Conscious Living for a Chaotic Crazy World
In today’s digitally connected world, it has never been easier to create, connect, and grow a community.
Whether it’s to find like-minded people, build a business, or just share your thoughts and ideas; all you need is a connection to the internet, a platform to share your content, and the willingness to hit, “Publish”.
So why do you struggle?
[Read more…] about How to Permanently Rid Yourself of Imposter Syndrome
Wouldn’t it be great if you could just lay out a system to create more success, happiness, and fulfillment in your life?
Well, that’s what I’m going to give you.
And how do I know?
Because after 15 years of applying this simple formula has transformed my life.
First, a little back story.
Like many Americans, I struggled financially, and while I was making decent money as a union electrician, I wasn’t enjoying my day-to-day life as much as I could be.
There was something missing.
Don’t get me wrong, the bills were getting paid, I was blessed to be married to a beautiful woman, and we lived a comfortable life.
But something was missing.
[Read more…] about A Simple Formula for Success and HappinessWhat is the key to success?
If you look around, you are surrounded by it.
It’s as simple as this, see what most people are doing and do something different.
Yep.
Simple as that.
Do you remember the last time you were uncomfortable?
What did you do?
If you’re like most people, your amygdala took over and your response to the uncomfortable situation led to worry, anxiety, maybe even fear.
Most of us do not like feeling uncomfortable and when we do, what do we do?
We “circle the wagons.”
We pull ourselves in.
And worst of all, we stop thinking creatively.
When we feel fear, our brain and body goes into “survival mode.” What Nobel-winning psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, called “thinking fast.”
The discomfort sounds the alarm, you get ready for the tiger to jump out at you from the bushes, or the enemy tribe attacking you as they running at you from over the hill.
You view the discomfort as something that you have to protect yourself from.
And almost everybody does this each and every day, almost at every moment in their lives.
But it’s not the discomfort that makes us worry, it’s our perception of the discomfort.
Have you ever ridden a roller-coaster? Waiting in line, seeing the monstrosity of twisted metal, and the loud noises as the train of passengers scream thru the loops, dips, and curves.
What about a scary movie? Waiting in suspense as the protagonist (or next victim) is walking through the dark, shadowy, house. You’re anticipating the psycho to pop out at any time.
How does that discomfort make you feel?
For some it’s fear, for others, it’s excitement.
Simon Sinek explains it really well in this short video.
You see you can train yourself to view uncomfortable situations as either a good thing or a bad thing.
And that is what successful people do relative to everybody else.
I get it.
We are social creatures.
We like to feel like we belong.
But we, as human beings, are also able to choose the tribe that we belong to.
Once upon a time, we were locked in geographically, genetically, and geo-politically into our tribe.
But no longer.
For the past decade now, I have been taking online classes. In those classes I have met people from all over the globe.
We get together to learn what is important to us and in that process, we discover how we are more similar than we are different.
And that realization has helped me to break free from the crowd of my local neighborhood.
And you can too.
Choose to go against the current.
Choose to do something different.
Choose to tread a new path.
All too often, when told to go against the current, people immediately imagine salmon, leaping, rushing, and swimming upstream.
Often into the mouth of a savvy, smart bear waiting on the bank of the river.
Contrarians everywhere like to do the opposite of the crowd. Sometimes for no other reason than just because…
That leaves you with an interesting quandary.
Leave one crowd trying to make their way the best they can only to end up with another crowd who is just gumming up the works to show that they can.
That can leave you in a tough spot.
So which way do you go?
When I first began training in Hapkido under GM Bong Soo Han, we would begin sparring after a few months of learning basic techniques.
Master Han felt it was important to apply the techniques in a dynamic environment (sparring) as quickly as possible. He knew knowledge without application is wasted.
So as an orange belt, we would begin to learn how to spar, practicing striking and blocking against one another.
As beginners though, it is like you are on railroad tracks, one student charging forward to attack the other, and the defender retreating backward, fearful of the barrage, only stopping when coming up against the wall of the dojang.
For me, being a physically small guy, I was generally on the receiving end of these charges.
Which had me ending up a little banged up, but no worse for wear, because I retreated until I couldn’t anymore as I would eventually hit the wall and then get hit by my training partner.
There had to be a better way.
And the instructors kept telling us the way.
Get off the railroad tracks, stop moving just back and forth.
So, I decided to try an experiment. I would show up early before class, even before anybody else was there.
One thing I loved about GM Han’s dojang was that it was open to all of his students from noon until closing at 10 pm, as a member, you could train as much as you wanted on the mat.
He even encouraged it but few students took him up on the offer. (There’s that breaking from the crowd analogy I mentioned.)
I would show up around 3 or 4 pm, a couple hours before classes started and began to design drills to work on.
The first one was movement drills so that I could get off of the railroad tracks of sparring. It was a very simple exercise, from my basic “fighting stance,” I would begin practicing moving in the 8 basic directions, starting with either foot.
Every day, I would practice moving my feet without tripping myself up, first with my rear foot, going in any of the 8 directions to get my center-of-mass away from where I started.
Then doing the same thing with my lead foot, again moving in any of the 8 directions to get my red-dot center of mass away from the incoming attack.
Day after day, I would practice these drills until I could easily move in any direction.
I then added a twist, literally.
In sparring, my training partner, in his attack is basically trying to get on top of me (the red dot).
So as I practiced moving around, I would add a spin, turning to face toward the red dot, putting me in position to counter his attack.
This one drill made a huge difference for me as a beginner martial artist.
It was no longer that I was trying to hit my partner or avoiding being hit in return. I could not confidently be there, letting him come in so that I could deflect and avoid the attack and move around him for a counter-attack, or at the very least not get hit!
This was a game-changer for me.
I finally began to relax, not feel as much fear or anxiety, which allowed me to come up with creative ways to engage with my training partners.
This would have taken much longer if I was locked in the fight or flight response of the amygdala and not being able to come up with creative ways to deal with the situation.
So what can you do?
What success or achievement are you working toward? And what are the people around you with the same goal doing?
What can you do differently?
How can you stand out?
Who can you reach out to who has already achieved your goal and seek out their wisdom, experience, and input?
What third way can you come up with?
And who can you find to support you on that path?
It seems as individuals, we cannot stop making comparisons as we go through life.
Good or bad, right or wrong, winning or losing.
There’s a voice in your head. A non-stop chattering, judging, being critical noise.
This voice of yours basically does one of two things, on the one hand, it helps you to feel good about you and your life compared to those who are worse off than you.
But, more often than not, it does the reverse, that voice compares you to others who seem to be doing better and makes you feel poorly on where you are in life.
And the internet and social media are just making it worst.
But comparisons in and of themselves are not bad. No person is an isolated island, we live in a society that we learn how to make a space for ourselves, and comparisons allow you to create that space.
They allow you to define yourself, and they also allow you to determine your progress.
So, if you’re going to make comparisons, wouldn’t it be a good idea to make smart comparisons.
The problem with most comparisons is that they are overly simplistic. Dualistic-polarity of either/or.
When life is all that simple.
In life, sometimes you’re up and sometimes you’re down. Some days are good, others you’d like to forget.
Do these days define you as good or bad, strong or weak, or just a person going through life and trying your best?
The problem is not being up or down, the problem is in the perception of seeing yourself as up or down.
“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Wild Years
The fact of the matter is that you are both good and bad, strong and weak, up and down, it always comes down to a better question, “Compared to what or who?
Most people are aware of marital arts and its belt-ranking system.
Starting as a white-belt beginner, a student goes through various belt-ranks until they earn the coveted black-belt.
Even in styles that do not use belts, tai chi, kali, and boxing are examples but they still break groups of students into beginner, intermediate, and advanced pods.
The belts offer a reasonable system to help students to train and practice together. Advanced students cannot do techniques against junior students that have not learned them yet. In sparring, junior students initiate the encounter by attacking first.
It offers a great template for students of different skills to workout and train together.
It also offers a great way to make healthy comparisons.
An intermediate-level student can look to the advanced-students to see how much more she has to learn and grow. And, at the same time, she can look to the beginners, to see how far she has already grown.
And life is like that. Every day, there will be people ahead of you and some people behind you, and you’re just somewhere in the middle. Neither good nor bad.
Once you understand that you will always be in the middle, neither good nor bad, then you can use comparisons in a way to create greater success.
Look to those who are better than you and learn from them.
By the way, as a little bit of martial arts trivia, the Japanese word, sensei, which many Westerners misinterpret as teacher or master actually means “born before.”
A sensei is someone who started along the path before you, she got a head start, so she’s in front of you for now.
There’s no rule that says you can’t overtake her, and while I was training under GM Han, you would see that all the time. Life would sometimes get in the way of training and people would take breaks while their classmates kept on training and moved on ahead.
So healthy comparisons, look to their seniors to see how far they can go. They help their juniors by sharing what they have learned, helping them to grow.
And in the process, they train with their peers, to test themselves against and to support each other for further growth.
And you can also do this in your own life, even if you never step onto a martial arts mat.
Look to those that are doing what you one day wish to do. Watch them, learn from them, if possible, see if they would be willing to teach you.
Then find people to help. There will always be people you can help to improve their lives, help them, and in the process of helping them, how much you already do know, how strong and wise you already are.
Third, find a group of peers, those who are around your level and ability. Test and help each other on how to learn and grow. Try out different strategies and tactics, sharing what you’re learning and noticing.
Even if you can surround yourself each day with teachers, students, and a peer group, you can still challenge yourself to grow and learn each day.
In the image, you can see a simple tracking system that I learned from Anne-Laure le Cunff of Ness Labs, she calls it Plus/Minus/Moving Forward. Simple enough, lol
It’s a super simple system that’ll help you to track your wins and how you move forward from your challenges.
Each day, or week, depending on how much you want to track, you note down your wins (+), the challenges or hurdles you stumbled on (-), and how you want to move forward from where you are now (–>).
It’s so simple but don’t let that fool you. Too often we don’t track our progress and we forget how far we’ve come.
We also tend to forget our stumbling blocks, and then chastise ourselves on why we didn’t move further faster, forgetting we had to pick ourselves up along the way.
A black belt is a white belt that got thrown down 100 times and got back up 101 times.
Comparisons are neither good nor bad, it is how you feel about the comparisons that is the issue.
Do they inspire you to achieve greater success or do they throw you down to the ground and make you want to sit out the game?
And the easiest way to become inspired to achieve more, help those you can. By doing this one act, you see how powerful you already are and you’re feeling good about yourself because you’re helping others.
And it’s a great way to get your head and heart back in the game.
What do you want to achieve? Who has done it already and how can you learn from them?
And who can you help by sharing what you’ve learned?
“Your problem is not your problem.”
Do you want to create more success in your life?
Do you want to feel safe and secure with a partner you love?
Do you want to stop struggling in the day to day grind?
What would that all look like for you?
When I ask my clients that question, many of them respond with a litany list of complaints and negative situations going on in their lives.
I pause them and repeat the question, “Sorry, I didn’t ask what you don’t want, I asked you what you do want in life.”
I’ll ask you the same question.
What do you want?
Make a list.
Make a long list.
List everything and anything that you want.
You’re allowed.
Did you make a list? If not, stop here. Seriously, make a list of at least a dozen things, achievements, goals, relationships, or what have you that you want.
Got it?
Good.
Now pick one, pick your favorite one.
Here’s one of the two questions, “Why is that important to you?”
What’s your answer?
Good.
Let me ask you again based on your response, “Why is that important to you?”
What’s your answer?
Great!
Now again, “Why is that important to you?”
Are you beginning to see a pattern here?
This is called the 5 Whys of Root Cause Analysis. It is often used in business for problem-solving and management.
But I find it also works extremely well for helping my clients to live principle-based lives.
You see, a lot of people say they want to be wealthy, but if you dig down deep enough, it’s not the money they want, it’s the lifestyle they believe the money will provide.
Research has shown that after a certain point, having more money doesn’t equate to more happiness. And it’s a lot lower than you’d expect.
In a 2010 study in the US, researchers Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton found that your happiness increased as you made more money up until $75,000. After that, happiness levels tapered off even as the participants had more money.
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? may have been a fun game show but winning it wouldn’t guarantee your happiness. It’s even worse if you play the lottery.
This is why the 5 Whys is so important. Too often, we chase goals and dreams without really diving into why they are important and what could give us the same results without wasting time, money, and effort chasing BHAGs.
So that’s the first question, knowing why something you want is important for you and your life.
The second big challenge my clients face in life is overwhelm.
Too many plates spinning at once, getting ready to crash to the floor.
Or worse yet, not knowing what to do and lost in the daily confusion of what’s important, what’s urgent, and what’s a waste of time and energy.
Now the 5 Whys will reduce some of the overwhelm by removing the low-hanging fruit of time and energy wasters, but for the goals and dreams that are important, there can still be overwhelm and lack of clarity.
So in comes the next question, the 5 Hows.
From the list you already made, you did make one didn’t you?
Pick one of the goals on the list.
Write down everything you can on what it would look, feel, and be like when you achieve this goal? Write down as many metrics as you can so that you know when you achieve them, there will be no doubt that you succeeded.
Got it?
Okay.
Now for each one of those metrics, cut them in half.
And do it again.
And again.
Cut them down so small that there is no way you couldn’t take that one step. The how of it is too easy.
In 1987, soon after moving to LA from Honolulu, I walked through the doors of 3201 Santa Monica Bl. in Santa Monica CA. I had a book in my hand, that I bought a couple of years earlier, Zen in the Martial Arts by Joe Hyams.
In the book, Joe describes the Hapkido master Bong Soo Han as a phenomenal teacher and philosopher, who I meet for the first time that summer in ’87.
He gets up from behind his desk, with his intense eyes, and greets me warmly but stoically, if that makes sense, asking me why do I want to train in Hapkido. I reply, “I feel grounded when I train.”
Apparently, that was good enough for him and I enroll in his school. I didn’t have any starry-eyed dreams of being a master or even a black belt, all I knew was that I felt better emotionally and mentally when I trained.
Hapkido is a very interesting martial art, not as well-known as tae kwon do, karate, or now, BJJ, I would often describe it as the kicks of TKD and the joint locks and throws of judo. It’s an eclectic style that draws from many other schools.
As such, the training can be overwhelming. But GM Han and his instructors knew that breaking it down into easy manageable steps that progressively increase in difficulty and intensity, they would have a system of personal development and leadership.
And that’s what I did, without even trying, to be honest, I couldn’t picture myself as a black belt, I was just someone who liked to punch and kick and spar. But I kept training, I kept improving, and I kept getting higher in rank, until one day, in ’98 I’m testing for my 1st dan.
That’s the power of the 5 Hows. Breaking down your goals so that by just do the steps, you attain a BHAG, sometimes surprising even yourself.
The two questions of the 5 Whys and the 5 Hows are great tools for streamlining and simplifying your life and goals.
But often that is not enough.
We all hit walls, stumble, and fall.
We all have fears, it doesn’t matter if your a noob or the most experienced badass guy in the room, as human beings when we face uncertainty and get out of our comfort zones, we all need support and help.
There is a book by executive coach, Marshall Goldsmith that I review regularly, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.
You see, we all have strengths but sometimes those strengths become our biggest weaknesses.
For example, being a leader requires the ability to take charge, tell people what to do, and sometimes make snap decisions. But those same qualities sometimes don’t work in the home where you have a family and not followers.
And the reverse can be true, some of the most loving helpful people I know struggle with boundaries and saying no, so they can often become doormats, letting other people walk all over them.
Coaching not only helps you to streamline and simplify your life but also to help be a mirror, allowing you to see things you may have missed. And also to support and encourage you when you’re feeling doubt and uncertainty.
Can you succeed without coaching? Sure of course!
I’m coming from the perspective that I’ve had many coaches throughout my personal and professional career, from my time on the mat heeding the wisdom of my master and his instructors, to on the job site seeking out some of the best craftsman, supervisors, and leaders in the industry, to my daily life, hiring the best teachers, executive, and personal-leadership coaches I could find to help me to take my life further.
It’s not for everyone. Some people are happy with where they are, but if you’re not, first use the 2 questions to see what kind of life you want to create, then find people who can help you to create that life.