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Inside the Outside

“The embroiling algorithm of happiness may leave many people bewildered or lost in translation while they snubbingly fall back on the smartphone, as a shield against intrusions from the outer world. (“Even if the world goes down, my mobile will save me”)” ― Erik Pevernagie

The Allegory of Plato’s Cave

“Imagine a cave, in which there are three prisoners. The prisoners are tied to some rocks, their arms and legs are bound and their head is tied so that they cannot look at anything but the stonewall in front of them. These prisoners have been there since birth and have never been outside of the cave. Behind the prisoners is a fire, and between them is a raised walkway. People outside the cave walk along the walkway carrying thigs on their head including animals, plants, wood and stone.

So imagine that you are one of the prisoners. You cannot look at anything behind or to the side of you. You must look at the wall in front of you. When people walk along the walkway, you can see the shadows of the objects they are carrying cast on the wall. If you had never seen the real objects ever before, you would believe that the shadows of objects were “real”.

Plato suggests that the prisoners would begin a “game” of guessing which shadow would appear next. If one of the prisoners were to correctly guess, the others would praise him as clever and say that he were a master of nature.

One of the prisoners the escapes from their bindings and leaves the cave. He is shocked at the world he discovers outside the cave and does not believe it can be real. As he becomes used to his surroundings, he realizes that his former view of reality was wrong. He begins to understand his new world, and he sees that the Sun is the source of life and he goes on an intellectual journey where he discovers beauty and meaning. He sees that his former life, and the guessing game they played is useless.

The prisoner returns to the cave, to inform the other prisoners of his findings. They do not believe him and threaten to kill him if he tries to set them free”.

Although there are many interpretations of this story, most have settled on the theory that the “cave” represents people who believe that knowledge comes from what we see and hear in the world- empirical evidence. The cave shows that believers of empirical knowledge are trapped in a cave of misunderstanding. The “shadows” represent the perceptions of those who believe empirical evidence ensures knowledge. If you believe what you see should be taken as truth, then you are merely a shadow of truth. The “game” represents how people believe that one person can be the “master” when they have knowledge of the empirical world. Plato is demonstrating that this master does not actually know the truth, and is suggesting that it is ridiculous to admire someone like this. The “escape” represents the prisoner’s intellectual journey when finding truth and wisdom.

We are taught as children into adulthood to think and orient our behavior based on existing data. It is the safe, comfortable bet. Some of the most respected people within the world are pedigreed people who have built a “knowledge” base out of intellectual lethargy. Free thinkers (and actors) from the beginning of time have operated in the paradigm of creating empirical information, not responding to it. There is always a new way, a new path that has yet to be discovered. Knowledge without application is useless. Experience without action? Also useless. You do not need years of preparation, whatever has led you to where you are today is good enough to launch you to where you need to go next. You do not need paperwork. Paperwork includes degrees, certificates, referrals, endorsements licenses, and recommendations and so on. You do not need a mentor. No one will be as invested in yourself as you. You cannot outsource the responsibility of planning the course of your life. It is not that these things are unhelpful; it is that they are unnecessary. You do not need them to do anything. What do you really need? You need passion. You have to be absolutely passionate about what you believe in. This comes from within not from outside influencers who largely live their lives chained to their own empirical limited beliefs.

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April 27, 2020

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Minding the Gap

“Thoughts make for an excellent servant, but they are tyrant as a master”

The Flywheel Effect

“Picture a huge, heavy flywheel—a massive metal disk mounted horizontally on an axle, about 30 feet in diameter, 2 feet thick, and weighing about 5,000 pounds. Now imagine that your task is to get the flywheel rotating on the axle as fast and long as possible.

Pushing with great effort, you get the flywheel to inch forward, moving almost imperceptibly at first. You keep pushing and, after two or three hours of persistent effort, you get the flywheel to complete one entire turn.

You keep pushing, and the flywheel begins to move a bit faster, and with continued great effort, you move it around a second rotation. You keep pushing in a consistent direction. Three turns … four … five … six … the flywheel builds up speed … seven … eight … you keep pushing … nine … ten … it builds momentum … eleven … twelve … moving faster with each turn … twenty … thirty … fifty … a hundred.

Then, at some point—breakthrough! The momentum of the thing kicks in your favor, hurling the flywheel forward, turn after turn … whoosh! … it’s own heavy weight working for you. You’re pushing no harder than during the first rotation, but the flywheel goes faster and faster. Each turn of the flywheel builds upon work done earlier, compounding your investment of effort. A thousand times faster, then ten thousand, then a hundred thousand. The huge heavy disk flies forward, with almost unstoppable momentum”. – Jim Collins “Good to Great”

The idea of setting a goal suggests a destination and a conscious process. Outcomes are different. They set a direction. For instance, I might say I want to reach a point where I am financially secure in my life. I may never reach that goal, but as an outcome, it organizes my choices regarding my investments and directs how I spend my money every day without conscious thought. Knowing we live in a world of abundance (we do as it is our own limiting beliefs that create a bias for scarcity), how do we facilitate this? Moving from a current state to a desired state requires an individual to develop well -formed outcomes.

Well-formed outcomes should always be stated in positive terms.

Negative experiences can dominate our thinking and we focus more on what we do not want than what we actually do want. This can create a hindrance in moving forward. My most recent endurance event was a classic example of this. Although to varying degrees, I had been able to overcome the two physical and mental disasters that I experienced in the jungles of Nicaragua, I still think of them. The transition is as such. I am now able to allow those negative thoughts to come and go without reserving them for contemplation. Those thoughts are not reality and have no bearing on my present-state. If they have no bearing on my present- state, then how can they have any influence on my future-state? I created a new reality by not controlling my thoughts but allowing them to freely flow in and out of my conscience. I cannot control the thoughts, but I can control the response.

Well-formed outcomes are based on things that we can influence.

I absolutely could influence my training preparation, my nutrition and my planning. At the start of the event, my nephew (who was crewing me throughout the race) asked me “well how do think you’re going to do?” My response was “I trust in my training and preparation”. I knew that everything I did, every decision I made relative to preparing for that race had been based on how I envisioned the outcome, not the goal. In fact, throughout my preparation I never focused on the 100-mile distance, I focused on the incremental steps needed to get to the outcome. The outcome was not achieving 100 miles, it was the feeling of fulfillment I knew I would have upon completion.

Well-formed outcomes are sensory based.

Always envision what you will see, hear and feel when you achieve your desired outcome. Imagine that you have already achieved the outcome and what it would be like. Consider your greatest life experiences. How did you feel within the moment? In most cases reaching the goal, if people are honest with themselves, was not the defining experience it was the joy and sense of closure that he or she felt. Outcome based thinking focuses on those feelings not the end goal itself.

Well-formed outcomes are sequenced and bite sized.

Outcomes can be overwhelming if not broken down into bite-sized chunks. For example, buying a house or owning a successful business can be overwhelming. Framing the big chunks like this can cause us to become defeated before we have even begun. It seems like such a considerable amount of time, effort, and sacrifice to do what it takes to achieve the outcome. On the other hand taking small steps every day builds momentum and increases our motivation. By reducing the frame into more manageable bite sized chunks, we immediately reduce the challenge. The space between present state and future state is the “crisis zone”. The interesting thing is the “crisis zone’s” genesis is within our own minds. It reveals itself when we move beyond our comfort level without developing sequence and incrementalism. Recall that we think linearly and by developing a sequenced framework within diminishes those overwhelming thoughts.

What resources are needed?

Sometimes we are limited in the progress we can make towards our outcomes because we do not have the resources we need. It is easy to get out ahead of ourselves without considering if our outcome is timely and we are in a position to go for it now. This does not mean we cannot be working toward this outcome, but we need to consider what the relevant sub goals are that we can set first. For instance, someone may say.” I want to learn a new language, but I don’t have the ability to attend a class with my work commitments”. Sometimes we use our limitations as excuses to hinder any progress towards our outcome at all. “I can’t get X because I don’t have Y. Most often, the resources are available to us, and all we have to do is to give a little consideration to how we can put in place the things we need to move forward. Never forget we live in a world of abundance one just needs to be willing to step out of their internal limiting bias.

In what contexts do you want this outcome?

When, where and with whom do you want this outcome? Well-formed outcomes are situation specific. If we do not set boundaries, we then tend to generalize. By setting specific outcomes, it is then easier for us to assess when we achieved them. Establishing a specific context for a particular behavior anchors the response.

How will you know when you have fulfilled your outcome?

Specific, measurable sensory outcomes create more of a sense of direction in our minds. How will you know when you have achieved a specific outcome? It is unique to you. One person’s idea what of what it means to be confident might be different from another person’s idea. People will often say, “I want to be successful in business”. What does success mean for you? How can you measure this outcome? This could be measured in financial terms, the number of awards received, or the number of promotions. If we are vague in setting outcomes, then we will be vague in our direction. For example, an outcome might be to be in a “stable relationship,” but what does a stable relationship look like? On the other hand, your outcome might be “to become more assertive,” but what does assertiveness look like? How will you know when you have it?

Well-formed outcomes are compelling.

Compelling goals are motivating. You most likely started a project at some point, became bored and moved on to something else. How can you set your outcomes in a way that propels you toward them? What do you find motivating? By taking the time to get a clear vision of what it is you would like to achieve you will increase your motivation towards it. Imagine yourself having accomplished a project and the fulfillment, hearing the excitement of other’s voices when they recognize what you have accomplished.

Well-formed outcomes are ecological.

Our outcomes must fit in with the rest of our lives. We have other people to consider, other priorities and important values. Does this outcome fit your core values as a person and how you see yourself? Consider in what ways the outcome might not be right for you? Are there any contexts where this outcome would not work? If it is ecological than outcome directed thought is commensurate with priming a flywheel. It starts with a spark, becomes a fire and eventually turns into a blaze.

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April 23, 2020

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Big Mind, Little Mind

In Buddhism the words “heart and mind” are one in the same. When Asian Buddhists refer to mind, in fact they point to the heart. Mind in this sense is not thinking mind, but rather a larger quality of presence and awareness that is intrinsically open to the world. The mind that is one with the heart is a larger presence of being that responds to the world in a wide open way. Centuries of meditators have found that this big mind, this openness to what is, is much more central to human nature than the thinking mind.

Big mind is the larger, formless ground of awareness that is prior to the “small mind” of conceptual thinking. Before we can even think about something, we first have to let it into awareness, let it touch us or affect us in some way. Sometimes it is possible to touch big mind in silent spaces between thoughts, or when powerful experience suddenly stops thought and we find ourselves suddenly facing it. When we respond to things from this open, non conceptual awareness, rather from our ideas about things, a full encounter and exchange with reality becomes possible.

Consider the practice of meditation and mindfulness. You just sit in the moment, without doing anything, without holding on to anything, without singular concentration. You let your thoughts come and go using your breadth as an anchor keeping you focused on the moment. Normally we do everything that we can to avoid just being. When we don’t have a project to work on we get nervous, we judge ourselves and initiate activity to satisfy the inner critic. We put conditions on ourselves. Through mindful meditation you realize that your basic well-being is not conditional upon being good or doing something good in any particular way. Your intrinsic self sanity exists to matter what you do. You are basically good for no other reason than that you are awake, responsive, and open to life.

We create our individual experience of reality via the vehicle of thought. Thought is the missing link between the formless world of pure potentiality ( Big Mind) and the created world of form ( Little Mind). Leaving behind, even for a moment, the man in the mirror Big Mind can be achieved and human potential can be unleashed.

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April 19, 2020

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Why Am I Here?

It is not an existential question. Within this framework, the question isn’t driven by religion or a cultural belief mechanism. I mean why am I here doing what I am doing at this very moment? We as human beings tend to think linearly. When we think of the past, we do so in terms of time. When many people discuss something good or bad that might have happened to them in the past, they often turn their head to look back to illustrate that it was a historical occurrence. If we were looking at a timeline and marking off life experiences on that line, our experiences would be clear, some good and some not so good. They are steadfastly there for us to observe and contemplate. As human beings, it is important to learn from ones mistakes, but consider that many people are perpetually looking back forever grounded on the negative end of that line. As those were real experiences, they are easier to see and therefore influence our current behavior. The Merriam Webster Dictionary characterizes Identification as establishing or indicating who or what (someone or something) is. It characterizes Definition as determining the essential qualities or meaning of. In short, as we look back we identify our experiences as they are, however we have the power to determine the definition and that gives us a basis to influence our own behavior.

Knowing that we think linearly, now consider for a moment what it looks like ahead. Is it as clear? For most, it is not. Many people set goals and expectations for themselves, however the challenge becomes the steps and processes needed to get to where they want to go. If that linear line were a railroad track, they would be the ties that attach each incremental link within the track. When you look out ahead, do you see those links or the outcome? Do you see the outcome at all? Now imagine hovering above that time line. You now have a clear sight line to your experiences. Reach down and pull those negative experiences off the track. Discard them. Now look out ahead to your goal or goals. What will that experience look like? What will it feel like when achieved? Reach down and pick up those positive outcomes. Lay them down at your feet and start building your links. The definition to a future outcome is established.

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April 19, 2020

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