Hi FRIEND!
What a jam-packed week! It was my favorite kind. I flew to Asheville on Sunday. All the accolades that place gets for beauty, is insufficient. The place is heavenly. It’s lush green trees, mixed with an amazing view of the mountains is intoxicating. I definitely want to spend more time there. Next, I was off to Dallas, to encounter one of the most difficult venues I’ve spoken in.
It was a ginormous exhibition hall that was floor to ceiling concrete. So big, 14 semi-trucks were parked in there. It was also super cool. The sound just bounced and bounced around. I felt bad for the audience, but they were great. I ended the week in State College, Pennsylvania, home of Penn State University. It too was prettier and cooler than expected.
What topped the speaking experiences was reconnecting with friends. My friend from the fourth grade, Dean Pearson, coordinated the opportunity for me to be at the Auto Haulers event. Our friendship was forged in a difficult and memorable year of my life. I had moved, changed schools and “lived out in the country” with no one around. Dean lived next door. We’ve been friends ever since and randomly stay in touch.
In Pennsylvania, it was a reunion. Louis Lessig, Geoffrey Klein and I were all at the New Jersey SHRM Conference last year. It was my first time meeting Geoffrey, the Purple Beast. We immediately hit it off and laughed the entire time. Lou and I met at an NSA event in 2017 or 2018. He’s been gracious to let me be in his Super Lawyer life, ever since.
ACCESSING THE WORLD
Being with each of these guys fills my soul. Their personalities are distinct. They’re incredibly smart. They are wildly talented. They each serve humanity in profound ways. Most impressively, each one is a killer dad. Listening to the stories from their lives, let’s me access a world I’m completely ignorant of.
The power of friendship acts as a portal that transports us into the same world we’re living, but reveals an entirely different experience perspective. Have you encountered that? When talking with friends, knowing they live on the same planet as you, but their life adventure is so completely different? That inspires me.
DISMANTLING OUR WORLD
The way we’re doing life right now isn’t the only way. They way we think right now isn’t the only way. The way we talk right now isn’t the only way. It tends to be the only way we’ve done it for a long time, so it seems most “natural”. How do we significantly disrupt our current pattern of life? Where do we start the dismantling/rebuilding process?
Our thoughts of course! How we think generates our emotions and actions. It’s trippy that our entire existence happens primarily in our minds, then it gets played out through our bodies and feelings. That’s why words are so dang potent. They are the little containers of life that fuel our thoughts.
Instigating Ideas…
1. Call/text an old friend and let them know you’re thinking about them.
2. Be with people who rejuvenate your soul.
3. Consider an area of your life that needs dismantled. Start.
4. Go into nature and let the beauty replenish you.
What made the big concrete room so tough was my voice echoing over itself, turning into an overload of word mush, which was hard to distinguish. If we’re not careful the same thing can happen with our thinking. That’s how people get overwhelmed and lose clarity; The bombardment of similar negative thoughts crashes down on top of one another.
HIGH CALIBER
I’m grateful for the quality of friends I have. It matters. I know they are good for me when they’re just sharing an every-day-story from their life and I feel challenged. My close friends are all higher caliber humans than I am. Granted, that could simply be my perspective, but I certainly appreciate their willingness to let the riffraff in their life. The quality of input into our lives isconsequential.
It’s also true, we can start taking action for change, before we think or feel like we want to. That action still originates in our minds. “I could do this differently” and then will ourselves to do it. I’m in a disruption mode for Hawks Agency and am going to implement some actions I’m not even sure I like, but just for the chance to see if some new results show up. We can do that in any area of life. Where do you need to take action?
I hope this week is filled with good friends who enlarge your capacity and thinking! Consider an area of your life to disrupt to access more joy, peace, love and hope.