Month: September 2017

It doesn’t matter how deep the water goes, once it’s over our heads, we start swimming.

Nathan Winograd used to be a lawyer before he organized the first no-kill shelter.

Scott Harrison used to be a club promoter before he brought access to clean water for millions.

Jim Ziolkowski used to be a vagabond before he started building schools.

Jacqueline Novogratz used to be a banker before she changed the way we look at philanthropy.

Brene Brown used to be a researcher before she went viral.

Danielle Button used to be an occupational therapist before she brought medical equipment to those in need.

Seth Godin used to be marketer before he made a ruckus.

John Wood used to be with Microsoft before he shined a light for those in the dark.

I guess we all used to be something ordinary before we did something extraordinary.

What did you use to be?

Patience isn’t sitting around waiting for something to happen.

It’s about making things happen and learning to sit with the tension of not knowing what is going to happen next.

This might work. This might not work.

I have never met someone who was perfect. And, if you are like most people, you probably haven’t either.

It seems to me that all human beings are born with certain weaknesses. Some are more visible while others may be more severe.

Josh Rossi is a photographer, who knows how to inspire each of us to turn our weaknesses into strengths.

What’s fascinating to me is despite the real challenges the real Justice League faces day in and day out, they are the ones who are teaching us. Their courage makes us want to stand up and follow them.

Here is the thing, courage is not jumping off rooftops or running into a burning building. It certainly can be. But the kind of courage I am talking about is shipping your best work into the world, to be vulnerable, to be eager to change things for the better, to speak up for equality, opportunity, dignity and respect.

By all means, go ahead, wear a mask, wear a cape, ship anonymously until you feel comfortable putting your name out there for the world to see.

I think we will be surprised to discover that when we decide to put the cape on, that are posture will be a little better and we will walk a little taller.

You can’t become a ninja without first pretending to be a ninja.

(Or an astronaut or a mathematician or a writer…)

Imagination is the first step towards reality.

It’s a shame that the system works overtime to crush our dreams.

It would be a tragedy to waste one more second pretending to be something we are not.

When you break down this post, it is really a series of words constructed in a way to make sentences, separated with periods, commas, spaces, etc. Examine it even further, you have characters, symbols and lines of code on a screen.

Of course, we don’t just choose any symbols or words—we choose the right ones to tell a story that touches the recipient.

The words you say (or don’t) matter because of the meaning we interject into them. But how you choose to interpret them is up to you.

The problem with profiling, stereotyping and guessing is that we’re wrong, most of the time.

Americans believe that 17% of the country is made up of Muslims, 42% are born abroad and 23% are LBGTQ.

When in fact, 1% of the country is made up of Muslims, 13% are from abroad and 4% identify as LGBTQ.

We think that crime rates are higher than they actually are. We think that we give more foreign aid than we actually do.

The problem is when we lean on cable news and social media feeds to inform us, we end up feeding our biases and prejudices.

Only when we learn to own our stories can we change them. It’s the first step in building a culture that we can all be proud of.

There is simple learning, which is learning how to do the same things better.

Then, there is generative learning, which is learning how to do new things.

Our futures become more predictable and more certain by doing the same things we did yesterday, over and over again.

It is easy to seduce ourselves into thinking that repetitive motion makes us better. That’s the way we were taught at school, right?

But real learning occurs when we learn something new, something different, something that has never been done before (by us anyway).

It is when we learn to connect the dots we can begin to see a completely new world. A world full of possibilities.

That kind of learning, the kind of learning from reading an insightful blog or the right book that changed the way you think, is when you realize not what you know but how much you don’t know.

There is nothing wrong with simple learning. But exploiting what we did yesterday, getting a little faster and a little cheaper, isn’t going to get us to the places we want to go.

Then you have no choice but to do it again.

And again.

And again.

Keep producing your best work and overtime we can’t help but notice someday.

It’s not fair but the only way to outlast the critics, the trolls and the non-believers is to keep producing work that matters.

People like us do stuff like this.

Tribes make us feel safe. They bring us closer together through unity, community and, most importantly, connection.

It is innate in all of us to fit in. To not stand out. To talk like the people around us. To eat, drink, exercise, dress, read…like us.

Which is why it is so hard to leave when the tribes views no longer coincide with your believes. So hard that it explains why human beings go to extraordinary lengths to fit in. Even in the worst of circumstances from sexual abuse to forced extinction of species to Holodomor.

When we leave our tribe we feel loss. Part of that spirit is gone. But that part can be filled again when we find the right tribe to embrace who we are and what we stand for.