“The host notes that he always feels better after spending time on Wikipedia, which he can't say for some of the other mega-successful web properties that fill our digital landscape. I had never thought about it, but I absolutely agree. Every Wikipedia rabbit trail session leaves me feeling peaceful, illuminated, and full of wonder. Wikipedia is a gift, and one that helps us to collectively focus, affirm, celebrate, share, and enjoy our love of knowledge and wisdom. I found the whole interview worthwhile, and I hope you do too.”

“My dream was correct.  Just once I would like to experience a moment unhaunted by competition and loss.  But it isn’t possible.  It can’t be.  All that makes the human condition valuable and worthwhile is haunted by competition and loss.  It has always been and must always be.

Meditate on this and you will cherish that which you love all the more deeply, and also value the friction of competition and how it refines you all the more as well.”

“It’s been a fascinating journey of creation and discovery, one that I could never have predicted even a decade ago, but I have no doubt I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be and doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing. I wake up every day inspired and driven to deepen current relationships, build new ones, and spread my message to a wider audience. It’s joyful and flexible, which tells me that it’s right. And if this is speaking to you, that’s something I can help you find too.”

“The pattern always looks the same, isn’t it?  We wonder what we will do with our time as information technology transforms our cognition and relieves the work burden.  But we keep filling it, don’t we?  We’re not living in the end of Wall-E yet, nor do I think we ever will be, so long as we don’t face some kind of extinction crisis brought about by careening exponential growth.”

“At the end, one of my friends in the group told me she couldn’t believe a computer generated that.  “It sounds EXACTLY like you wrote it.”  One thing I don’t know is whether that particular program studies my writing style, or just pulls from the greater internet.  Either way, I took it as a strange sort of compliment, although I’m not sure why.”

“Liminal simply means “in the midst of transition”.

And transitions can be tough.  We all know what they’re like.  And for some reason we tend to avoid them when we see them coming or find ourselves amidst them.  But they are unavoidable.  We ALL must go through times of transition whether we want to or not.  And we growth-oriented people must PURSUE them, even though they are uncomfortable. Many of us know when we’re being called to something deeper, grander, and better.”

Most people know what FRICTION is, but here’s Google’s definition: “the resistance that one surface or object encounters when moving over another.”

Life is full of friction, and always will be.  We can get better at overcoming it.  Many, many sources of friction offer resistance to our goals, and they can all be overcome.  In fact, our goals are not meaningful if they do not offer some kind of resistance to our spirit. That’s one way to think of it.

VISCOSITY is a bit less widely-known, but by no means obscure.  Simply put, it’s a liquid’s resistance to flow.  Oil has a higher viscosity than water.  Caramel and tar higher still.  Liquid nitrogen has a very low viscosity.  Have you ever seen it move across a surface?  It flows very easily. I still remember a delightful day like this in high school chemistry class…

“…this tells me that each moment of human life is an investment.  We’re confined to the Realm of Action, taking actions in every moment and unable to stop doing so.  To improve our results, we need to examine our motivations.  And that’s where the 4 M’s come in.  They represent our respective individual motivational calculations, and we each need to optimize them in our own ways.  That’s one of the facets that I help leaders and creatives to work with in an intentional way.

“Motivation” is not one of the 4 M’s.  It’s the Meta-M.  All 4 M’s affect our motivation, and the resulting blend is the ROI of each action we take.

If you have a problem with any of them, the whole system is out of balance and demands to be recalibrated.

The 4 M’s are…”

“A couple weeks ago a client of mine, with whom I greatly enjoy working, told me that one of the special qualities they discern in my coaching is that I am concerned, not only with my clients’ bank account, but their “emotional account” as well.  That was the word they used.  Emotional account.

Which indicates that particular client saw emotional wellbeing as part of the ROI from working with me.

What are all the ways YOU measure ROI?

To me there’s 4, and I call them the “4 M’s”.  I think they’re what you are after, as well as every organization and community that you are a part of.  If there’s a problem with any of them, there’s a problem with all of them.  And these are imbalances I can help you see and articulate.”

“And it’s actually funny that those are the words we often use…become “more of who you were meant to be.”  Or, if you’re religious, you might say become “more of who God created you to be.”  Ultimately I think it’s the same idea.  Why would you need to figure out how to become more of what you already are?  Nothing else is like that.

We humans have an odd condition - we need to figure out who we are, what we’re here to do, and then become more and more of that.  And then we resonate more fully on numerous levels.  And that allows us continue the process, achieving greater levels of authenticity.

And I notice that authenticity is more challenging, complicated, counterintuitive, and even contradictory, than most people realize. 

Some of the ways…”

“Purpose is related to the imperfectability of human life.  Human life MUST be imperfectable because we need opportunities to grow and develop into better versions of ourselves, and so every generation must face new challenges and traumas.  That’s the human condition.  It’s absurd, and I think many people sublimate that to ill effect.

PURPOSE will always be related to your particular assessment of the imperfectness of human life, and thus your path is revealed.  We can all see what is wrong or missing.  This is a millennia-long human pursuit that transcends our specific, individual lifespans.  We each have a place in this grand story, which is why I love both Kierkegaard AND Hegel (Hegel had a grand, totalizing theory of human history and Kierkegaard hated it because he couldn’t find room for the individual among the grandeur - I think they were BOTH right).”

“The lesson is that agreement with others AND ourselves, is not always so simple to find.  Sometimes, often, and especially when it really matters, it is actually very hard won.  Don’t know why, but it is.

What you want is on the other side of agreement.

And agreement is often on the other side of…”

“This is an exacting and nuanced equation. Your very peace, happiness, and life satisfaction rests upon it, and it takes true precision to discern.  I find most people simply don’t go deep enough.  When I talk to leaders who are frustrated, and struggling to discern the shape of this in their specific lives, we leave no stone unturned, no angle unexamined.  We need to look at everything, because everyone you touch is somehow involved in that question of what you want.

And, once this is discerned, HOW is it ultimately executed?  Simple.  Everything that you want is on the other side of something very specific…”

“Life is unremitting, and our quality of life is generally high, which places heavy demands on us (to be fair, the demands of lower quality of life are also quite high, so the demands of life are ultimately inescapable).  It’s enough to drive anyone to despair from time to time, but some of us feel it quite persistently, and most people, for some reason, don’t understand.  Some people tell me it is even fruitless to describe this feeling to their therapists because even THEY don’t get it.  This shows me that my thinking and work has an important role in what is typically called “mental health”.  I don’t like that term, but it’s the best one we have for now.

To quote a paraphrase of Kierkegaard: “...existence in this earthly realm must lead a sensitive person to despair.  Despair, Kierkegaard held, is the inevitable result of the individual’s having to confront momentous concrete ethical and religious dilemmas as an individual.  It is the result of the individual’s having to make, for themself and alone, choices of lasting significance.”  Some people feel that at a profound level.”

“First of all, I think human life has an alienating quality.  It’s what the Existentialists discerned about 100 years ago.  We’re all going through our lives, highly dissatisfied in many ways, with the unceasing friction of merely existing in space and time gnawing away at our souls just a little in each moment.  And we’re all doing this together, never quite sure if others are having the same experience of alienation and spiritual fatigue.  Part of the power of the Existentialists was creating a body of literature that spoke to this very condition, and in doing so easing the very condition by helping us all relate to one another more.

But for creative leaders it goes a step further.  We experience not only that perpetual friction of existence, but also the perpetual vision of what could be.  It’s a benevolent vision, usually involving some thriving organization that provides terrific service while taking care of its people, with close ties to all the communities it touches.  And such things are never built easily.  That’s the friction of leadership.  And it’s alienating too, because such leaders are rare.  But if you’re one of them, you know.”

“This is a small example, but its lessons can be generalized to much harder, more complicated ones. All leadership choices are based on similar calculations, and every choice tells a story. A friend of mine specializes in the field of semiotics, which basically looks at the world as a massive collection of signals, each of which tells a story. To change your results, look at the stories.”

How about that?  One of the strongest leaders I know, and she doesn’t think of herself that way, simply because she has inherited a highly limited concept of leadership.  And I don’t blame her - it’s an image that is reinforced for many of us through considerable cultural conditioning.  A leader is a strong personality, commanding the respect of a room, speaking with clarity and confidence, motivating followers into urgent action.

I wonder how many great leaders are out there, suppressing their considerable gifts and potential influence due to this highly limited notion of what leadership is.

She said “What do you think?”

I said, “Absolutely you are!  Because here’s how I define leadership…

“A few days ago I talked to someone who became interested in my thinking and immediately found it helpful for his vision.  Shortly after that I heard him speak about his organization for a few minutes.

Afterward he approached me and said ‘Well, what do you think?  How did I do?’

I gave him my very honest answer, which is what I tell everyone who asks questions like this.  “I can’t answer that, because we didn’t start at the right place in the process.”

“To translate his very polite words into immature idiot (which is what I was at the time):

Hey you f*cking dummy, don’t you realize that we’re a SOCIAL species?  There IS no job without the students.  Then it’s just you standing up there, flapping your lips about stuff you like.  Any dumbass can do that.  The job IS engaging the students, learning their passions, working with their motivations, helping them succeed.  It’s not about YOU!

It took me a few years to really get it, but now I do.  Actually, not entirely.  It’s still easy for me to feel sorry for myself and forget that I’m here to serve others, and that it is others’ success that is the entire barometer for my efforts…”

“We all leave clues all the time. We have a brand whether we know it or not, and often the branding we AREN’T aware of leaves the strongest impression. It doesn’t matter what you say, only what you signal. People are watching closely.

I think that’s what makes coaching so powerful. It’s a different perspective, typically with a keenly refined and articulated understanding of human nature, that enters the picture and expresses what it sees so that you can cut through the subjective fog and get exceptionally clear on exactly what needs to be done next and exactly how it needs to be done.”