Month: April 2021

I had an opportunity to speak at the Summit Speaker Series for the Outdoor Recreation Department for the state. I spoke about the challenges our culture is facing and how if we can shift our mindset.

We can dare to fly higher than we ever imagined.

The problem with labels is that we almost always end up excluding someone.

Insiders and outsiders.

The Jazz and the Lakers.

Freshman and seniors.

The moment we have two sides, we equate it to right or wrong.

When Republicans and Democrats see one side is losing they assume their side must be winning.

The battle is not good versus evil either. There are a lot of ways we can govern. We don’t live in a zero sum world.

There is no us without them. We’re in this together.

Exclusivity is everywhere. But it is a choice who we are excluding. For too long, I am afraid, we have been excluding people because of superficial features over merit. Perhaps the challenge going forward is to let go of the labels our ancestors have built and figure out how we can be more inclusive for the people around us.

Communities over tribes.

No one wants to watch the big game after they know the score.

There is no tension once we know the result.

The same with magic tricks or a joke.

You want to be part of the journey.

What story are we telling?

Because if we are not creating tension while simultaneously defusing it, then we need a better story to tell.

Leverage is the ability to amplify input force to create a greater output force.

If you can make something mechanically easier to move, by all means do it.

If you can make more money by borrowing some, you probably should.

Where we get in trouble is when we begin to leverage people and relationships. What do we hope to achieve with this selfish behavior?

Is that promotion really worth it? Can your integrety be bought so easily?

Does getting into a famous college really justify the means?

Why do we believe a large quarterly return can justify paying others so little?

In the end, the golden rule prevails. No one wants to be used this way. Yet, our entire economy hinges on leveraging the skill, sweat and labor of the bottom to raise the ceiling.

Generosity is what scales. Becoming better at giving credit instead of taking it, admitting mistakes instead of denying, finding strengths instead of faults in others…you’ll be a more attractive person to be around.

Ironically, the better your network, the less you’ll feel like you need to leverage to get ahead.

We must not forget that the way our brain has trained us to find happiness is to compare ourselves to others.

Think about it.

The Bartman Incident is a controversial play that took place in 2003. During the 8th inning of Game 6 of the National League Championship, Luis Castillo hits a fly ball towards foul territory. Cubs outfielder, Moisés Alou, reaches out to catch the ball. At the same time, Steve Bartman, excited to catch a fly ball disrupts the play. The Cubs went on to lose the game and then the series–continuing their 95 year World Series drought.

Bartman had to publicly apologize for the incident. He had to change his phone number and received many death threats. Why? Because in the heat of the moment, it’s easy to forget civility. The Cubs were still up 3-0 after the play occurred. It wasn’t Bartman’s fault that the Cubs allowed 8 runs to occur afterwards.

You know, I wasn’t a fan of Rush Limbaugh. It’s well documented that he said many racist, xenophobic comments on his radio show. After he died, the memes came mocking the person.

And it wasn’t just with Rush Limbaugh. We saw it after the explosion in Beirut and with the kangaroos of Australia.

No subject is off limits on the internet. Over time, we become desensitized from what we see. It’s no wonder that discourse on the internet has fallen apart.

We don’t treat each other with civility behind a user name. We wouldn’t dream about saying the things we say to people’s faces.

Much like leaving a concert, once we see someone jaywalk everyone else decides to the same thing. Permission was all we needed. We don’t like to think as someone who would jumps off a bridge when we are dared to but we are more susceptible to peer pressure than we like to think.

Fair is when the starting line is the same for everyone. Except that’s not the fair we experience.

Some of us are born with challenges. Others are born in less than ideal circumstances. Many live without enough resources. Even more without access to education or simple things like clean water.

And we can scream this isn’t fair because…it isn’t. They continue to get louder and louder. Making those in power uncomfortable and defensive.

So how do we bend the culture toward fairness? We can start by listening to those suffering instead of thinking about our own struggles.

Everyone has an opinion on where to go from here. Not everyone is able to sit with the tension and listen to those who have had the short end for generations. It’s easy to leave those behind when you don’t even know they exist.

I’m afraid of the work

I haven’t started yet. And I am imagining all the things that can go wrong before they even happen.

I’m doing the work and I’m afraid.

Afraid that the work ahead won’t be good enough to resonate with the people I seek to change.

I’m doing the work.

Without narration. Without the drama. Simply do. Do!

Imagination is a valuable tool. But it can also sabotage our best work when we let it run wild. Work from a place of faith not fear.

As Seth Godin has pointed out, “Lee De Forest, father of radio, was raised by people who voted for Abraham Lincoln, but he died when Bruce Springsteen was twelve years old. That’s not many handshakes from “The Battle Hymn” to “Blinded by the Light”… During that same period of time, we invented and moved on from radio, live TV, nationwide magazines, color TV, cable TV, Compuserve, Yahoo, GeoCities, The Globe, MySpace and 10,000 other steps.”

The cycles of technology are moving faster and faster with shorter lifespans.

My first cell phone was the end of my Junior year of high school. You used to get charged for every text you sent. It blows the mind of teenagers today. They simply can’t comprehend what it was like to grow up without a cell phone in their hand. That is a massive shift. Things we now use every hour of every day like cell phones, computers, the internet, data, Google and social media wasn’t ubiquitous just 10 years ago. And yet…

Yet, the degrees of separation from us today and of slavery and the Civil War is not that large. It isn’t some blip on the radar. Our history in the US with slavery is longer than the history without. (In 2022, for the first time, that won’t be true.)

It can be easy to tell ourselves a story about how “that was so long ago.” In reality, it wasn’t. So much has changed so fast that it can feel like an eternity. Part of the shift is we have more access to more information than ever before. We know longer just keep track of local events. We talk in a global scale. Amplifying the feelings of time passing by.

It easy to feel superior when we talk about the past, especially with the tools we now have at our disposal. To look something up 200 years ago, you would need to live close enough to a library and be able to read. We’ve worked really hard to remove barriers. Now, with none in the way, we get caught on the next cat video. The next click bait.

The script needs to be flipped here. When we benefit from the work of others that came before us, it is our responsibility to the next generation to do work that they will benefit from too.

The door has been opened, how many doors are you opening for others?

If everyone isn’t wearing a hat, you can put one on. Everyone wearing closed toed shoes in a foot of snow, you can wear flip flops.

But it is much more difficult to defend ideas that are different from the norm. To march to the beat of your own drum and to defend that position takes guts. It requires us to stand out. To be in the spotlight.

It isn’t popular but it’s important. The only way we inspire change is to tell stories and to shine a light of injustice. People are capable of becoming complicit to horrible things. And they are also capable of so much more.

Those in power are in fear of losing it. When we raise the floor, however, we all benefit.

Einstein barely escaped the clutches of the Nazis before coming to the US. What a tragedy if he never got to put his stamp on the world. Who never rose to contribute because of 250 years of slavery?

Waiting can mean a lot of things. Waiting for deliverance. Waiting to win the lottery. Waiting for the Tooth Fairy to come.

On the other hand, patience is waiting with intent. Patience is trudging through the path persistently. But you’re on the path. That is an important distinction.

If you are waiting for the perfect conditions to start, you are going to be waiting for a long time.

The alternative is to begin. And be patient about the results you seek.