Posts

Posted on

A Secret Among the Self-Actualized

Even for the ones with the jobs so many others wish they had- the actors, the entrepreneurs, the authors, the working artists, the travel journalists, the spiritual guides, the 4-hour-work-week day traders, the tropical-island scuba instructors, the yogis, the CEOs, the coaches, and all of those people who proclaim love for their work… The truth is they’d still prefer to not be working.

Even the best job in the world can’t deliver absolute openness.

No one, not even the most self-actualized among us, desire obligation more than free time. It’s like being in a gorgeous building. No matter how vast the rooms or ornate the ceiling detail or wonderfully cool the air conditioning, eventually you want to get outside where there are no walls, to walk in the woods or lay on a hill and look up at the sky.

But the light doesn’t last long out there either.

However memorable the sunset, the weather cools down, the bugs come out and, eventually, it gets dark, so you return to your building. Now, whether it’s a beach house or a shack is irrelevant. It’s serving some sort of purpose in your life. But don’t try to figure that out, just know that it’s true and instead of comparing your work life to your leisure life, try to seek solace in the coming and going between the two.

Work… free… work… free… If you look for it, there’s a balance in this back-and-forth. There has to be. That equilibrium can sustain you. And it will lead you to appreciate the weight on both sides of the scale.

Posted on

Conversation Vacation

Looking to get away?

The next conversation you fall into, let go of everything you know, even the notion that you already know the person in front of you. Listen to their voice ask they talk, the vibration, the up and down of it. See their face, how much their mouth moves, how their body moves.

Instead of replying, invite them to go deeper. You can do it with silence, or a question, or the lift of your eyebrow. The deeper they take you, the further into uncharted territory you go. It doesn’t matter if this is your partner or the person on the corner. It’s a new day and you don’t know them fully.

Get into someone’s thoughts, a few layers down, and you can escape from your own for a while. You can free yourself from the circles you run in. You can find warmth in someone’s heart.

Posted on

Stay or Go?

Staying in the same job for several years can almost be like falling into a depression.

It swallows you up and that’s all you see. It’s not so much whether the job is good or bad; it’s just that you can easily lose the ability to compare your surroundings to those of other situations. You begin to believe there is only one way of doing things, or, even if you know there are other ways of doing things, you haven’t experienced them in so long, it’s hard to believe they exist.

Like depression, long tenure is all-encompassing.

I’m not saying you should leave but you should definitely see what else is out there and discover other ways of doing what you’re doing, for your own sake and for the sake of your employer. Be a tourist somewhere else to shake up your paradigm.

Whether you stay or not, is irrelevant.

You’ll climb out of the chasm. You’ll see farther and shed off the claustrophobia you didn’t know was there. And with deeper inhalations, a lot more is possible, wherever you are.

Posted on

Beautiful Trance

I used to think CREATIVITY was about creating stuff. That’s what it looks like on the outside, but if you really look at a person who’s creating, you can see it’s more about chasing a feeling.

Artists – the most committed creators among us – are constantly wishing they were in that creative space. It’s almost painful, like lying in a bed in the middle of the night and trying to get back into a dream. That’s the catch. After living in that CREATIVITY, other parts of reality don’t seem to bring as much bliss. Conjuring light becomes more exhilarating than standing in it.

All of us have access, but some clamber in front of the doorway more than others, eager to please whatever God guards that door.

And you can’t half-ass it either. You have to full-ass your way into that beautiful trance. Once inside, you really don’t dare comment, reflect, or adjust; you just keep doing whatever it is you’re doing. Screw the analysis. For now, create, create, create…

Paint the next line, fold the next corner, sing the next note. Invoke that light in your small room. You don’t need to see very far. You don’t have to know any more.

Posted on

Go Small Or Go Home

If you’re having trouble getting started, you’re probably starting too big.

Take a page from reporters and novelists. When telling a story, they usually start with tiny details: the doorway of a building, the button of a jacket, a word, a name, an action. Big themes have no place at the beginning.

It’s the same with resumes. When faced with a pile of notes, I start with crafting a single bullet point, one achievement out of many, then I work backward from the inside out, from the bottom up, bullet by bullet, job by job, ending with the grand introduction, the client’s favorite part: a 2-line opening statement summarizing the entirety of the person’s life and career. A sunflower grown from a seed.

I rarely get to that 2-liner without first toiling over some tiny bullets.

And such is everything, isn’t it? Bricks to a castle, glances to a relationship, flowers to a garden.

Start small, have faith, and build something beautiful.

Posted on

Indentation

The space bar on my keyboard has a noticeable indentation right where my thumb hits it. It’s so smooth and streamlined that, when I first noticed it, I thought it must have come like that. What a perfect resting place for a thumb!

But time and erosion are more diligent than any product developer. They never let up.

To think that such tiny, soft taps of my fleshy thumb have worn down a piece of plastic and will keep wearing it down until it’s completely destroyed. I supposed I’m hitting that space bar more than anything else in my life. That’s true for many of us; a fraction of our destinies are connected by a withered space bar.

Moreso, we’re connected by the tapping: repetitive acts and thoughts that grind away at us. With enough time and neglect, a light touch in the same tender spot can destroy us.

But the remedy is as simple and subtle as the suffering. A small adjustment, a shift half an inch to the left or right, will break the cycle and end erosion’s reign. You don’t even have to know why you’re moving or what you’re moving toward. In the beginning, any movement will save you.

Posted on

So Many TVs

I found an incredible deal for a TV, bought it, and then returned it because it had a crack in it. While waiting to hear back from the company, I started to second-guess my buying decision. I went to Best Buy and looked at 50 other TVs, read their little tags, talked to an overzealous sales guy, and stayed up late researching reviews and technical specs online.

By the end of the week, I’d circled back to my original TV, the one I wanted most, the one I had already researched to death and settled on several weeks prior.

“Too bad you wasted another week on it,” someone commented.

Not at all. I just needed to remind myself of what’s out there in order to recognize that what I have is exactly what I need.

I see this a lot with career-counseling clients. Over time, jobs and routines lose their flavor (or more specifically, we lose our ability to taste their flavor), which makes it easy to forget how our jobs are nourishing us.

A few days (or months!) of circling doubt is sometimes what it takes to reach peace of mind in the long run.

And realize that when you’re shopping for TVs or pondering a career move you’re not walking in a circle; you’re climbing a spiral staircase. You may pass the same places in your journey but, because time is a teacher and you’re stacking up insights, you’re a bit higher up than you were the first time around.

Posted on

Empathy When It’s Hardest

Empathy is my ninja power. And yours too, if you want it to be.

Empathy is the way into anyone’s heart. It allows you to stand in their shadow and feel the way the wind hits them. You can witness the healing of a soul when you stand in that place. And you can be part of that healing.

We empathize with friends, loved ones, those with unwarranted wounds. It’s a human thing and it always works, for everyone involved.

But empathy isn’t always easy. In fact, when it’s not easy is when it’s most powerful.

When we’re at our best, in full ninja regalia, an enlightened state if you will, we experience empathy for people on the other side of humanity, not just the slain but the ones holding the rifle and the gavel. We simultaneously love the abuser and the abused, the oppressor and the oppressed. This doesn’t mean we’re aligned with evil, rather confronting it and challenging it with our greatest weapon.

When we stand in this space with our feet firmly planted, we’re reminded that there are a cause and effect to everything, that the notion of the hero and the villain only perpetuates conflict, like a child’s comic book with its endless sequels: clever incarnations of the same tension between the same people.

There is real power in EMPATHY at this level, a fierce, unrelenting LOVE that works diligently against HATE, CONTEMPT, DISGUST, and the others, that converts gnarled barbed wire into chain mail to enable its wearer to withstand and outlast the evil that’s hurled from all sides.

Posted on

Summoning the Genie

People come to me because, as they put it, they’re not good at selling themselves. I hear this from everyone: salespeople, marketers, actors, speech writers, strategic communication professionals, PR agents. For the majority of us – even those where selling is a central component of the work, selling becomes a challenge when the product is ourselves.

That’s because SELLING is the wrong mindset. We don’t want to be products and we don’t want to be our own salesperson.

So don’t be.

Instead of selling yourself, get excited about your story. This excitement is like a genie in a lamp: conjure it up and it will get you whatever you want. It will do the selling for you.

But your excitement must be genuine. Therein lies the rub (hee hee) – a blessing and a curse – you can’t fake your way in because no one will follow you.

When I’m doing interview coaching or asking a client about their work history to build their resume, I’m not just gathering content; I’m summoning the genie. I’m watching for a lift in their voice, for their pace to pick up, for a good ramble to pour out. That’s when I know I’m rubbing in the right place. It’s obvious. We can both feel it, the genie in the room.

There is an undeniable truth to excitement, an honesty that sells better than any prefabricated pitch. And, no matter how disillusioned you are with the places you’ve left, that excitement is always in there somewhere, curled up and waiting to be called upon.

Posted on

Rage

I’ve always been afraid of RAGE, namely my own.

Somewhere around 10 years old, I created a place inside me just for RAGE, put it in there and decided to never let it out. But RAGE is a wily one and it put a hit on me from the inside… it got SADNESS & NUMBNESS to step in and do the dirty work. There was never a full-blown take-over but whenever a situation called for RAGE, the other two worked me over real good.

My identity was formed around this: a fear of RAGE and those unexpected knock-downs by SADNESS & NUMBNESS. “Chill Cliff” emerged, a leaf in the wind, a dude okay with everything and everybody. Certainly, a likable lad, though not completely whole, not yet.

And as my identity surfaced, I feared RAGE all the more because I thought it might take over entirely if I let it out of its container. I worried it would cover everything else I’d created like a thick black ink spilling over a page.

It took many things to get me to open that box again – sweet, patient girlfriends, pop songs and mixed tapes, ventures with vices, thousands of journal entries, daring bits of fiction, caring high school teachers and college professors, more girlfriends, sensitive boys and sensitive men, and storybook reconciliation with those that love me more than life itself.

It worked.

I became brave enough to let RAGE out its box, and I smashed that fucking box to smithereens, cuz boxes have no place in the body. And though I was scared, I let RAGE run free. It broke a few things, it turned some heads, then quieted down. In fact, that’s kind of its M.O. Come out hard, break shit, and disappear.

It’s taken some time but I’ve come to understand RAGE. It’s a wrecking ball, an alarm clock, a microphone, and a dump truck. It serves me well, just as all the others do. Its message is hard to read because it’s cloaked in violence.

But I get that, too. RAGE is always pushing harder than you want it to, always coming out at the wrong time because, much like a screaming, kicking child or a deep dark secret, it’s constantly being told to go away.