It’s an easy trap to fall into. Seeking recognition.

You can tell yourself you’re just trying to stay level headed.

Making sure you don’t go off the societal rails.

Level setting.

Reconciling.

Trying not to rock the boat.

And to a point that’s true. But it’s also a way of washing out. It’s a way of diluting your personal potency in an effort to gain recognition. It’s a way of fishing for what the other person wants so you can turn around and offer it to them.

I’ve been in meetings with salesmen, where I can immediately tell they’re doing it. You ask a question such as “what are you offering our company?” and the salesmen replies with a wide smile “what do you need?” It is clear that the salesman is not there to help you, he is there to make a sale. So he is attempting to cater his offer to suit your every need. But that’s dependent on the person you’re talking to knowing what they need and being willing to share. If they can’t articulate it, or won’t, then you can not offer it. Everyone loses and you still have not been authentic about what you have to offer.

Likewise I’ve seen it when people are evangelizing to me about their religion. You can see it in their eyes when they speak and the inflection on the words they say. “Have you heard the good news, we can all be saved!” They’re not telling you what they believe, they’re sharing with you what they hope you will believe. Each person they convince, that they’re telling the truth, gives them a little more confidence that they are actually telling the truth. It’s like saying “If you believe what I’m saying, then maybe I can believe it to.”

But it is not being authentic. And it is not helping.

The truth is, we don’t need a watered down you.

We don’t want to hear what you think after it’s been filtered through a few ‘sane’ people.

Hmmm…. Well, I’ve got to warn you, that last statement was a lie. We probably do want you to be filtered. We probably do not want to really hear what you think. But we probably need to.

The world needs you raw and representing.

The world needs people that are who they are, unapologetically.

The world needs to be shaken up. We’ve gotten complacent. We’ve started to assume that everyone more or less agrees with us. Worse yet, we’ve started to feel that everyone more or less is okay with the path the planet is on. It feels like we’re going to hell in a hand basket and everyone is just okay with it.

We have enough sheep.

We need a few wolves.

We need to shake things up.

We need you to be you.

You don’t have to setup a billboard and call attention to your awesomeness.

Awesomeness will speak for itself. The the lights around your awesomeness will be so much brighter when they are authentic.

Step up!

Namaste,

Kevin

What would the world be like if we could all fly and leap tall buildings with a single bound?

How would it change your world, if you found that everyone you knew could shoot lasers from their eyes and lift heavy objects?

What would the world be like if everyone had superpowers?

The answer might intrigue you, cause the truth is, not that different.

The world would look the same to you, pretty much, as it does today.

Except we’d be flying everywhere instead of driving, and we’d be shooting lasers from our eyes.

I’ve thought about this before.

What if you had superhuman strength and could hit a wall with your fist and punch a hole in that wall?

What would the real world response to this be?

Well for starters people wouldn’t invite you over to their houses as often, repair bills would be astronomical.

But for your own home you would build it from stronger materials. You’d use materials that could deal with a little wear and tear. For example you’d want door frames that didn’t collapse the first time you ran into them. You’d use materials that were appropriate for the environment, to deal with your strength and weight and hold up for longer than 5 minutes.

Now imagine if everyone was that way. The whole world would have adapted to and been building with stronger materials. Engineering specifications would take into account the requirements of buildings with better materials. The world around you would be built to cope with this higher level of being, strong, faster, etc… The bottom line would be that the world around you would be created to account for the people that lived in it. Everything in the world around you would look normal and average, and you would find the world held up pretty much to your expectations. Except everyone had superpowers… Which in essence would mean that they were all average.

Still following my line of thinking here?

So I’m saying if everyone in the world had super powers, then the world would look like it was supposed to, because everyone was average. So the world would seem to us, just like it does today, normal.

So considering that everyone around you is average.

And everything, in general, around us looks pretty normal.

Why do you believe you don’t have superpowers?

You’re more powerful than you think.

Now go be extraordinary.

Namaste,

Kevin

You are a salvage specialist skirting the edge of the forbidden sector. A region of space where no-one is allowed to enter. Suddenly your proximity sensor starts blaring! Something just showed up just over the border, where no one travels. And it’s something big. Should you investigate? Should you break the treaty to see what’s there?

In many ways your life is like an adventure game. Unfortunately there isn’t much preamble or lead in. You’re born and, “bam! Figure it out!” Sure there are a few years of slow activity at the beginning. But most of that time is spent figuring out the controls work and learning the interface. How do you walk? How do you talk? What’s this body for anyway?

We have a limited amount of time on this planet. In that time, we need to figure out what we’re supposed to do here. It’s sort of like the ultimate adventure game. Adventure is out there waiting for you to explore and discover.

Here are a few tips to make the game better for everyone.

Don’t spend all your time at the inn bickering with the inn keeper. Go out and explore.

Don’t spend your time worrying about how other people are playing the game. It’s their quarter, let them play their way.

Don’t worry about others complaining about how you play the game. It’s your quarter, play your way.

Don’t spend your time in fear of what might happen. Lots of things could go wrong, and probably will. But on average many things will go right. And the things that go wrong are called challenges, they give you a chance to step up and earn extra points. Yes, we still don’t know what good those points will do us, but it can be fun just to see your score go up.

Do encourage other players. Sometimes someone else will be going through a bonus round and you won’t even know it. Maybe they need that extra power boost of a hug or just a kind word to help them level up.

Do be kind to yourself. If you run into a particular puzzle that you can’t solve, maybe you need to come back to it later. Without the cheat guide it can be really hard to solve some of the puzzles on the first attempt. Allow for mistakes.

Do remember, you’re here for the experience. Enjoy the mystery.

Namaste,

Kevin

Normal. Average. Expected Behavior. Common.

These words all have a very specific meaning. Oddly depending on the context the actions they describe could be drastically different. It’s easy enough to say that “Most people are average”. Or that “The average person acts normally”. Or even “That kind of behavior is expected and common”. But in reality we tend to edit out the expected. Ignore the normal. And backseat the average. We have a tendency to ignore that which we truly expect.

Conversely our minds are like hot pink highlighters for the outliers. When we see unexpected behavior alarms start going off in our heads with bright red flashing lights. Abnormal behavior triggers our minds into contrast mode as we itemize all of the flaws, errors or outright bloopers occurring in front of our eyes.

So when we spot that abnormal outliers, behaving in uncommon and unexpected ways, we speak up. Sometimes we correct. Sometimes we reprimand. Sometimes we just yell! “That’s a red light you just ran buddy!”, “How dare you treat me like this!?!”, “Would you talk to your mother that way?!?”.

Interestingly, it is much more rare for someone to speak up in support of behavior they expect. Our minds think, that this is the normal and civilized way for people to behave. So when someone does something we would have done ourselves, or would have expected, we tend to take it for granted. We believe, that the behavior observed, is the right way to behave. By taking it for granted, you are effectively ignoring it, and potentially discouraging it from happening again.

We really do want the world to be a better place. Additionally we truly need to believe that we are behaving in a way that makes the world a better place. So why not prop up the people that we see behaving in a way that makes that dream a reality? Why not become the voice of advocacy that encourages those normal, average, expected, common people to continue to be normal, average, expected and common?

We need to seek out a model of positive reinforcement. When you see something you like, say something. Don’t expect it. Don’t take it for granted. Don’t let the moment of sanity pass unremarked. Be the voice that speaks up and says “I like the world you’re building. Thank you!”

Namaste,

Kevin

I was thinking about legos this week… More specifically I was thinking about building blocks.

Imagine this hierarchy.

City

Buildings

Blocks

Limestone, Ash and Water with an Oven (or kiln)

This is a gross over simplification. But in many ways that’s feeds my point. We all tend to stand on the shoulders of those that came before us. Not everyone can make bricks. But many people train on how to lay bricks. Not everybody designs buildings, but a few people may be experts at planning cities. We have to work at becoming professionals in the context in which we practice most, but it doesn’t mean we become experts in all levels from chemistry to city planning. There are levels where we let our expertise shine and levels where we trust to the skills and efficiency of those that make it their trade. It does not mean we can not do it. It means we should consider whether we should do it.

There are master craftsman who can do it all. But they have spend years crafting their skills and learning each aspect. At some point they were a beginner and knew nothing. All they had was aptitude and desire to learn. So when you take on something new, but look at the expert who knows it all, it can be very daunting to expect yourself to know it all as well. You have to take off chunks at a time and allow others knowledge to fill in the gaps. Even experts focus their energies within a core area of passion. The keys are focus and patience.

Let’s look at another example:

Book

Chapters

Paragraph

Sentence

Words

Letters

English

Here is an example where the person doing the heavy lifting is master of most of the components in the hierarchy. When you write a book it is built of chapters. Those chapters are built up from individual sentences forming paragraphs. These sentences are all based off of words that are formed from letters. Then you have the abstract concept outside of this heirarchy of ideas for the book and translating those ideas into words. With all this skill and knowledge it’s still being based on the standing on the shoulders of the english language and of course the alphabet, concepts and ideas created long before us.

So what’s my point?

Well, when you consider being creative, it’s easy to get blocked by one level or another of the creative process. You don’t even realize that this is the thing holding you back, because you’re trying to do something new. You are in uncharted territory and uncertain how to proceed. Often the reaction is to give up and assume you can’t do it. When you may in fact need to determine the size of the building block that you’re willing to work with. Sometimes this means breaking the problem down and chewing off small chunks, this is often called reinventing the wheel. If someone else has solved the problem previously, you can benefit from their knowledge and utilize their existing ‘wheel’. Sometimes this means switching out your problem with someone else’s solution, eg: using their wheel.

Let’s say you’re trying to build a house and you start mixing dirt and water together and stacking slabs of mud to build your walls. For some reason instead of getting tall straight walls you end up getting low arched puddles. Your walls are really just mounds of wet dirt. What’s the next solution? You could re-evaluate your approach to using mud, research how dirt can be made into bricks, refine your knowledge on baking bricks, and start a kiln up to produce bricks for your walls. Then just produce enough bricks to build your house. Or, you could go the store and buy a load of bricks. Maybe brick building from scratch isn’t your forte, but stacking bricks is your thing. If you remove the hurdle in your path of having to build your own bricks you could find you build houses really well. You just kinda stink at making bricks.

So when you try to take on something new, be gracious and try to focus on the fun. Determine if you’re goal is to make your own wheel, or if what you really want is a better cart, but you can leverage someone else’s wheels. The problems you face can be less daunting when you learn to lean on others where needed. This doesn’t make you less creative, it makes you part of a community.

Namaste,

Kevin

I remember when the WWJD trend started. People all around trying to ponder what would Jesus do in this situation?

About 15 years ago my friend was about to get married to best girl, Jamie. I remember we joked at the bachelor party that his wrist band emblazoned with the letters “WWJD” standing for “What Would Jamie Do?”, to keep us on the straight and narrow for the bachelor party. We ended up going to see the latest Austin Powers movie, definitely tame by bachelor party standards.

Holding yourself to the perceived standard of another person is an interesting behavior monitoring and adjustment tactic. What would your soon to be wife do in this situation? What would your best friend do in this situation? What would Jesus do in this situation? But in order for you to actually and accurately apply this technique, you would need to know the mind of the person that you intend to model your behavior after.

It’s intriguing when you consider the implications of such a question. “What Would Jesus Do?” The question often implies the higher calling of mankind. To seek peace and justice. But do we truly know the mind of the Christ? Could we act in a similar way to the expectation of how Jesus would behave? It is easy to simply ask the question, but to walk through the inevitable assumption that it implies, is to believe that we know the mind of Christ. And ergo, based on religious dogma, to know the mind of God.

But really, in the average case, when this question is applied, you’re not behaving as Christ. You are just overlaying a religious behavioral code on your actions and then judging them as worthy or unworthy. If we were to truly answer the question of “What Would Jesus Do?” we would need to understand the underlaying motivation and impetus behind all actions of God to really grasp how to behave in any situation. Thus rendering the question of “What Would Jesus Do?” at best inert and at worst harmful. How could we possibly know? And what if we were to interpret the actions wrong and instead of choosing to feed the homeless we chose on that day to overturn the tables of the money changers? How are we to know that we’ve chosen the right action?

I bring up this question not to denigrate the intent of those eager to seek a higher power to guide their actions. Rather I point out this epitome of logical failure in seeking guidance to highlight a simpler action that occurs far more often. To avoid the pitfalls of comparing yourself to others. You see, I find my brain doing this all the time, when I react in a unpleasant way to something I find my mind judging and saying “Nathan would never have done that.” Or “I bet Peter handles these situations much better than I do.” It is a common pitfall to assume that others are better behaved than us, more compassionate than us, a better person than we are.

In fact to enact this type of comparison falls under the same logical fallacy, to imply that you know the mind of the other person and know how they would react in any given situation. It is not our job to know the minds of others. And it is not our job to judge our actions against the perceived thoughts of others. It is our job to know ourselves.

Temet Nosce

Know Thyself

It is our job to understand ourselves. It is our job to know our own minds. It is our job to understand our actions and learn from them.

What Would You Do?

Namaste,

Kevin

Have you ever watched a movie twice? (or more…) You know how it goes, you watch a movie and you just think to yourself, “That was Amazing, I want to watch it again!”

You get the general plot, and loved the story, but there were parts that just didn’t make sense.

You are filled with questions…

What was doctor’s character doing with the old car?

Why was the wife upset at her hairdresser?

Why did aunt Ethel always wear a blue hat?

Why did Eric turn to a life of crime? Was it his mothers fault?

So you watch the movie again, and sometimes again and again, trying to soak it all in. Trying to make sense of the details. Trying to connect the dots.

Really good movies are like that, there is a depth to them that calls out for review and consideration. They touch upon something core to our being and make us ask questions. These questions are sometimes about the movie, but more often then not, they are about us. By understanding the movie we can reveal a truth about our subtle selves that is not obvious.

We can ask abstract questions of our psyche… Would I do that? Could I do that? What if I had to make those same decisions?

The really good movies don’t entirely make sense the first time through. You get the general plot, but you go back for more, to get the nuance…

And that’s one of the big challenges with your own life. You’re watching it for the first time. You haven’t met all the characters yet. You didn’t get to read the script in advance. And a lot of random things happen that just don’t make sense.

When you watch a movie the first time, you just don’t know what’s going to happen

That’s the fun and that’s the challenge.

You have the joy of discovery, but you don’t have the advantage of perspective.

When you know what’s going to happen, the second time around, you have the advantage of understanding the results of the actions. You don’t have as much fun with the discovery, but you can really dig into the depth of the interactions. The emotion tied up in experiencing something the first time can actually cloud our understand of what is really going on.

This is especially true in your own life. When you are experiencing a moment in your life it is very easy to be swept away in the emotion and lose sight of the big picture. Job loss, breakups, deaths, births, unions and new work, always seem dramatic and traumatic, but when viewed back through the lens of time and experience they all become part of a bigger picture.

This is one of the ideas that helps me when in the midst of tragedy or turmoil, I am part of a story that hasn’t ended yet. Death and loss are very painful, they are also inevitable and instrumental. They help to shape us, polish us and refine us. And I truly believe that they would all make a lot more sense if we saw them from a universal perspective instead of from the first person view.

Whatever is happening in your life right now, well, I hope it isn’t too painful. But just remember, even if it is painful, it will all make sense when you watch the movie of your life the second time through.

Imagine you in your last moments, on your death bed, with the credits of your life rolling, experiencing that moment of elation as you think to yourself, “That was amazing, I want to watch it again!”

Namaste,

Kevin

You’ve been on the edge of your seat.

Clicking Refresh on your email.

Waiting with Baited breath for it’s arrival.

And now, it’s here!

The one, The only, Kevin Presenting “Thoughts”!

It pains me to say so, but presentation is everything. Or at least, it’s everything at the gateway.

By that I mean presentation is point of entry for ideas. It’s the lubricant of social discourse. It’s the icing on the cake. You may still have cake, but without the presentation element of the icing you’re lacking the engagement and attention of the potential cake eaters.

You always hear about the pearly gates of heaven.

No one discusses the rusty chain-link fence of heaven.

Why? Because when the idea came up, people stopped listening. Why would I want to go into an exclusive club that can’t afford to maintain it’s fences.

I have always wanted to live in a world where it was “the thought that counts”. I imagine a world where my efforts will be judged solely on their effectiveness and merit. But they aren’t. The surface of the actions is far more powerful than I like to give credit.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not calling you all a bunch of shallow ne’er-do-wells. Quite the contrary, if you’re reading this I can consider you a person of discernment and distinction. Thanks in large part to my ego and self image. None the less you are amazing. But you are also critical thinking and observant. You judge a book by it’s cover in a value sense. Determining if the author’s intent is worth deeper consideration. Presentation is the gateway.

I believe largely that we live in the world we create.

Sometimes the world around us adjust to our expectations of it.

Other times, the world around us filters through our mental image and we see only what we expect to see.

Regardless of the cause, the world largely turns out to manifest my impressions of it.

And I have over the years observed a double standard.

As mentioned, I want the world to judge me for my merit and thoughts. While at the same time, I often judge the world for it’s presentation.

Presentation isn’t about shiny flashing lights and magic tricks. Though these do catch the eye. But it is not just about spit and polish. There is more to presentation than simply putting on a good show. It’s about authenticity and sincerity. Does the presentation mesh with the presenter?

So with this thought in mind I would remind you that it’s okay to judge a book by it’s cover. We’ve all done it and we will continue to do so. And it is also the thought that counts. Which implies that our superficial judgements need to go a little deeper, but judgements will still be made.

Remember to practice the grace that you need, on the people that you meet.

And keep on thinking critically.

Namaste,

Kevin