Are you bored and feel the need to be entertained?

Peter Bregman wrote a thought-provoking article last week in the Harvard Business Review entitled “Why I returned my iPad.”

The premise is the iPad is too good. It is an escape boredom device that distracts us from reaching a state of boredom that triggers our most creative capabilities.

Much of the parenting advice I have heard of the last few years flies in the face of this premise.  Keep your kids busy. When they start to mix it up, distract them into another activities quickly. Whatever you do, don’t let them get bored.

Have you heard those parenting advice tales?

I will not argue these tactics don’t work. I will argue using them kills creative imagination.

Recently, I took the Wii away from my boys.  Problem was, every time they got bored, they played Wii, then they would fight, then the parents felt compelled to intervene or check out and ignore the situation. Wii was sometimes a tool to enable us parents to get something done around the house or intentionally check out.

Have you done this yourself?

In a few short days, removing Wii has changed our family interaction for the better. My 3 boys are playing outside more, interacting with their neighborhood friends, building legos, having Bakugan battles, started playing tennis, doing more artwork, and returning to pre-Wii life. A life where they are using their creative imagination to escape boredom.

Guess what else has happened, my wife and I have checked back in.

The brilliant Kurt Cobain sung a very poignant line in Nirvana’s 1991 classic Smells like Teen Spirit. He said, “Here we are now, now entertain us.”  That line stuck out to me then and it still sticks with me today. I may choose to use distraction to escape my boredom. Too much is at risk for me to rely on distractions to entertain my kids.

Wii was a distraction for my family. The iPad was a distraction for Peter Bergman.

Find a way to limit your distractions. Embrace your boredom. Allow your creative juices to flow. You will be surprised what emerges.

What does escaping your boredom cost you?

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1. Being a Dad changed my life forever
2. Noises here, noises there, noises everywhere

What are you lacking in your life? “Lack” implies something is not complete or missing from life. Is your life incomplete? Are you lacking something?

Hmm….what could that something be?  What do we need in life? Needs are something we have to have. We need food, water, shelter, clothing, and some basic hygiene products.

Do we need more than this?

Of course we do. Basic elements for survival are just that, basic needs.  We have other higher-level needs that are essential to helping us live a good life.

Just like everything else, needs have a counter balance in life.  Wants are something we would like to have. We can want whatever we want. That does not mean we need to get it.

Our culture is built on expanding our perceived needs.  We are attracted to novelty, quick fixes and instant gratification. We are always looking for a bigger piece of pie.

We want a new house. We buy one. Then we repaint the rooms. Redo the window dressings. Buy new furniture. Change the landscaping. Remodel the kitchen. Replace the carpet with hardwood floors.

When does the cycle stop? Did we really want to do all of this?

What did we need in the first place? What were we lacking?

We are emotional human beings who let our emotional selves control our rational selves. We need to satisfy our emotional needs to feel complete.

Perhaps I got the original question all wrong. Let me try again.

What emotional need are you lacking in your life?

No related posts.

What are you accepting in your life?

Huh? What in the world, am I asking?  Sure, I admit this is a vague open-ended question. I assure you it has a very simple yet complex answer.  Well, at least that is my expectation.

Acceptance is the ability to find safety and comfort to be who we are in the world.

We spoke last time about resistance being the doorway to action . We cannot step into the doorway and begin breaking down our barriers of resistance without accepting situations and ourselves, as they are, nothing more, nothing less.

When we accept, we exercise patience, compassion, and generosity.  We are more curious about the world we live and present with who we truly are. We naturally establish and maintain healthy personal boundaries. We allow people and situations to come and go without disrupting our overall happiness and flow in the world.

Theoretically, this all makes sense and seems relatively easy to understand, so why is it so hard to accomplish?

Humans have this thing called expectations we carry around with us. They affect the outcome of everything we observe and experience.  Expectations are entrenched in stories we tell ourselves. They are mental debris that weight us down and suck the energy and focus from what we want.

Have you ever noticed how your expectations leave a sour taste in our mouth when things do not go as you planned?  How much excess weight are you unnecessarily carrying around with you?

The world does not care about your expectations, or mine.

The only expectations we can try to satisfy is our own.  Yet, we routinely place our unspoken expectations on people and situations.  We are unknowingly sacrificing our own happiness.

We can learn to let go of our expectations and allow life to unfold. We alone are responsible for our lives. We can learn to allow. We can remove our judgment, expectations, and conditions of satisfaction from our experience. We can remove the burden of expectations we carry around with us. We can learn to experience people and situations from a first timer’s point of view.

We can unconditionally accept people, situations, and ourselves from who we are.  

Think it is impossible, what is stopping you from trying to be more unconditionally accepting?

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1. Resistance is the doorway to action
2. The open road awaits…put the peddle to the metal
3. Re-gifting: Offering our gifts to the world

“Resisting something is a sure sign you are supposed to be doing it. The greater your resistance, the more important it is to you.”

A few weeks ago, I tweeted this thought. Today, I am still grappling with it as much as I was when I originally wrote it.

Do you feel some resistance to it as well?

I thought you might.  I invite you to read my thoughts and add your own. Together, we can explore the validity of this concept. Deal?  Here goes.

When something we have not accepted as a given for ourselves enters our awareness, our natural human inclination kicks in and we begin to erect the walls of resistance.

We may become defensive, take things personally, make excuses, and justify our actions. More importantly, we will most likely close ourselves to new ideas, other people’s perspective, and further entrench ourselves in our current understanding and stance. We withdraw from the conversation and start to protect ourselves.

Our language continues to spew out rationalizations, complaints, and outspoken opposition. Emotionally, we harbor feelings of blame, shame, guilt, jealousy, pessimism, frustration, anger, and depression.

The stronger our emotional reaction, the more likely our resistance is related to a core challenge we face in life.

Emotional warning signs are opportunities to examine aspects of our lives that are holding us back. We welcome what we allow. We resent what we resist. This is a perfect time to allow something new to emerge in our lives.

If we choose to meet these opportunities with the same type of resistance we have been discussing, then we ensure a quick trip to the back of the life learning line. Awareness opportunities are neither good nor bad. They are simply a chance to learn something new about us and to make a choice without self-judgment.

New awareness opens the doorway to new possibilities for us. Our thirst for change awakens and our creative juices freely flow. We no longer resist the unknown. We make a friend of change. We trust the choices we make. We live more freely.

What do you think?  Did this strike you in any particular way? What emotion are you feeling?

Do not resist the urge to leave a comment, let it out.  Sharing our point of view adds to the community conversation in ways we cannot imagine.  I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the concept at hand.

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We all know these voices…they are constantly chirping away at us. For some, they voices are loud and paralyzing. For others, they are a faint noise that shows up in moments of uncertainly. They trap us in our comfort zone and keep us from fully experiencing the life we want to live.

Laurence Boldt wrote a short book (“How to Find the Work You Love ”) that is full of endless wisdom. Voices of doubt are public enemy number one. There are four main voices, doom and gloom, conformity, self-diminishment, and idle complaint.

Boldt frames this discussion beautifully by identifying the fear associated with the voice of doubt and providing a way to overcome your voices of doubt.

I would venture to say that we have all experienced each one of these voices many times in our lives.

Take trust for instance. Do you trust yourself?

We welcome what we allow. We resent what we resist. Trusting ourselves gives us the courage to face our challenges and obstacles. We are able to take risks and make our dreams come alive. Trust removes our resistance and allow us to live.

Why do we choose to resist when we can allow something new to emerge in our lives?

When you have complete trust, you have complete confidence in every decision you make for yourself. Without much thought, you know what is in your best interest and what is not. The voices of doubt chatter is what stops us from taking action to achieve what we desire.

The secret to moving past these voices of doubt is to avoid being trapped by the toxicity of these negative energy patterns. If we cannot mute the volume, then we need to turn the volume down low.  We can learn to adjust the volume by allowing our creative juices to flow. We can choose to allow ourselves to experience more joy in our lives.

Can you imagine a life where every decision is fully supporting what is best for you?

Utopian maybe, but it would sure be fun to live every day in that flow.

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I am standing backstage about to give an important and meaningful speech. I know what I have to say will touch the hearts and souls of my audience. I cannot help but wonder what their expectation is of me. I wonder how they arrived at this event. I am curious as to how they will act upon the information we share tonight. Moreover, I am excited about what I will learn from our interaction together.

Teachers carry a tremendous burden.  They often shoulder the responsibility of helping their students comprehend and extrapolating those concepts into other arenas of their lives.  This responsibility is not solely theirs to own. Learning is a 2-way street. Teachers learn just as much about their craft as the student learns.  The real value in learning is taking newly found knowledge and applying it to every situation you can imagine.

Teachers can inspire us, but they cannot make us want to learn. We have to have a burning desire to learn every day and to face every encounter with the utmost resilience.  The only hurdles we cannot overcome in life are the hurdles we do not allow ourselves to jump.

Learning and applying is what has led me to this moment. I have had many great teachers. My path has brought me to this point in my life. The journey has and continues to challenge my preconceived notions about my life. I have struggled to communicate my needs to the world. I have found the voice I have been search for.

Today, I live my daily life by trying to better version of myself every day. I do not always succeed. I fail in my efforts quite a bit. I get up the next day and try again.  I believe it is my path to help others do the same. My help is not always welcome. I am often misunderstood. I keep trying to perfect my craft. I am learning and applying my knowledge. My actions honor who I am.

Introductions are being made. The butterflies are churning not in an anxious or nervous way, but in anticipation about what great discoveries we will make together. Learning and applying has taken me this far on the road to mastery. I see no reason to stop now. I hope you will join me.

Related posts:

1. The trouble with learning
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The road traveled is filled with potholes, twists, turns, dead ends, and long open stretches of open road. Navigating all these obstacles makes the journey all that much more satisfying. Reaching our destination unharmed and better for all the decisions made is what we live for. Our choices seemed hard at the time. In retrospect, they were easy.

We agonized over some decisions. They paralyze us into inaction. Why do we allow simple decisions like what to eat or wear, go here or there, pc or mac, etc. to send us into a pothole? We drove in that direction. We made that choice. We choose to drive on the wrong side of the road. We need to make smarter decisions for ourselves.

Many of us strive for peace, love, and happiness in our lives. Do we really need a rock-bottom crisis to trigger action into positive change or can we simply make a choice and take action?

Short-term decision-making is driven by negative emotions (fear, anger, frustration). Long-term decision-making is fueled by positive emotions (love, joy, happiness). Focusing on the long-term is like bugs on the windshield. It flies in the face of our normal behavior.

What is normal behavior anyway? Normal behavior is a ritual. Rituals are known quantities. They are safe, comfortable, and risk free. They manifest themselves in routines, emotional responses, standard response or opinions, and knee jerk reactions. They are second nature to us. We do them without thinking about them.

Challenging rituals is the road to finding our voice in the world. This is the map to long stretches of open road. Let us put the pedal to the medal. Does anyone hear the song “I can’t drive 55” playing?

How do we challenge our rituals? How can we free ourselves to find our voice?

We start by focusing on what brings excitement and happiness into our lives. We skip the part about focusing on traditional problem solving techniques. We take a pass on all the negativity in our lives. We focus solely on bringing all the good we have to the forefront.

We vivify the world we want to live in.

I want to live a life where we are all connected to each other. Unconditionally accepting each other for who we are. Celebrating all the good we individually have to offer the world. Sharing in each other’s success. Helping each other become the best version of ourselves.

The best version is different for everyone. Individually, we have the capacity to help another along their chosen path if we decide to make that choice. We will choose to show up in every conversation with love and compassion. We will speak and listen from our heart. We will unconditionally respect and support each other’s growth.

Smart decisions are about taking small daily actions to expand our possibilities to live. We will open our minds and allow our creative juices to flow. We will trust the choices we make. Future decision will come easier. We support the path we want. We live.

We Vivify!

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How does the word “responsibility” really show up in our lives?  According to dictionary.com’s definition, responsibility means accountability or blame. So I am either accountable for my actions or I blame others for their in action. Does anybody else find this fascinating? I do. Let us see if we can find this working this way in our society.

Recently, huge back-to-back snowstorms (40+ inches) crippled the DC metro area. The public opinion on snow removal and schools re-opening has been a lightning rod discussion topic.

My parents taught me self-initiative and to take action. I reacted to the enormous snowfall by digging my way out. I cleared sidewalks. I shoveled streets. I helped my neighbors remove their snow.

Many people I met had the opposite response. They were bitter and resentful. The county failed to plow my street. My kids are driving me batty. Why are the schools still closed? I’m trapped and can’t get out. Where are the plows? These people wanted someone to blame. They did not want to take responsibility themselves.

A friend was complaining about their DirecTV not working due to heavy cloud cover and the mounting snow on the satellite dish.  I asked if they were blaming Mother Nature, DirecTV or themselves for subscribing to satellite TV? Stupid snow was the answer.  Clearly very frustrated by being stuck inside.

The definition holds true in these two recent life examples, but does it hold true in other life events?

When I think about responsibility, I generally think about it from a personal accountability standpoint. Responsibility also carries a burden,  sense of duty, and constraints. These emotional feelings can weigh heavily on our ability to move forward in life. The weight we experience is directly related to the choice we make. Blaming focuses our attention towards finding fault and feelings of guilt thereby weakening our ability to show up the way we want to show up in the world. Accountability is much more powerful and gives honor to meaning to our actions.

When we feel overwhelmed by responsibility, we feel trapped and our possibilities for escaping seem very limited.  The same responsibility that is trapping us offers a path for escaping the noose we have around our neck.

Consider this story.

Kevin is happily married with three kids. His wife Amy is a stay-at-home mom. He wants to find a more fulfilling career. He wants to have more autonomy and be more actively involved in decision-making. Kevin likes his current job but it does not give a sense of purpose. He feels constrained by levels of bureaucracy and lack of information sharing. He blames his lack of motivation on the inability to get anything done.

His thinks employer should be doing this and they should be doing that. He would love to find another job that provides work that is more meaningful. When ask what that job might look like, his first response is about money. He has placed a financial noose around his neck.

Do you see the paradox here?  Kevin is accountable for his family responsibilities. There is nothing more important to Kevin than providing for his family. He blames his employer for not providing work that is more meaningful to him. Ironically, he is not accepting personal accountability in his search to find work that is more meaningful. Money is just a symptom of the challenge Kevin is facing. Responsibility has gotten the better of him and is controlling his actions and in actions.

Is responsibility keeping you down, or are you keeping responsibility from helping you up?

Related posts:

1. Unwanted Behaviors
2. Snow-Pocalypse
3. Learning and applying is the road towards mastery

We cannot escape the noise. Noises interrupt our life. Noise distracts us from focusing on what is important to us. Noise slows our progress towards accomplishing our goals and dreams. Noise blocks us from listening to our internal intuition. Noise stops us from taking purposeful action.

Not all noises are distractions we need to restrict from our diet. Reading expands our learning and teaches us about current thinking and trends. Listening to music brings calmness and stimulates our creative thinking. Watching videos helps us see the world through the creative lens of the content provider. Playing video games opens the door to competitive fun. Interacting with kids teaches us about ourselves and creates a window opportunity to see the world through curiosity and wonderment of a child. Engaging in conversation on a social media platform gives us a chance to share, connect, and learn about how we show up in the world.  Talking with friends and loved ones warms the heart.

Too much noise is the problem. We make a choice to succumb to the noise or to allow it to distract us from our personal growth. Like it or not, noise is a part of our lives and is here to stay.

We need to find a way to separate the distraction noise from purpose driven noise.

Wait….I like all the noises in my life. Of course you do. We are social animals and we like to keep ourselves busy. We like to go-go-go. We like instant gratification. Noise is an addiction.

Do you ever complain about not having enough time or being overwhelmed?  Do you wish you could do more of the things you love? Do you feeling trapped by your current situation? Answering “yes” to any of these questions, is a sign of noise controlling your life. The noise is keeping us from finding out who we really are and what we really want out of life.

We need to become more discipline and pragmatic with our approach to noise. Setting time boundaries around when and for how long we engage in noises is not good enough. Rigid structures tend to feel trapped and confining. They take away our freedom. They crush our spontaneous creative enjoyment of life.

We can navigate our way through the noise mind-field with a more nimble and flexible engagement plan. To be successful, we have to slow down and pay attention to what is happening inside us.

Slowing down creates new possibilities for ourselves. We think more creatively, make better decisions, and move rapidly towards our desires. We aligned with what matters most to us.  We act on purpose. We do away with the noise.

Is the noise controlling you or are you controlling the noise?

Related posts:

1. What do you want to be when you grow up?
2. Is responsibility keeping you down?
3. Listening to the voices of doubt will get you nowhere fast

After days of talking about it, the snow has begun to fall. Anticipation has built all week. We expect a historic snow of 16-24 inches. It is all we can talk about. It is all the Media can talk about.  We do not want our daily lives to be disrupted. We do want our freedoms to be restricted. We resist anything that might take this away from us. We fear the snow-pocalypse.  Panic and fear is ruling the day.

Grocery stores are sold out of milk, bread, and eggs. The local hardware store had a line of 20 people 30 minutes before opening today. Businesses closed in advance of the storm. Schools closed in advance of the storm. County governments are telling people to prepare to be trapped in their houses for 3-5 days.  We are becoming a soft society consumed by our fears.

Dec '09 Snow-pocalypse

Fear mongering did not exist in the December 2009 blizzard. Why you ask? The answer is simple, the media only prepared us for 6-8 inches of snow. The 16-24 inches we received was a surprised to all.  We dealt with the situation, we did not panic; we did not fear the unknown. We accepted our faith and made the best of it.

This time is different. Fear of the unknown has taken control of the conversation.  Snow-Pocalypse is pulling our inner fears to the surface. These raw fears and emotions are controlling our decision making and actions.

What we focus on drives our perception of the world.

When we choose not to succumb to our fears, we can choose to focus our energy and thoughts on more positive snow-pocalypse outlook.

I look forward to spending quality time with my wife and kids.  I want to make snowmen, to sled ride, to have snowball fights, to make snow angels, to shovel my sidewalks, to help my neighbors, to have fun, and to witness all the beauty Mother Nature has to offer.

Is panic and fear controlling your life? Are you afraid of a little snow?

Related posts:

1. Is responsibility keeping you down?
2. Noises here, noises there, noises everywhere