Josh Allred's Blog

Most adventure sports have a saying,

“Where you go is where you look.”

That really can be applied to our lives.

If you are getting your news from a Facebook feed, you’re probably not informed.

And if you spend hours a day in front of the television, should you be surprised in 20 years you are full of regrets?

By contrast, getting up one hour early to go to the gym, in 18 months, you will be happy with the results.

When you sitting down and writing that book you always imagined, are you satisfied when it is complete?

Pick your heading. While the wind may push you different ways having a direction with your compass is invaluable.

The culture likes to remind us that we failed the culture not that the culture has failed us.

That when the system is set for the Haves to continue to get richer it creates a gap.

One that can’t ever be closed without radical reform.

You can then choose to accept this outcome. But that is pretty terrible. The alternative is to measure success in other ways.

Art. Am I making a difference in my community? Did I make something that changed the way someone felt? Will I be missed when I am gone?

Not everyone that who is poor lacks money.

Because when you get paid by the hour, you don’t want someone to get a larger slice that didn’t earn it.

It’s a zero sum game.

That money is what you traded for with your time and effort.

However, when we talk in terms of community, no one gets upset that someone volunteered less than someone else.

Because we are trading our time for something else.

We used to do all sorts of things for free. But thanks to industrialism, trading our time is our job.

Your purpose isn’t to grow profits. A whole world opens up to us when we find new ways to measure.

This is silly. It should be:

“If you build it, maybe they will come.”

There’s no guarantee that the outcome you seek will come to pass.

But one thing is for sure:

“If you don’t build it, no one will come.”

“Put your head down, do what you are told and we will pay you.”

The promise was if you worked hard enough you can improve your life.

That is a myth.

Unless you own the asset, own the means of production; you probably are not going to get ahead.

The shackles of debt and compound interest are not easy to break.

And a bunch of magical digits and bits on a screen isn’t happiness.

We live in a world of widely held but false believes. The way to move forward as a collective is to change the story.

When there are no jobs because all of the robots can do them for us, what does it mean to be human?

For too long, we have used our paycheck as a signal that we must be doing something right. Time for a new way to measure.

Every hero needs a journey. Some cause that she must fight for. Adversity to overcome.

We fret so much about discomfort. But isn’t this what is supposed to be?

Half the fun is in the journey.

The reason why we create a chain of command is so we can create layers of insulation.

“Who’s responsible for this mess?”

It makes it difficult to take blame (or credit) when you don’t have your name written on the project.

If you are going to put your finger prints on something, be proud of it.

The more layers we create, the less responsible we feel.

Don’t assume what you know is what everyone else in the room is thinking.

Quit assuming that you know more than everyone else.

There is no one answer to fix complex problems.

We don’t see what you see. We don’t think the way you think.

Your contributions are important. Vital! We need you to jump in. The key is contribution. However, anything else is just taking.

The story we tell ourselves about our place in the world are rooted in fiction.

Because we can’t possibly take in everyone’s point of view, we accept ours as fact.

Our narrative works overtime to protect ourselves.

That narration that protects us also betray us from seeing the world as it really is.

Democracy can rally around a candidate and vote someone into office.

That doesn’t mean that person is the right choice.

Juxtapose this to science and mathematics, where we can make calculations to get a correct answer.

That’s the difference our narration makes. We can misuse agency in the face of truth.