Nudges from Nature

I didn't want to get out of bed on a chilly morning to take the call from a client who is several time zones ahead of me. I did it anyway. I didn't want to open bill from my insurance provider marked "personal and confidential." I did it anyway. I didn't want to drive hours away and fight 3-day-weekend traffic to pick up an old friend at the airport. I did it anyway. The result of these actions was one less thing I had to carry with me for the rest of the day, or week, or month, or whatever time it might take until action was non-negotiable or somehow got left behind in the annals of time. There are lots of things I used to do out of obligation or social pressure or because someone long forgotten said I had to, or for no other reason than I felt that I should, that I now do because taking action is empowering and liberating. It frees the soul. I live inside my head so much. I always have. I look inward first, and often. It's not so much that I'm indecisive

Imagination is everything. In imagination, anything can happen, anything can be.  We imagine our better selves every day. A better life. We all do this. Somehow we always find a way to yearn for something to be different. In better shape. More money. Better relationships.  Now, it's best and perhaps necessary to start from a place of acceptance -- accepting who we are and that we are exactly who we should be, exactly where we should be. But that's a topic for another post. And indeed, life continues to go on regardless. Change is constant. So, as life moves forward, we have an opportunity at every moment to contribute to a world that we dream might be. To take advantage of the opportunity, we have to bring our imaginations down to earth. We have to do the work. And maybe it's that misalignment -- between what we dream of being in the future and what we are capable of doing today, in this moment -- that difference can seem so vast that it leaves us confused and uncertain as

A while back, I wrote about taking on a home improvement project that had haunted me for over a decade. I removed a hack job of corrugated steel sheets that had risked trapping water under a second story deck any time it rained or the air was thick with fog. It wasn't pretty. Last weekend, four months to the day since facing that fear, I finished the deck project. It looks beautiful, feels strong and sturdy, and has certainly been a source of pride this past week. Here's what I learned in the process: Reality rarely matches the worst-case scenario that our imaginations find all too easy; though sometimes it does Facing reality is easier than holding onto the demons in our heads; facing reality abolishes those demons, even those worst-case scenarios; it can't be any other way The cliche about a journey beginning with a thousand steps is true, and brilliant; get started on the journey; look for a Northstar, but expect the path to meander along the way; a stepping stone somet

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-