Why I Do It.

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain." --- Frank Herbert, Dune - Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear

There is an unanswered question that has and continues to collectively baffle economists, psychologists and career coaches. The question has existed parallel to the economic system that encourages its asking. A question that many have asked since the idea of capitalism was first penned by Adam Smith himself. The answer is hard to produce and succinctly articulate, even for the entrepreneur: Why do people start new ventures? Put another way:

Why do entrepreneurs do what they do?

Why suffer through the ambiguity and inner turmoil? The feeling of constantly walking on the edge of failure? Why put in hours on the laptop at odd hours of the night, on weekends in coffee shops with free wifi and during the holidays? Why strip yourself of the lifestyle trappings that your peers are enjoying at 40k a year so that you can plow every extra dollar into an idea that everyone says won't work anyway? Why engage in the ditch digging that drains away the person you thought you were?

The sexiest answer, of course, is to get rich. But the only people who buy that answer are students because it was sold to them at Barnes & Noble by corporate marketing teams posing as entrepreneurs - telling them to use their strengths to go "take it to the next level".

The truth is, we all know the money is far from guaranteed and that it will be years before we even see a dime of it. Given the 70% failure rate of new businesses, each entrepreneur answers this question in their own way, because each entrepreneur's situation is different and how they come to grips with the daunting odds is individual to them.

For me personally, I don't do it for fame, fortune or personal prestige. I don't do it to impress people, to "stick it to The Man", prove critics wrong, to look smart or because I like being the underdog.

In all the months that I slugged it out for Dash & Cooper, nothing in my life compares to the ecstasy of seeing my first D&C shirt finally come in from one of my manufacturers. The road that lies between your idea and selling your first product is paved with late nights, missed social functions and the constant whir of your mind as you parse through disparate information, groping for some solid ground. The reason why I do it is for the pure elation that occurs when you are briefly reminded that out of nothing, you built something that people value. You are reminded that this is a fact. Something that no one can refute or take away from you. It is then, and only then, that you become present to the meaning of creation and the truth that ownership is not simply a bunch of papers and signatures.

In order to understand what it's like to bathe in the pure experience of ownership and self-reliance - to feel it pierce through to your bones - you must slog it out in the trenches amongst the mud and much of uncertainty and fear. There is no other way.

That's why I do it: to feel alive.

***

This post was written in part for {Branded} Online Magazine. Feel free to go check it out and see some other things that we are saying over there.

Go to the next blog post: The 2011 Action Plan.

The 2011 Action Plan

Who says I can't get stoned?

Plan a trip to Japan alone.

Doesn't matter if I even go.

- John Mayer

Leading off from my last post about living intentionally and Seth Godin's recent post about how you are your own worst boss I'm going to share about why 2011 is going to be the first year of officially creating and enacting an action plan. I'm going create some of my own language around the use of an action plan (inspired by Seth's blog post):

"You wouldn't go work for a company that made up a yearly plan while hung over, you also wouldn't work for one that would abandon a plan after 2 weeks quoting that they were going to 'figure it out' as they go along.

Why do it: It declares the future that you want to live into. When you say that you are going to do something, what you are really creating is a new life that will be coming at you full on: one that you want to live. It provides the large things that you want to get done and allows you, through an action plan, to work backwards from that reality to today. I personally try to make mine as measurable as possible so that at the end of the year I can see what happened vs what I said was going to happen.

Most importantly I look at why? Was it not as important as I thought it was? Did something catastrophic happen? What? The reason for looking at 'why' is not so much whether or not the reason was valid but who I was in the face of that reason. What the data shows me is me. And I learn something about myself that I didn't see before.

Why no one actually does it: Because it looks like busywork or some homework assignment. They make themselves feel guilty when they break their diet once or forget to go to the gym. And rather than get back on the horse (what's 1 or 2 days, or even a week lost in the context of a year?), they would rather ignore the discomfort of sticking to behavior change than actually feeling the joy of the results they have gotten for themselves. By the way no one is holding you to the commitments you make except you. So if you quit nothing happens, literally.

Wait, one thing does happen: you learn that you are someone who can't be self-directed when no one is watching you.

In other words, you find out that you are person that can't follow through on their own commitments. Don't like how that feels or sounds? Then do the plan. Don't like how that feels or sounds? Well then good luck amounting to anything more than the rat race, my friend. Because the exceptional professionals I know are the ones that can show up and deliver especially when they don't feel like it.

Why I like it: It helps me offload the mental power necessary to remember, find motivation for and actually enact the behavior change. I simply declare what I'm going to get done, create an action plan, input the time into my Google Calendar to do it and then let my calendar dictate what I should be doing. I just follow the plan without thinking and happen to get the results that I want. It's not rocket science. Over time (say 5-10 years) I'll probably think less about the planning (because I'll get better at it) which means that think even less about the "doing", which in turn can allow me to start dabbling in tremendous things before the age of 35. Things in the ilk of Laird Hamilton and Shai Agassi. Why? Because that's what I chose for my life.

My challenge to you is to go check out Chris Guillebeau's blog about How To Conduct Your Own Annual Review. In the comments, let me know some things that you are thinking about working on this year - I might borrow some to try on as I roll out the first draft of my 2011 Action Plan.

Cheers,

Travis

Living Intentionally

No, No, No, No

I will never forget

No, No

I will never regret

I will live my life

Closer to the edge. - 30 Seconds to Mars

December for me has always been a time of reflection. I guess the holidays serve as a convenient mile-marker on the highway of my life; a time to take stock of everything and see how it compares with last year. Up until this year it was simply something I did in my head, unintentionally and it typically centered on trivial things like whether or not I had a girlfriend.

But since I have been introduced to some new management technology this year, I have a mechanism to be intentional with my review and the planning for 2011.

Why do I do this? Because I want to live as intentionally as possible. I don't to waste valuable effort and time thrashing about hoping one day that a miracle will happen and I'll 'make' it. This concern is something Seth Godin lays out perfectly in his blog post here. He says:

"Even if you're not self-employed, your boss is you. You manage your career, your day, your responses. You manage how you sell your services and your education and the way you talk to yourself.

Odds are, you're doing it poorly.

If you had a manager that talked to you the way you talked to you, you'd quit. If you had a boss that wasted as much as your time as you do, they'd fire her. If an organization developed its employees as poorly as you are developing yourself, it would soon go under."

I think that this is a pretty accurate depiction of people trying to make their way through the human experience: survive. It's actually a pretty reasonable way to go through life. With what's going in the world today, it gets pretty easy to slip into the mode of letting one's reasons run their life. With divorce, kids, work demands, car maintenance, sickness, death, etc it's totally reasonable to be in survival mode. In fact self-protection is an honorable act on behalf of self-respect.

So be unreasonable. Follow through on your commitments in the face of all of that. Because that's what being a professional human being. That what living intentionally is: being unreasonable. Doing the hardwork in the off season, when no one is watching, making tough choices and sticking to them longer than anyone else would. Seth goes on to develop this a little further:

"We are surprised when someone self-directed arrives on the scene. Someone who figures out a way to work from home and then turns that into a two-year journey, laptop in hand, as they explore the world while doing their job. We are shocked that someone uses evenings and weekends to get a second education or start a useful new side business. And we're envious when we encounter someone who has managed to bootstrap themselves into happiness, as if that's rare or even uncalled for."

Again, the question for all this is 'why'? Why try to live intentionally? Because if you aren't living intentionally, it's hard to say that you are doing anything other than coping. Coping means that you don't have a choice, that you are given a set consequences that you must manage the best you can. To me that's not living, I know because I did it for most of my memorable life.

Living for me is choosing to do what I want and following through on the commitments in the face of the things that I have no control over. The first cop out I hear around commitment is that something catastrophic happened. Look, if you knew that you would get a million dollars to follow through on one thing you said you would do, nothing - absolutely nothing - would stop you. Those 'reasons' and perfectly explainable barriers that stand in your way wouldn't look so hard to overcome, would they?

As I roll out what's next for me in 2011, my challenge to you is to think about what commitments you have that you keep derailing. And when you identify what you do to derail that, start thinking about what you unknowingly committed to (hint: it has to do with self-protection).

For more information about how this process works, I highly recommend checking out a book by Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey on how to start looking at your natural immune system to change called How The Way We Talk Can Change The Way We Work. Good luck. Have fun.

The Road Not Taken, Revisited

It's not until we've lost everything that we are free to be anything.

- Tyler Durden, Fight Club

I started 2010 with a promise to myself that I would take the road less traveled in my life. My first ever post on this blog talked about choices that we have when reacting to what life gives us. While I wasn't exactly conscious of this commitment throughout the year, the results that I have produced may provide evidence that I did my part to make the most of the opportunities that I had.

By all means, I had amazing year attending my first TED Conference, being published, launching and closing Dash & Cooper, and contributing the creation of The Foundry.

Yet in the midst of all this, the most significant thing that occurred this year was the slow death of who I thought I was. At the beginning of the year, I was certain of a lot. Certain of who I was in the world, who I was going to be in the world and how the world worked. As the year went on, these assumptions were smashed - every single one of them. This creative destruction was grinding, purifying, painful and enlightening.

Around February or March, I understood that I was going to need to become the person "I was destined to be" in order to taking advantage of the opportunities coming my way. And while I understood that change was necessary, I didn't realize what exactly was going to take place.

What actually did take place was the erosion of the hidden beliefs and commitments that supported a persona that allowed me to "fake it". And by faking it, I mean playing the entrepreneur prodigy that has it "figured out" (Good Will Hunting, anyone?). A character that I had carefully crafted for almost two decades was stripped of me in last 12 months. All of my assumptions about how things work, should work, failed the litmus test of reality (in my case, the experience of trying to build a company). Furthermore, I had many more hidden assumptions that were brought to light and subsequently obliterated. Everything I knew, everything I thought I knew was gone.

I was literally left with nothing.

The experience was like a product of the Red Pill-Blue Pill scene in The Matrix, the burning-acid-on-your-hand scene from Fight Club and the scene where Ellen Page's character in Inception realizes she has access to pure creation.

The beautiful part is that in sacrificing the person that I thought I was, I was given the ability to be anything - thereby eradicating the "who I've been", "who I am" and "who I'm destined to be" notion. I was free of the confines that limited me from doing what I wanted to do; to be who I wanted to be - a blank canvass to create upon.

Reflecting on it now, I found that I paid a small price in exchange for endless possibilities. Not only just the freedom of self-expression but also a mental model to discover and bring to light more assumptions that I hold but are hidden from me. The benefit of doing so allows me the ability to live my life intentionally rather than letting my assumptions-mistaken-as-truth run my life for me.

I wouldn't say that I'm a 100% different person - humans are too complex to enact durable behavior modification in just a single year. Neither would I say that I am a perfect person. In fact, the quite the opposite. I've just been attempting to put a mechanism into play to identify, analyze and be transformed by my flaws, foibles and intra-contradictions. I'm also not (nor will ever claim to be) an 'expert', like anything in life, proficiency takes practice and time.

And as time goes on this regenerative process will resemble a snake shedding its skin - a constant turnover and departure from what I thought I knew as hidden and undeclared assumptions and commitments are brought to light and transformed into the assumptions and commitments that I hold (like a deck of cards).

So thanks for your patience these last 10 years. Thanks for the patience this last year and I look forward to engaging with you in 2011 and beyond.

Claims, Compromises and Indiana Jones

Welcome to resistance

The tension is here, the tension is here

Between who you are and who you could be

Between how it is and how it should be

I dare you to move

I dare you to lift yourself up off the floor

I dare you to move

Like today never happened

- Switchfoot, I Dare You to Move

I've made a lot of claims in my life.

Claims about fame, fortune, power and prestige.

Claims about who I am.

Claims about who I want to be.

Claims to defame others.

Claims to defame myself.

Claims to follow through.

Claims of war.. and claims of peace.

Claims to myself about my intentions.

Claims to be _____________.

I have made many claims about things I thought I knew and many claims about things I knew nothing about.

Some claims were true, some were fake and some were embarrassingly false. But the one common denominator is that I normally don't follow through on as many claims as I make.

I'm changing that. See, it's a powerful thing when you make claims about who you want to be and what you want to do - and someone takes you seriously enough to give you a chance to live up to them.

First reaction? .. Holy &$%*!

When someone gives you the opportunity to go do what you said you were going to do and be who you said you wanted to be, the elation is quickly replaced with the reality that you are left facing the dark, heavy chasm of actually having to go do it.

I was lucky enough to be given that opportunity this summer. It wasn't exactly pleasant, but thankfully I wasn't alone. I had 24 others facing exactly the same thing and we all had to step out into the apparent abyss. It's kind of like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when he comes to the deep chasm with no obvious way across. Before he steps out, he must decide between risking his own life in order to follow through on his promise to save his father or turning back.

For those that have seen the movie (should be all of us, if you haven't seen the movie it's un-American), we all know that he takes a step to find footing on solid rock, disguised as an optical illusion. But I reflect on the moment that he pauses before taking that step.

It looks like certain death. He looks at his book to find some sort of clue, nothing obvious. He stares into the blackness below. There's a moment of panic, a reconsideration. Indiana hears the cries of his dying father and you see the internal struggle, the fear and yet the sense of duty to uphold his promise by taking the next step on the journey. Finally, he clutches his book tight closes his eyes and even though he's not ready and the situation isn't perfect he decides to step anyway. From the ledge of rock-solid certainty into the black unknown.

Beautiful.

Most of us have had to take that step a couple of times in our past and I know that I used to doing everything in my power to avoid those situations. Most of the time that step was taken in a time of great peril and pain.

But what about the ones that are taken for a great adventure? What about the steps that lead you to the triumph and glory you seek, ones where your dreams come true, ones that are presented when people aren't, in fact, dying?

It's an intriguing fear when you are offered a chance to have everything you want. I don't want to speak for any one else, but I was terrified when I realized that my dreams were coming true. This is due mainly because I really had no idea what I was asking for until I got it. I was just making some half-baked claims and selling them really well. And like good ol' Indy, I thought about turning back.

We all create external reasons why we shouldn't take that step; too many disappointments have jaded us to need the chains of mediocrity that have become so comfortable. Luke-warm is still warm right?

What if Indiana Jones had looked at the abyss and turned back? What if he would rather watch his father take his last breath than momentarily step into the unkown?

Nothing. Someone else would likely step up, step out, save the day and earn the glory - live the life that was meant for me.

Every compromise we make between who we are and who we could be is essentially equivalent to death. Except this time the body dies decades later.

I am in no means perfect at this, I'm just committed to upping the percentage of times that I step from the ledge of certainty - to give the unknown a shot. For every time I do, I get closer to being the person that I need to be in order to live the life that's in front of me. And every time I don't, every time I compromise (which happens more than I want it to) I keep my relationship with all of you from really living because I'm offering a Travis Corrigan knock-off, not the real thing.

Do what you should to do, be who you could be. Or not. You have nothing to lose.

Really.

A Lack of Abject Cynicism

There's a lot I've been thinking about when it comes to my experience of being an entrepreneur. It's been a hellish few months and I'm just getting started. Despite my imagined ability to artfully articulate what it's like to be a "real entrepreneur", I keep finding (and collecting) snippets of articles that strike the chord deep within.

See, I thought I knew a lot. But the more I know, the more I realize that there's a lot I don't know that I don't know. However, if I had to say something about what I've learned, it's these two things:

1. There's a lot I don't know. Even if I think that I know it, someone else seeing the same thing as me and I don't know how they are viewing it.
2. It's not about knowing more but developing a way to learn smarter. A method of learning the all the unknown in life as you travel along and acquire the information that progesses you further along than every other piece of information bombarding you - a method for identifying the different between what's urgent vs what's important and choosing accordingly.

My experience is only shared by my Foundry cohort. Other young entrepreneur CEO's who are so openly embracing the path that they've taken. They are the only people that I can truly connect with. They understand the constant gnawing of which step to take next. The static that we receive about not wanting to go get "real jobs". The frustrations of being told what we should do with our company by people who don't really understand what we're doing. The limbo between being revenue-ready and seeking financing so you can quit your job. The look that we get when we tell people we are CEOs and they don't believe us. The balancing act between the near-broke startup we have now and the billion dollar company that we have in our heads. Our fixation on things like excel, Management Reports, this tiny thing called margins and the art of being scrappy. I know this sounds elitist (that's not my intention) but unless you're in it, daily living it, it's just hard to connect over these things.

I stumbled across another article from Harvard Business Review about Misfit Entrepreneurs. Dan Pallotta writes an article that is so far from the traditional perspective of the entrepreneur that it's probably why I connected with it so much. The article, like what most entrepreneurs like to do, takes the stereotypical perception of what an entrepreneur is and flips it upside down. Dan provides an obscure and almost enlightened perspective on where most great entrepreneurs operate from.

Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of people that talk the game (like I did for a long time) but only a few actually strike out to do it. I am in no way implying that you must be an entrepreneur in order to be someone of worth or that people who are tackling the corporate world are the antithesis of what's described below. Being human is not mutually exclusive to the path that we take in life. We all share the common thread of the human experience, we all express it in different outlets and some nurture and foster it more than others. All I am providing is a humble and unorthodox insight (one of many) about the core of what happens behind the scenes in my mind and heart on a daily basis. Here's what Dan says about it:

Someone interviewed me a few months back for an entrepreneurship project, and he mentioned that in his conversations the thing that stood out the most was the willingness of great entrepreneurs to be vulnerable.

It's not the first association you'd make with an entrepreneur. Words like "driven", "ambitious", and "persistent" usually come to mind. But the moment he said it I knew that he'd hit the nail on the head.

Vulnerability. It is the most poignant quality in every entrepreneur I know.

To embrace the misfit in oneself is to be vulnerable. It is to forsake the easy acceptance that comes with fitting in and to instead be fortified by a kind of love, really. A love of life, a love of wonder, and, ultimately a sustaining love for oneself. Far from egoism, that love for oneself is a measure of one's love for others, for humanity. And it only from that love that great ideas can be born.

This kind of love cannot be taught in business school. It has to be felt. It has to be given sanctuary away from the noise and relentless assault of information. And then it has to be nutured. It must be embraced, in the light of day, for all to see, for people to ridicule, to criticize, to laugh at. And the entrepreneur has to be willing to feel the pain of ridicule and suffer the risk of the dream being stolen, or crushed by the meanness of this world. But the misfit doesn't worry about that. The misfit has a higher calling: to bring the unmanifest into being, no matter who is saying what.

Vulnerability is the absence of cynicism. And the absence of cynicism is love.

As that interviewer uttered the word, I thought of my entrepreneur friends. And I realized that what separates them from others is their abject lack of cynicism. Their willingness to be vulnerable.

Their love.

Confident, but not really sure.

I recently read this thought-prodding article from Harvard Business Review.

It is part of a blog series that I am following call 12 Things Good Bosses Believe. This particular entry rings pretty true to my experience with Dash & Cooper over the last few months and my life experience since starting my senior year in high school: we all live in uncertainty, which becomes somewhat more certain as time goes on. In my personal experience, mainly in football and entrepreneurship, you don't have very long to try to analyze all the details and different contingencies before you make a decision. You have to make decisions with what you know and what senses you have about where you are going. And then be ready to change your mind.

In the article, the author details a small excerpt from an interview with Andy Grove, longtime CEO of Intel. Something so simple about dealing with complexity that it shifts the way you think a little:

None of us have a real understanding of where we are heading. I don't. I have senses about it. But decisions don't wait, investment decisions or personal decisions and prioritization don't wait, for that picture to be clarified. You have to make them when you have to make them. So you take your shots and clean up the bad ones later. I think it is very important for you to do two things: act on your temporary conviction as if it was a real conviction; and when you realize that you are wrong, correct course very quickly.

Think about it. Read the article. Give me some feedback as to how this applies to your life.

Everything Matters

Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another. - Ernest Hemingway

I was once honored with a most inspiring lecture early last semester in one of my entrepreneurship classes. We were discussing the practice of skill development over time and were told how paying attention to the details of developing skills, framing certain thinking-patterns and hardwiring your personal decision-making model can, over time, allow you to do powerful things when the opportunity presents itself.

Since we were also discussing idea generation, a few of us mentioned how we had thoughts for products that very common today many many years before their time. The reason why we weren't able to act on those ideas was due to the fact that we just didn't have the skills and knowledge to make it a reality. What my professor said next, will stay with me forever:

"Laird Hamilton, as you may know, is a professional big wave surfer. He got to be that way because his biological father left him at the age of four, which caused his mother to move them both to Hawaii. Wandering the beach at a young age, he had a chance meeting with the man who would eventually become his adoptive father, pro-surfer Bill Hamilton. In wanting to please his would-be adoptive father, he took up surfing and continued surfing nearly every waking moment of his life. To the point that he was surfing in amateur competitions before the age of ten and pro competitions in his teens - later setting his sights on big wave surfing. After a lifetime commitment to skill development within surfing he went on to conquer a wave that was never considered possible to ride.

According to Moore's Law, technology will double every seven years. Subsequently, every seven years, a sinlge product will enter the market that significant shifts the paradigm in which society operates within. Shifts it to the point that the very discourse of society through history is altered permanently because the rules about what is possible have been rewritten.


I tell you all this because some time in your life you will come across one, if you are truly gifted maybe two, paradigm-shifting ideas that have the potential to rewrite the rules and shift the historical discourse of society. Often, that wave has formed before you even know that you are on it. To ride that wave, to make that impossible idea a reality, will require you to do something that could never be taught, something that could never have known to prepare for. Whether or not you succeed a combination of a few things: which skills you decide to develop, a lifetime commitment to developing those skills and your ability to come up with the perfect answer to a problem that no one ever thought possible."


Needless to say, my mind was blown. Shortly before walking out of that class room, wondering how I was going to possibly focus on my job at work, my professor showed us this video of Laird Hamilton surfing the impossible Teahupoo to further drill the lesson into us.

Go watch the video, think about what Laird says at the end of the clip about risking his life, and then think about what skills you are developing (whether you intend to or not). Are you knowingly committing yourself to skills that will prepare you for project that may very well define you? Or are you unknowingly developing a skill set that negatively alters your life (shifting blame to circumstances/others, avoiding anything unpleasant, not doing work and then complaining about why you shouldn't be held accountable)?

Think about it. Post your thoughts below.

20/20

Hindsight is 20/20 because the past is always easiest to see. - Bleeding Through

If I've learned anything since my last post. It's that execution of your commitments is the only thing that separates the exceptional from the mediocre.

I've made a lot of claims. I have not followed through on all of those claims. The differentiating variable between what I say I'm going to do and what I actually do is simply the clash between reality and my perception of reality.

Every week I know exactly what my completion rate is. As of writing this, I am at 16% for the week. I have only hit 100% a few times. The reason behind the discrepancies is that when I write out my management reports on Friday, my perception of what reality on that particular day hasn't factored in the things that I have yet to find out. By Monday, only half the list is relevant, by Wednesday, half of that is relevant. The Travis Corrigan that wrote the management report on Friday is different than the Travis Corrigan the following Wednesday. The reality of the space that you are operating in changes quickly in highly chaotic, complex situations. Priorities change as the environment changes, if you can't adapt your organization dies.

So why make a plan if it's going to change? Because over time you get better at calling your own shots, knowing that there are a lot of cognitive blindspots built into your plan. You learn to execute better, you become disciplined and start recognizing work avoidance tactics (like writing blog posts). The practice of executing on a plan makes you become better at planning. It's cyclical: after a while you learn that it's hard to execute a soft, head-in-the-clouds plan. And you learn that you won't accomplish anything of merit with low-standard plans.

It's hard, it requires integritous accountability and dedicate time of reflection to review what you have done and what you have not.

Try it: Write down (yes, write it down) 10 things that you plan to do in a week. Then add 2 stretch goals (mark them with an "s" at the end). Put the document someplace that you can get to easily, preferably someplace that you pass regularly. At the end of the week calculate the following:

Commitments Completed/Commitments Made = % Completion Rate

The exercise isn't about getting 100%, it's about looking at WHY you didn't do what you said you were going to do. Were they not as important as you originally thought that they were? Did some unforeseeable hing that wasn't on your list pop up that took precedent? Are they worth carrying over to next week or should you drop them?

Do this exercise weekly for the next 4 weeks. Tell me your completion rates and any insights that you have about.

Letters

In the spirit of spring cleaning, I am in the process of purging my bloated closet. Chucking things that I thought I couldn't live without in a blitzkrieg, an activity that's surprising easier than I anticipated. I've run into a snag though..

I've stumbled upon an old wooden box, a gift from my grandfather, full of handwritten memories.

Old journals, notebooks with sketchings and thoughts, and manila envelopes stuffed with pictures of times I forgot that I ever experience. It's an odd assortment of mixed-emotions: warm nostalgia, a reawakening to the emotions as I'm transported back to the moments captured by the item in my hand juxtaposed with the knowledge of the less-than-perfect memories that separate the man I am today from the boy was then.

Then there are the letters. They are soft, a sign that a significant amount of time has passed since their inceptions. Letters that my parents wrote the night before my State Championship football game and graduation. Correspondence between old high-school flames that I was convinced I loved at the time. Letters from sisters professing their love just before I moved to California. Small notes I received from friends and family that despite their shortness carry an impact because of their thoughtfulness. Letters from former loves (the real ones), some I remember discovering on my windshield after I finished a work shift, some are printed emails, many I thought I had thrown away during the normal purging that occurs during the painful breakup. Correspondence, either handwritten or printed email, with almost-lovers, their words dancing on the line of deep friendship and wistful thinking.

Then there are the letters that I wrote. The ones which were never delivered. The ones that carry my heart, either in the moments of it's breaking or the heaviness just before breaking another's. Nostalgia takes a twisted turn, traced with a form of regret. An entire library of thoughts cram my head as I walk through those experiences as well as the alternate experiences that I wish would have happened or could have made happen but didn't have the foresight in the actual midst of it all. Oh wait, it was those experiences that taught me foresight.

Then I think about whether or not I should toss them, save them, or even.. send them. Seems like a good idea considering I'm in a state of purge right now. So I think about their effect: they may change the recipient's retrospect of my reality or how I felt during that time but it wouldn't change what happened. Some the recipients I talk to (kinda), some I don't, some I make a point to avoid. I wouldn't even know how to go about finding the addresses to send them along.

As all of this swirls and grows, I find myself taking one last look, a deep breath and listening to the sound as I rip them apart and toss them in the trash can. I don't throw all the letters away, just the ones I shouldn't be hanging on to anymore.

The point is this: That was then, I'm in now. Many of those experiences are buried in pine, six feet under time. My life is much different now than it was then. I'm a much different person too. Who I was when I wrote those letters is dead and gone. The pedagogy of trial by fire has burned the naivety and fear of the unknown. I've lived a little, experienced some and learned what is and is not love and loss. As such, the letters are like takeaway memos of a long meeting that I didn't want to be in. In the scheme of everything I deal with on a daily basis they are just trivial pieces of paper. The lessons are burned on my heart, and I am thankful for them because they came at such a great cost. Throwing them away is just the physical action of hammering the last mental nail to the coffin I began building long ago.

Challenge: Burn it all. Let it go. Don't wish for what should have been or could have been. You can't bring them back, they are chapters that have already been written. Take those lessons and write new ones to look back on, this time with a smile.

Of Boys and Men

"Around the world, boys endure strange and humiliating rites of passage before coming men.. like wearing skinny jeans."

Again, I think Docker's is on to something here on their 'Second Dawn of Men' marketing program. But as I flip through some of the articles in this month's GQ, I notice one that states the 'Is this the End of Male Vanity?', it seems that there is a movement back to the Natural Man (or whatever).

At least it feels like an undercurrent, a subtle movement that man is more than vanity and paper thin shells. There are those who are merely swimming on the surface and those who's waters run deeper. Common sense can easily identify people in the extremes of these two groups: one waxes his eyebrows and gets botox at 21 and the other, well... doesn't.

The fact that this cultural shift occurred around the same time as the Great Recession is not merely coincidental, it may acutally be causal. Men have this interesting connection with the control of resources and through the evolution of various currencies in our history, credit became the soup-du-jour of this past decade. While it was flowing like milk and honey, the vanity factor increased exponentially because we could 'afford' it. Everyone went metro, got spray-on tans and paid (read: borrowed) $120 for ugly t-shirts.

While some ignorant few are still playing the arrogant bit (sidenote, I think it's interesting how closely both of those words are in terms of spelling and meaning). There is clearly an underlying difference between those who still cling to their chunky watches and waxed eyebrows and those who have accepted reality, took a long enough look in the mirror until they understood what they really saw and moved on.

The difference, you ask? Initiation.

Initiation is a wonderful and terrible thing because it separates the men from the boys. It's wonderful (to most) because it ensures that those who come out the other end are really capable of handling great responsibilities while equally (and terribly, to some) ensuring that those who lack the ability to be counted on for anything, simply aren't.

In other cultures, a male is not considered a man until he kills a lion. Then he is able to have the honor of being bestowed the responsibilities of marrying and procreating.

Personally, I think about that and wondering how many idiots had never been born if we had that ritual in our society.

Initiation now, as the Docker's advertisement referenced mentions, is mostly passive. Many men now must seek it or at least be acutely aware that it's happening. The Great Recession has been a wonderful initiation. It's the Darwinist cleansing that capitalism so greatly relies on to expose who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.

A man who has been initiated is one that is comfortable in his own skin. He doesn't need to be a poser with designer threads, chunky watches, massive lines of credit, and German cars that he can't afford. He doesn't need to flood his body with supplements and spend all his time being a big fish in a little pond at some gym. He doesn't need to pretend that he's an MMA fighter and look for fights wherever he goes. He needs to be himself and not anyone else. There are enough guys trying to be what the world tells them they should be and they aren't man enough to say no. Being a genuine individual that is conscientious of others and his relationship to them is, in part, being a real man. A real man realizes that he's one of a kind and let's the world deal with the weight of his presence.

Want to know whether or not you are comfortable in your own skin? Here's your challenge: go to a mirror, stand about 3 feet away and look yourself in the eyes for as long as you can. If you feel noticeably uncomfortable or can't hold the gaze for at least a minute, you may have some soul work that you need to do. As always I appreciate your comments and next time I'll be going a little more into the details of initiation.

Of Sacrifice and Significance

Why the hell am I here?


Have you ever wondered that? In the midst of all the frustrations, the responsibilities, the aspirations and the chronic tendency to measure the difference between where you are and where you think you should be, sometimes the thought creeps in. When it's all said and done is there anything that transcends the daily experience of inches that we tend to lump into weeks and seasons whenever we get a chance to look in the rearview mirror? This universe is huge, the population of this planet is about 7 billion, and here I am hanging on for dear sanity on my way to another meeting, appointment, day of work (fill in the blank). Why I am I doing what I'm doing? Why am I not doing something else? If I even thought about doing something different, would it make any difference? Is my life going to make any difference at all? Is the sum of actions and decisions made throughout my life going to impact anything in course of humanity given that so much happens regardless of my interaction? Did my brain just fall out of my head?


I know for me personally, I have a great need for significance. I live for a pat on the back and a "good job, sonny" at the end of the day. I yearn to do things I'm passionate about, do them well and hopefully gain some recognition. I guess that's why I'm a workaholic: I equate significance with productivity. The logic works like this:


1. I want to be significant, to be appreciated for what I bring to the table and how that achieves a "good job, sonny".

2. A job well done requires two things: a job (duh), and a commitment to doing that job excellently.

3. If I do those two things, I get told that I'm doing a good job at the end of some period of time. Corporate America calls this a Performance Review -their 'good jobs' equal a 14 cent/hour raise (hooray!).

4. If I do those two things longer and better than anyone else for a long enough period of time, I get to climb the corporate ladder and (hopefully) be in a position where my actions and decisions affect more people and if I develop myself to be a good leader then (hopefully) my decisions make a positive impact on people's lives and then my significance comes in the form of observing the positive effects of my actions and decisions on a grand scale (hopefully).

5. I die and I take nothing with me.


Pretty awesome huh? Yeah I didn't think so either. It's egotistical and leaves no real impact on anyone for any real period of time after I start decomposing. I'm also dead, so I don't anticipate caring about what people think of me at that point either. Which leads be to the following question:


Why the hell am I here?


I read something super interesting tonight, it's from a book called Wild at Heart, by John Eldredge:


"A young pilot in the RAF wrote just before he went down in 1940: The universe is so vast and ageless that the life of one man can only be justified by the measure of his sacrifice."


Between the meetings, the classes, the studying, the politics, and the constant churning to progress my life to the upper echelon of what America thinks is significance, I often think to myself: this is the hill that I will die on. I'm sure that at some basic level, we have all thought that. This life is Hamburger Hill, it's claiming the lives of good people and turning them into living corpses in their quest to get to the top.



But what about that RAF pilot? ..the life of one man can only be justified by the measure of his sacrifice.



Suddenly, the meaning of personal significance is no longer linked to just doing a job well done. Could it be that real significance is linked to sacrifice? What does that even look like? The core of human nature is arguably survival. At least that's what Maslow and Darwin think. Look out for number One. "What am I getting out of this?"


Sacrifice is significant because it doesn't make sense. From a survival standpoint, sacrifice is unnatural because it requires that you lay down something you hold important for someone else. And that's it. You do it because of your conviction that it should be done and that you are the one to do it. Period. It's not like you walk around thinking, "Gee, I hope something perilous happens today so I can get on the news." Acts of selflessness are so significant because that's exactly what they are: selfless. I'm sure martyr isn't an occupation that kids want to be when they grow up, at least not amongst the industrialized nations. We want to be Astronauts, Sports Stars and Actors, we want to be significant for our unique achievements on a grand scale, not lay them down for the sake of others without payback.


There was a reference in my last post that now, for the first time since bad guys the world needs heroes. What makes a hero? Sacrifice. Taking a few moments out of your commute and your tunnel-vision schedule to do something for someone else. You don't need to rush into a burning building. You don't have to become Batman. Maybe just walk an old lady across the street.


Challenge: Become Batman. I'm kidding. But just try to work in a little sacrifice into your life. And like being a gentleman, don't do it because you get kudos and recognition, do it for the sake of being a man, and largely, being a good person. I want to hear your ideas on how you can actually work this into your life (hint: Consider starting with the people you love).

Death of a Gentleman.

We are a nation of playboys.



I muttered these words to myself as I flipped through the first few pages of this month's GQ magazine. These fashion advertisements portray what these designers think the average American male should aspire to: overly-tanned, self-centered objects of sexually-ambiguous excess. I am in no way homophobic, I have a lot of good friends that are homosexual. But this blitzkrieg of pomp and arrogance succeeds in giving me a model on how to perfectly execute a meticulously-dressed shell. But what about the core?

Then comes one of the most profound advertisements I've seen in recent memory:

Once upon a time, men wore the pants.
And wore them well.
Women rarely had to open doors and little old ladies never crossed the street alone.
Men took charge because that's what they did.
But somewhere along the way, the world decided it no longer needed men.
Disco by disco, latte by foamy non-fat latte, men were stripped of their khakis and left stranded on the road between boyhood and androgyny.
But today, there are questions our genderless society has no answers for.
The world sits idly by as cities crumble, children misbehave and those little old ladies remain on one side of the street.
For the first time since bad guys, we need heroes.
We need grown-ups.
We need men to put down the plastic fork, step away from the salad bar, and untie the world from the tracks of complacency.
It's time to get your hands dirty.
It's time to answer the call of manhood.
It's time to WEAR THE PANTS.

Thank you Docker's. You read my mind.

I recently sat in a group (I was the only male there), and it was a generalized complaint that there were no more gentlemen left. That there was no formality in dating, no courting, just a bunch of guys asking to hang out- hopefully thinking that it will eventually lead to sex. No leadership, nothing to offer, everything to take. All these women came from different backgrounds, they have different perspectives on their roles as women, but the simple aggreance was that they wished for more men to act like men.

Guys: Be a Man. Take charge. Don't be a flaky cop out. Live your life as if it existed before FICO scores, when your signature and your handshake was the only thing that mattered. Open doors for women, take your hats off inside, wear pants that fit, and wear them around your waist with a belt. Have some manners. And do it, not for sex or for "points" as I see so many marriages based on, but for the simple fact that you earn the right to upgrade from "Male" to "Man".

Women: Be a Lady. Let us be men. Shoot hard-lined feminists on site, for that's what they did to gentlemanship. They forgot that there is a difference between heroes and bad guys, thus producing a genderless society where no one wins. Women have more opportunities, but less pay (sadly) and men don't know which actions build him as a man and which ones he will be ridiculed for as a shovenist. Guide the protocol by reciprocating acts of Gentlemanship with acts of lady-like behavior. If you text during dinner on a first date and talk about all the "best guy friends" that you "love to death", don't let it be a surprise when we drop you off at the end of the night and don't call again.

I aspire to be a Man. I want to court a Lady. I want to be a part of a society in which there are basic manners that everybody knows and respects. Being civilized is not a function of enlightenment where you are the most amiable and adaptable man in the room, someone who has no presence. Being civilized is being courteous and having manners but knowing that sometimes you need to draw a line in the sand and stand for what you believe in in a way that is firm but respectful.

There are times to show courtesy and respect and there are times to stand and deliver when that respect has been violated. The more that the latter is emasculated, the quicker Gentlemen become extinct. Because manners and courtesy are derived from unshakeable masculine strength. That strength is only realized and defined when it is put to use. If you stop telling us to put it to use, then all you end up with are a bunch of soft "nice guys."

Gentlemen: It's time to be Men. For the sake of being Men.

Stand and Feel Your Worth

"Stand and Feel Your Worth" - Thrice

This moment, I am in finance class. The same one I have bitched about in previews posts. We are reviewing our first midterm test scores. My two classmates, both amicable colleagues in this and other classes of mine this semester are groaning about their results. They are finance majors and have received scores in the mid-sixties. I, an entrepreneurship major, receieved an 89. I would lie if I didn't feel the least bit gratified, maybe that's my competitive nature.

But I don't need to say anything, my score has. I have said nothing while they mutter their self-directed frustration as I remember some comments they've made about their confidence in my ability to lead our group assignment in this class this semester. I do not boast. When I see the look of dejection in their faces, it is a look that I recognize wearing a few times throughout my college career.

In this moment, I realize that humble pie is derives, and is derived from humility. Those that are served choke down its bitter taste. Those that serve it must show humility, or else be selected for a helping later down the road.

As I reflect the servings of humble pie that I have injested over the last few weeks, I realize that humility is hardly a derivative of words but rather of actions. Some of you know that I have an entrepreneurial idea that is beginning to turn into a fairly exciting venture. What started as an idea while selling credit card protection products over the phone in July of 2008, was barely validated by an early investor in overstock.com to be (potentially, if I don't screw it up) a multi-million dollar company, maybe a viable competitor to major players in the national market. I am humbled. Entrepreneurship is a team sport, I am only here at this level because the people on my team are constantly raising the bar for themselves and expecting as much from me. I actually hesitate to tell others what I am attempting to do. I am not funded. I don't have an operational model. I am not incorporated. But I have people who are cheering me on. Evangelizing my idea, my aspirations and my direction. I am humbled.

I have learned the lack of respect that people will show you when you are all talk and no show. Conversely, I have begun to see the regard that people hold you in when you say little, do much, then say even less. But I am human and though I wish to continue that behaviorial trend, I will fail. Good thing God gives us grace as a model as to what we should show to others. For though I am initially tempted to rub my classmates' faces in the dirt, I have actually offered my consolation and aid for future tests. For the high road is its own reward: you can walk on solid ground without feeling contaminated by selfishness.

So my challenge is this: Stand and Feel Your Worth. Feel it through the actions you bathe in excellence. Feel it in the admiration, if properly earned, that others show you. Feel it in yourself when you rest on quiet confidence, emphasis on quiet.

Dying

Today, I met a 22 year old who died three times about a month ago.

That's right: DIED THREE TIMES.

He told me how he got sick with what he thought was the flu about 6 weeks ago and it worsened to the point that he couldn't lift his head. Turned out his heart, his kidneys, and his liver were all failing simultaneously. He was life-flighted from his home in Jackson Hole, Wy to the University Hospital ICU. This kid is a healthy 22-yr-old with no history of medical problems personally or in his family. Over the course of 3 days his heart flatlined for about 5-7 minutes on three different occasions. He was not expected to last through night many times during the week he was in ICU.

I asked him what dying was like and he described, in vivid detail his experience of coming out of a dark forest to an open field of wheat and the warmth and peace. He also went on to say that each death-experience ended with loud thud noises which was actually his heart beginning to pump again, then waking up with a team of doctors presiding over him in their attempts to resuscitate him. He remembers that he clearly knew he was dying each time.

To make a long story short, he recovered in 2 and a half weeks with absolutely no scarring on his heart- a medical miracle. Here is a paraphrase of his perspective during the whole deal:

"After I died the first time, I really prayed to God about his will for my life and if my death at the age of 22 would really be something for his glory. I never heard an audible voice, but I had the confidence, despite how bleak my situation was, that now was not the time for me to go. Even though I died two more times after, I felt that God had something else that he wanted me to do. From that point on I was determined to get out of that hospital in two and a half weeks. After a week, my tests came back good enough that I could be moved out of ICU. The results continued to improve, and 2 weeks and 2 days after I was admitted, I was released and walking on my own."

He is not allowed to leave Utah because he needs to be under careful monitoring and there are not enough good hospitals in his hometown. The following though is what really impacted me:

"I was truly ok with dying, after experiencing what life after death has to offer, I look forward to the day that I die and NOT come back. But it's that experience that truly allows me to live. It's not until you lose your life do you really gain it."

Everything that I thought was a big deal in my life when I walked into that meeting tonight went out the window. I was speechless, which you all know is impossible. This guy was so positive, had a get-it-done attitude and was not ashamed to enlist his unsolicited faith in God.

I was given a reality check from someone who has lived only as long as I have: that all of us are subject to mortality. He also taught me that we all have a choice in how we face that mortality (sometimes more than once). That we can choose to accept what we can't change about dying and that sometimes the attitude in which we walk through the valley of death is often the difference that helps us come out alive.

Challenge: Lose your life. Honestly imagine what would happen if you suddenly were removed from this earth. Gone without warning. No chance to prepare your will, or say your goodbyes. As you think about it, do you find that you are satisfied with the way you lived your life? Or do you still have more living to do? Like most of us, if you answered the second question, you still have things that you want to satisfy. Satisfy them, but remember: you can't take anything with you. All you have is your name and how you will be remembered by the people that were in your life. Do wish that you would have done more for them? Then go do it. Do you wish that they would really know how you feel about them? Then go tell them. Don't compromise, don't take shortcuts. Live every moment of your life in personal excellence, because you never know which one will be your last.

Perspective

I love experential knowledge.

Learning something through an experience is an experience in itself, often because we didn't expect to learn anything as the events started to unfold. Sometimes, this learning, at an even more basic is really the just the identification of something we didn't know was there before.

The thing about experience is that it takes your preconcieved notions about anything and changes the angle by which you view it. Sometimes that means just being closer to that object or notion. I think that often we think of a change of perspective as a matter of degrees but I have found that the world, your thoughts, your biases shift significantly when you get closer to something. The details of an ideal become more visible, as if you placed an HD lens over your perspective. You notice that it's not glossy, but rough and textured. Even more importantly, you realize that it's not as solid as you once thought in your former persective, but something that can be prodded, poked, and probed.. even molded; like slightly moist clay that you need to exert significant pressure to alter. You take a moment to reassess your surroundings, gauge your reaction, then reconcile them to previous thoughts and assumptions, then move on a slightly different person.

I have many ideals that have changed the closer that I moved to them. One moment you are at a seemingly significant distance from a lifestyle (group of actions, behaviors, thoughts, value system, consequences, etc), then a conversation throws you into the center of it. Now you are experiencing it from the inside looking out. Whereas you were previously looking at it from the outside at what you thought was an solid, opaque shell; you are realizing that your assumption was wrong: it's a permeable membrane that where you can move freely.

As I get further along in my college career, I also get closer to the "real world." My chosen profession is 'change agent', the world calls it entrepreneurship. I want my job to be invovled in start-ups. To many, this lends a sense of arrogance. I know because I felt the same way last year, when I was on the outside, looking at what were my (erroneous) assumptions about the entrepreneurship lifestyle. But I have been allowed to continue getting closer, and it's not some sugar-coated shell of wealth and adventure. Sure there's adventure, but there's massive sacrifice. I have learned about personal burn rate. That there is no trade-off, no tit-for-tat on focussing on one area of your life at the expense of another. In order to do this you have to change your perspective. Because of my passion for making awesome ideas a reality, I can align my personal life (what's that?) with my "work life".

To drive the point further, I am realizing that being an entrepreneur is an "all the time thing, not a some of the time thing". For those of us who played sports and excelled at them, we know that phrase is often Vince Lombardi's mantra on winning. Excellence, a critical component of anything that amounts to anything you do in life (should you so chose), is a state of being not something you turn on and off at will. So I have found a way to make my passion be the solvent and dropped the things in my life I thought I could compartmentalize to be dissolved into a whole new solution, spinning in the beaker of my life.

For years, up until a few weeks ago, I had no idea that I would have learned the things I just described, mainly because I didn't know they existed -that they were constant elements you had to accept as you walked through that membrane. Does it sound harsh? Well it depends on your perspective... The same company looks very different if you are viewing it through a corporate or entrepreneurial lens. Even more so depending where that particular lens is positioned.

But then again so is life. I once read that you actually train yourself to be a fatalist or opportunist. Even more interesting is that you can, through training, change. Your perspective, the lens in which you view anything, can be changed. Sometimes you move it under you own choice (intentional or not), sometimes life moves it for you. Or give you another one.

My challenge is this: take anything, anything, in your life that you feel absolutely certain on and change your perspective of it. Move the lens, adjust the focus, or get a new one altogether. See how things change and take notice of how you change in reaction to the new information. Then do it again. And keep doing it and see if you can alternate between all of these perspectives quickly and accurately. Then move on to something else, then let me know your reaction.

Know Thyself

Today, I went through a Strengths Builder class at work with my manager and the rest of my team (18 people). The four hour class was centered around the results of our StrengthsFinder Test Results. For context, StrengthsFinder is a timed test that identifies your patterns of thought, behavior, knowledge and skills and groups them together into "Themes". Your Top 5 themes (out of 34), as the instructor stated today, are synonymous with breathing. What's interesting is that out of 19 people, my number #1 theme -Command- was present in anyone's Top 10 (!).

Command is so rare that the instructor was intrigued enough to discuss this theme for 20 minutes. According to her, a rare percentage of the population has it their Top 5, even fewer still have it as their Top theme. The funny thing was that everyone, even the people that I don't directly work with stated that the description was right on. So here's the description for Command:

"Command leads you to take charge. Unlike some people, you feel no discomfort with imposing your views on others. On the contrary, once your opinion is formed, you need to share it with others. Once your goal is set, you feel restless until you have aligned others with you. You are not frightened by confrontation; rather you know that confrontation is the first step to resolution. Whereas other may avoid facing up to life's unpleasantness, you feel compelled to present the facts or the truth no matter how unpleasant it may be. You need things to be clear between people and challenge them to be clear-eyed and honest. You push them to take risks. You may even intimidate them. And while some may resent this, labeling you opinionated, they often willingly hand you the reins. People are drawn to those who take a stance and ask them to move in a certain direction. Therefore, people will be drawn to you. You have prescence. You have Command."


Sound like me? Somewhere, my best friend Alex is laughing because he has seen me time and again call people out on their crap. Whether it's someone acting cocky, or fake, or arrogant, I have a knack to take a stance and call them on it. And it's usually in front of everybody too.

I don't know why I do this, because it seems that this "Strength" would be perpetually pushing people away because I'm constantly running over people. Yet, the instructor said that this is a strength often found in Generals, CEOs and heads of State.

Thankfully, my employer offers personalized Strengths-based coaching to work on developing and managing these strengths. They suggest focussing on using this to find roles and tasks where I do this well, by mentioning the a list that Gallup put together of postive perceptions regarding Command. They are as follows: "Charismatic, Driven, Easy-to-Follow, Inspirational".

But she also talked about prescence. That I have a "prescence" whereever I go. She mentioned she observed how I interacted with my team during activities and though she had never met me before the class, she knew who I was because of the results she had been given from our tests.

And if I think about it, I've always loved leading. Scout Leadership, Sports Leadership, School Group Leadership- I just naturally seem to take charge and most people don't seem to object (I think). And the bit about calling people out, I just want to be candid. I hate going through life and regularly interacting with people that are not being honest with me, others, or themselves. And this is an area that I'm most called to: I am an open book. I speak exactly how I feel. I'm completely honest about who I am and my thoughts and my earnestness with whatever I'm experiencing. I don't know how to be any other way and I can't imagine anyone else detracting from the fullest and purest experience of life by allowing any moment to go by when they aren't being clear-eyed about the truth. That's just who I am.

The point is this: learning about yourself from the perspective of others is an experience all in its own. I have often wondered how other's view me. Well I got what I wished for, and even more.. 20 minutes of 18 people including your boss discuss and point out the positive and negative perceptions of that which is closest to your hardwiring is more draining than you anticipate. But this insight along with rest of my Top 5 - Competition, Restorative (fixing things), Ideation (idea creation), Strategic- have provided solace. I find solace in the fact that even though Gallup's assessment is not the ultimate answer to Travis Corrigan's soul, I now have a better articulation of how I act spontaneously. I get to compare and contrast my perspective of myself, with the perspectives of others and work to get somewhere in the middle so that everyone (including me) is happy.

My Challenge is this: Know Thyself. I would recommend taking the StrengthsFinder test and then coming to talk to me about your strengths. We can use the materials I have from the class and start looking at how you operate. I'm sure that it will be a useful tool in understanding how to make all the difference in the lives of those around you, as well as your own.

Standing

There used to be a time when standing for something stood for something.

Ok, I stole that from a Kettel One commercial. Regardless, I think this simple statement makes a great commentary on the way things are nowadays. It seems that apathy is slowly becoming the new American norm, especially in my generation. A favorite author of mine, David Foster said in his book Accept No Mediocre Life,

"If it is wrong to overestimate yourself, isn't it at least equally wrong to underestimate yourself? Because we haven't learned to balance pride and humility, the paradox of our time is that we can buy more, but enjoy it less. We have more conveniences, but less time; more degrees, but less sense; more knowledge but less judgment; more medicine but less wellness. We have multiplied our possessions without adding to our worth. We're obsessed with making a living, but not a life. Medical breakthroughs have added years to life, but not life to those years. We've done bigger things, but not better things. We eat fast food; we suffer slow digestion and shallow relationships. In our quest to get "the good life" we have two incomes, but more debt; fancier houses but broken homes. We take quick trips, use disposable diapers, possess a throwaway mortality, have overweight bodies, and buy pills that do everything from cheer to quiet to kill. All in a futile quest to get what we already have... love."

A brief glimpse into the past concludes that we are at one of a few historical turning points in the story of the "Great Experiment." Today's issues are not much different than the Progressive Era (1866-1910) and the experience of the greatest generation (1925-1970). We, as a nation and society have again been brought to the edge of oblivion. A shaky economy, monopolistic corporations and special interest groups draining the system of sustainability, a shrinking middle class, immigration problems, national security, industry vs. the environment, political inaction. The ship of the United States has been steered to rough waters and I'm getting the unsettling feeling that the crew is asleep at the helm, much like a frog placed in a pot of water, slowly boiling to death.

I'm not calling for political action, but I think there should be a call to return to principles. "Reality" shows illustrate that my generation is the poster-child for the path society has taken over the last 100 years. Shows like "Jersey Shore" demonstrate our youth's digression to a microwavable mentality; a consumption-driven lifestyle fueled by the latest candy-coated pop song on the iTunes. In the movie, Gladiator the question posed is "is Rome worth one good man's life?" Given the context of history, we are the New Rome, are we worth one good man's life? Many of our soldiers have demonstrated they believe it is worth theirs...

I'm not talking about candy, I'm talking about meat and potatoes; sustenance. Principles of a different wave length than a throwaway morality. Principles that reject mediocrity, pacifism, and submission to the status quo. Principles that set that foundation for a framework of actions that respect consequences, not actions that soothe the current emotional state. Principles worth standing for: Smart work ethics. A teachable spirit. An educated approach to issues. Common Sense.

I challenge mediocrity and MTV's version of what "the good life" looks like. I challenge the notion that every waking moment must be spent making a living, waiting for a time in life when a bank account must be a certain size to support unrealistic enjoyment. I challenge those to act, drawing back from the obsession to make a living and instead make a life. To build that life using principles worth standing for. To be an example and encourage others to stand for theirs. To hope that there are still some willing to play a part in keeping this ship from capsizing. To understand that we can learn from the past, and create an existence where failure does not equate to a chain of regret that we drag with us. To live closer to the edge, away from what is comfortable and stagnant. To be the generation that steers, through the decision to live their principles, and deliver this nation from the brink of implosion to again respresent principles and ideals worth standing and dying for.

So, in closing: Never forget. Never Regret. Live your Life.

My New Enemy

I hate blogger templates.

I have tried, and failed at finding a suitable template to replace the one I currently possess. Why? Because I am realizing that no one can leave comments on my posts. I also have another enemy. I was going to wait and announce him at the end of the semester but I just could not hold back after today's debilitating onslaught of condescending "encouragement" and perpetually raised brows.

My new finance teacher is a trip.

I think he spends more time telling us how much we are going to get the material wrong on the test than he actually does teaching the material. Now, I could drift and let the integrity of my rant drop somewhere into the depths of ad hominem by procuring acidic insults based on two class periods and a slew of stereotypes. But that really wouldn't make much difference. But you should know that at from 7:30am-8:50am on Tuesdays and Thursdays there is a Travis Corrigan sitting on the back row of an auditorium... slowly dying inside.

I strongly desire to intellectually challenge this man who thinks he's smarter than me because he writes his test questions (I'm assuming) with the highest employment of confusion possible. I want to show him that some of us aren't sheep, easily swayed by the droning of a convoluted man hiding behind the lecturing ego of a furrowed brow.

I must play his game. Show He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named that he's mortal like the rest of us. Shake his comfort zone a bit. But I must remember my place. I do not know it all. I have something to learn from this class, even if it is just a new form of survivial... or patience. I must remember the past times when I have challenged professors early in the semester, only to be shamed by a poor grade, given by poor effort. I can't going around trying to start a fight with everyone who annoys me, any blood-drunk fool can do that.. remember?

But then I think that it's not really a competition, that I really have nothing to prove to this person. He breaths and bleeds like I do. If anything, his arrogance and need to control me through my grade has given away a fundamental flaw in his scheme: his class is not life. I don't care what grade I get. I have much more going in my life than what I receive in some dreaded finance class.

As a dear friend and former professor of mine said to me semi-recently, "Travis, you just need to tell yourself that this is one professor during one semester during a short period of time in your life. Get in, do the work, get the grade, get out."

The point, I am realizing, is this: if I play his game, in hopes of beating him at it, he wins regardless of the outcome this semester. My New Enemy would be myself, for I've taken the bait.

Challenge: have perspective. Do your best not to lose site of it when you encounter those who really get under your skin. Me included (on remembering to have perspective - I know I get under all your skin already). I could also use some help, if someone, anyone, in the blogoshphere knows how I can get a new template and let people post comments just email me... I'm all ears.

Why Not.

"Why Not?" is my new mantra. It's effective date was Januray 1st, 2010. I plan to keep it the rest of of my life.

Wikipedia defines a mantra as a word or group of words that are considered capable of "creating transformation."

In the movie, Never Back Down, after dealing a substantial blow to the protagonist, the antagonist says, "When you get tagged, your brain registers one of two things: Back the hell up.. or get the hell in."

I love that line. I know that often the worst thing for me to do when I get "tagged" in life is to sit in the middle. I refuse to be ignornant to the fact that retreat is sometimes the better option (more on that later). But starting this year, I am using the mantra "why not" as a personal battle cry to get the hell in.

First, let me cover retreat: Retreat is not Surrender.

Retreat is choosing to place objective clarity over the emotions of ego. Retreat is living to fight another day. It's not being so blinded to zeal that attempting to win every battle causes you to lose the war. I have been in times of retreat, often because it has been my only option and trust me, it's a fight all in itself. Retreat requires more courage and emotional fortitude than charging. Any blood-drunk fool can rush the field, retreating requires an acute self-awareness, a prescence of mind about the reality of the situation despite the adrenaline and the emotion coursing through your veins. It requires strategy because you will need to convert your retreat into a positioning that sets you up for success in the next skirmish.

Unfortunately, there have times when I retreated and instead should have charged. I allowed myself to surrender to the insecurity of rejection and passed on opportunities that could have been life-altering. I want to transform my mind in these situations from retreat to get the hell in... Why not?

My dad, who has been in sales for over 23 years told me this: "You don't get unless you ask." I have realized that all the things in life that I want begin with asking for them. This forces me to have courage in the fear of rejection. I have social anxiety, rejection is a big thing for me. I can only bolster my courage in these situations by making a decision to get the hell in - "why not" is my battle cry.

In an appeal to logic, I use a sort of Pascal's Wager in approaching rejection: If I ask and I am rejected, my life is no different than if I hadn't asked at all. If ask and a door is opened, then I have taken another step in my journey to my heart's soul purpose. Therefore, why not ask anyway?

Here's examples of how I've walked the talk since I started using my mantra to create a transformation:

I ask for more responsibilities during a volunteer project... Now I report directly to the Executive Director of the organization who offers to give me school credit for my efforts, lets put the operations projects I work on in my resume and offers to write letters of recommendation any time I need them.

I am asked, as a class assignment, to interview an entreprenuer. I say "why not" and ask my professor to make an introduction to Rick Alden, a Park City Resident, and 2009 Entrepreneur of the Year for the United States. He's says "shouldn't be a problem", I'm expecting an email in a few days.

A friend recommends that I intern for an $18 million, student-run Venture Capital Fund. I say "why not" and ask the aforementioned professor for help on getting accepted. Turns out he's well connected in the Venture Community in Utah and California, and is willing to help me go after it.

I finally introduce myself to the gorgeous girl that works at a downtown coffee shop I have frequented for months. Later, I say "why not" and go ask her out to dinner. Though she blushes, she rejects my offer. I am still alive and life is no different than if I hadn't asked her.

The Challenge is this: get the hell in. When the situation calls your name, charge straight into the heart of your fears... You'll never know what's in the next room if you don't knock on that door.

The Price I Paid

A few months ago, I was asked to write about my reflections on the cost of a mistake I had made. It asked me to examine the financial, relational and psychological costs. Below are some excerpts from what I've written:



"To be honest, I haven't accounted for every little price or loss or cost. I work and study and live a productive life- to count every cost, to audit every expenditure in the framework that I have to repay for the worst night of my life is in itself a price I cannot afford to pay. Rather I take stock of my life before, after and onward from that night.




The fact is this: The notion that I have paid a price implies that an exchange has occurred.



Looking back, it's easy to say that I mortgaged my early 20's for a gamble that I lost. That I was overleveraged and the risk was too great to rebound from. But taking snap shots of my life now compared to my life then illustrates that the aforementioned costs have really been exchanged for a life of focus, of discipline, of realism. For I have been forced to deal with my demons, to eradicate my bad habits, and to clear out the cancer of insecurities that plagued my life. Friends lost weren't really friends at all. My situation became a litmus test for the shallowness of aquaintainces and proved the resolve that lies within the people that truly love me. The ones who stuck by me in during the dark winter nights and waited, beck and call, for news of every progressing detail.



I have aquired better time management skills, learned to be more punctual and make better decisions. I traded a life of pretentious arrogance and fashion labels for one of utility and legitmacy. A life of empty promises with no intentions of fulfillment, exchanged for the truth of a harsh but doable reality. Clear purpose and achievable steps to my goals replaced the ambiguity and fear of failure. Where remained a dark, cold emptiness -a looming, bottomless doom beneath my feet- has now been replaced by a solid foundation found only when one has reached rock bottom. I have recieved a stout re-training in the behaviors and tactics to lead a life not jeopardized by temporary pleasures.



I have gained new friends, born as a direct result of my mistake. Friendships that would never have been forged otherwise. People who barely knew me, coming to my aid at my lowest points. People who were willing to enter my life when I had nothing to offer and everything to take.



What price have I paid? $10,000? $20,000? $50,000? It doesn't really matter, for I have recieved my life. And though its not perfect, I am in less debt than before the events that transpired on November night. I have better quality friends. I have the love of my family. A promotion at work. And a humbleness that merely being a good steward of my life is repayment for the countless hours and money that others have spent to continually support me.



And finally, the realization of this inevitable truth: make good decisions. They are no more harder than the consequences of bad decisions. While the changes and progress made has not been for the reasons I hoped for, or paid in the form that I expected, I have certainly profited. For the time and money spent on this mistake and its subsequent consequences have been large, it is a small price to pay in exchange for the person I am becoming and the life I am beginning to live."



Challenge: How do you view the mistakes or problems that you've dealt with in your life? Were they situations to be merely survived or chances to clean house and start right? As I've tried to commnicate in my last blogs, your attitude is one thing that makes all the difference. Instead of hoping to survive the consequences of every negative event in your life, view these as part of the exchange to becoming a purer YOU. A you unshackled by the insecurities and fears that weigh you down and keep you from doing what makes you come alive. For it is then when you can truly make all the difference in your life and the lives of those around you.

The Road Not Taken

As this is the first official post of "All the Difference", I will be sharing my favorite poem, written by my favorite poet. The poem and the quoted commentary below it are referenced at the end of this post.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all he difference.
-Robert Frost (1874-1963)

"We must interpret his choice of a road as a symbol for any choice in life between alternatives that appear almost equally attractive but will result through the years in a large difference in the kind of experience one knows."

I have had a lot of choices in my life, and like Robert Frost there are times in which I could have traveled both roads at the same time. Sometimes I have been blessed with a choice in which one alternative is clearly better than the other. But what about the ones in which the alternatives are in relative equality? I think about what my life would be like had I never left Utah for California. Had I never returned to Utah from California. Had I never made the mistakes that I have. Had my mistakes been timed differently or made different mistakes altogether.

One of my favorite parts of this poem is that statement of how "way leads on to way". Often in my times of quiet, ususally on the night drive home or when I park in an area that overlooks the valley, I think about how I got to where I am. Which events lead to another that were critical in providing me with the cards I currently have in my hand. I certainly feel like I'm being guided along in the journey of my life. At times its a strong sense of direction, and complete helplessness during others.

But the difference has been the way that I approach my reaction to life's events. Do I let it teach me? Or just surrender to sadness and try to cast blame on others? I have been fortunate enough to have parents and other sources of influence in my life constantly instill a sense of "fight." I am of course, referring to the animalistic fight or flight approach to any event. I strongly believe and have witnessed in my life as well as others, the power of "fight" inherent in any individual.

Reaction is a matter of choice.

And it is one of the few things in life that make all the difference.

Most of my biggest victories have come at the end of a path that began during a moment of crisis, where my reaction would be the very thing that made all the difference... because the course of direction was mine alone to make.

I feel like I have fighting all my life and the mistakes that led to times of crisis in my life is when I decided to retreat from the issues at hand: those things that are crucial for me to master before I can move on to the next chapter of my life. Oddly enough, the failures and crisis -products of path commanded by a chose to run away- have eventually forced me to fight anyway.

This is not to be mistaken as some morbid approach to life, where you suffer and then you die. It's endurance-training. John Maxwell said in his book The Difference Maker that you can judge the strength and character of someone by witnessing how much strife one can take before they start to become unraveled. I feel that each time I choose to "fight", that decision becomes easier to make as problems (opportunities in disguise) present themselves.

As I close this post, I offer a challenge. For a challenge will be offered at the end of each post, something to carry with you into your daily tasks and duties. My challenge to you is this:

View every problem, every situation in which your decision requires you to choose one path among many as an opportunity. Rely on your strengths and talents to influence the outcome of your chosen path, even though you may not know where it leads. Take the road less traveled, opt for an opportunity to trully grow- to take a step (or two) closer to who you were designed to be. It will be uncomfortable. It will be uncertain. But adventures are not lived out in a snuggie or at the bottom of a bottle. They are lived out on the rocky paths less traveled by. Your decisions at the various tailheads of your life will make all the difference.


Arp & Johnson. Perrine's Sound and Sense. 10th Edition. 2002. United States of America. pg 88-89.