Month: March 2025

If the path forward was obvious, management would have already took the path. Leadership, on the other hand, doesn’t follow the simple set of instructions. Instead, the chart a path. Pivot as they move forward. Always course correcting. If you know the answer you want, you will find it. However, when going to places that are unclear on the map, leadership has to step in. Even in the AI world, the space to lead is still vast. Most humans don’t know what they want. They know once they are there. But too often, there is the unsettling feeling of finding the next novel feeling. Because deep down, we crave experience. At some point, you can talk about the next great adventure; it’s another thing to go on.

A good coach, mentor, or therapist understands that you cannot change what has happened in the past. Instead, they help the student see something from a different point of view. They change the lighting, move the object in a direction, and see what has happened in a different light. From there, we interpret what happened in a new way. A new perspective doesn’t change what happened, but a new story can help us find the peace, clarity, and closure we seek.

Symbolism refers to objects, characters, and phrases representing something more significant than their literal meaning. Symbols can be used to spark a movement and rally people behind it, and they often have an emotional component.

On the other hand, meaning encompasses the significance, purpose, interpretation, or message something is trying to convey. Symbolism often tries to convey the meaning behind it.

For instance, the simple poem “Roses are Red…” insinuates roses as a symbol of love. A vessel. The poem’s meaning is what we interpret about the gift of a rose.

I am convinced that humans are in constant search for meaning. We create symbols to help us interpret what has happened or what is going to happen. And we make meaning out of every circumstance using symbols as a catalyst.

With 60,000 to 80,000 a day, we are constantly bombarded with thoughts. There is no quiet; therefore, it can feel like no peace.

But just like any microscope, we can find a sliver of space if we zoom in far enough. Magnifying that space to make it larger to allow time between the thoughts of nothing. That’s the moment we are looking for.

The other day, I fell while riding a skateboard. At first, I blamed the rocks and my son riding too close. It really hurt, and I felt sorry for myself. It had been such a wonderful day out. Now, it felt ruined.

But once I was done feeling sorry for myself and was sitting with the pain in my wrist and back, I realized that I was given a gift—a gift to be awake. I had taken the day for granted, and I forgot how fragile life was—that at any moment, it could be taken away.

I wasn’t wasting the day scrolling on my phone. I was out with my kids, spending it the way I wanted, yet I still was going through the motions. I wasn’t aware.

Awake.

1. Everyone wants everything. All at once, people demand convenience and luxury. While simultaneously wanting to be free of the cycle of work-produce-consume. And yet, want someone else to take responsibility, to lead, and decide.
2. Everything is possible. Our hole is not so deep that we can’t climb out. The world is not without problems. But in many measures, it is getting better. The question in the future isn’t if something is possible to make things better (we know what must be done) but rather when do we stop digging further down. This leads me to believe…
3. We don’t know what we actually want.

When we prune a tree, it allows for the limited resources it has put to good use. Instead of wasting time on areas that are not bound to grow.

The other week, I wrote about the power of the delete button. But we can’t forget there is also an unsubscribe button. Quite literally, we can choose what comes in. Time is constant. And so, how do we choose to fill it? Taking a moment to figure out how to curate the inbound sets up the rest of the days going forward. Regular maintenance would be required, like an oil change. But 15 minutes a quarter will save so much of our attention in the aggregate.

Perhaps the greatest asset we have in this economy is attention. Each newsletter, blog, notification, and viral video chips away at that attention. And if we say yes to clicking this, we are saying no to something else. Digital clutter is 100 percent real. The question is how we manage it. Saving two minutes a day over a lifetime adds up.

Peter and Rosemary Grant report that finches with longer beaks do better in wet conditions in the Galapagos islands. This allows for the discovery of more food and a higher reproduction rate. Finches with shorter beaks, however, do better in dry conditions. So, based on the environment, the species and population respond.

Having an umbrella when it rains is helpful, but not so much when it’s 72 degrees in the spring.

Every creature must respond to the environment around them. So when unemployment rates go up, people will react. Desperation can kick in when someone is caught in a vicious debt cycle. The same can be said about the old marshmallow experiment. It might signal that patience can be rewarded with two marshmallows. But someone without the resources, who lives in scarcity, may think it is very reasonable to take what is in front of you.

We can’t correctly evaluate why individual players do what they do. But we can step back and examine the system and its operation, examining the feedback it gives us and adjusting.

Reminder: Holding a microphone too close to a speaker causes the noise to amplify over and over again to give a rotten sound for everyone to hear. When one suffers, we all suffer.

In each of us, there is a pull. The pull towards freedom. The open road. The pull to climb a mountain.

On the other end is the pull to settle down, to be responsible, to plan for the future. To be prepared.

Most of us try to thread the needle of living both lives. When we are living one, we yearn for the other.

Our biggest fear is that deep down, we know we won’t be successful in either realm.

The downside of a hyper-individualistic society, where the priority is one’s happiness, is that it leads us to believe we should pursue one’s own appetite.

You could look at retail therapy as a temporary fix. But after a while, when one awakes, all they will find is a closet full of Nikes and an emptiness in oneself the size of the Grand Canyon.

We struggle to get out of our way. But rarely do we examine why we got here in the first place. Each path leads to nowhere extraordinary. But few paths lead to peace. And yes, it is often the less traveled path.