Josh Allred's Blog

Knocking on doors, making a sales call, writing a personal letter, telling a story, putting on a show, making promises (and keeping them), looking someone in the eye is becoming scarce in the marketplace.

Human work will continue to be in high demand in a world full of automation.

So if you are wondering what it is we need more of in the future, it’s this: see people as they are and give them a chance to become who it is they want to be.

It’s hard to change people’s minds.

But maybe, when given the chance, you can be the one standing on the wall lighting a path for others to follow.

Everyone has resources. Some of us have more resources than others: money, time, intellect, energy.

It doesn’t matter how much of these finite resources you have, what matters is how you use them. What matters is how much you care. What matters is if you are willing to bring emotional labor to the table.

It seems so painfully obvious but you can literally start with anything.

You can help at your local church, charity, non-profit. You can help the widows, the poor, the needy. You can choose to start a movement. You can choose to make a better environment in your home. You can pick up the trash that you see on the floor. You can hold the elevator door a little longer. You can let someone in your lane or write a letter. The cliché of helping the old lady cross the street with her groceries, you can do that too.

It’s not your job but you do it. You do it because it needs to be done. You do it not because you have to but because you get to.

I think we all are looking for the same things: respect, dignity, love, trust, being missed when we are gone.

That connection is waiting to be made if you are willing to show how much you care.

The time to start is now. Soon just isn’t good enough anymore. There are too many distractions to take us out of this moment.

Go.

Make a ruckus.

You’re not sure what is going to appear in your inbox next. You’re don’t know who is going to text you. It’s not clear who is calling you this afternoon.

No one has a crystal ball.

If we cannot predict what is going to happen next, why are we spending so much time planning the next 10 years, 20 years, 30 years?

It appears then that the only move that matters is your next one.

The choices you make today will have a direct impact in what you do tomorrow.

Everyone is born with some type of talent. The kind of stuff you cannot learn like being seven feet tall. You are naturally gifted at something.

But skill, on the other hand, is learned.

You can learn to read, write, be generous, paint, film, connect, amplify your message, change something to make it better, to see, knit, smile, dance, sing.

Almost any skill can be learned with enough practice. Practice is all about failing. The person who fails the most will be the one that succeeds.

The culture has become far to obsessed with the lotto ticket winner.

The thing is if you were born in this county and have access to the internet and education and clean water and health care…you have already won the lottery. We don’t need a dummies guide to tell us how to get rich. What we need is to learn how to leverage the opportunities we have been given to open up a world of possibilities.

We finally get to this point where we have decided to do something only to be paralyzed by the amount of options available.

We don’t know where to start. We don’t know which idea to go with.

But were you able to pick what you wanted for lunch? 

Maybe you were torn between the soup or salad. But you still picked something.

Don’t let the fear of failure amply our ability to choose or our ability to ship.

It’s true, this might not work. But what the heck, give it a try and see what happens. And if didn’t work, you can try again tomorrow. The cost for failure is so low with internet.

What do you have to lose?

You’re poor or out of shape or scattered.

If only you believe it.

The problem is the lizard brain, the amygdala, Resistance tells us over and over again: You’re not good enough.

After a while, we believe it.

Social media amplifies these feelings, that everyone’s life is better than mine.

So instead of living a life of low expectations the alternative is to live a life that others will emulate.

But it starts with what kind of story are you going to tell yourself.

Start where you are. If the difference you make today, no matter how small, was out of love and generosity then it doesn’t matter how big of a splash you made. What matters is that you cared enough to do something about the world you are living in.

There is a gap from seeing things as they are and seeing what could be.

Too many of us are stuck. Too many of us are afraid. We feel like we lack the means to sojourn the journey. We haven’t done this before. The future is uncertain. We’re unable to leap.

So conceding that the gap is too big for anyone to cross (except for those “other people”, the 1%, the ones with talent), why take a risk?

It’s safer to be on this side of the chasm, it’s the way it always been and it’s the way it’s always going to be. It’s safer to know the outcome, even if it is less desirable.

It’s easy to put fear in the driver’s seat.

But for the others who are on the fence, who want something better I think we have get an opportunity: To shine a light for them to follow.

Helping people do something they never thought was possible is always in short supply. The future is in need of more people like you to bridge the gap.

Traditional media is a one-way street. They report the news and we watch the news. There is no other interaction. You can choose to change the channel whenever you want.

That old model is dead.

Social media, on the other hand, is supposed to be social. A two-way street. We interact with each other. It’s a community.

But when is the last time a tweet changed us for the better? How did it work out when you began engaging with someone’s political points? When was the last time someone changed your mind on social media?

The problem with social media is that most of the time it isn’t actually social. Instead, we end up spending our time watching cat videos instead of what it is for: A tool for connecting with each other. But we don’t use the tool the right way.

Social has to be more than interacting with a screen. Social is interacting with each other, sharing ideas, breaking down the perfect so we can unleash the impossible. Social is bringing a group together to make things better. Socializing can solve really big and really interesting problems.

I think we need to stop pretending: The time we spend on social media isn’t actually socializing. It’s a place to hide.

I don’t see a lot of problems being solved or accurate information being shared or a lot of growth happening. It can happen, but only if we spend less time correcting people for being wrong.

It’s easy to hide by swiping left and waiting for something better to come along. It easy to spend the afternoon architecting every word in your paragraph to make your point of view appear right. There are plenty of inaccurate sources to prove it.

What’s difficult…no essential is elevating our conversations. We can hold a higher standard. We could level up. We could provide better content for us to see and skip what we ate for lunch.

So what?

All finite games have winners and losers. It’s not the game you signed up to play.

The goal wasn’t to win. There is always going to be someone better out there than you.

The goal is to play the game. Over and over again.

If it was easy than it wouldn’t be hard. You don’t develop self-efficacy unless you do hard things.

Instead of waiting to get picked, why don’t you just pick yourself and get to work?

When we pay for something, we’re done. Fair and square. Even Steven. No one owes anyone anything.

But when we give something to someone, that form of exchange brings us closer together.

We are moving away from the industrial economy and entering one of connection. We want to know who is connected, who is trusted.

The simplest path towards connection and trust is generosity; give a gift.

And when you feed the network often enough, the network will turn around and feed you back.

Many people will sit there and say, “What? Are you crazy? In this economy? We can’t be giving stuff away.” Yes, in this economy. Yes, in this time in our lives to change someone for the better.

We no longer live in a world of scarcity. We live in a world of abundance. (Not all of us, of course.) But abundance hasn’t fulfilled us.

Do human work that matters. We eventually will notice.