Nudges from Nature

We celebrated my daughter's 16th birthday with a camping trip to a Northern California lake. There were seven of us in all. Our immediate family and a couple of her friends. We forgot newspaper to light the barbecue. It wasn't a problem.  The fallen eucalyptus leaves and abundance of twigs of varying sizes from the shady oaks and sycamores that surrounded the shore provided a quick way to get the coals going. They lit up like the head of a matchstick. I reflected briefly on commonality of severe wildfires in California now, and on my friends and fellow citizens who had lost homes in the Camp, CZU, and Woolsey fires.  Campfires were forbidden at this campground. Which is a bummer when you're camping. But, we'd get by without one.  We swam, paddle boarded, and blew up an inflatable boat that was on its last legs, giving a quick ride out to the middle of the lake, and a humorous ride back that ended with the the occupants deep in the water and pulling a sad sack of yellow

Last Thursday I sat down with my wife and admitted things were dire.  Four years ago I started my own marketing strategy and execution practice. I got off to a good start, signing a major deal to run a short series of events for a growing startup. It would pay our bills for six months, and leave me plenty of time for other projects. I signed that deal on March 2, 2019. Two days later on March 4, Governor Newsom declared a State of Emergency in California due to Covid. Needless to say, all events were off. It was a harsh reminder to include a kill fee clause in my contracts. I scraped by. I adapted. I won engagements with digital transformation projects. After years of kicking the can down the road on having a digital-first strategy, suddenly everyone needed to adjust fast, or go out of business. But things had to be scrappy. Budgets were tight and tough to win. Two and a half years later, I had depleted our savings. As we emerged into the post-Covid era, contracts were flush again. I s

 "To he who is in fear everything rustles" - Sophocles (497-406 BC) Fight or flight? Those are the two commonly attributed responses to fear. But there are two more: freeze and faint. Faint? That's a big one. Have you ever felt so much fear that you lose consciousness? Freeze is perhaps a bit more common and is the one I associate with Sophocles's quote above. When hearing it recently, I pictured a rabbit in the woods, spooked and startled briefly by something, ears perked up tall, eyes sharp. Suddenly the entire forest is rustling. As the omniscient observer, I see there is no real threat. The rabbit is alone. But to the rabbit, entrenched in fear. Everything could be a threat. And until every potential imaginary threat is ruled out...everything rustles. When you encounter something scary -- in today's world perhaps it's a larger than expected energy bill or a layoff notice -- do you fight or flee? Freeze? I don't know about faint, but perhaps a wave of e

I've read a lot of books on meditation and mindfulness, and occasionally the topic overlaps with the subject of prayer. I was reviewing a list of recommended reading by a community leader and as I glanced across the familiar titles by Eckhart Tolle, Neville Goddard, Napolean Hill, and even Stephen Pressfield, I came across a title I hadn't seen before called The Prayer of Jabez  by Bruce Wilkinson.  It was published in 2000 and was a NY Times Bestseller. I'm surprised I haven't come across it before.  Perhaps it falls off these more modernistic lists because of its framework within biblical and core Christian beliefs, but the higher level and perhaps simplified message resonates across spiritual lines: have faith and good things will happen. Stop thinking so much. Trust your intuition. The Prayer of Jabez is an obscure passage from the bible hidden in one of those inexplicably long genealogies occurring in Chronicles (Jabez is specifically mentioned in 1 Chronicles 4:9-

Ever since seeing Star Wars as a kid, I became fascinated with careers in creativity. Could someone really make a living telling stories? And not just a living, but become really, really rich and really, really famous? And not just stories, but creating...anything?  George Lucas, Stephen Spielberg, Cat Stevens, Neil Diamond, Steve Wozniak, Jim Henson, Evel Knievel -- these people were creating things, and talking so casually about their creations as if they were just another moment in a day-in-the-life of a whole-minded person. I was fascinated and wondered where these people had come from. They just appeared. Like magic. I quickly succumbed to society's narrative of the overnight success. After all, I had never heard the name George Lucas before Star Wars was released, Spielberg before Raiders of the Lost Ark, Wozniak before the Apple I.  And then suddenly, there they were. They were everywhere. Every talk show. TV, radio, morning, night. Their faces were on billboards, their voic

Fear. Excitement. Anger. Commitment. Uh oh. These are the five stages of DIY Home Improvement projects.  I wrote recently about finally facing the fear of addressing a water collection issue underneath a second story outdoor balcony that had been nagging me for fifteen years. Once I got a handle on the reality of what I was facing, which was not as bad as the nightmare scenario I had been building in my mind over that long time period, I found myself excited to tackle the project. The second phase kicked in: Excitement. My dad was a skilled handyman around our house. He taught me a few things. This was now my chance to challenge myself and put my knowledge into action and skills to the test. Then I faced another big challenge: Anger.  I was suddenly overcome with anger at myself for letting this go so long. How could I have done this? Thid was neglect. I simply refused to address the problem. Mixed with anger, I found myself experiencing an emotion I hadn't experienced in a long t

I turned to face a demon that's been haunting me for fifteen years this past weekend.  This demon was different from the others in that it was an actual physical fear. I live in my head too much. Way too much. My default experience in battling demons is internal: the fear of failure, imposter syndrome, forgiveness, resistance, persistence, grit...the list goes on and on. But this fear has been right in front of my eyes -- or rather just beyond what I could see.  It's a janky modification to the deck in the back of my home, done by, local lore tells me, the lost-his-way son-in-law of the family that lived here prior who had some money issues so he "helped around the house." Anyone with a little common sense would know this guy didn't have much of it, nor much experience with the trades. It looked like a total hack job. The boundary of my fear was with overlapping sheets of corrugated galvanized steel that were nailed to the bottom of a second floor outdoor Douglas