Month: February 2019

It’s the follow through.

Whether we are talking about your golf swing or finding a new job or starting a non-profit…

You have great ideas. Lots of them. But that is what they are and will remain until you show action. 

Ideas are not solutions until they actually help someone get across the chasm of how things were to what they ought to be.

We tend to talk ourselves into waiting until a better solution presents itself before we step up, you might be surprised to discover that if we take more action better solutions tend to open up. 

There are a lot, I mean a lot, of really inept people at the heads of organizations. Not everyone, of course, but there are plenty of CEO’s or managers or members of the Board that don’t have 30 years of experience. They have one year of experience repeated 30 times.

Now, they’re making 10 or 20 or 100 times more per hour than the person on the bottom.

You might not have the resources they have (access to capital, resume with a prestigious title or a degree from a famous college), and yet, despite all the advantages, you can still carry something they don’t have…

Grit.

Here is the thing, no one is saying you can’t pick the really difficult projects that people are afraid to touch. No one is saying don’t put in the time and effort to solve nearly impossible problems. You can choose to delay gratification and say no to the marshmallow.

The door is wide open. The light is green. These are skills that you can practice and learn. If it is a skill it can be taught, it can be learned, it can be fostered.

What are you doing for others?

It’s quite clear to live a life filled with any other philosophy, then you’re living an a life unfulfilled.

What’s it for?

Is it really to caution us or to insulate us?

Are we that worried about the one What if? scenario that we forget why we started on this journey to begin with?

History is long enough now that we forget why we do the things we do.

You may not be able to cut through “this is the way that it’s always been.”

But if you don’t try how will you ever know?

[The job as a linchpin is to learn to cut through. It’s a job that never ends.]

The problem with wilderness therapy isn’t the lack of qualitative data to prove the effectiveness of the field.

The problem is that it costs on average $30,000 to $60,000 to go through a program.

Outside the 1%, no one can afford that.

Instead of focusing and trying to hush the loon noises and validate the field, maybe we should hyper-focus on creating better access for an incredible experience.

The by-product: Qualitative data follows the quantitative.

Given two choices, humans will almost always choose the one that serves their own interest best.

It’s nothing personal, but we tend to skew things toward our favor. Often without much thought.

The problem is when we play finite games. If we are playing to win, if we are playing to raise our status (and lower someone else’s), negotiations will inevitably stall.

In a world of where we “split the baby,” no one wins.

Maybe worth considering to take less and leave more on the table. Someone doesn’t have to lose in order for you to win.

In 1896, an Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto, noticed that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population and that same trend can be found in wealth distribution.

As Pareto described it, the second wealthiest person has half of the wealth of the first. The third wealthiest person had half of the second. And so on.

It was later coined the 80/20 rule and it is also known as a power law. 

Our ability to make difficult decisions follows a similar arc.

We see this all the time in the field. A student doesn’t like a certain adventure activity because in the moment their feet are sore, quads are tired, hands are cold…

The experience is rewarding after a good nights rest—not during the dip.

The bottom line: Our ability to make difficult decisions decreases as the day wears on. Don’t make difficult decisions when you’re tired. 

In the 1930’s, after a slew of Hollywood scandals, The Motion Picture Association of America (made up of the six most powerful movie studios) sought after the help of Will H. Hays to help rehabilitate Hollywood’s image. Afterwards, he produced a list of Do’s and Don’ts, formally known as the Hays Code, that was immediately implemented for Directors, Writers, Producers, Actors to follow.

The pendulum swung from the fringes and edges to the center. For 50 years, it held up. Until one day it didn’t.

Because soon, actors and directors were working their way around it. (Under the Hays Code, actors couldn’t kiss longer than three-seconds. Alfred Hitchcock’s 1946 film, Notorious, had the actors keep breaking away every few seconds. The scene lasted for two and a half minutes.)

And so the pendulum swung again back to the edges.

In 2017, Harvey Weinstein has been accused for serial sexual misconduct sparking one of the biggest movements we have ever seen against sexual misconduct. And now, Gillette tackles what masculinity means, in the process of becoming the 29th most disliked video on YouTube. That’s okay because 600,000 (and counting) still liked it.

Because it wasn’t meant to be for everybody. Just someone.

It might not be for you that Nike takes a knee with Colin Kaepernick. It might not be for you that Patagonia endorses political candidates. You might not want to know what the social views of the food you eat is.

That is the way the world is going. Because in a world of infinite choices with infinite products or services, we choose the ones that align with the way we see the world.

Hays Code could never last in our day because the market for masses continues to shrink. Every day. You can’t control the content that is being produced anymore when everyone walks around with a camera for video and photos.

Even though some keep trying, you can’t stand in the way of progress or art or change.

Because the pendulum keeps swinging towards justice and healing and awareness.