Have you ever stopped and considered how your mind colors the world around you?

You have the ability to distill any situation into black and white, good and bad, agree and disagree.

It’s interesting to consider how our mental assumptions play into our interactions with others.

We tend to construct worlds in our heads of black and white.

It’s easy enough to understand why we do this.

It simplifies the world around us to consider a more straight forward scenario…

Is the light turned on or turned off?

The simplicity of a lit or unlit state.

On the analysis appears true, but it is often superficial and inaccurate.

What kind of light is it? (LED, fluorescent, a candle)

What spectrum of light is generated?

What color is the light?

What is the intensity of light?

And so on…

This colors our interactions with other people when it comes to our psychology of connection.

We tend to operate in one of two paradigms.

Either we believe ourselves to be part of the majority, aka everyone believes or behaves the same as we do.

-Or-

We believe ourselves to be alone an isolated, nobody believes what we do, or nobody else has been through what we do.

Both of these lines or reasoning are common and pervasive, they can even be helpful in understand the situation.

They can also be harmful and frequently flat out wrong.

If you operate under the paradigm that everybody believes the way that you do, you operate under an unspoken justification that what you believe is right. culturally accepted behavior does not actually imply moral or just behavior. It simply implies that you won’t be judged harshly by another for the behavior.

Racism, sexism, agism, many ostracizing behaviors tend to be socially accepted, but in no way right or just.

Genocide has been culturally accepted and condoned in recent times, it certainly doesn’t make it right.

Alternately, if you operate under the paradigm that you’re all alone in your behavior and thinking, it doesn’t make it wrong. If you are judged harshly by someone around you for your behavior it doesn’t mean that you’re the only one with that behavior. In fact often the person judging you is seeing their own behavior in a mirror of your actions and judging you for something they despise in themselves. Not that it makes you feel much better about the judgement pronounced upon you.

There have been many people that have suffered and even given up and lost their lives through the harmful belief that they are all alone. The idea that you are alone is a frightening path that can lead to further isolation, guilt and a harmful downward spiral of self deprecation.

It’s time to start talking. It’s time to get the word out to the isolated people of the world that they are not alone. You could be the person that shares your story and saves the life of a lonely person afraid there is something wrong.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying everything is okay. I’m not saying all actions are good. I’m not saying that all of your behaviors are noble and justifiable. I am saying you are not alone.

I also understand that it makes sense to not talk about it. If you feel you are all alone, you can be afraid of the reactions of others. More to the point you may have tried to share your story in the past and been judged and ostracized. It may mean that you need to keep looking to find that people that will benefit from and resonate with your story. The search may be difficult. The path may be rough.

It is important to understand that your story may be a path to connection for someone dying of loneliness. Your story may be their salvation. You may be the lifeline to an individual desperately looking for hope.

Seek your niche.

Find your comfort zone.

Search out your tribe.

Share your world.

Namaste,

Kevin

If you could travel through time, what would you do?

Where would you go?

Why would you go?

Some people like to consider time travel an activity to fix the mistakes of the past.

Go back and convince yourself to turn left at the T in the road instead of right.

Alter a key decision to avoid a catastrophic outcome.

Undo the scars in our psyche.

Others consider time travel from a tourist or researcher perspective.

Go back and see the battle of midway or witness the birth of Christ.

Maybe stand in the farmers field and see what really crashed at Roswell.

If you had this kind of power, or ability, what would you do with it?

Would you feel godlike and try to reshape the world based on your designs?

Or modest with a hint of greed and go back and win the lottery or make stock picks based on your foreknowledge?

Would you binge watch history?

There is a pattern emerging with the availability of television shows in bulk, through services such as netflix, where people will watch entire seasons of a show in a single day. It’s called binge watching. If you had the ability, would you binge watch history?

Would you jump to the birth of Christ, then jump to the sermon on the mount, then Leap forward to the crucifixion, finally jumping ahead 3 days to the resurrection?

Would you actually watch history unfold? Or would you build your own synopsis?

Would you watch the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand then jump the Paris Peace Conference? Glossing over the specter of World War I focusing only on the highlights.

Would you edit history to remove the boring parts?

Would this make you a scholar? Or a voyeur?

I think the illusion of time travel is that there is one thing. One moment. One pivotal instance where everything changed. The idea that watching that moment, will make all of history understandable. The idea that changing that moment will change all of history. I don’t think our world is that simple and I don’t think our world is that fragile.

I believe we are an accumulation of actions and activities.

Individual moments facilitate tipping points.

Events trigger events.

Actions compound into actions.

Critical mass is reached and an explosion seems to come out of nowhere…

But the explosion was in fact building for a very long time.

If you could go back and assassinate Hitler, would you stop the genocide of the Jewish people? Or would you simple trigger a shift in which nobody knows the name of Hitler, but say Himmler in the same dark tones? How many would you have to kill to prevent the mass murder of the Jewish people? And after you’ve altered history with your dark actions would they begin to whisper your name in the same dark tone…

Before you try to fix the world, begin to work on yourself.

Before you try to understand the world, understand yourself.

If we try to alter the universe, but we are a mess, the result we create is a mess.

If we come from a place of internal chaos, then what we exude and what we create around us is chaos.

If we come from a place of centered peace, then what we exude and what we create around us is centered peace.

And we don’t even need a time machine. We can be a positive change in the world and be a scholar right where we are, in the present moment.

Namaste,

Kevin

You will never be more than you are today. You are all that you will ever be.

How do these statements hit you? Do they come across as an insult? Or a compliment?

A mindset of scarcity processes these statements and is afraid they are true. A thinking pattern of inadequacy leads to the belief that you need to be more. The need to be more leads to attempts to resolve your deficiency through acquisition.

Alternately, an abundant mind will rejoice in this statement, because you already know you are enough. Being nothing more than you are today is wonderful, because you are already exceptional. You don’t need to be anything more, because you are already more than enough.

Your beliefs don’t actually change who you are. They change how you react to who you are. And they change how you interact with the world around you.

Coming from a place of scarcity, versus coming from a place of abundance, dramatically changes how you see the world around you.

Two people can look at a pile of money and react in completely different ways.

To one person the pile of money is a treasure.

An abundance of funds and possibilities for freedom.

To another person the pile  is a pittance.

A few days of living followed by lack and the need for more.

The pile doesn’t change. The perception of the pile changes.

We live in a world of excess and lack. We are surrounded by excess. We are constantly told we are lacking. The messages are designed to drive us to consume. They are intended to facilitate a model of acquisition. Driving us in a world where obtaining the next item is the goal. Not even the item itself, but the acquisition of the item. Owning the item immediately devalues the item. It feeds on a natural human desire. But it’s being pushed into overdrive by the constant availability of the novel and unique. Manufactured scarcity.

Are you adequate as is?

How do you feel about the word adequate?

Would you stay in a hotel if it was described as adequate? Why not?

adequate: as much or as good as necessary for some requirement or purpose.

Actually adequate sounds pretty good. By definition it is all that is needed.

Do you feel adequate to take on today?

Do you feel adequate to be yourself today?

Do feel adequate to live your life to your full potential?

What if I told you, you are more than adequate?

Again, it may sound like an insult. If I were to see that on my annual work review I would start to consider if I needed to look for another line of work. But it’s actually pretty damn good.

In world filled with the most extravagant hyperbole ever! You are more than adequate!

We live in a world of overflowing cups. But we don’t need an overflowing cup. We don’t need everything in excess. What we really need is adequacy. What we really need is to have enough. But we keep seeking too much. Largely because we are told we need more.

Seek balance today. Look to become the half full cup.

You are more than adequate for the task.

Namaste,

Kevin

The other day my 5 year old came to me with some new activity she’d performed. She had managed to take a piece of paper and cut it into small chunks all over the floor. My adult mind quickly weighed the options for response:

Who am I talking to?

How much work was this to create?

How much work will this be to clean up?

Does this represent progress for motor skills?

Is the result something I would deem as creative?

What response is expected by the question asker?

I’m sure 1000 other questions and answers swam through my head in moments. Most of them subconscious. Within milliseconds my internal consensus was complete and I knew what my response would be. I was ready to deliver it.

With real sincerity and full enthusiasm I responded, “That’s really cool dude! Good job!”

All this was accompanied by a high 5!

I meant it, she was excited, I was excited. She had fun, she was proud of herself and her project was a success. As a parent, how could you not be proud?

Now, I was pleased with the response.

Excited that we’d had a fun interaction.

But my brain loves to process ideas. Once it’s spun up for problem solving, it likes to keep going… and going… and going. It’s sort of like the energizer bunny. But instead of banging on a drum it likes to tweak up my anxiety. In this case my brain kept running through questions and throwing out variable changes that may have changed the outcome. “What if the paper she was creating with was her birth certificate?”, “What if she had been using the big sharp kitchen scissors?”, “What if an adult had come to me with this same question?”…

What would I do then?

My brain loves hypothetical situations. It’s unfortunate from an anxiety perspective, because my brain tends to make me worry about things that are never going to happen. It is a gold mine from a blogging perspective. Every once in a while my brain spits out a random question that makes for a good blog. (Hopefully at least once a week)

What would I have done differently if an adult had come to me with the same question?

This lead to a whole new line of thinking.

At what point in life do we stop encouraging people?

As mentioned I was totally and sincerely supportive of my daughters activity. But what if a coworker had come over and said “Hey, check this out!”. He leads me over to his cubicle and shows me a little pile of cut up paper on his desk. How would I respond?

At what level of development do we decide a person no longer needs a pick me up?

When do we feel in life that someone has been encouraged enough and our job is to level set their expectation for the path going forward?

“Jon, I really like your pile of paper. But I also think you can do better. The paper chunk sizes are all over the place. You didn’t even organize the stacks, it’s just a heap of sliced up paper. I don’t even think you were trying. It’s like you phoned it in.”

I’m as guilty of it as the next person. I’m a sucker for kids, especially my kids. But there seems to be a cultural mentality about performance. There is, some point, in height or age or some metric nobody is even aware that we’ve agreed on, that causes us to become more critical. The voices change and our mental decision points shift. We weigh in more towards criticism. We lose the fun approver. We stop encouraging.

Why do we stop encouraging?

Catch yourself judging today.

Find a person that needs encouragement.

It’s not hard, they’re all around you.

Encourage them.

“Way to stop traffic crossing gaurd”

“Nice Decision Obama”

“Thanks for fighting for our rights, Mrs. Constitutional Lawyer”

“Good blog Kevin”

It’s a cruel world out there, be the voice of “you done good”.

There is enough criticism.

Namaste,

Kevin