeting, based on comparison with other people, and we justify our place in the realtivity at all costs. We reach out to others to tear them down and build ourselves up, or to tear ourselves down to prove something.

In the middle of these thoughts I was reminded of the Pink Floyd song "Wish You Were Here":

So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell,
Blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

Did they get you to trade
Your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
And cold comfort for change?
Did you exchange
A walk on part in the war,
For a lead role in a cage?

How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish bowl,
Year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have we found
The same old fears.
Wish you were here.

However, if you think about it, just the opposite is what would work to make our lives fuller and to have success be a winning game. The silliness of the paradigm really reveals itself if you consider that the areas we work to hide from others - our fears and vulnerabilities - are the areas that make us human, give us an authentic place to connect with each other. If we reach out from there, from our humanity, we can un-stick ourselves from this existing paradigm of success/failure. Now we can create a new paradigm of success that is our own, that is taylor made for the things we are committed to, for the things we want to do in our lives. We can create the measure by which we will know success. They will be our own and are not limited to seeing what someone else is doing/has already done. We would never have to suffer in comparison to another and our successes would be our own.

What would you give up to live a life of authentic connection with the people in your life and have success at your fingertips? What could you do with a life like that?

Think about it... how many times would you hit the snooze-bar on your alarm clock?

Peace

make a difference NOW!!!

Folks, there is this amazing and wonderful human being named Travis - a writer and fellow blogger - who just lost his house and everything in it to a fire. He and his family are thankfully safe, however they have nothing.

Now normally I would say "please" go and donate to help him out... but I'm done with please.

DO IT NOW DAMMIT!

http://habitatfortravis.blogspot.com/

Thank you

Peace

better late than never - resolutions

So, it occurred to me that I had made resolutions, promised to post them, but had not actually done it. DOH!

Maybe it is just me trying NOT to face the music, to avoid responsibility for taking on the things I say I want to do, that I say I am committed to doing. Maybe.

Or maybe it is that I get so damn busy with things that I completely forget what I said I was going to do unless I schedule it in my calendar.

Or maybe it is a combination of the two.

What is important is that I am doing it now. Right now :)

Here is the list:

- have novel ready to go to agents - includes cover letter & synopsis
The plan is to have this ready by the and of April... its a good plan, really.
- complete the OC Marathon with Katy, Deborah and Kevin
May/June time frame... must. keep. running.
- learn to play guitar - at least 3 songs
I've been building/repairing guitars for 20+ years now? Maybe I should learn to play them.
- surfing
It's been 2 years since I have paddled out - that's over now.
- go to writer's retreat in May/June
Thanks Heather. I WILL be there.
- new tattoo - at least one
At least one.
- lead introductions (100+ people) & be effective
This could be the fun one :) If this makes no sense to you, educate yourself.
- hot tub installed and permitted
Been too damn long with this in my garage... need the space back.
- get pregnant with number three
Actually, get the wife pregnant... the other way is just too weird.
- Hawaii vacation
Bought a damn vacation package - flipping time to use it. Hawaii == surfing :)

And that's the list. The good, the bad and the ugly.

Normally, I do not like resolutions. They end up being just another list of things that I "have to do"... like really, I have to do it. Didn't I make it up in the first place? Isn't it something I want to do? Even if I don't want to do the things on the list, and they are only here because I 'should' do them... I can't think that my life would not be better for having done them.

So why, why, why do I resist?

It's one word. One word none of us likes. One word we will do just about anything to avoid. Even quit part way through, or not do it at all.

Can you guess what that word is? Come on, dig a bit deeper. You know what it is. You just don't want to even recognize it.

Fine, I'll say it for you, and for me: FAILURE.

That's right, all caps... bold... underlined.

I know that failing something doesn't mean I am a failure as a person. I know that failing leads to greater understanding and ultimately to greater achievement... and yet I still resist. I still don't want to fail.

So every time I find myself resisting... I invite myself back to reality, back to the world of being human. To be human, to be alive means to fail. And inside that failure to accept my humanity and to grow and to learn.

So, welcome back to being a human being, welcome and hello. Enjoy the ride and find the hidden treasures... buried right there under that heap of failure :)

Peace

ROFLMAO

Found these lists today. Laughed my ass off. I hear these every day... many of them more than once a day.I even used a few... notice the past tense of that verb. I am purging them.

The top ten most irritating phrases:

1. At the end of the day
2. Fairly unique
3. I personally
4. At this moment in time
5. With all due respect
6. Absolutely
7. It's a nightmare
8. Shouldn't of
9. 24/7
10. It's not rocket science

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/debates/3394545/Oxford-compiles-list-of-top-ten-irritating-phrases.html

20 of your most hated cliches

1. "basically".
2. "To be fair" it is invariably followed by a biased and utterly unfair comment.
3. "to be honest". What does it mean? Are you normally dishonest then?
4. "going forward" Since time is irreversible, it's totally unnecessary. No one experiences life "going backward".
5. "the fact of the matter is" is usually just the speaker's own opinion.
6. "let's face it" and "let's be honest".
7. "touch base"
8. "at the end of the day"
9. "in the pipeline"
10. "the reason being"
11. "I'm not being funny but..."
12. Beginning a sentence with "You know"
13. "by the end of play today"
14. "singing from the same hymn sheet"
15. "Can't get my head round it"
16. "A raft of proposals"
17. "To roll out (new initiatives etc)"
18. "Don't just talk the talk, you got to walk the talk"
19. "Lessons will be learned"
20. "actually"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7733264.stm

Now some of them are Brit specific... but you can extrapolate a "yank" term or phrase that would be just as annoying or irritating.

Perversely, as I am writing this post, I just want to take all of the above and roll it into one short story... just to play, and most importantly, to annoy :)

Peace

not me

I've been pretty upset lately. Unhappy.

My job has had me on-call for the last week, and in the last 36 hours I have only slept for about 4 of them. I am grouchy and cranky. My daughters have taken this opportunity to have full-on, hard-core, volcanic melt-downs. Screeming is an injustice to the volume and pitch of the vast tsunami of sound that is hurled from their once angelic faces. Refusing to eat dinner, do homework, bathe and generally any other request, command, option or demand... all were met with an even greater intensity of "output" from my angels.

The people I coach in the leadership program I am involved with are resisting the very thing they came into the program to overcome, deal with, gain mastery over. And they are making me wrong for tasking them to do the work required to achieve their goals.

The problem with all of this is that I have been tightly focused on me. It has all been about why it is not going right for me: why don't they listen to me; why are they doing this to me; why, why, why is it always about me? I've forgotten a very simple truth: there is nothing going on over here that is more important than what is going on over there. Seriously.

Once I take my tightly focused view off of me, and place it out there with everyone else that makes up the world I know and live in, then and only then does it all become workable, doable, easy, peaceful... there is where the magic lies, not here.

When I focus myself on making sure that the people in my life are having a fabulous life and living their dreams, everything over here that is miserable just goes away. Everything that is not working in my life either disappears or gets handled. It truly is just like magic.

It is really all about "not me". It is about being of service.

You can start flexing this muscle by just being present to how many times a day you use the word "I". When you can substitute that word for someone else you can start seeing what is possible in the world. You can see the humanity in other people. You might even start seeing it in yourself too.

And how does this relate to writing? I am so glad you asked :)

When you are in the throws of a story, lost in the creation and invention, you disappear. When I am writing I get into my "zone"... the characters become more real and alive for me than the cat sitting next to me. They start telling me the story. I can see, hear, taste, touch and feel everything in that world. I disappear and become a part of the fabric of the story.

I stop focusing on me and my life and have it be about anything but me... and the magic happens. I can create worlds, people and even sciences that have yet to be discovered - and they all work.

This is where the magic happens. This is where you are rooting for your MC to get the girl or the guy. This is where you cry when they don't, or maybe when they do.

This is the space where people create projects and organizations that take food to the starving in the world, clothe the needy, and like one of the people I coach in that leadership program - create a social project to raise money and buy a generator for a small village in Iraq that will use it to run a school to train people with disabilities to work, get jobs and be self-sufficient.

We did the math the other night and we figured the average class size in that school was 300 people. The training program is about 3 months. That's about 1200 people a year that would never have been able to take care of themselves becoming active contributing members of their society. We averaged in the expected lifespan of the generator and started looking at numbers in the tens of thousands of people...

That is what can be achieved by focusing on what is outside of "I". That is pure f***ing magic.

"I" can't make a difference with "me" until it gives up the "self" for "other".

I remembered all of that this morning when I was driving to work and making the people in the cars ahead of me wrong for being in my way and slowing me down.

I'm going to talk to my daughters and apologize to them profusely tonight. I am going to clean it up with my wife for my appallingly poor behavior. I'm going to recreate the purpose and promises of the leadership program with the people I am coaching tonight and get them present to what is possible in themselves and in the world - and renew their faith in their coach.

And for you dear readers... I apologize for being in my head and being absent for so long. In my world I have nothing important to say. I'm a poor writer and even worse blogger.

But since it isn't about me, I can write for you and the only thin I indeed have to be concerned with is whether or not you are inspired or touched by the words and ideas given freely here.

Peace

what would you do?

A question was posed to me a few days ago... and it got me to re-examine a few areas of my life. Not like there is something wrong, but I just started to see how resigned I have become in the area of dreaming and wanting.

I have become so resigned that nothing I "really" want will ever happen, at least not like I daydream about how it could go. You know, those pie-in-the-sky daydreams where your able to do or have anything and the world seems to be demanding you to be successful? Yeah, those type of dreams.

I know I live like they can't be possible, not even remotely. Maybe many of you do that as well. We're human, we usually do not believe in the exceptional, especially as it applies to us and our lives.

But inside of the inquiry from that question, I saw that it is only my story about what is possible that keeps those dreams from happening. In other words, those things, those dreams do happen to people. Look at the news about celebrities and such. It does happen. I just live like it cannot happen to me. There is absolutely nothing in the way of me living my dreams but myself.

I am my biggest (and only) roadblock. I am the cause of my being exactly the way it is, and is not. If I can cause that, then I can cause it to be any other way I choose... or dream.

By now you are most likely ready to kick me because I have not told you the question.

Here is the question: If you knew you absolutely could not fail, what would you do?

What I saw for myself is that I live my life like I have already failed as a writer and so therefor I just don't throw myself into it with all my love and all my passion for the story, for the written word. Now that I can see that clearly I am able to let that go. I know I am the only barrier to living the dream of being a writer. Just me.

What would you do?

Peace

stats - for those who like numbers

So I wrote a longish piece yesterday... and I completely forgot to put in my time and all of that nitty-gritty.

So here it is:

Time - 3:00:00.4
Average Speed - 13:44
Place - 1462

My average speed is based on miles run divided by time run - so I actually run at a faster pace than that. If you take out time walked - two minutes out of every five - and the potty breaks, you would get a faster average time per mile run. I used the Galloway interval running method so that I could manage my health and complete the race without injury.

My overall place is based on the number of runners (~2500), and not on the number of runners for the Team Challenge fund raising team.

The Team Challenge group included 509 runners who raised over 2 million dollars to find a cure for Crohn's Disease and Ulcerative Colitis.

For all of you number junkies... I hope that fulfills your need to know :) If you still need more details, go here.

Also, Team Challenge is still accepting donations until August 20. Keep the donations coming. It's a sure bet now that you know I've already run and completed the race.

Peace