Boy is this a common pattern. When I have enough money, I’ll write that novel I always dreamed of. When I reach this next milestone I’ll spend more time with my family. When I’ve made my company a success I’ll have children. And on and on and on.
It’s always an excuse, and it’s always a mistake. If it’s important for you to do, do something about it now. If it’s not important for you to do, let go of the need to pretend it is.
Find a way to get started on that novel today. Find a way to spend more time with your family today. Start making that child today.
What’s the worst that could happen? You might find you really didn’t like writing a novel. Great, then you just saved yourself the time spent dreaming about it, and you can get started chasing the next dream. Or you might find that you love it, and you should’ve done this years ago.
If not now, when? If not here, where? If not you, who?
October 28, 2007 · 1 comment
I know it’s not as simple as that, but this article in FastCompany flipped a switch in my head.
“The cutting edge, the thing that is getting more traction, is the effort to sell services rather than products,” Brown says. It’s a shift in perspective that can transform a business. It’s IBM selling you computing services-server space, processing capacity-rather than actual computers. A company selling computers wants to sell as many servers as possible, without much regard for the power they consume or cooling they require; a company that sells computer services wants the most efficient, cool-running servers it can make. Companies that are able to turn their business inside out this way find that addressing sustainability issues can change from a burden or cost to an opportunity for efficiency and profit.
Of course, if the vendor is responsible for providing the service, not the product, and for the disposal of the product, they’ll have a vested interest in making the product last longer, be more durable, and be cheaper and more efficient to dispose of.
At the same time, a subscription service over a one-time product sale gives recurring revenue and customer loyalty. It becomes harder to switch provider, which is good for the companies. Along with the halo effect of doing the right thing for the planet.
While we’re at it with the miniature posts, here’s another tiny piece of advice: Instead of frying your “frikadeller” meat balls on the frying pan, throw then in the oven on a baking sheet at 200C/400F for half an hour. No more getting them stuck to the frying pan, no more burnt or half-done meatballs, no more meatballs falling apart while checking if they’re done. Just leave them alone for half an hour, and you’re done. What’s easier than that?
It pays to eat a whole duck every few months and save the fat. I keep a jar of fat and jelly from last time I had duck in the fridge. It’s great for frying instead of oil or butter, throw a slab of duck fat and jelly in the sauce for a rich flavor, or throw in a bit in when you make bolognese. And it keeps virtually forever. It’s a god-send.
I’ve seen it many times that a give fear during your childhood builds a corresponding strength in you. In other words, the fear, while painful, has a gift for you. The challenge becomes in adult life it let go of the fear while retaining the strength. To not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Take my wife, for example. Her parents’ marriage fell apart and her father died of cancer shortly thereafter. She’s been haunted by a fear that her life would fall apart, and consequently seen it as her responsibility to keep everything together.
That fear has made her a really really good project manager, because it has built in her the ability to see everything that could possibly go wrong in any given circumstance, and the team can then take precautions to mitigate those risks.
I’ve seen it in many times. For some, the fear of not being okay has made them really good at learning new things. The fear of being rejected has made others really good listeners and really good at intuiting what other people need.
But as long as the fear is still in place driving that, it’s a painful and draining process.
Letting go of the fear, however, doesn’t mean the strength goes away, too. In fact, the strength can help you be grateful to the fear for everything it’s given you, which in turn makes it easier to let go of the fear.
So long as you simply resist the fear, it’s going to stay where it is. Accepting it, allowing it to be, recognizing that it was the only possible response to the experiences you had at some point, and being grateful for what that has done for you, including the strength it’s built, allows it to let go of you.
What are your examples?
I was watching Charlie Rose’s interview with Warren Buffet from May this year, and here’s what stuck with me:
what stuck with me was the focus on having fun (Charlie Rose asks if he knows anyone who’s having as
Have fun – Rose asks if Buffet can think of anyone having as much fun as he is, and Buffet says no. Five years back when I had a long conversation with my very successful uncle about what made him successful, and his number one item was to have fun. Number two was to surround yourself with the right people.
Avoid hard work. Buffet quotes Reagan for this gem: “They say that hard work never killed anybody, but why take the chance?” The idea that you have to work hard to achieve anything is such a widespread lie. I think it’s so popular because it gives unsuccessful people an excuse for not being successful: They chose not to, because they prioritized family over putting in the hours required to succeed. It’s comforting, but it’s bullshit. You can be successful without working hard, if you spend your time on the right things – the things that you’re strong at, the things you enjoy doing, and the things that
Which brings us to outsourcing and do what you do best. Like for example outsourcing his philanthropy to Bill and Melinda Gates and others who enjoy that more and are better at it, so he can keep doing what he enjoys, which is to make more money that the foundations can give away.
No HR, PR, or IR departments. Makes sense. Just 19 people in Berkshire.
I’ve been a fan of the strengths-based approach to life improvement since First, Break All the Rules, but it wasn’t until the most recent book in the series, Go Put Your Strengths to Work that I was finally able to get some real traction from it.
The key was the exercise where you go through an entire week writing down for each task you did whether you loved it or loathed it. Whether it made you feel stronger and weaker. It seems pretty obvious, but it’s very useful to remind yourself to pay attention to what’s good for you and what’s not.
What you do at the end of the week, then, is summarize and generalize the things you love to do so it matches your criteria. During the week you write down “loved talking on the phone with Simon”, and these other things you did, and at the end of the week, you synthesize that into “love talking to smart people i care about on the phone when we talk about something meaningful”, for example. You make it general and specific enough at the same time. And then you do the same for the “loathed” list.
One of the surprises to me was that I really enjoy being on the phone, hence the example above. A couple years back some guys I was sharing an office with remarked at how the way I communicated with my customers on the phone was really special. I could get away with saying things to my customers that they’d never dream of. I didn’t make much of it at the time, but going over my “Loved to do” list, I noticed that there was a whole lot of phone conversations on it.
It made me realize that I enjoy phone conversations even more than face-to-face conversations for certain things. When I’m on the phone, I’m always using a headset, I walk all around the house, I move, gesticulate, walk up to the whiteboard and take notes, make a cup of tee if I need that, and so on. I can let go of any concerns over how I look or use my body, and just be present in the conversation. So there’s a strength right there, that I wasn’t aware of.
Once you have your strengths down, black on white so to speak, it gets a lot more difficult to ignore them, and even more difficult to suffer more of the things you loathe.
The book overall is okay, but it’s way bloated. It’s north of 250 pages, but would be much better at 50. I know Philip Greenspun has been singing this song for more then a decade, but something has to change about the publishing industry. It’s a waste of people’s time, a waste of trees, a waste of fuel shipping those extra pages around.
The above was pretty much the only specific value I got from the book, though if you’re in a traditional job with bosses and such I suspect some of the later chapters may be relevant to you.
I watched The Secret the other night, and here’s my take on it:
- The focus on money and cars made me cringe. I almost couldn’t watch it, but I persevered.
- I found the Da Vinci Codesque production quality and their tone of voice distasteful.
- I find the whole packaging, what with calling it “The Secret” and making things sound more mysterious than they are annoying.
- The fact that this film taught millions of people that they don’t have to stay victims, that they have some power over their own lives, is truly valuable.
- The law of attraction is real.
- There’s another law called the law of manifestation. The two got merged into one in the film.
- I believe you don’t have an absolute say in anything. You’re not creating, you’re co-creating. There’s about 7 billion other people out there co-creating their reality, too, so it’s a negotiation.
- I believe you still do have to work for the things you want in your life, it’s just that the law of attraction is going to attract people who wants to help, and the law of manifestation is going to help you manifest that which you envision.
At the end of the day, I believe there’s immense value in just clarifying what it is that you truly want. It could be using a vision board as the entrepreneur in the film talked about, or it could just be a written list.
And by imagining how having these things in your life would feel you can sense whether this is something you truly want, or it’s a surrogate. Like money. Everyone wants money, but by itself, money is not going to bring you happiness. At all. Envisioning it and feeling it can help you see your real motive and your true wants.
Having a vision will make sure you have a focus, you know where you’re headed, you know why you get up in the morning. I’ll help you notice the opportunities that come your way that you otherwise might have missed.
I went to see a presentation by Ole Kaare Føli (horrible website, sorry) tonight. His work is quite fascinating. He finds areas in the body that are tense or stuck, and he works to release them. He originally learned from his father who was entirely self-taught, and now his son is building a business around it with an education and such. His claim to broad fame is that he’s worked with Bjarne Riis, Tour de France-winning cyclist, and Sanne Salomonsen, Danish rock singer.
I’m not going to summarize the whole thing here, much of it was repeats from his book, but a few nuggets:
Your breath is central to all well-being. A deep breath with a deep sigh on the out-breath connects you with your emotions and releases tension.
Fear affects the kidneys, anger affects the liver. Repressed anger affects both neck and back.
The stomach is what he calls the waste basket of the body. The stomach has a very large number of nerve endings, and all kinds of emotions end up here. I’m absolutely fascinated with these connections between body parts and psychology.
Yoga is good, but frequently practiced without awareness, at a too fast pace. Do it with awareness and at your own pace, and go as far as you can. Don’t force the positions.
Most professional bikers have old shock stuck in their tissue. Bjarne Riis had residue from the death of his brother while he was an embryo, which caused his mother to feel guilt all through her pregnancy. Once that was released, Bjarne lost interest in riding the bike.
Ole has never taken a vaccine, and neither have his kids or grand kids. All are fine. They also don’t drink any cows milk, and they don’t use flour toothpaste. All three generations. And all are fine. I love when people buck trends like these. I haven’t used soap or shampoo in 15 years, except to wash my hands. It’s just not necessary. (And guess what? The only place I have problems with dry skin is on my hands – I think I’m going to stop using soap to wash my hands now.)
Phew, that last post felt a bit heavy. So to lighten things up a bit, here’s how to make the greatest bolognese or ragú or meat sauce, or whatever you want to call it. Same technique applies to Danish-style chili con carne, or any other meat-and-tomato-based dish.
- Lots of heat. Really fry the meat. Minced ox meat will release a lot of liquid, and if you don’t remove it, the temperature won’t raise above boiling, and the meat won’t get caramelized, and the caramelization is where all the richness comes from. So I remove the liquid with a spoon to get the meat to really fry at high temperature, and then I add the liquid back in later, because after all it’ll have more flavor than plain water which is what I’d have to add otherwise.
- Lots of salt. Tomatoes love salt. It’s hard to put too much salt in. Put it in early, so it can really get deep inside that tomato sauce.
- Lots of fat, and different kinds. I use olive oil, pancetta, which also has a bit of fat, a slab of duck fat, and a dollop of butter. Fat pulls out the flavor. I also pour extra god olive oil over the finished dish, it really gives it that final kick.
- Lots of time. I put it in the oven at 180C/350F for as long as I can up to 6 hours. I try to get at least 3 hours. Something dramatic happens to the tomatoes after about 3 hours, where all the flavors just go wham!
The secret to all great flavors is the five tastes: Sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami. Keep those in mind when you adjust the flavor, right before putting it in the oven.
Bon apetit!
October 24, 2007 · 1 comment
For so many years I’ve been dodging fate. Ignored my calling. Run away from my purpose.
What’s my purpose? I believe I’m called upon to heal large numbers of people. To end their suffering, to bring them peace, and to let them express their love and creativity.
Sounds big? You bet. And it scares the hell out of me, and I want to cry with joy and freedom at the same time. But most of all, I feel like surrendering.
Why the running away? Several reasons.
First, I’m terrified. Why me, dammit! I’m doing fine. I’m minding my own business, making a living, taking care of my family. Can I please just be left alone?
I’m terrified at the thought of everything that seems to go with the job: Having to get out in front of a large number of people and pretend I have anything to teach; writing a book: working with people individually and in groups; pretending I know the Truth. Right now, I’m scared people will read this and think I’m a selfdelusional fruitcake.
Second, who am I to think I have anything to give? So many people are smarter, better looking, better communicators, more spiritual, more peaceful, more powerful than me. Who am I to think I have anything to add?
Third, wouldn’t everyone want to do this if they got the chance? Obviously we can’t all go around teaching like this.
Since I was a child, I’ve had a great fascination with “Mahatma Gandhi”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandhi, or at least the idea about him that I got from watching the movie as a kid. That quiet, peaceful, egoless, yet immensely powerful that he touched so many people, it blew me away. My entire life, I’ve firmly believed that everyone would want to be Gandhi if they could. And of course we can’t all be Gandhi, that would be madness. Nnly recently did I realize hardly anyone wants to be Gandhi.
But all of those reservations are of the ego. They’re thoughts. They’re about fear.
The truth is, I understand how to live a life free of suffering. I have an innate ability to understand and accept and love other people for who they are (And my self? Mmmm, that’s taken a bit of work) . And I have the ability to communicate that understanding. It would be a crime to let ego get in the way of that.
Let me illustrate with an example. As you probably know, I’m taking this coaching education with Sofia Manning, and it’s excellent, it’s brought so many amazing things into my life. But the core method that they teach is quite rigid, and it doesn’t go to the level of true healing that’s really all that practically all of us truly need – when we’re ready. That type of work is what my coach, Bruce, is doing with me.
So I was doing a coaching session a few weeks ago, when my client brought up a topic that was clearly much better suited for a “Bruce” type approach than a “Sofia” approach. I could do a Sofia, and we’d make progress, but it wouldn’t be nearly as valuable.
So the thought that popped into my head first was that I had to practice what I’d been taught, it was much too soon to stray away. Maybe in three months’ time. After all, I’d only been coached this way, I’d never been taught how to do it with others.
But here’s where I got it wrong: It’s not about me. Those thoughts are just my ego being afraid of doing something wrong. “Let’s stick to the script, so no-one can blame me,” it says. It’s fear talking. What would love do here?
Love would help my client heal as fully as possible, as directly as possible.
And this, more than anything, is the pill I’ve finally had to swallow: This is not about me. This is about how I can be of service. This is about life. In fact, it’s about capital-L Life.
Life wants to use you, and it’s trying to tell you how. You can either choose to listen, or you can try and pretend it’s not there. But it’s not going anywhere. It’ll keep on bugging you until you put your ego aside and start fulfilling Life’s plan for you.
When will you start listening?
Vi har købt et lille hus på Amager så vi har lidt mere plads og have når nu vi får barn nummer to om lidt, så vi skal have solgt vores lejlighed på Frederiksberg.
Klik her for flere billeder.
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Du kan få den billigt hvis du slår til her, dels fordi vi gerne vil have den solgt hurtigt, dels fordi du får del i besparelsen på mæglersalæret hvis du køber den direkte – vi foretrækker et salg til netværket fremfor et salg til fremmede.
Men du skal reagere hurtigt. Om max en uge sætter vi mægler på, og så bliver prisen højere.
Jeg vil ikke skrive prisen her, men send mig en mail, hvis du er interesseret.
I’ve just finished reading Sharif Abdullah’s execellent Creating a World That Works for All, and this paragraph in particular called out at me:
Someone said that our “calling” is the place where our deepest joy intersects with the deepest needs of the Earth. I add a further definition: our calling is the place where our inner joy and our inner terror meet. Our calling is our place of both joy and sacrifice. Waht risk are the Earth and her families asking of us? I love speaking to groups, but I also experience a moment of terror every time I do so. WHere is your terror? There lies the direction of your compassion. (p167)
Two things about it. First, it reminded me, once again, that life is not supposed to be without terror and other negative emotions all the time. The goal is not for pain to go away, but to let it be, without resisting, so it can flow through us like a river and make room for the next experience. I seem to keep forgetting this simple point.
Second, I recognize this exact feeling from my coaching sessions. I love doing coaching. I love getting so close to another person, I love that space that we create together. But I also feel that moment of terror. Every time. Which is odd, because people tell me I seem so natural, not afraid of anything that might come up. But the truth is that for a moment, I’m terrified. I just try to let that be and not react on it.
What about you? Where does joy and terror meet for you?
It’s easy to get caught up in a mindset of “this project absolutely needs to be done by the end of the month, so we’ll just tough it out.” Unfortunately, it’s a really bad idea.
If it doesn’t feel good to do the work, chances are you’re doing shitty work.
Great work takes passion, love, and creativity. And these go into hiding when negative emotions are running the show.
Trust that there is a way to do everything that you truly need to do that also feels good. Or at least not bad.
There’s three productive ways to relate to work: Acceptance, enjoyment, and enthusiasm.
You can accept things like taking out the trash. It’s rarely passionate or even joyful, but it has to be done, and you can at least fully accept that.
Enthusiasm is when you’re on a larger-than-life roll, like when David created and evangelized Rails.
Enjoyment are for all the things in-between.
If you can’t accept, enjoy, or be enthusiastic about the things you need to do, don’t do them.
Instead, take a step back, and find another way to accomplish the same with acceptance, enjoyment, or even enthusiasm. That’s judoing it.
A friend of mine, let’s call him Peter, was complaining to me about how one of his colleagues, Hans, was being disloyal. Hans said something supportive to another colleague’s face, and then five minutes later over lunch said the exact opposite. Peter was furious. “People should by loyal. I get so upset when they’re not. It’s just wrong. Don’t you think?” he asked me.
So I asked him back.
Me: “People should not be disloyal. Is that true?”
Peter: “Yes! Of course they shouldn’t.”
Me: “Well, what’s the reality of it. Are they sometimes?”
Peter: “Yes”
Me: “Can you know with absolute certainty that they should never be disloyal?”
Peter: “Hmm, no.”
Me: “So who are you, how do you feel, how do you behave, when you think that thought that people should always be loyal?”
Peter: “I get angry, mad, upset when they’re not.”
Me: “And who would you be if you could not think the thought that people should be loyal?”
Peter: “I’d be at peace with it, calm, relaxed.”
Me: “Yeah. Exactly.”
The world should be exactly as it is. How do I know? Because it is, and reality is the only thing that is.
Your thought that the world should be any different from what it is is just that: A thought. It’s an illusion. It doesn’t really exist.
The reality, on the other hand, is real. There are people in it, some of them are loyal, some of them are not. Reality doesn’t care what you think it should be. It is what it is.
So you have a choice.
You can choose to hold on to the thought that the world should be different from what it is. Or you can choose to accept that reality is what it is, and stop the suffering.
Suffer. Or not suffer. That’s the choice. It’s up to you.
If you choose to believe reality should be different, you will suffer. You’ll be playing a movie in your mind that shows how the world is and how unfair that is and how it really should be instead. “I can’t believe he did that.” “I can’t believe I just missed the last bus.” I’m sure you have plenty of experience doing this.
And because you’re playing that movie, you will have less mental energy, fewer resources, to actually deal with the situation and come up with a creative alternative solution.
On the other hand, you can choose to accept, and tell yourself “it is what it is, right now, at this moment, this is what’s true”. Take a moment to fully and completely accept that. Then the suffering will stop.
You may still be in pain. Maybe you just hit your finger with a hammer. But at least you’re not adding a layer of suffering on top.
The suffering, the resisting, the movie in your mind’s eye, will have ceased. And you’ve freed up your mental energy to focus on choosing the best course of action. You might still want to change the situation, and that’s fine. But you’re doing so from your most resourceful state.
The choice is entirely up to you. You’re free to choose suffer if you prefer. No-one is pushing you.
Choosing to accept reality may not make the thought to go away. Generally you can’t – thoughts come and go as they please, they’re not in our control. But sometimes it’ll stop, because you’ve seen through the illusion of it, because you’ve realized that it simply is not true.
If not, there’s two more things you can do to hit the final nail in the coffin. One is to turn the original statement around. “People should be disloyal.” Why? Because they are. In my experience, saying it loud will often make people laugh, and it seems to connect some circuit in the brain that makes the thought let go of us.
Another technique is to understand. If you really try, I bet you could come to realize why Hans was being disloyal. Perhaps he’s insecure and was afraid to say what he thought to the person’s face. Maybe he was treated poorly in school or at home and that’s why. Whatever it is, there is a reason, and by finding a plausible reason, we can get to “Of course!” Of course he was disloyal! It couldn’t be any other way, given the circumstances.
In fact, you can be certain that if you were in the same situation, with the same mental model and resources as him, you would have done the exact same thing. Of course you would. But that’s a post for another day.
PS. There’s a book about this, called Loving What Is, and it’s really fun and mind-bending in a good way. The four questions in the dialogue above are from there. Check it out.
I started to do Yoga in the beginning of January this year. I had been wanting to for years, but I hadn’t done anything about it, in part because I dreaded going to yoga classes in a yoga center, in part because I wasn’t sure where and how would work for me.
Thankfully, I found a way to practice yoga that works perfectly for me. It’s a tradition founded by Krishnamacharya. My teacher, Peter Hersnack, was educated by Krishnamacharya, as were Pattabhi Jois, founder of the Ashtanga yoga tradition, and many others of similar stature in the field. The tradition used to be called viniyoga. Not sure exactly what happened, but it’s the term I use, as it’s the only one I know.
Viniyoga is not mainstream at all, but boy is it cool.
It’s a form of yoga that’s completely tailored to you individually. Classes are only one-on-one, and my teacher puts together a 30-minute program that I do every day at home.
The exercises are all centered around your breath. My teacher starts by asking me to make a few movements, so he can spot where my breath is constricted. Then he designs a set of exercises to work on those areas.
There’s no special clothes, I practice in jeans an t-shirt, no equipment apart from an old dishtowel and a stool we normally use in the kitchen. I do it on a beautiful persian rug in the living room, but when I’ve been traveling, I’ve done my yoga on the carpet of my hotel room, or just on a towel on the floor. It’s very low key that way.
These days I do the program every night before I go to bed, and the half-hour is well spent, because my sleeps is always deeper and better after having done so. At other times it’s been the first thing in the morning before the rest of the family woke up, or after they’d all left the house to go to work.
Every 4-8 weeks I go back for another session where he sees where I’m at now and designs a new program. It’s a pretty cheap way to do yoga as well.
The difference it has made in my breathing and my general body awareness since I started 9 months ago is astonishing. My breath is so deep and long now, and it extends deep in my belly, but also to the back, my chest is much more open, my shoulders down. My ability to get centered and grounded in my body is amazing and very useful, say when comforting my daughter.
And the daily check-in with my body has proved invaluable. Hidden pockets of emotions can’t hide for long that way. I used to never do anything besides running and biking and pushups, and I thought that was probably all I could do. My body was a vehicle for my brain. Not so anymore. It’s been surprisingly easy to gain this awareness of my body, and it’s been endlessly rewarding to bring that back in as a cornerstone of my life.
But it’s not just me. My wife recently took a lesson with Peter Hersnack, after having practicing yoga for 7 years, and she was completely blown away. So was another friend who’s a yoga instructor herself. Peter saw patterns in her that no-one else had noticed before, and designed a practice program for her.
So if you’re considering yoga, but have been put off by the traditional way of practicing it, or just want to dig one step deeper, give Peter or viniyoga a try. I’ll be happy to give you Peter’s email address, just get in touch.
UPDATE: Peter has allowed me to share his contact info. He can be reached at hersnack SNABELA gmail PUNKTUM com, or by phone at 50 197607 in Denmark.
