One more correction

I am sorry to do this to you, but I had to have the new blog site tweaked and this included changing the address and the RSS feed. Here is the right site

https://www.davidaderholdt.com/

Switching to Squarespace for my blog from here on out. Click below!

So you will need to resubscribe to this blog in order to continue to receive it via RSS feed. Just as soon as i figure it out I will post it here. And here you go. Click this link in your RSS feed aggregator. https://www.davidaderholdt.com

The three F’s

# Chapter 56

There are three things that distract most people according to Bobb Bhiel fog, fatigue and flirtations and according to me (and a great deal of data) alcohol affects all three. You flirt with temptations more easily when drinking. You are definitely more fatigued when drinking. But the one that strikes at me most when drinking is fog. 

It is like the fog on the lake this morning, being created seemingly out of thin air and obscuring your clarity and vision. Lake fog makes for awesome and epic photographs, and it was amazing and I took a ton of pics.  But life fog is frustrating, making you uncertain and doubtful about your next course of action, it makes thinking erratic, cryptic and perplexing. Most of all it makes practically all movement dangerous. You can’t see what is coming, you can’t see where the edge of the pavement is located, you can’t see the deer crossing the road out in front of you. All of these are great metaphors for what fog in your life does to you.

Yes you can can have fog in your life without drinking, but drinking always makes it worse. This was and is one of the primary reasons I have decided to take a break from drinking. I need all the clarity I can muster and then some. There are problems to be solve, challenges to be overcome and solutions to find. Beer will never help me find those things nor accomplish those things. No matter how much I enjoy it, alcohol only takes in the end. It never gives.

At the cemetery

At the cemetery 

It’s quiet. And that is not to be funny. In a world with very little quiet, it’s a beautiful and silent place. I guess that equals peaceful in the modern world. It also feels lonely, missing my mom always makes me feel that way. 

Remembering her from the days of my childhood and youth makes me hurt to have that wonderful warm presence in my life again. She was so much fun and brightness and vivaciousness. Everything can appear to be fairly gray in the post-mom era. I wish I could remember more of the stories that she told, the history that she shared, more of what she taught us. But mainly I remember what I felt. 

Now things feel very different. The noise of the house is non-stop and not nearly as dynamic and conversational. There are no thoughtful moments, no thinking and little consideration about the deeper things of life. Whatever appears in the frontal lobe gets spoken into words that circle endlessly around in the same boring loop. Well I guess it is time to head back to the present. Quiet time is over for today.

Who is driving your life?

In the thousands of miles I have driven across America 

. . . these last 10 days, I have noticed a very interesting leadership phenomena

 . . . other drivers will tailgate you while in the fast lane, driving so close to your car, encouraging you to go ever faster, you can’t even see the front of their car they are so close! And then very often, when you pull over into the slow lane to allow them to pass, they then slow down? 

Let’s extrapolate here. It seems apparent to me that people are willing to go above the speed limit and break the rules as long as someone else is out in front of them and is the primary target. But when left alone in the fast lane, with no one to be the primary target but themselves, they immediately decide the risk is too high and they slow down.

I think many people live their whole lives like this. Especially Westerners. They want someone else to take the lead, shoulder the responsibility, take the initiative, do the hard work, while they benefit safely in the backdraft of someone else’s efforts.

Don’t know about you, but I prefer to choose my risks, choose my path, make my own efforts, take responsibility. You gotta own your life, or someone else will.

Is it a habit yet?

Chapter 60

Is this a habit yet? When is anything a habit? Isn’t a habit simply a dependable decision to choose a consistent action? Well yes and  . . . no I think. I have been working out for over 20 years pretty much every single day. If I am not in an airplane or car or train traveling to some destination, I simply always have some form of a workout, its almost like breathing after so many years. I pack for trips based on workouts. My shoes selection is often based on my hoped for workout plans. My daily schedule revolves in truth around my workouts, not my productivity.

Some might call this obsessive behavior instead of a habit, but I would not. Time has proven over and over and over again, how much better I feel and how much more productive I am throughout the day, when I have a workout. Those are the facts of my life. Your mileage may differ. But this is a habit in my estimation, and writing these 275 words a day are not. Even though this is my 60th consecutive day, I won’t miss this, like I would a workout. Of course writing 275 words does not affect my physical body like exercise, but I have other habits that are mental in nature and they DO give me a kick, albeit a mental one not a physical one. So I am still waiting for this daily writing practice to give me a mental kick that I will miss out on, if I fail to do it, and then I think it will be a habit in the Dr Aderholdt world.

Uncripple your mental clarity

# Chapter 55

Great sleep is only one of the benefits of my 100 plus days without imbibing. Mental clarity is another. Thought I will admit this one is more difficult to track and measure. It does however show itself in a dozen ways. And it comes with an additional bonus - more control.

More control over what you say or don’t. More control over being generous with your thoughts and words and attitude. But the more control over the words you say is the real gain here in my opinion. A night after drinking with the guys, and I find myself saying things better left unsaid, especially to my wife. You can’t undo these things, and they carry a high price tag and it doesn’t get better in the future. So while we aren’t talking about massive amounts more control, every little bit helps when you are me. I will take it. Its enough to be noticed!

The additional mental clarity can be seen in the alternative narratives that you can construct about why something happened. This is probably the most valuable to the general world, that the added control, but these alternative narratives make many things possible. When my dad says, “that SOB Chris the electrician, he had no right to say that to me!” . . . alternative narratives clicking mentally here . . . and I can say, “well maybe Chris had a really bad night staying up all night with his new baby”, or “maybe Chris just received a really bad medical diagnosis this morning” or “did we do something to spark that response in Chris?” And so on and so forth. Easily three alternative narratives that my dad would have never considered otherwise.

Can you see the power in this?? It is awesome. For some reason, and I wish it did not, but alcohol cripples this ability in me.

Quiet or food?

There are many love languages, a concept and a phrase I think made popular by Gary Smalley back in the 70s, but my dad‘s love language is food. 

Food is the very last conversation I ever wanna have. I am committed to destroying food’s power in my life. That is complicated much by the fact that this is my dad‘s love language. While you’re eating and devouring any given meal, he is already planning the next three meals or even the next week worth of meals. So not only can you not just simply be present and enjoy this meal, you also have to be future oriented and planning out the coming days and weeks. Infuriating. Incredibly difficult. Destruction of all my current goals.

But this knife cuts both directions. My love language is quiet, solitude, and silence. These are a complete anathema to my dad. He cannot stand one single second of silence. He will do anything, and say anything, and make any amount of noise necessary, to fill every single moment of silence. So my love language, and his love language, don’t work together so well. It’s not that I can’t plan out what we’re going to eat tomorrow, it’s just that I am past focusing on food 24/7. It’s not that he can’t have a moment of silence here and there, it’s just that if he has a choice he will never allow a moment of silence to occur.

So the thing he wants most and a thing I want most, neither of us ever receive. Hmmmmmm.

Yet we still get on so good. I guess real love can overcome even our primary love languages?

What I think about it

So yeah, I am not drinking any alcohol at all. For months now. Its been easier than I expected actually, and most people have been very supportive and not made a big deal (or any deal at all) about me not drinking with them. This has been huge, because honestly I expected much more push back than I have received. So maybe I don’t have to upgrade my friends and family after all? Many people do when they make a change of course in their lives. On the other hand I am not sure I am making a change of course in life or still experimenting. Will let you know in 10 years.

But it has been really difficult in my own head. And this of course is where most things are truly difficult. The stories we tell ourselves make a great many things more difficult that perhaps they really are in the real world. And likewise, the stories that we tell ourselves could make our lives a great deal more accurate to reflect the possibilities and potentials that are always around, but rarely utilized. These internal narratives are the foundations of our daily experiences in life.

But I digress about the difficulties of not drinking. My internal narrative about myself does not include a version where I never drink alcohol. I have lived in the Slavic world for the last 25 years. In the Slavic world, everything in life revolves around alcohol. I mean everything! But even the social pressure of the country I live in is not the worst. Its what I think about it, that is most difficult. How I perceive it, the values I place on it, what kind of person I think it makes me, how it defines me in my mind, these are the battles of being a non-drinking person - or anything else in life.

The longest run . . .

Chapter 50

Yesterday’s chapter on nonversation may have confused you since book two is about changes and experiments and life hacking toward greater productivity. Nonversation is like the mental version of being physically drunk - that’s how badly nonversation will deconstruct your productivity.

Speaking of being drunk, I am not. But I have noticed over the years that alcohol was having a more and more significant impact on my physical body. Said another was, I love beer - sincerely enjoy it, but it doesn’t like me. It slows me down, physically, mentally and makes me feel like crap often on the following day. It wrecks my sleep about half the time. As Ruby Warrenton says, “You never regret not drinking the following morning” has my bullseye painted squarely in the middle of that statement. I have simply never regretted not drinking . . . the following morning. 

So I am currently on the longest stretched of days weeks and months without drinking that I have ever done in my adult life. 102 days since I last had a beer, and while I really miss beer (especially when there is Mexican food involved or pizza) the outputs have been really great. That doesn’t mean that I won’t drink again. Not at all, but I have been moving in this direction for years. Since no amount of wishing will make the negatives of alcohol consumption go away (if that were possible I would be the poster child) and no amount of rationalization will make the positives of not drinking be explained in any other way,  . . . for now, I will see how far the stretch of no alcohol will run.

Nonversations

Chapter 49

Nonversation. This is a word from Lee Bacon novel. It means a meaningless conversation. When it comes to productivity, nonversations are the ultimate death knell. This has graduated senses of meaning. It could be just avoiding someone you live in close contact with and now you have one word nonversations instead of conversations. It could just be the inane speaking of words which constitutes what passes for most small talk (why don’t we have big talk?). Or it could the mindless vomiting of each and every thought that passes through the frontal lobe of a person in the form of an endless monologue. And there are probably subtle shades in between. I have experienced them all, but the last one is most deadly to production.

It is a constant and unending pointless source of sound. Filling up every sacred moment of silence with nonversation. 94% of nonversation don’t even require a response. It is essentially a modern form of monologue under the guise of conversation. 

You know you are in a nonversation when you break in and try to take this to a conversation, and the person just continues off topic about what they were nonversationing about before you broke in. Or you would know you are in a nonversation when the subject hops irrationally from one unconnected topic to the next with no connector transitions. Or you know you are in a nonversation when hours of spoken words by one person, only require occasional grunts or eye contact from you, to continue. Hell, lets be honest, the nonversation will continue whether you give these fake signs of interests or not.

Escape if you can! Avoid if you can! Run away if you have the opportunity! Do not allow yourself to be cornered here in a nonversation. Because if you do, then prepare yourself to watch your productivity just trickle away into noncomplishment.

Memories

# Chapter 43

As I got the full tour of the devastation here in Paradise California and the surrounding areas, I came to conclusion that it will never return to what it was in the past. It will return, but that future will be something other than what was here before. It has to be. None of us can ever return to the past really. As Seth Godin calls them, “our memories of our memories.”

Here in California, they can’t return to the past because these houses that burned down (1600 of them!!) were built with money from decades and decades ago when land was cheap and so was labor. And currently post-fire land is relatively cheap. I was looking at some of those pieces yesterday. But the labor and building costs have skyrocketed. I can buy the lot for 10 grand maybe (a great deal in this part of the world) but to build the simplest cement block duplex would cost an astronomical (for me) $450,000!! Paradise was destroyed by a random convergence of perfect factors that resulted in a ferocious fire storm. But their past cannot be resurrected up out of the ashes, because things have changed. They always do.

As thus, neither can you or I return to the past. It no longer exists even except as “memories of our memories.” This is driven home over and over for me right now as I am spending all the time with my dad that I can, since both mom and brother are gone, and its just us (thankful so much for Brenda who breaks up the monotony!!) two boys, and my dad reviews his memories of his memories every day multiple times. About half the time those are the memories of memories of his childhood, and the other half of the time of my childhood. Those worlds no longer exist. There is not even a facsimile of those worlds any longer. While we may occupy the same chunk of ground in the same village, town, county, state and country, nothing else the same.

The only solution is to live in the present and aim for the future, whatever that may be. Here in Paradise, half of the people remaining are now living in RV’s on the burned out foundations of their former homes, and it will be years before the legal stuff is cleared up and they can easily move forward and rebuild. But most of them will not have the resources to do so. The present and future are not the past. The past is nevermore and neveragain. So I can either be constantly distracted by the past as I sit at the table and reminisce, or I can get up and live fully in today and reach for tomorrow. Take action. Move. Act. Don’t be penned in and incapacitated and distracted by your memories of your memories.

Too many options

# Chapter 39

The distraction of too many options. When we lived in Russia 25 years ago and we were on the road traveling between cities, which did not happen very often because of the restrictions and hassles of travel there, we would stop with the kids at a roadside building which advertised by picture or words, that food was offered there. We have done this a few times, but it is still the most unique experience ever - you go in and sit down and wait. That’s all. Just wait. 

No one takes your order or asked how you are doing or where you would like to be seated, or what you would like to drink. You just sit down and wait 10-15 minutes and then a Russia grandma would bring you out something. You would eat it. That’s all there was to it. No options. No menu. No choices. She brought you the one thing there was to eat for that day. If you were lucky it was hot.

That likely sounds horrible to my American friends but don’t knock it till you try it. No one was ever in ecstasy about Russian cuisine to begin with in my opinion, so what did it matter that you had no choice about which nasty thing to eat? But the almost complete lack of options, or choices, was unique even for Russia. 

The exact opposite is true here. Too many options. It takes longer to order here, than it did to get food there in Russia. But the stress!! You likely don’t even realize what a huge distraction and stress all your options are, because that is the only normal you have ever known. But live a few years with zero options, and you will run screaming from the Cracker Barrel or most other places.

Looking back on it, there was a great freedom and simplicity in having few options. We should design our days and schedules with less options, so that we can focus and produce something amazing.

Going optimal in a less than ideal world

The distraction and opportunity of being a slave to someone else’s schedule. Its 4:50 am. My dad is up and awake and humming and whistling. He is happy as a bedbug in a mattress. He is excited and cranked. We are taking a road trip to Tennessee to spend the whole day looking at antique cars. His agenda. At 4:50 am. 

I would rather be having a root canal. The whole structure of my day is wrecked. Up too early. Not enough sleep. No workout today (except patience. Is patience a muscle??)  No decent food. No development work. And on and on I could go, this is just the beginning of the list. I don’t even like antique cars very much.

But this isn’t about me. I agreed to go on this trip. You agreed to take that job, marry that person, choose those in-laws, have those children, live in that neighborhood, go to that college, study that degree, make that investment, fail to make that investment, take that posture, have that attitude, and live this life that you have largely chosen. This is also true for me. My dad is hopping and eager for this day trip! Its evident by how early we are up and how energized he is this morning. While the day will be mostly agonizing for me personally, its a dream for him. Why would I not agree to go?

We all make lots of decisions and even deciding to not make a decision is really a decision. We all agree to many things in our lives that are not necessarily our first choice. Ask any mother with a newborn, but we still made the decisions that brought us to this place and once the decision is made and things are in motion, all that you generally have left to work with are attitude and effort.

So how much effort are you gonna put toward make this as good as it can be, whatever it is? What’s your attitude gonna be? Are you going to be sullen and resentful all day because you are doing something less than your ideal day, or are you going to make this the best day that is can be given the parameters it already has? 

Go optimal. Give it your best effort and attitude.

Fuel to be your best self

For the last month I have been writing about distractions, and frankly I thought I would be done long before now. And I wanted to be done by now, because I have other things I want to write about! But there are yet more distractions and they are keeping me on this subject.

Stage or cycle of life can be a huge distraction and keep you from both your best self and your best work. I am closer to 60 years old than I am 50 years old and it is easy to see the shift in how people view me and my advanced years. Finished. Over. Done. Out to pasture. Retirement fodder.

Yet I am stronger than I have ever been. I am very healthy. Weigh the least I have ever weighed. Doing some of my best work ever. How the young people at the store see me and how I see myself is violently different. Some of my favorite Leadership thought-leaders wrote the bulk of their best work when they were even older than me. Why do you think I am writing this stuff every day?  I am practicing!

However, there are specialized distractions that come with each decade, and in the getting-older-decades, they have more than their fair share. When you are in your 20’s you are distracted by the overwhelm of possibilities and fear of making a major mistake. In the your 30’s you are distracted by establishing yourself, starting a family, and the growing burdens of responsibilities, etc etc right on through when you get to your 50’s. The greatest distraction so far in this decade has been the shear number of death’s that we have had to face. Parent’s, uncles, aunties, cousins, siblings, and friends. Today would be a perfect example of this distraction - planning to go to the funeral home this afternoon to see a neighbor who passed away, and then stopping off to see an uncle who has days to live. 

Stay focused, and use this dark and painful distraction and disruption of life as fuel to make every day matter and be your best self. Its not easy, but it is really important.

Foggy mornings

We are spending the weekend on the lake, at an AirB&B and this morning it was so foggy. The air temperature was so much higher than the water temperature, that there was a solid wall of airborne moisture surrounding the lake, the house, the woods, everywhere. And here in rural Virginia, I discovered that these country drivers don’t use their headlights at all in the fog. I almost hit a couple of them!

Fog. Fog is a terrible distraction. This morning was so foggy. It obscured everything. It made my morning bicycle ride down right dangerous. It makes it so difficult to see clearly. It requires warning lights. Flashing lights are barely enough! My biking glasses completely fogged up and I had to ride without them. The moisture was so heavy in the air that helmet become completely wet on the outside and was dripping water in my eyes! My clothes were soaked with air moisture. It was a wet thick heavy distracting dangerous ride. My probability of getting killed or hit and injured was likely 10 times higher than normal, and its pretty high all the time.

All because of fog. All the same metaphors apply in leadership and development. The fog is not moisture in the air, but rather obscure business dealings, problems, employee retention, the VUCA world, volatile currency markets, trade agreements, shifting markets, and unexpected consequences of executive decisions, staff changes, and generally an unlimited amount of other challenges can be your fog. 

Take precautions, all that you can that doesn’t require a debilitating amount of effort. Stay extra vigilant when things are foggy. Have a clear purpose and destination and let it drive you forward steady and carefully, but as my friend Dr Anderson says, “Go and make!”

The learning curve

Learning curves

I just had a great conversation with my son-in-law and fine Nicaraguan cigar on the balcony last night. He and I both have fully stepped into a venture of Real Estate investing and we are making lots of mistakes. Even though we have been studying this process for years, and dedicate time each day to learning more, we are still making mistakes. We had each other howling last night, as we were trying to out-mistake one another!

Perhaps you might think that we are just bumbling amateurs who really don’t have a clue and should sell all of the assets we are building immediately to stop the bleed? Perhaps you think we are unintelligent and lack diligence or patience, and that we are in over our heads? Out of our depth? And perhaps you might be correct in some minor way with each of those, but we are committed. Committed to making more mistakes. Because this is how we learn. It is also how you learn too, and if you don’t believe me, then you aren’t learning anything at all.

This is called the learning curve. Every new venture, relationship, goal, objective, and pursuit in life has one. You go from being a person who doesn’t even know what they don’t know, to a person making regular mistakes, to a person of high competence. There is no short cut to that process. If you aren’t willing to learn, to make lots of mistakes, to fail regularly, then you will never reach the class of the highly competent. The only way to hone these skills is through messing up and taking chances, and falling down and getting back up every single time. You can become the sharpest blade in any drawer if you are willing to face the learning curve.

Becoming

Becoming. Or as James Clear asked, “Can my current habits carry me to my desired future?” This is a most difficult perspective to grasp when you are younger. The idea that you aren’t fully formed and complete when you graduate from high school is distasteful medicine to drink and few do. But when you have multiple decades of life to reflect upon, and you can see the arc of life, then you get it, becoming is a natural part of getting older if you have practiced the right habits along with way to get where you want to go.

On the other hand, the vast majority of my high school mates, haven’t read a single book since they graduated 40 years ago, and when they look back, they see the same person that they were 40 years ago. The terrifying part of that sentence is that they are perfectly content being that same person that they think they were 40 years ago. If this describes you, then you are reading the wrong blog.

This blog would be for those who can (or want to) see the beautiful arc of what they are becoming and those who are ready to change their habits to become a person that can change the world. These people are always ready to change themselves first, because they understand that they cannot possibly change the world until they become something more. Actually it is more nuanced than that . . . they would not enjoy changing the world nor the changed world, unless they become something more first.

I am in my late 50’s, approaching 60, and I am changing more habits than ever before. I want to become more than ever before. My expectations and hopes are more than ever before. Build those habits that can carry you into a future you really desire!

Impatience

Distractions abound. Impatience is a terrible distraction. It is wanting something without the willingness to commit the necessary time to the process. In other words, most of the time we want it instantly. And most of the time, important stuff takes time. 

My son is brilliant, sweet, wonderful, warm, fun man, but completely incapable of delayed gratification of any type it seems. He is the only one of us who does not have a college degree, which of course is just an exercise in delayed gratification. He can’t save money nor save for retirement, again exercises in delayed gratification, or in other words - impatience. No instant here. Its killing his progress.

But you can’t build wealth or knowledge or skills or a business with impatience. You can’t build credibility without patience and consistency. You can’t build trust being impatient. These stepping stones of progress take time and you may not see the results that you are aiming toward, for a long time. Projects at scale, take time to come to fruition, to produce something world changing, to have results that move us all. The more important your task or goal is, then longer it may take to see it happen. The bigger the project, the more complex the pieces are, and the longer it takes to find alignment. Thus impatience becomes a distraction.

The overpowering need to see results sooner than they are ready to appear, makes many important actions and decisions seem to be overwhelming. It is tempting to quit before success is achieved. It is difficult to keep going if you are impatient for the the results, more than the process. Focus on the right processes, and the results will get here - eventually. But they will get here.

Control or no control?

What you can control and influence and change has limits. There are many things outside of your control and influence. I made an airport run yesterday to pick up my wife, which is a very very common experience in our lives. But unlike the short 30 minute trip this would be in Skopje, it is 90 miles trip to Atlanta, and can take from 1:45 to 3 hours on normal days. If there is an accident somewhere along the way, it can take far longer. There are probably 50,000 cars moving between here and the airport at any given moment, and any one of them can become the bottleneck that changes everything. All beyond my control and influence. And 100 other factors that are similar between here and there that I also cannot control nor influence.

That point made, this chapter is about what I can control and influence and change. Yes there are lots of things that I can’t control, but I don’t have to let that lead me to be AWOL about the things that I can control. You and I have control of our responses. Our responses even to the things we can’t control, and the unexpected events that occur. My wife’s flight landed two and a half hours late yesterday. My response was to find a comfortable chair and read a good book and enjoy a few extra hours of solitude. No fretting, no frustration, no regrets, no churning. 

But better than that is the control we have over our initiatives. We don’t have to wait until things happen, we can make things happen. We can take the initiative, plan for contingencies, look for the possible events that may occur outside of our control and take precautions. This is frankly a far superior decision than just responding well, even though that has its place in the scheme of our lives.

Focus on what you can control and influence and change. Respond well to those you can’t. This is the winning combination of those thrive.

Redirection

How do we turn all of these distractions into something productive, some form of alignment? I have tried many many strategies over the last three years and they mostly have some fashion of mild success. But the only one that has consistently provided real distraction relief has been redirection. Or if that word doesn’t help you mentally picture what I am suggesting, think of it as creating projects to do and to change the endlessly circling monologue.

Yesterday was a prime example. The first redirection of the day was sending my dad out for lunch with a girl, his friend, who isn’t his girlfriend, but is a good companion. However that redirection ran out of gas after lunch. So I then I did a second redirection, I asked him to go with me to look at a property that I was thinking about developing. That kept him talking about all the reasons this property was dangerous for hours. Otherwise, if I don’t do this redirection I get monologues like the worm hole size monologue that I am getting at this moment at 6:44 am.

Worm hole sizes. Yes that is what I said. Unfortunately he is not talking about the Space variety, but rather the vegetable variety, i. e. how big the hole in his squash was yesterday from the worms, and now he has jumped to how many cows are in the pasture across the road . . .. You can easily see why redirection is a necessary tool to have in your arsenal.

One warning here though, redirection has limitations. It will not always free you up to focus and concentrate. Many times the best it can give you, is a better/different monologue/conversation. Who or what do you need to redirection today to get your best opportunity to produce something amazing?

The ants turned off the water

The distractions of the day can also include insects. I kid you not. In fact, though you may find this difficult to believe I swear I am telling you the truth, because I saw it with my own eyes. And I promise you, I did not believe it either until the last second where I could no longer deny the truth of it - the ants turned off the water to the house. Completely. No running water at all in the whole house. Because of ants.

One of the vagrancies of fire ants in particular, besides their vicious bite, is their love of electricity. And in the grass field 200 yards above the house that my dad lives in, where the well is located, the only source of electricity there is the well house and well pump itself. So even though this may be stretching the bounds of believability, the ants piled in there until their mass shorted out the contacts. No electricity, no water.

When I pointed out to my dad that the water was not flowing, I just assumed 1. That the breaker had blown or 2. That the well had run dry. But my dad swore, "those damn ants!" And he hops up off the chair where he was uselessly wasting his life watching what is called "news" in this country, and started issuing instructions for the tools and actions that we would need to defeat the ant empire. At this point I was starting to consider senior citizen homes and remedial therapies for seniors, but I went along with him, because if for no other reason, it made him stop watching the "news".

So we got a tank of compressed air, insect repellant, filters, pliers and a screwdriver. I found the breaker for the well still "on" and flipped it off so that we didn't get accidentally shocked. Fast forward to my dad using the compressed air to blow away all the ants, and then turn the power back on and viola we had water again! Never underestimate the power of a distraction, even if it is an insect. And let me tell you about the guinea wasp nest that we dealt with next. . . . 

The triangle of production

I missed a day. And I did not even know until the following day which uh, I guess is today. Does that mean this is not yet a habit? 11 days does not a habit make. Actually it was Sunday and the flow of a Sunday is different than the flow of other days, and I just hopped from my morning workout routine, into a hustle to get to church, and then the day was gone. So clearly I need focus, even micro-bursts of focus in order to write daily, but I also require commitment to get my butt in this chair.

Ok ok everyone needs a day off, and I will let Sunday's slide into that day's off category, once this habit is solidly formed and the question of weather or not I will write is not one that is under consideration. But commitment or intentionality are the other side of the coin of focus. Without them, I don't need focus because there is nothing to focus on. Commitment and intentionality will make certain that I structure my day week month life in such a fashion that I will complete what I have intended to do. That seems like such an innocuous statement, but there are layers and layers of success or failure tied up there.

I realize as I am writing this, that there is also a third element, which might be required. Call it grit or persistence or even stubbornness but that something other to make sure the commitment or intentionality get structured, and that the focus is actualized. This threesome could be seen as gas, car and motion if you need a different metaphor. Or energy, structure and actualization if you need yet another one. If you haven't caught the whiff of possibilities yet, then you are probably reading the wrong book or blog.

The superpower of silence

Six glorious days of quiet and peace and thinking and margin and space and relaxing and did I mention quiet? Silence. That highly underrated element of the introvert universe, that superpower of those gifted with quiet. In a world that never shuts up, silence is so absent that many have never experienced it ever. It's like those who grow up in big cities with lots of light pollution have never seen the Milky Way except in pics that someone took, somewhere else.

I made an interesting trip across America three years ago on a bicycle over an eight week period, with a group of Americans. There are so so many things I could tell you about that trip, but the one that intersects our chapter this morning is the introvert table. It came about because of the three Earl-like monsters on the trip. The kind that if-their-eyes-are-open-their-mouths-are-moving types. Fred especially. Never a ruder non-stop talker ever existed. I actually ended up bunking with him the very first night I joined this group in Seattle on our way to D.C. Never again. I bunked as far away from Fred as humanly possible and still be indoors after that. 

The introvert group out of sheer despair finally made a sign that we stood on our eating table, especially especially at breakfast. "NO talking allowed at this table." If you are not an introvert, you may find that sign offensive or rude or controlling. But for those of us sitting there, it was heaven. We just wanted a quiet morning, alone with our own thoughts, and NOT anyone else's thoughts, until later in the day, . . . maybe.

I have had six days alone with my thoughts for the most part, and it has been so refreshing. I am gonna need that refreshment because now I will be logging three months with my dad, and he is near-Fred in his need urgency frantic panic to never have any silence. What gives me energy and fills me with life, fills him with dread and fear. At least I imagine this to be true, but I can't be sure, because he has never given silence a try.  

Moments

I wish I could capture for you the vibrancy of this moment, the vividness of the purples and pinks and whites of the flowers near me. The utter beauty of this breeze blowing on this balcony, so breezy in fact I had to put a light jacket on, to capture the raw pleasure and peace and ease this moment is for me. I am not leading anything. I am not the charismatic extroverted master pastor that I had been for decades, orchestrating teams of people to lead, sing, teach, all on a tight timetable. It is a quiet, peaceful, God-filled introvert heavenly moment, that honestly I could not have even imagined in the past.

I don't have to be in charge, I don't have to be busy, I don't have to be humorous or quick to reply, I don't have to manage, I don't have to practice nor decide. I simply can be. Could this have happened in my 40's? Maybe. But in my 30's or 20's no way - I had too much to prove to the world . . . and to myself. No longer. To simply be is the rarest sort of gift. A gift that few people receive it seems, if the turbulence of this world is any measure. Contentment in this moment - the best gift of God on His day.

Willingly I will walk (fly) away from this idyllic moment in a few days, to the endless talking and noise and chatter of my dad, and his world, where a moment of silence is a terrible foe never to be unleashed or allowed. But I need to look after my dad, and this is the price of admission. Moments, will have to be gathered while on a motorcycle, or doing some solitary activity that absolutely prevents him from intruding, but that is in a few days. We should not let the impending future cloud the present.

He would have been 55 today

He would have been 55 today

My brother's birthday is today. I can no more forget him or his birthday than I can my own name. It is still surprising how much his absence costs me in terms of anger and pain. Yet I have never felt more vibrantly alive. This is intentional, the best way I can honor those who have already passed on into eternity. Each family member and friend that goes before me, calls me to bring a better and better version of myself into play each day. These three plus years since he died have been one long roller coaster ride, but I keep breathing and thinking and working and seeking to change this world for the better. To make other's lives better.

The agony has turned to a dull steady ache. The torn fabric of life now has a scar. But I am called to face the challenges of life, of living, to take care of Earl our dad, to look after my brother's girls and his granddaughters. I am left to find a way to keep moving forward, to stand guard, to move this world to where his kids and my kids and our grandkids can have a better life, a more sure footing than we had. This loss can be the fuel to change the world, so my end and your end won't be like his end. To work toward having his death continue to matter, as if he were still with us, because he is.

Happy birthday Roger Dale. Happy double nickel man. I miss you.

To follow up on “The Switching Costs”

To follow up on "The Switching Costs"

I took the whole entire complete day off yesterday. I haven't done that in forever, because there is always work to do and work is well . . . what I do, what I have always done as an adult to be valuable and important, so I can humble-brag my significance to the universe. I understand I don't have to be busy (read The Switching Cost) to be important. But there aren't many people believing this, even as I am trying to figure it out myself.

I was at dinner with a client this past week and he was telling me how one of his main engineers just calls him regularly to tell him how busy he is. The phone call goes something like this (and I am quoting) ring ring, my client answers and barely can spit out a hello before the engineer yells from the other end, ". . . man we are so f*cking f*cking f*cking busy, we are going out of our heads, f*ck f*ck f*ck" and the engineer hangs up. (Sorry about all the F bombs, but this was a quote)

Yes I would consider this an extreme example, but this actually happens in the real world, over and over. Everyone is too busy, and that is a poor decision. We need something other. My friend and co-worker Bernie calls this white space, a place where nothing can happen and there is no pressure for anything to happen, which allows for the amazing to happen sometimes. And I brushed up against that white space yesterday when I did  . . . well nothing at all. Gonna try it again tomorrow.

But what I noticed most significantly yesterday as I was having a total complete do nothing day, were the costs of switching. It became so apparent when I switched to what was going on in my dad's head when he called from the USA, to switching to the challenges that my wife is facing in her ginormous work with women, to switching to what was going on in my own head! I wasn't switching tasks as much as I was just switching my focus from one person's focus to the next person's focus, and it took me forever it seemed to start tracking (truly) with the next person. So The Cost of Switching became far more apparent, when I only had to do three big giant switches in a single day, rather than the constant switching that I apparently do so much each day that it feels like the norm. So if you ain't getting this, take a "do nothing day" or even half day, and watch for the switches. They will be much more apparent.

Food intake is the battle

Food intake is the battle

About 24 years ago I weighed in at 296 pounds on a 5 '10' frame. I was walking death coming down the street. Maybe the most unhealthy human being ever. Long story short, and a brain aneurysm later, I got busy exercising. And 60 pounds less later, I continued to exercise, but primarily so that I could eat what I wanted with few restrictions, and stay at 240 . . . which seemed like a good weight after being 296! But a decade at 220-240 and it became clear that 200 was healthier and I felt a lot better at 200-220, than I had at 240. But then I turned 50, which birthday I spent with my niece, brother and sister-in-law in Thailand. Was a lovely trip. But my brother said to me, as he was trying to help me get out the door for my return flight to Macedonia, "man this bag is heavy" and which I replied, "it is just the standard 50 pounds allowed by the airlines."  Then he noted, "man you are still carrying THIS much extra weight every moment of every day! Pick up this bag and feel your body's pain!" I did.

That was seven years ago, 50 pounds ago, and yes I have been in the 160-165 pound range these last seven years, and yes as the scale goes down, the better and better I feel. So much so that I have been toying with the idea of the 140's . . . but I am digressing from the point of all this history.

I have been operating under the wrong idea that exercise was responsible for weight loss. Of course after working out practically every single day for 24 years, I had started to suspect that "calorie in and calorie out" was not how our bodies actually work. The pinnacle of learning that lesson for me was bicycling across the entire USA three years ago and gaining 12 pounds. Exercise has a zillion benefits and I still do it everyday, but weight loss happens in the kitchen. Tom Kravirtzs stated about exercise affecting weight loss, "It's not nothing, but it's not nearly equal to food intake — which accounts for 100 percent of the energy intake of the body," 

And there it was in bold letters - food intake equals 100% of the energy intake of the body. The enemy to weight loss is simply how much I eat. Nothing else can affect it really. Sure you can manage the types and frequency and the fine details, but in the end, it all comes down to how much you eat. I exercise - alot and the upsides are real and great, but how much I eat matters the most when it comes to weight management. 

The switching cost

The switching cost

After 57 years of life, I read something that finally sunk in today that is so astonishing and mind-altering and revolutionary that I am wrecked. James Clear said it perfectly, "As a society, we've fallen into a trap of busyness and overwork. In many ways, we have mistaken all this activity to be something meaningful. . . . I think we're kidding ourselves if we believe being busy is what drives meaning in our lives."1

And you are thinking yeah yeah yeah so what? You. Don't. Have. To. Be. Busy. To. Lead. A. Powerful. Meaningful. Life.

That is so what. I don't have to be busy to be important. I don't have to be busy to change the world. I don't have to be busy to accomplish important meaningful life changing work. I just have to focus. I don't even have to be busy to contribute something to the world that is the most valuable thing I can contribute.

But I lived the multitasking life for so long, that this is revolutionary. Clear describes "the switching cost" of focusing on everything and anything rather than the one thing. The switching cost, is the mental disruption that occurs when I change from one focus to another focus. Email alone costs most workers one minute out of every six, not because of reading slow, but because of the switching cost. The mental disruption that is the most clear and obvious disaster of our technologically driven pings, chirps, burps and signals from our phones and computers and iPads that are demanding our action and attention.

But the final nail in this colossal mental shift that I am exploding with, was when he posted his weekly priorities. Seven days - seven priorities - and two were "days off". 

1. You can read (SHOULD READ!) the entire article here, unless you are one of my clients, because I will be sending you this entire article and insisting that you read it multiple times!

An Eastern European root canal

An Eastern European root canal

There are few less fun things to do, than a root canal, I care not where you are in the world. But there is only one filling in my mouth that is less than 40 plus years old, and they are starting to simply wear out. I get it, these teeth have been with me a long long time and they have worked hard every day for almost six decades. 

So about three months ago I had a tooth break, and today I found out that it actually was a filling that broke, not the tooth itself. And OK, so you really should not wait three months to get something like this looked at, but I don't have dental insurance and I can not afford an American dentist, and I have been traveling all over the world and been on the road for months. I ran out of excuses this month though, and was starting to have more and more pain in the "broken tooth" especially while flying which I do often, and so I set my appointment and went. 

She immediately told me that the tooth wasn't broken, but the filling was and she need to dig it out and redo it. Of course here, anesthesia is used rarely, but I was already expecting this having had dental work done here before. So she dug right in (pun intended) and she drilled out the remaining part of this ancient filling. Then she found a cavity underneath. She drilled some more, deeper and deeper. My tension rose as the pain escalated. She finally ran out of tooth completely and saw that she was gonna have to do a root canal to do the job properly.

At this point she decided that some numbness would keep me from coming completely out that chair (although I still left her a nice puddle of sweat when it was all said and done), and likely messing up her fine dental work in process, and so I received the rare blessing of a numb face. There is so much more I could say about this experience that would grow hair on your chest, but I will refrain. The only two blessings were the total bill - $117.96 - and the hope that tomorrow that my tooth will not hurt nor be broken any longer. Next Wednesday is round two.

The tendency to cross disciplines and underestimate difficulties

The tendency to cross disciplines and underestimate difficulties

I had the most irritating interaction with Dave yesterday. He was intruding on my conversation with Charles, but that was only the beginning. So not only was he being rude, but he brought two more insidious irritants to the moment.

When he found out that I was an avid biker (read insane) he went on and on and on about how his husband Shaun who was piddling around Chiang Mai on his granny bike, was looking for something more challenging. He firmly believed that the jump from a three times a week one mile ride in his flat neighborhood, to a 53.5 mile ride up and down some of the steepest mountains in SE Asia was a small jump. He. Is. So. Wrong. 

It took me 10 years to get to the fitness level to ride these mountains, and I am carrying 70 pounds less weight, and workout every single day. Just another Westerner dismissing expertise and experience. But if this 53 year old man, thinks he is gonna make this 53 mile loop with me, while 70 pounds overweight, I don't care how much his bicycle costs!, then he is a lunatic.

And then he spent the next 45 minutes trying to convince me that practicing Yoga and that holding my breath would increase my VO2 rates. Here we are in public and he is showing me how to breath, or not to breath, so that I could build my optimal red cell counts and oxygen rates while biking. Just another Westerner dismissing expertise and experience. While I don't mind him being a fanboi of Yoga, validating his chosen joy by forcing it onto others is not necessary. And how the hell does he think I can hold my breath when I am making a climb of 11% grade in 100 degree heat??? Yoga is probably a perfectly valid exercise and activity, but it will not cross wholly into the discipline of cycling. No way.

When Dave finally gave Charles and me a moment alone, Charles said, "please don't take him biking with you. He will die, no doubt about it." And I told him "no worries, not a chance". Why is it that we think everything we might be interested in, applies to everything someone else is interested in? Why do we even have to tell everyone else what we are passionate about (unless invited to do so)? I have had one steady stream of foreigners imposing themselves onto my life this week, trying to convince me of various things, from appearing as a guest on TV, to converting to JW's, to changing from cycling to yoga. Not a single one of these people asked me what I was interested in. Not one of these people were interested in me, only what they perceived that I might could give to them, or add to their lives. 

I don't mind this in my clients nor my friends, but I will think less of you if you make our introduction transactional in these ways. You don't know everything, and what you are interested in doesn't apply to everything someone else might be interested in. 

1141

1141

1141 beautiful miles this last month on the bike up the grueling mountains of SE Asia in the heat and humidity. Sweating out the toxins and bad stuff of a Western diet. It's been great and revealing in a humbling sort of manner. I am not a young man, but I feel much younger (after a few weeks) when I give myself these kinds of limited challenges in short intense periods each year. If you want to get stronger and more flexible, you must push yourself into new areas of accomplishment, no matter how long it takes you. The worst thing you can do to your body is not use it and feed it poorly with calorie-intense-nutrient-deficient food.

I can't duplicate the intensity of these mountains and the temps anywhere else I generally go in the world, and so I can't see the immediate benefits of such rides when I am not in SE Asia. But it sets the standard for the rest of the year. It gives me a peek into what top fitness feels like, what my body experiences when I work it like this day in and day out. It is a pretty spectacular experience for a 57 year old grandpa. Combine those levels of effort, with an Asian diet and the results are astonishing. This is why I keep telling myself that I want to move to Chiang Mai. It's difficult to live astonishing in Eastern Europe,and darn impossible in the USA.

Buckets and buckets

Buckets and buckets

I have unearthed a disturbing trend in my clients. And it probably has its roots in our Evangelical background, where the super devoted never tire and never quit and never are frivolous. The trend is that it seems we are still trying to burn ourselves out for Jesus or the kingdom or whatever. 

This trend is one of the most deadly pieces of awfulness that I have to carefully work against in almost every single one of them. Deconstructing this whole conceptual idea that you can sleep when you are dead, that God loves best those who work the hardest and sacrifice the most, that there is merit in weary exhaustion that leaves you weak and defenseless in too many ways, that crushes energy and excitement and creativity.

Here is what I mean in very technical speech ... the “very tool we need to prosper in today’s environment: our cognition. So, when we require mental acuity, we experience diminished recall. When we need sharp thinking and problem-solving, our minds are full.” From "The 24 hour rule" by Charles Fred.

Even in myself, I am still discovering that I need buckets and buckets of self care to find optimal balance of input and outputs. In the past I laughed at this idea. But I can remember so vividly the day in 1993 when I read a quote from Bill Hybels who was the pastor of the largest church in the USA at that time, that he needed to spend 50% of his time in developing (PTA essentially) himself, in order to pastor that huge mega-church, when I was working 80 hours a week and barely getting everything accomplished for a small growing church of 125 people.

Eventually I got what Hybels was preaching, and now I preach it myself. We need far more and better buckets of caring for our own souls, bodies and minds than we ever thought was necessary. I only wish that I could package up all the energy and power that I got from 9 hours of sleep last night for today's opportunities, and show it to my clients. Buckets and buckets of care people. Stop cheating yourself or cheating all the people in the world that your life affects.

95 is perfect . . . for me

95 is perfect

I spend most of the year being cold and less productive than I could be, were I warm. But here in Asia, at this moment sitting in the shade of the patio, its 95 degrees, humid, slight breeze moving to keep things just under the sweating point, and its perfect, wonderful, excellent. My brain is jumping with possibilities and relief. No wasted energy going to the effort of staying warm!

Of course everyone's perfect is gonna be different, because there is only one perfect for each person. And that applies to all the pieces you need/want to be the most powerful version of yourself. One of the primary tasks of crafting the right PTA for yourself, is understanding what you need in order for it to take place in an optimum manner. I find far too many of my high capacity clients pushing this back down the priority list - mistake!

One of my peeps, likes it really cold. He is basically a polar bear. He would melt and only suffer here. Another one needs regular appointments with a fishing pole in order to be the most powerful version of himself. Another needs longs daily connects with her hound and husband. As you can see, this can be most anything. My perfect is Asia and 95. Know yours and make it a priority to get it often!

If I let my mind wander . . .

If I let my mind wander

In this cramped small seat next to the largest person on the aircraft who is crowding my small space even more, then this might be an exercise in smallness and constraints.

But if I look out the window on the other side of my small seat, and see all the puffy clouds, and tiny roads and twists below and let my imagination soar, this might be an exercise in bigness and freedom and possibilities.

Both are true, the big man and the window, but I get to choose where to focus my thoughts and attitude. 

So much power

Everything in 2019 is pretty much overclocked. The propellers (yes this is a prop plane) and engines on this aircraft are more engine than we need to get airborn and make our way to Bangkok and Siem Reap. The processors in this phone are far more powerful than I will ever need to get the job done. In fact the processors in my iPad are such overkill, that there isn't even any software made that can stress them out! My motorcycle will go 115 miles per hour (yes I know this for a fact) but the speed limit is 55 most of the time and with all of these items, I only use a fraction of the power that is available to me.

Likewise, my body is capable of far more than I usually demand. I have run marathons and ultra marathons and climb the Rocky Mountains and crossed the USA on my bicycle and still I can do even more. Interestingly enough the area of life that is **most** overclocked in terms of capacity, that I think gets the least mileage out of that potential - is our brains.

Thinking is hard work, really hard work and there is not nearly enough of it going on around us. It doesn't appear like it is actually work (until you try to do it for a living!), because there is no sweat involved, although there certainly is a great deal of effort involved. We all need to use a great deal more of what is available between our ears. There is so much power untapped here.

Temptation Bundling

Temptation bundling 

James Clear speaks eloquently about temptation bundling in his book “Atomic Habits” as the combination of an activity that you want to do with one you need to do.  I can personally vouch for this habit builder activity. It could even be called a structure builder in my opinion.  And if you want to layer it up even more, add a “not that until this” requirement.

What this looked like for me is that what I want to do is read. I am years behind in my reading lists! What I need to do is exercise. Temptation bundling is combining the two - audiobooks are the way to effortlessly do so. Thus I only allow myself to listen to books while exercising. Period. No exceptions!

Layering it up means that I touch no electronics before I temptation bundle every single day. That means no distractions! It’s icing on the cake!! 

This provides the structure of my production each day. It makes certain that I get the valuable things accomplished in order of their contributions to my daily productivity. I discovered years ago that email is only doing someone else’s priority not my own. Social media is less than useless in terms of my productivity and so boxing that “no electronics “ rule into my life is a huge plus. And of course I do need to correspond with email but it is later in the day action which equals its lower value to my daily productivity.

Terminal discontent

I spent some time with friends today. They are so typical of humankind. They are afflicted with discontent. Their particular discontent happens to center around personal relationships, which is one of the primary discontents we all deal with at some point. We want the impossible, and when we inevitably don't get it from the persons we love and are involved with, the result is a nearly terminal discontent. Terminal in the sense of constant, but it also often ends the relationship eventually and so is terminal in that sense as well.

While all forms of discontent are burdened by the weight of expectations, none so much as relationship discontent. Few humans can boast of a relationship that is never strained by the stress of expectations. And we even have expectations about the other person's expectations! We weight that relationship with so many expectations that we actually frequently create problems where none existed in my opinion! Stop! Now!

Mitigating my discontent most often begins with me assessing my expectations and readjusting them to something approaching reasonable. Some will cry "settling" here, but if what is going on in my imagination (i.e. expectations) does not line up with reality, then one of them must give.

"We can’t imagine an alternative to work.”

What????

Hunnicutt stated this in an article about the "religion of work." Benjamin Hunnicutt is a professor of leisure studies at the University of Iowa and author of Free Time: The Forgotten American Dream. It is astonishing how many articles and blogs are coming down the pipeline these days, touting the demise of retirement, the abolishment of free time, the need to be working in order to be mentally healthy!

I say astonishing because none of these people can imagine an alternative to work!?! Leisure has gotten a bad rap in the 21st century, and personally I think this is completely bogus. I enjoy my work and I enjoy my leisure, and I enjoy them equally! I also am a much nicer human being because they are about equal in my life. As my daughter said to me, "I like this version of you much better than the one where you worked 80 hours a week." Best part of all was the discovery that each hour of "work" is now far more productive, than all those busy hours were before.

But can I imagine an alternative to work?? Oh heck yes!! There are endless books to read, and blogs to write, and places to visit, and food to try, and drinks to sample and fish to catch . . . oh, that sounds like my life already doesn't it?? My friends I already am smelling the roses! So does that make me one of those rare people who leverages his passions and wants and best contributions to the world into a paycheck?? Probably.

If you can't imagine an alternative to work, you need a better imagination. Tim Ferris would probably recommend some psychedelic drugs at this point, and I would likely suggest some international travel to get you moving out of your mental zipcode so that your imagination could vastly improve. We get an extra 30 years now compared to generations of the past, whatever are you gonna do with that gift?? At the moment I am sitting on my balcony among the flowers, purple, pink, white, reds, and the vista is a grand range of snow capped mountains, with a glass of sparkling water and over 2000 articles waiting in my que to be read and dissected and passed along. 

War Stories

War stories

We all have them. Scars too. My dad tells his of growing up poor, fighting and struggling his entire life to scratch out a living. This was his war, and these are his stories. The two guys next to me on this flight, are telling each other actual war stories, and those are their stories to tell. But I find most of these stories the wrong stories. We need to tell ourselves and others, another story.

A story about how we changed the world. About how you made a difference. About how you changed one persons life. And then another. And then another. About how you were continually learning and developing yourself and others. About how you created opportunities and possibilities for others. About how the world is a better place because of your efforts. About how living this kind of life changed you. 

Directions

Directions

It is a typical pattern of life, but sometimes difficult to recognize it for what it is, that you have to go backwards to go forward. This happens to me all the time as I travel for work. I frequently fly two time zones in the wrong direction, in order to catch a flight going in the desired direction. Many times we have to travel North in order to reach the highway that will most efficiently take us South. 

It happens in language acquisition. When you begin to study a new language, you have to set aside a lifetime of skills and accomplishments in order to learn the very basics. Even the dogs understand more than you when you begin! It doesn't matter if you have a doctorate or not, in the new language you are several stages below the animals. It is the only path forward. And it will continue to appear to be going in the wrong direction for a long while. As one language teacher described it to me, you speak wrong! You continue to speak wrong. And less wrong. And then less wrongly. And then less wrong, and finally, more right. You only get there close to the end, and the entire trip felt like you were going the wrong direction.

It happens in finances and investments. I recently purchased some investment properties. I spent the entire first month of ownership going the wrong way (spending money instead of making money) in order to arrest and reverse several directions the property was heading. Yet it was still the shortest route to where I needed and wanted to go. It happens in relationships, our spiritual journeys, and in our careers. 

Don't get frustrated when you have to go the wrong direction to get to the right directions. Where you are going matters. Patience and tenacity achieve remarkable results even when it feels like you are going the wrong direction.

Process of Mystery

Process of Mystery

Our annual "process of mystery" is in full swing, also known as the Federal Visa Process in the country we live in outside the USA. Even after 20 years (yes it has been that long!!) there is no signage, no designations on the doors, no instructions, no directions, just an entire floor of identical doors that lead to angry people who have no patience for anything or anyone disturbing their peace, even though without us (the customers) they would no longer have a job.

This is obscure and nearly impossible on purpose. It lays ALL the burden and responsibility for "figuring out the system" on those required to pursue a Visa, and thus leaves the people behind each door free to sit at their desks and find the smallest minutia and reason to "fail" the application. Even after 20 years of doing this and having professional assistance at every step of the process, we still had to return to the notary today for one additional stamp. (I think this was just a token command to just remind us of who has all the power here)

Yes every country has the right to create a process that it deems necessary and prudent to insure that the Visa process fulfills the values and expectations of said country. But having the most oblique process in the world doesn't make you a world class power, it makes you a bully. Unfortunately, they do this kind of stuff to their own citizens as well. Don't even get me started on the process of registering a car! The net result is not a better nor more efficient process (and yes I understand that such values aren't necessarily the goal in many places around the world), it is instead a mind-numbing waste of time, when we all could be producing something meaningful and important. At the very least list the requirements and process somewhere no matter how complex they may be, and the transparency along with understanding may make everyone's life more manageable. Ok rant over.

Living longer for sure, but better?

Today my wife and I had an interesting and long overdue introductory conversation about our new stage of life and what we are gonna do with it. I can start drawing Social Security in less than five years! We talked in a round about way (never really facing the truth of the failed health system here, no handicapped access here, no progressive care here, etc etc) what it would be like to continue living and working here in Macedonia. Then we talked about the wild cards - my dad, her health and our fragility as we get older - these are not the crisis that you can predict on a timetable, but at the same time you can be certain that they are much closer to your immediate future than they were last decade. We talked about the trade-offs of various decisions and in the end, stayed precariously right where we have been for the last five years or so, the decision to NOT make any decisions and therefore not close any potential doors nor conclude current highly valued activities.

This is pretty short-sighted of all of us, and probably foolish from a financial point of view, and definitely disastrous from a leadership point of view. As Joseph Coughlin of MIT said, "Over the past century, we’ve created the greatest gift in the history of humanity—thirty extra years of life—and we don’t know what to do with it!" And this is precisely where the decision to not decide is a catastrophic failure. 

I have been doing a fair bit of reading on this topic and it was fascinating to see our conversation today, exactly followed the line of those articles - that I don't mind getting older, as long as I have all the abilities/mobility/intellect/strength/resources that I have today. And that is where this entire conversation breaks down - because we won't. We will become evermore dependent on someone as we lose these currently held gifts, in our ongoing physical breakdowns. And then we die, which is nevermind not important, its the living part I am addressing! Eternity is in God's hands not ours.

But this extra 30 years of living, now that is a conversation worth having and facing and planning and doing. Life is longer for sure, but better?

What’s part of our “next”?

What's next?

The only constant seems to be change itself. I am fond of saying that I am living with the third version of my wife, and she is probably living with the fifth version of me. No one stays the same unless they are dead, and I am not yet. The person you married has gone through a number of revolutions since your wedding day. That is normal. That is to be expected and even admired.

Long story short, in my life, that means I keep leaving really great and perfect jobs, for the next challenge. The current one is what I am calling "13 doors" and if you are into real estate investing and understand your "freedom number" then that makes sense. Otherwise, you will just have to wait until I write that particular blog and clue you in. For those in the know, I am currently at five doors.

13 doors is keeping me on the edge of my seat. It's keeping me awake at night. These are probably good things. Everyone needs tension in their lives to make things interesting. I have no idea how my current and upcoming economic engines will integrate or how one may be accepted or rejected by the other. But they WILL intersect, only the when and how are yet to be determined. Again the only constant is change itself.  This is happening. Imagining that it is not, is a Grimm Fairytale.

In the quiet

There is not nearly enough quiet in my life. Practically everyone's experience in the modern world is the noise and hustle of busy. There is far too much bad news concentrated down into constant 20 second sound bites on the news channels. Communication has made so many things better, but it has also made a great number of things far worse. 

I can know what some maniac in New Zealand did to innocent people, moments after he accomplish his psychopathic deeds. This is not healthy nor good. This rips the fabric of our peace and lives in such a way that we are forced to participate even if as only observers. Knowledge can be powerfully good, and it also can overwhelm all the quiet and peace that could be present in our lives. 

As I get older, I understand that quiet is more and more important to my well-being. So this may not come as a surprise to to you, but I haven't willingly listened to the "news" since 2007. That is 12 years of far more peace and quiet in my life. I also discovered three years ago, that I am an introvert after all! This was a real shock as I had worked most of my life in a profession that demands a charismatic and highly extroverted public face - one that I had been faking for about 30 years. No wonder that I constantly felt drained and exhausted. The energy required to wear that mask all the time was enormous. 

Pretty much everyone that means something to me in my life, much prefers this real version of me, over the fake version that I publicly wore. Now I can easily give myself permission to say "no" and to stay out of the limelight and to have the quiet in my life that is necessary for me to thrive best. Americans have a huge affinity for extroverts and busy. But I don't have to be that way. I can choose quiet.

(A good primer on this subject is Susan Cain's book entitled "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that can't stop talking") 

Which stories to tell?

These last 2.5 years, I find myself spending far more time with my dad than I have in the last 40 plus years. This has been both wonderful and trying. Wonderful because we have had to forge a new relationship, since my brother and mother have both died and there are only the two of us. Trying, because the new dad I have discovered after 40 plus years never stops talking. It's not really a conversation, its mostly just a monologue that consists of every single thought that crosses his mind, unfiltered and largely unconnected to anything I (or anyone else) may say or any response given to his previous statements. 

Often (really often!) its the same set of repeated stories of his working days, with some repeating childhood memories thrown in there, and all the freshly polished memories that he can dredge up about the past. None of these stories are about the future. Granted, I too may well be feeling and experiencing and living this when I am 78 years old and don't believe that there is much of a future remaining.

But after 2.5 years of this, and after trying 15 different strategies to break through and have an actual conversation (which I admit, happens occasionally, but nowhere nearly often enough!) I have started to wonder what kinds of stories will I tell at this stage of life? Those pieces and experiences of my past that I value are so radically different than my dad's, it has really made me pause and think about this.

I have been to 50 countries and have lived in five. I am extremely well traveled and speak multiple languages. I have accomplished things few even dream about in the world that I grew up in and where my dad lives. But unlike my dad, I don't think my stories will be about my jobs, nor all the nuances that are a part of my work. Even if I told those stories, I think few people would understand them and especially not the significance of them. 

So I don't think I will detail all the jobs that I have had, cars or machines I have driven, nor how hard I worked, nor how the big people put me down. The stories that I think about are much more about the experiences I have had like visiting the temples at Angkor Wat, riding my bicycle across the entire United States, or the people who I had the privilege to challenge and lead, and the lives I intersected with in all these places.  It's about the people you changed, not which activities you did or didn't do or got credit for or denied along the way.