Josh Allred's Blog

In 1770, Wolfgang von Kempelen created the Mechanical Turk. The Turk was a chess-playing machine.

The joke, of course, was that it was fake.

Inside the Turk, there was chess master that would operate the machine. For 84 years, the Turk toured around the world beating most of its opponents. And for 84 years, audiences stood in awe inspired by magic.

The lizard brain inside all of us cannot reconcile with the fact when magic has taken place. Because magic isn’t real. Many of us cannot deal with this tension. So we have to find a way to release it.

But the illusion loses all of its magic after the trick has been revealed.

There is something to be said about the 5-year-old who stands amazed and in wonder of the impossible: We can learn to live with this tension instead of spending all of our time trying to make it go away.

Not much left to discover from the 8 year that says he knows how you did the trick.

We don’t live in the past.

The big moment for us is tomorrow.

By small and simple means are great things brought to pass.

[Like this blog.]

We don’t have to make a big splash to make an impact.

It’s the ripples that reach out and touch us.

It turns out, birds are not meant to live in cages.

But sadly, many of them have been conditioned to keep going back into them because they think it’s safe.

And people are the same way. We move from cage to another. (One job after another. One credit card after another.)

It’s fake.

And there are lots of things in our world and choices that we are making that are fake.

By engaging in things that are fake, we end up making ourselves more desperate and less likely to make a difference in the world for what we think is safety.

We’re not often faced in situations of real risk anymore. I’m talking about the kind of risk that if we were to fail, we would die. No, a safe is not going to fall on our head, a shark is not going to land on our house, and we’re not going to spontaneously combust (even if we think we will).

So then we need to decide what kind of choice are we going to make: Do we want what’s safer or do we want what’s better?

If we want safer, we can keep doing what we’ve been doing. But at some point, we hit the bottom. We can’t go faster than instant, we can’t go cheaper than free, and we can’t go more accurate than 100%.

So the alternative is to race to the top. If we are going to choose better, we are going to have to reconcile the fact that we will be judged. It comes with the choice of freedom. And yeah, sometimes things might not work. But we have an opportunity to fly, to do work that matters, and to make a difference.

[What are you going to do now that you realize the cage door has been unlocked this whole time?]

It’s increasingly clear, that the easy decisions are the easiest ones to make.

Which leaves us an opportunity: We can get really good at the small and simple things. Progressively solving more complex and interesting problems.

But the paradox is: By making easy decisions, outcomes become more certain and predictable. We get more comfortable. And we fall into a trap of what we think is safety.

So if we can learn to stand up and say, “This might work. This might not work. But what the hell, I’ll give it a try,” a door to a world of possibilities will open up.

But if we get comfortable in the jobs that depend on routines or can be broken down into a set of repeatable steps, those are the ones fading away. And fast.

Because accuracy and speed and cheap—all the stuff that is measurable—technology won’t have a need for us to evaluate.

But the things we can’t measure—like connection or the worth of a smile or creating something that touches us—that’s the kind of stuff that are left to be desired.

No one does it in one leap though. Not all at once. It’s one step at a time. The question is no longer if you have time. The only question left is: Are you going to decide?

Two centuries ago, there was an old man with his wife that lived in a small village. They had two things they heavily relied on to survive: their son and their horse.

One day, the horse runs off. The people of the village gather around to console the family, “Oh my! How can this happen? What terrible luck!”

The old man looks at the group and gently replies, “Maybe yes. Maybe no.”

The next day, their stallion returns with a mare. He had been out looking for a mate. The villagers and the wife come together but this time to rejoice, “This is unbelievable. What good fortune.”

The old man again says, “Maybe yes. Maybe no.”

The next day, the son begins to train their new wild horse. In the process, the son falls off the horse and shatters his leg. The village was shocked.

But again the old man, trying to get through to the village says, “Maybe yes. Maybe no.”

The next day, the army comes through the village and recruits all of the able body young men for war. And, of course, the young man can’t fight with his leg.

(This story can continue on forever.)

Maybe yes. Maybe no.

We all have a default setting. The highs are as high as the sky and the lows can sink us down to depths of the sea.

Sometimes things will go wrong. Not everything is going to be perfect. And not everything is always going to be fine—no matter how much time we spend trying to make everything okay.

But all things will work for our experience. Those experiences will work for our benefit.

If we can just remember the old man, we can develop a new posture, one where we can welcome failure. We can skip self-pity. We can skip the labeling that were not good enough. We can skip the blame and shame.

Instead, we can be more kind to ourselves. We can be more kind to each other.

And if we can remember that we belong here we don’t have to tie our self-worth to our outcomes. Everyone of us has infinite potential and infinite worth. We don’t have to let extenuating circumstances dictate what kind of person we are going to be.

It’s great by choice.

We don’t have to wait for the world to act on us to do something about it.

It’s not very often we aren’t connected to WiFi or can’t get a signal or don’t have any bars.

But it’s in these moments we can find a better connection.

One that doesn’t rely on an operating system, a touchscreen, or battery life.

It’s seems incredibly simple, but connection isn’t measured by the strength of your WiFi signal. No, if you’re looking to measure with how you connect with others it’s this: Would we miss you if you were gone?

The greatest things in life start by small and simple means.

Like a seed, we grow the same way.

Little by little. Day after day. With one attempt after another. We fail, fail again, and eventually we learn to fail better.

But not by leaps and bounds. It’s step by step progression that we learn to live to our fullest potential.

How do we know if a meter stick is actually the length of a meter?

Easy, you grab a second meter stick and hold them side by side. Wait a minute. How do we know if that second meter stick is truly a meter?

So we head to the hardware store and compare again. But how do we know if that meter stick is a meter?

Next we go to the manufacturer. How does the manufacturer know that their meter stick is actually a meter? (I think you get the idea.)

Eventually, our journey would take us to a small shop in Sèvres, France. There we would find the world’s first meter stick. It’s a bar hung on the wall with the word “metre” above it.

The question is: How do we know if that bar is actually a meter?

The answer, of course, isn’t to continue to go in circles. No, we need to accept and believe that the bar is the length of a meter. This is what I mean when I say, “It’s all invented.” We have built our entire lives around these imaginary, invisible systems.

There is no formula to live a life of authenticity. We can’t simply follow the step by step set of instructions. It’s not a straight path. And yes, we all stumble while on it.

It’s natural to say, “I’m not taking another step. It’s dark and I need the light first to show me the way.” But what’s essential, is taking that step into the dark and having the faith that the light will shine.

From time to time, I think about the road and where it will take me.

As time passes, the more I realize that it’s not about the dummies guides, the short cuts, the life hacks, the ten steps to getting rich schemes that gets us to be an agent to act.

It’s not about the tactics. It’s not even about the road we’re on.

None of it matters if we’re not willing to take a step forward into the dark.

But the amygdala, the lizard brain, the natural man in all of us is afraid and keeps us from being the person God intended us to be. Our best selves.

Fighting biology is a difficult battle. One that may not be possible to win. So instead of trying to make the fear go away, learn to dance with it.

Spirituality can help us find a purpose. It can be the thing we use to fortify ourselves. Not so we can take away our challenges but to give us strength to overcome them.

You won’t know before you go. You won’t know that everything is going to be safe. You won’t know that everything is going to be okay. Not everything is always going to be okay all of the time. No one has a crystal ball. The fact is, you won’t know until you go.

We can’t eliminate all of the risk. We can’t say that once it’s completely safe and the outcome is certain then I’ll go. Without risk there is no leap. So instead of trying to eliminate the risk, we should minimize it.

In a world where three billion people are connected, it’s now easier than ever before to minimize risk. At the same time we can develop these skills:

• Rather than following a map, develop a compass.
• You can develop a compass by developing good judgement. But here is the paradox of judgement: Good judgement comes from experience. And experience comes from bad judgement.
• So then we have to ask, what’s the worst that can happen? Is this real risk? The kind where failure means death. Or is it perceived risk? The kind of risk where you will be judged. (The only way to avoid criticism is to do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.)

But still we won’t know if we will like this product or good or service until we actually use it. Most of us don’t try things anymore that we haven’t done before. And if you live in on a $3 a day, you certainly haven’t bought anything that your parents didn’t buy. For the rest of us, when is the last time you did something for the first time?

[That why we need to do a better job telling a story that resonates with the people around us. Stories that are going to make us cry. Stories that will make us miss you if you were gone. I don’t remember the brand of the last toaster I bought. I bought what was the cheapest because that’s what I needed. But I can remember my favorite book in college was On the Road by Jack Kerouac. That book changed me. Not bad for something that only cost me 20 bucks.]