Josh Allred's Blog

Is the ability to choose.

When choice is taken away, outcomes become certain.

Certainty is relinquishing power and waiting for instructions to relieve tension.

We look for this tension to go away because we are afraid.

We are afraid that taking responsibility for our actions that we won’t be good enough. That we might fail.

Rather than dealing with the shame of failure, we would rather give up control and our choices.

We look to be told what to do.

But if we can learn to choose uncertainty, we need to understand that we are going to be judged. Outcomes are not guaranteed.

Uncertainty is our blank canvas: Where we can learn, grow, and progress.

It doesn’t start with a map. The step by step of instructions doesn’t exist in a world of infinite possibilities.

It’s about following a compass. Your choice in the direction you want to go.

[Most of us undervalue our ability to get to where it is we want to go. We shouldn’t underestimate ourselves.]

When the automobile was invented people weren’t asking for automobiles, they were asking for faster horses.

Fast forward to today, people are asking for faster internet and more data. But soon we will be offering VR and AI.

People are not sure what they really want, which leaves room for your customers to be wowed.

There is never going to be an opportunity like today to lead a tribe.

You just need to care enough and be brave enough to want to change the world around you.

What are you waiting for?

Most of us want credit, money, and fame before we do the work.

But credit, money, and fame doesn’t come first. It comes last. It comes after you make generous contributions. Over and over again.

You don’t become a writer when you sell your first best seller. You become a writer and then, over time, you become a best-selling author (maybe). There’s no promise.

So make generous contributions because you can. Do those things because it brings meaning. Never mind about credit, money, and fame. Professionals don’t care about that.

They care about connection. They care about meaning. They care about making a difference.

That’s what makes us human.

[Our Creator is happiest when his children are creating.]

Most Americans have never heard of the name Donald Bradman. Bradman was the greatest cricket player of all time. And it’s not even close.

Bradman’s lifetime batting average was 99.94. The next best batting average was Graeme Pollock’s 60.97. It’s like a baseball player batting over .500 every season for his entire career.

If you look at the standard deviation for above average athletes in sports, 2.3 would put you in the top 1%. Bradman had a standard deviation of 4.4. He was better at cricket then Jordan was to basketball (3.4), Nicklaus was to golf (3.5), and Cobb was to baseball (3.6).

By these metrics, you can argue that Bradman was the greatest athlete of all time.

The lizard brain is very good at tricking us into believing that we have to be the best in order to belong.

If you are going to wait to be as good as Bradman to feel like you belong, you will be waiting for a long time.

Because you will never be as good as Donald Bradman at anything you choose to do.

So why wait?

You belong when you decide you belong. You belong when you start contributing to the tribe. You belong when you start making a difference.

Now.

Go.

Make your ruckus.

We need you.

The person who invented the ship also invented the shipwreck.

So when there’s no chance for failure, we’ve eliminated all of the risk.

But without risk, there is no art.

Are you doing work that is remarkable or are you doing the kind of work that is keeping you from being fired?

Are your working for your customers or for your boss?

Do you have 30 years of experience or do you have 1 year of experience repeated 30 times?

Can your job be broken down into a simple set of instructions or is it a project without a map?

When people work with no goal other than attracting a better job or getting tenure or rank advancement, you’ll always find menial and trivial research.

On the other hand, contributions to knowledge come from those wanting to make a difference.

It takes guts to put yourself in the arena knowing you’re going to be banged up. But the other alternative is to sit in the cheap seats with the critics and trolls.

[The world is waiting for you to take your turn.]

It turns out a blue moon is when two full moons occur in the same month.

And it is not as rare as you might think.

It occurs every 28 to 30 months.

The next blue moon will occur on January 31, 2018.

Forget about all the plans you’re making between now and then.

Instead, make a commitment: A quantum leap just might occur once in a blue moon.

The magic of opening night isn’t that everything is going to be perfect. The magic is that this might not work.

If I wanted to go see a show that was perfect, I would just stream something on Netflix.

Because the chance that it might not stream is low. The chance for someone messing up a line or missing a lighting que or having a wardrobe malfunction is virtually zero.

The reason you go to a show and pay ten times the price you would to stream a movie isn’t to see perfection. No, it’s to interact with a tribe. (People like us do stuff like this.) It is to watch something remarkable and meaningful. We want to see something that can make us cry.

It is a safe bet that nothing will go wrong by staying home. But if failure is not an option, then neither is success.

In 1954, there were so many polio cases at the Boston Children’s Hospital they had to perform sidewalk triage in front of distressed parents seated in idling cars.

The polio vaccine was successfully tested the following year. By 1979, polio was eradicated in the United States.

Most people today don’t even know the name Jonas Salk, the scientist who discovered the polio vaccine. But to an entire generation, he was a beloved hero.

Interestingly, Salk never received the Nobel Prize. You might be shocked to find out neither did Mahatma Gandhi and Eleanor Roosevelt. While credit and recognition are nice, it’s not a necessity for leaving behind a legacy.

His discovery is not the only thing Salk left behind. It was his example: His sole focus was to develop a vaccine that would make the world a safer place. He didn’t worry about credit or money or fame.

When asked who owned the patent, Salk simply replied, “There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”

That vaccine is estimated to be worth over seven billion dollars today.

While awards, accolades and a bigger paycheck are nice, it’s not what professionals care about. They do the work because it matters. They do it because it brings meaning. And, more importantly, they give it in a generous way.

That is what creating art is all about.

Every time an adult male orca is brought into captivity their dorsal fin will begin to collapse.

Scientist still don’t have a definitive answer for why this happens.

I think there are some things in life that are not meant to be in captivity.

And after a while, it’s easy to feel defeated about the things holding us back from reaching our full potential.

I worry about the physical restraints we put on ourselves with the rise of debt and substance abuse. But the deeper concern is the emotional cages we put ourselves in: Somehow, the world has tricked us to believe that the choices we are making don’t really matter.

But each of us has infinite worth. Everything we do has a purpose. All that’s left is finding a way to fulfill it.