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One of my sources of self-doubt involves assumptions. In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and say that all of my sources of self-doubt involve assumptions to some degree. That’s because self-doubt is often associated with how we believe we are perceived by others rather than on actual information about how others perceive us. Most of the time, I can’t actually know what a person thinks about me or how they view me without them telling me outright (and even that can be unreliable), so all I really have to go on are my interpretations of things that happen and how others treat me. That’s an imperfect way to model the world around me, but it’s all I’ve got. It’s all any of us really have.

Rather than make assumptions about what others think, it’s likely healthier and more productive to work with the things I can know like how I feel about myself and my work, the results of my work in the world around me, and the impact I perceive my actions as having on those around me. I can also ask other people for their input. That’s a much better option than making up stories about what they think because those stories are often just reflections of the tapes already playing in my mind. As a result, the stories I make up about others are probably just reflections of my own inner dialogue, so it’s really not about the other person at all! It’s all about me and my own self-assessment.

While that could be confusing, it should be reassuring. Learning to focus on what goes on in our own minds and in our own hearts can help drown out invalidating stories about other people, their feelings, and the operation of their minds. Getting to know other people is important, and learning to give and receive feedback is vital if we want to adopt a mindset that allows us to continuously get better.  I know that, in my life, I am most productive and have the greatest impact when I focus on understanding the processes of my mind and my heart. What I think and what I feel are within my span of control and focusing on changing them, when needed, will yield far greater results than seeking to change what other people think. In addition, what others observe me do and the improvements they see making in my own life can serve to influence. Influence is how we make our way into the hearts and minds of others.

Homeostasis keeps us alive. It is the tendency for balance within systems, especially within the bodies of living organisms. Body temperature in mammals, for example, is regulated internally. A mammal works hard at maintaining a consistent internal temperature. In a human being, that temperature is approximately 98 degrees, give or take a degree of variance. Our bodies burn fuel in an effort to keep it within a certain range. When it’s cold, we shiver to burn more fuel and generate heat. When it’s hot, we sweat to give our bodies a layer of moisture that helps radiate heat through our skin. Shiver. Sweat. Shiver again. It’s all designed to keep that temperature stable.

There are countless systems and interactions going on within our bodies aimed at maintaining an overall, homeostatic state. Homeostasis also applies to systems outside of our bodies. Ecological systems can be said to be in homeostasis when the environment provides the organisms living within it everything they need to maintain stable populations. The ratio of predator to prey contributes to the homeostatic state of the ecological system, too. Too many of either can have a devastating effect, overall, sending the entire system into chaos. Pollution, rainfall, rate of growth, and rate of decay are other variables that affect these ecological systems. Balance between them all is essential.

Homeostasis, then, is a very good thing.

Until it’s not.

Homeostasis becomes an issue when it is applied to the inner workings of the human mind. Homeostasis is good for the biology stuff, for sure. It’s when the cognitive stuff kicks in that homeostasis can be troublesome. When we experience extremes in life, the tendency is to have extreme reactions to the experience. These reactions are both cognitive and emotional. I differentiate the two as process of mind (cognitive or what you think) and process of heart (emotional or what you feel). Regardless of terminology, they are extreme cognitive and emotional reactions to extreme stimuli. These stimuli elicit thoughts and feelings that fall outside our normal range.

If we won the lottery, we’d feel euphoric. If we lost a limb, we’d feel destitute. The influx of money would likely lead to weeks and months of “floating on cloud nine,” while the loss of function would likely lead to weeks and months of struggle and depression. However, what research has found is that people who experience such extremes tend to revert, over time, to a set-point, a level of cognitive and emotional being that is characteristic of the individual. In other words, once they get past the extreme reaction to the extreme event, they go back to equilibrium. It’s almost as if a sort of balance exists for our thoughts and feelings. There are peaks and valleys, but the inclination is to get back to “normal.” That’s homeostasis.

The problem is that homeostasis becomes a barrier to happiness and overall well-being when we look to change, to move outside our range of normal. As we attempt to change, something pulls us back to our old patterns, habits, and ways of being. Our bodies don’t like extremes, and our minds don’t like extremes, either. But extremes are what are required to move outside of comfort zones and effect real change.

As the calendar year winds down, our thoughts and feelings will likely move to extremes, potentially motivating us and hardening our resolve to do things differently in our lives. When the new year arrives, the bias will be towards action. The bias generally does not last long. Whether or not action actually yields results depends on the ability of the individual to overcome homeostasis. Knowing that, we can plan in advance and develop interventions to keep us from regressing to the mean.

I took my wife and two sons to a corn maze this weekend.  If you live in the Midwest, it’s a thing.  We do it every year.  We wander through the maze, collecting “punches” on our map along the way.  It’s not enough to just discover the maze; there’s a higher goal of finding each of the stations with a specifically-shaped hole punch along the way.  Where we go, there are three levels of difficulty.  This year, we chose the most difficult path.  On this path, the locations of the stations are not marked, so gathering each hole punch is a true challenge.  Corn stalks are tall.  At 6’2’’, I feel like a shorty next to the rows and rows of corn stalks.  This year was the first year we braved the “expert” path.

Over the years, I’ve tried to teach my boys how to use a map to navigate the maze.  Corn maze maps are not like conventional road maps.  Intersections aren’t clearly marked.  Milestones (stations) and landmarks (bridges and climbing platforms) are represented at their approximate locations on the map.  The paths themselves are kinda-sorta like the picture on the map; what was designed on paper does not translate 100% to the actual paths cut through the rows of corn.  In many ways, learning to navigate a corn maze is a lot like learning to accomplish goals in life: what we have is a direction, not necessarily infallible directions.

A couple of hours before we left for the corn maze, my 17-year-old son clicked the virtual “submit” button on his very first college application.  There are several more to complete, but the first one is done.  It was a major milestone in his life.  Through much of the process of completing the application and writing the necessary essays to go with it, he has relied on several people to act as guides, to help and nudge and offer advice.  In the end, though, he has lead us in the direction of his goal.  No directions from us, just direction from him.  Getting to the first milestone, that first submitted application, was a major moment in his life.

A few hours later, for the first time ever, he took the map in his hands, and lead my wife, my youngest, and me through the corn maze.  It wasn’t our smoothest excursion to date, but it was another major moment in his life…and in mine.

Nothing subtle here: my oldest son is taking the reins.  He is assuming the leadership role in his life.  It’s amazing to witness, and I could not be more proud of him.  I’ve written about my boys and my family many times in the past.  Being a parent has taught me more lessons about myself and my life than just about anything else I can think of.  Once again, one of my sons provided opportunity for me to pause and reflect.  Life piles on experiences, often in clusters seemingly designed for teaching.  I don’t know how or why things work this way.  Perhaps it is as much a function of my expectations and interpretation.  Perhaps there is something bigger at work.

Either way, this weekend, between a college application and a corn maze, I was reminded of the importance of not relying on maps provided by others and of assuming the leadership role in your life.

We wind up where we choose to go.

 

When I was a wee lad, doing something “on purpose” usually implied that I’d gotten myself into trouble and my assertion that “it was an accident” was being called into question.  Doing something on purpose was, more often than not, a path towards unpleasant repercussions.

Naturally, I did less “on purpose” and learned to let the flow of the current take me.

Thanks to the guidance of influential adults like my parents, a few great teachers, and a mentor, I came to understand that the world was filled with choices and that I had to make them.  Simply allowing things to happen…that wasn’t going to cut it.

During my junior or senior year in high school, one of the electives I took was “Library Sciences.”  Yes, 17-year-old me was hanging out with the librarian at my school, learning the Dewey Decimal System inside and out, keeping the card catalog updated, and returning books to the shelves.

Did you catch that part about the card catalog?  I’m talking Old School card catalog, too.  Rows of wooden drawers that were filled with actual index cards upon which were printed all the relevant bits of information regarding each of the books in the library.  A card for every single, dingle book.  And when I say “printed,” I really mean typed, as in “letter, numbers, and words put on paper by a human being using a typewriter with great speed and efficiency, but not so fast as to jam the keys.”  Where my typists at?  Woot-woot!

During one of my excursions with the book cart to put books back on shelves, I stumbled across the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu.  Instantly attracted and intrigued, I checked the book out and plunged in.  To make a long story short, I wound up asking for my own copy for my birthday.  I still have the copy I received and refer to it often.

Regarding choices, I learned this from Lao Tzu: non-action is action, so not deciding is, in fact, a decision.  We tend to omit non-action when articulating the options before us.  However, choosing to do nothing does not absolve one of the outcomes.  This was a profound lesson for me, one that I’ve never forgotten.  It’s a guiding principle today as surely as it was the day I realized its significance.

Going with the flow, then, is as much a choice as standing firm in the middle of the river, fighting the current threatening to pull me down and take me away.  Choosing either path is, in fact, done on purpose.  Now, whether one path is more purposeful than the other is another thing altogether…

A few years ago, I read the book The On-Purpose Person by Kevin McCarthy, and I thought again about the lesson of non-action and action.  In the book, Kevin offers a methodology for prioritizing how we spend our time, talent, and resources to help us stay focused on purpose.  Choice is central to Kevin’s method.  At every step, the reader must choose how to spend their time and talent.

Learn a new coding language or binge on Stranger Things: action or non-action.  Both are actions, both choices.  Both are done deliberately, on purpose.  And both can be precisely on purpose, aligned with who we want to be and where we need to be at a given moment in time.

Choose.  Choose wisely.  Choose with your purpose in mind.  Then, embrace the outcomes.  I believe it’s that simple.  At home and at work, we get to choose.  No more “accidents.”  Leave those up to Mayhem.  You…you get to choose.

Choose to love your purpose and pursue it relentlessly.

You learn a lot about what people really think about you when the stuff hits the fan in their lives.  What they look to you to provide to them when times are tough provides clue to what they really think about you.  Can you discern what matters most to them: the relationship or the transactional value you provide?  Do they turn to you for support, advice, guidance, or a long, warm hug?  Or do they turn to you for a business lead, a loan, or backup in a confrontation?  There is plenty to learn in how others treat you.  Sounds like common sense, but emotion often keeps us from seeing the truth.

Don’t judge the answers to these questions, and don’t judge the person.  Just use those moments to help you better comprehend where you fit into their world view.  With eyes more widely-opened, you can mold the relationship to either meet their expectations or yours.  Chances are, making it fit your expectations will take more energy and work, focused intentionally on the outcomes you want.  Just remember that your intention doesn’t guarantee success.  Or happiness.

 

I often wonder why we are so quick to judge one another.  What’s more perplexing is what I perceive to be a lack of consistency when it comes to judgment within my own mind.  There are times when I can listen to stories that, upon reflection, should have elicited snap judgment on my part.  There are other times when something flares up inside of me, and I honestly don’t understand why.  I see similar patterns in other people.  Have you ever listened to a close friend or family member rant or vent about something and not understood why the object of their story hit the nerve that it did?  Have you ever seen eye-to-eye with someone on one topic but totally been light years apart on others and not understood how or why?  This simple exercise in reflection should be something of an indicator that judgment is a very personal experience.  I also think it’s an indicator that there are few, if any, absolutes.

In judging others, I think we have opportunity to evaluate and judge our own values and beliefs.  Judgment is as much about our complete confidence in our rightness as it is our complete lack of confidence in our own beliefs.  More importantly, I think the moments when we feel the strongest urge to judge might be reflections of the myriad moments of doubt or the many instances when our actions were incongruent with our stated beliefs.  Perhaps we are too quick to find fault in others to help elevate our self-perceptions, too quick to express judgment out loud to assuage the guilt and pain we whisper inside.  In judging others, I believe we both judge and punish ourselves.  Pushing down another to raise ourselves never, ever feels truly good inside.  There is no spiritual nourishment from spiritual degradation of a fellow human being.

At this moment in time, in the United States of America, there is a whole lot of judging going on.  It would be far more useful if we held our tongues, reflected on the origin of our judgment of others, and engaged in some constructive conversations about how to heal the injuries on both sides of the growing divide.

The central idea is that great leadership happens intentionally, not accidentally. At the core of that intentionality is a set of guiding principles…value, really…the guides the behavior of the leader. It’s more than just a bulleted list of ideas. It is a system, an interconnected library of concepts, beliefs, novel ideas, musings, facts, and hunches that allows to leader to function. The tighter and more refined the system, the more effective the leader. It manifests itself in the world as a philosophy, even if the individual in question isn’t aware of it.

I’ve read many times that nothing scales like words. I’m coming to understand how and why this is true. When you write something down, it’s hard to ignore it. You can come back to it later, read it again, and contemplate the things you’ve written. You can edit. You can adjust. You can add. You can omit. Words on paper or in electronic form are fluid in that they can be molded and reshaped as often as the author chooses to work them. They can also be shared. In sharing, the words take on a life of their own. Once they are shared, even if express consent has not been granted, they are open to further editing by other authors, authors who spring forth from the pool of readers. You see, words are ideas, and ideas that are shared are unleashed. They are set free. They are released. Regardless of what we intend, every word, once written, belongs to the person who reads them, thus the fluidity I mentioned takes on a whole new potential. Now the remolding and reshaping is happening at the hands of others, and each one of them could be going about it in their own, unique way. That’s how words are scalable. Words scale because that is their nature.

For several years, I wrote words and hosted them on a blog. I wrote a lot of words. I wrote about 200,000 of them in that one spot alone, comprised of over 1 million characters. If you would have printed them out, in their original blog form, they would have occupied 600 pages. That’s a lot of paper, a lot of words. That’s a lot of ideas. Woven into the chains of words and ideas, I came to realize, was the essence of who I am, my values and most of my beliefs. If I died, a piece of my consciousness would live on, indefinitely, as long as those words existed in some form. That’s scalability.

Words are more than scalable, however.

How about a real “holy shit” realization: words aren’t only scalable, they are the conduit for the transferal of human consciousness. I can live on forever, in some form, in the DNA of the thoughts, beliefs, and feelings of those whose lives I touch through words. My ideas can become part of the DNA of their library, of their philosophy of life, of leadership, of family…of anything, really. If what I have to say means something to someone else, if it makes an impression or affects them, if it somehow alters the electrical activity in their living, thinking brains, then a piece of me exists in them. A bit of my consciousness has been transferred. My ideas are no less a part of me than the DNA in my cells. Probably more so because some ideas were created by me. My DNA? I didn’t make that. I came with that. But my ideas? They are mine…I made them, often from the ideas of others. I guess that means that when I transfer bits of my consciousness, the consciousness of those who influenced me gets passed along, too. See that? Words are the conduit for the transferal of human consciousness.

I think that’s a pretty compelling argument for writing stuff down. Write it all down.

There are two reasons to fear the walking dead.

First, if they get their way, they will eat you. They will bite you, tear out your entrails, and munch on whatever parts of you they can get in their eager, chomping mouths. That’s probably the primary reason to fear the walking dead. On TV that is.

The second reason to fear the walking dead, and this is the real, unspoken dread of those who still survive, is conversion. If you die, you become one of them. It has happened many times on the TV show “The Walking Dead,” and each time, the reactions of the survivors betray the truth: no fate is more dreadful, more terrible, to them than becoming the walking horrors that infest their world.

If you’re not a fan of the show, like me, the term “walking dead” is as much a metaphor as anything else. And this second reason that characters fear the walking dead is the only real reason any of us have to nurture the same fear. Any of us can fall prey to the kind of mindless, soulless existence that the metaphor implies. It is the fear of living a life without meaning, a life without a sense of purpose, a life without connection to the greater energy and potential of human existence. The walking dead, unfortunately, are legion, and falling into that shuffling monotony is, indeed, a good reason to be afraid.

There are many ways to fall into unconscious existence. Of these, one reason haunts me most: the unconscious life that comes from a commitment in the heart to disconnect. An intellectual commitment is much different from an emotional, spiritual commitment. Intellectual commitments are easy to forget. They are easy to ignore. They fall by the wayside because the mind can be distracted. This is why we are able to rationalize and justify all kinds of behaviors, even those that run contrary to the things we say we believe in and stand for. Emotional commitments, on the other hand, come from some place deeper inside, and they are etched into hardier material. They are not easy to forget because they are not from the place that remembers, at least not superficially. They are not easy to ignore because they are not of a voice outside of the self. They are of a place that has no voice because it needs to voice. They are of a place that is the source of all voice. They cannot fall by the wayside because they are an essential part of the self, of the traveler, thus cannot be shed when extra weight becomes a burden on the journey.

Emotional commitments are made and locked into our hearts. There, they influence and affect our lives in ways we do not always understand or perceive. They are as much conscious and they are unconscious. The most important thing, though, about which we must be aware is that, once made, they are nearly impossible to reverse, at least not without a great deal of conscious, deliberate work. When an emotional commitment is made unconsciously and remains unconscious…this is the most destructive, corrosive form of commitment. I know because I see it often in the workplace. I know because I hear about it often in conversations with friends. I know because I have fallen victim to it myself.

The details of my sad story aren’t important, at least not to this telling. What matters here is the discovery of the commitment. That is where the freedom comes from. However, the path to discovery can be as long and treacherous as any journey undertaken by Pizarro or Columbus. Like any medical diagnosis, we must first start with symptoms. We must recognize them, and that is not always easy. After all, the walking dead do not understand their condition. They do not know what they are or how they came to be that way. When we are living that kind of vacant, automatic life, it is hard to see the state we are in for what it is. All it takes, however, is the smallest nudge to spark a slight recognition, and that spark is enough to start the fire that can shed light on the path out of the darkness. Once we begin to sense the symptoms, then the path to recovery comes into focus. Whether we elect to stay on the path and do the hard work is another matter altogether.

Along every inch of the path, the temptation to just forget, to return to unconsciousness, is always present. It gains strength the closer we get to understanding the source, the illness itself that causes the symptoms. When that illness is uncovered and understood to be a commitment to be disconnected, our options become clear, too. It is at this point, when the commitment made in the heart is remembered and understood, that we have our greatest power. Not only can we recommit to a different outcome, we can also tap into the great energy that is released when old bonds are broken. Like the breaking of nuclear bonds, tremendous energy is released that we can harness and focus to great result. What that result might be…that is the unique, personal commitment that each of us makes to being something other than what we have been in the past when that past commitment has been the limiting factor in our lives. This is the moment of great change. And with change comes transition…

There is, in reality, only one reason to fear the walking dead, and that is becoming one of the hordes yourself. Don’t give up on yourself, though. Unlike the dead in the TV show, any of us can come back from the darkness.

Have you returned from being one of the walking dead? Have you helped someone else out of the darkness? I believe that anyone can make their way back. How about you?

Observing the world and creating mental models for how things work is probably one of the oldest human pastimes. One could argue that it is not only a fundamental part of the human experience but a vital part of the process that took humankind from Stone Age to…whatever age we are in today. Our brains are hardwired to take stimulus in through the senses and categorize all of the data coming in. We cannot help but try to make sense of the Universe with every breath, with every heartbeat.

What we know and believe about our Universe is based on observation. Our own observation is important, but the accumulated observations of all of humankind, across all of the ages, are just as important. One of the gifts of humanity is this collective storehouse of information. We don’t have to learn everything for ourselves. We don’t have to observe everything ourselves. There is a certain body of knowledge and understanding that we can tap just by virtue of being a member of the human race. Throughout human history, the volume and accessibility of knowledge, of data and information, has increased to the point that there are few things that require us to actually experience them for ourselves in order to understand them at least a little bit. It’s a double-edged sword, for sure, but it’s a miracle of our modern existence.

And, yet, much of the richness of life comes from firsthand experience. We can take esoteric, conceptual, theoretical knowledge and create our own ideas about what it must be like to experience a wide array of things. Ultimately, though, the Universe gains texture and perspective when we test the models we build in our heads. For example, we know small things make big things. We know that atoms make molecules. Molecules bind together to make…well, everything. The atoms themselves appear to be made of small stuff, and the smaller stuff appears to be made of yet smaller stuff. The big things around us form bigger things, and the bigger things appear to make up yet bigger things. Stuff and things, big and small. And we can observe it all.

Every beat of the heart, every breath drawn into the lungs, represents a small thing that, when strung together with other small things, makes up big things. The small moments of our existence…the loving caress, the tender moments, the connections between people, the heartbreaking tragedies…make up the bigger narrative that is a life. Each seemingly small, insignificant life is woven into a vast, unbreakable tapestry that stretches back to a past we cannot see and forward to a future we cannot fathom. We may be small on our own, but all small things make big things. Together, we are Humanity, capitalized, and we are inextricably, irrevocably, undeniably interconnected.

The atoms in your finger move planets on the other side of the Universe. Your heartbeat fuels the fire in distant stars that no longer exist. To understand our place in this Universe, on this planet, in this moment, we need only embrace the answer to the question of “Why am I here?” The answer is found in small things that make big things.

The question, it turns out, isn’t asked by us. It is asked of us. The answer to the question is ours to build from all the small things at our disposal.

My friend is leaving. My aunt died. More sad stuff will happen in life in the years to come. But it’s all OK because it’s all part of the natural way of things. It hurts, and it aches. It’s the way of things, though. There is no real vacuum. Bubbles do not last forever. You can never go back to what once was. No matter how hard you try, what once was is gone. You are changed, so that old, familiar place isn’t even being experienced by the same individual.

I know this sounds weird, but the ONLY way to get any closure…and with these things I need closure…is to see this all the way through to the gut-punching, heart-wrenching end. I am not going to let this opportunity to feel such deep sadness slip away.

I’ve done it before, let these things slip away. I’ve avoided and masked. I’ve pretended that reality was something other than what it was. I’ve let people…just leave.

It’s awful…never works. I just wind up burning bridges and hurting feelings.

It doesn’t have to take much. Give them a hug and tell them that you’ll never forget them. It’s that simple. That’s good bye between people who care enough about each other to be sad at parting. It’s enough to say good bye to a loved one beyond the reach of life.

It’s funny, but I am having one of the most profound, full-circle moments of my life this week. I believe that most things that haunt us are the spirits of injuries from deep into our childhoods. Through meditation, I’ve figured out that my childhood injury regarding loss and closure was the first death that affected me. When I was a freshman in high school, my grandfather died. Ironically, he was the father of the aunt whose passing I currently mourn. At the time he passed, we lived in Mexico. It was right in the middle of the school year, so my parents had to make the difficult call to travel to the U.S. and leave me and my younger brother at home when they went to the funeral. It must have been such a hard call to make. In the end, I never said good bye, never closed the circle of the relationship. It was the first death that really touched me.

I never got over that pain, that sorrow. I used to lose myself something terrible when I visited his grave. The hurt returned each time.  Except this past April, when I took my wife and kids to visit my grandparents at the cemetery, that intense grief was gone. Instead, I just felt happy to have my family with me, to share a part of our family history with my sons and my wife. I couldn’t figure out what was different. Maybe it just took decades to heal. I didn’t know.

But now I’m realizing that I’ve been reliving that moment of injury my whole life…over and over again…for nearly 30 years. I’ve been looking for a way to get over abrupt loss left wide open, unclosed, by recreating it at every moment of parting, at every moment of loss in my life. I relive the moment…and run. I run away from it. I don’t say good bye. I don’t close the loop. I don’t see friends off when they leave.  I don’t fully mourn family members when they pass.  

At least that what I used to do. It dawned on me that I’ve been doing it all wrong. I have been so, so wrong.

You don’t turn your back on loss. You turn to face it. You close the loop. You grab hold of grief. You say the difficult good bye. You give the hugs. You dry the tears. You do all that, and you put the loss to rest. You do it for both you and, in the case of friends moving on, you do it for them. You do it because you care. You do it because you want peace. You do it because it is right.

You can just give me a fist-bump instead, too, if you like. That’s cool. Just don’t pretend that what’s there isn’t there, that grief and loss will just go away. They do not. You have to release them.

This is the truth I have learned from a circle 30 years in the making.