Month: December 2022

For many, given the choice to follow the step-by-step instructions to make a really cool Lego sculptor or to go make something their own–most would be terrified of the prospect of making something that isn’t found in the manual.

“What if I fail?”

“What if people judge me? ”

In fact, our culture has worked overtime to praise the compliant cog worker that followed the specs. I mean, look it’s an X-Wing Fighter, that is much “better” than the thing you tried to create.

You will always find a Dummies Guide or a How To book on what to do next. But the real artist, the courageous impresario that we can’t live without, ignores the instructions, makes a ruckus just sees what happens next.

The world needs more people like you to throw away the instructions. Aren’t you at least curious to see what you could build?

Humans cannot stop playing games. Market share is a game. Accumulating more artifacts is a game. And so is soccer. When we finish a game, we can’t help but simply start a new one.

Yet, most of us look at Sysphus as a doomed person–why is the game of pushing a rock up the hill any different from ours? All games are sort of pointless if you think long about it. Yet, that’s what we do to fill the time.

Some games are infinite and others are finite. Some games have high stakes and maybe life or death. Others? We just think they are. And if we are not playing high stake games, we play for fun.

Maybe we should be having more fun with the games we choose to play.

Where you weren’t working your hardest or let your mind wander? Have you had a conversation that wasn’t work-related?

Of course, you have. Everyone has done this. Because we are not machines.

And yet, most people reading this blog probably don’t think of themselves as thieves either. The question is, where is the line? What is ethical and what is not?

The thing is, the McDonald’s drink machine doesn’t steal sips of Coca-Cola products. And the Walmart Automatic Check-out Machine doesn’t take an extra long smoke break. And the street light on your corner doesn’t ask for a vacation either.

Humans are not efficient creatures. We have weaknesses and on top of all this, we need dental. Our weaknesses are only going to be more exaggerated as time goes on. AI can simply follow the instructions better and it doesn’t need a pep talk to get in the mood to get to work.

What then do humans do better?

Initiate. Lead. Motivate. Deciding where to go. Caring. Decision making. Dealing with consequences. Having hard conversations. Making connection. Starting and finishing projects. This is the field that is wide open that a machine cannot fill. (Facebook tried and failed.)

You have more value than simply following the instructions. The ability to color outside the lines at any time is your best asset.

Is it someone’s fault that they have been diagnosed with cancer?

Difficult to say. It’s an unpopular opinion to blame a six-year-old for a brain tumor. And yet, as a culture, we have way less empathy for the 50-year chain smoker. There is so much variance because of the choices we make, the resources we have, what we have been taught, the genetic cards we have been dealt with, and the environment we interact in…

Here’s the thing, there is always a line of reasons we can choose to believe where the circumstances are not our fault. We are a victim of what is happening around us. We are overwhelmed by the amount decisions we have to make on a daily basis. Sometimes we roll the dice and lose. However, there is an alternative. A radical one. You can choose to take responsibility for all your actions.

The first approach may temporarily make us feel better. But when we take responsibility, even for the things we feel are not our fault, we are also saying we can take responsibility to change our circumstances.

This is powerful. It means you can act upon the world and not just be a passenger.

At the same time, this is so difficult to do. Not everyone is going to embrace this. Perhaps, grief is so painful, this is impossible to do. And I get that. This post isn’t to minimize people’s suffering. Instead, it’s written to highlight that we are also not victims of our circumstances if we choose. And when we have choices it means we can make different ones.

Life is out of control, and taking the little responsibility we have may be all we got. When we take responsibility, it changes our posture and how we walk through this life.

Love is more powerful than reason. And so is belief.

We can believe in something so much that we distort the facts to fit the narrative rather than change it.

Love and belief can get in the way of seeing things as they are because we so much want to see things as we are.

When we say yes, we are opening doors of possibility.

Possibility begets more possibility.

When we say no, that’s it. No more possibility. We close the loop and what we have in front of us is final.

Every morning, we wake up and act on the decisions of yesterday. We go to the job we are supposed to be at, finish the reports, clock out and head home. Only to repeat the cycle again tomorrow. We should be clear, that is a decision we make. We often feel trapped because the friction to make life changes (like moving jobs) is too difficult to do. Too painful and so we insist that this is where we are and must be.

Flip this around.

Every morning, you wake up and make choice. To be here and now. To say yes. To open possibility. When you decide to be where you are, you might be surprised to discover, things are more open than you originally thought.

And when you can say yes to the present, you can begin to build the confidence to say yes to something much bigger in the future.

It’s easy to confuse what is and what ought to be when things have worked out in your favor.

That’s why everyone who grew up with money has an opinion to fix poverty. It worked for me, why couldn’t it work for them? Yet, if you grew up with money, you can only imagine life without means.

It’s difficult to say what you would do if you weren’t taught money was a tool or grew up in an environment where you weren’t told to believe in yourself. How can you ever take chances if you never had the resources to survive your mistakes? Half the U.S. doesn’t even vote and yet what would it be like to live under a dictatorship?

Our path to safety and security and equality is far different from everyone else’s. Instead of judging the decisions of others, we would be better served to be curious, ask questions, and grab a shovel (get to work).

Because we often confuse our timelines.

None of us live forever so clearly the pain, discomfort, and disappointment we feel are all simply a current state of things. Ironically, constantly changing. When we seek joy, we are suffering because we know it will eventually be gone. And when we are suffering, we think this will last forever. It’s a vicious cycle.

So when we are bored at work, counting the minutes until we can go home, we might feel like this will last forever even though logically it won’t.

The same can be said when we use words like “never”, “always”, and “impossible” when in fact we should clarify the state we are in as “sometimes”, “soon”, and “improbable”.

Problems have solutions. Otherwise, we are asking for gravity to stop obeying the universe’s laws. So if it’s a narration, a story we are telling about our feelings, well, that can change.

The challenge is that people’s minds are not made for problems on such a large scale. It’s hard to imagine the change that would need to occur to solve the dire needs of the world because we have been indoctrinated to think small. Comfortable with the devil we know rather than venture into the void. Hence, it can be a relief to gripe about the boss again. It’s what we know how to do!

The answer is to expand our imagination. There is magic in thinking bigger. When we think bigger than ourselves, we begin to solve problems bigger than ourselves.

Safety is never a permanent state of affairs. The world is too chaotic and unpredictable. When we feel that comfort of security, the next thing we worry about is, “When will this end?”

Perhaps, we should ignore the security blanket and instead embrace what comes next.