Assessed your “inventory” recently?

So much time is spent looking forward and ahead on where you are going that all you ever see in your vision is that thing, or that place.  It’s really easy to forget that there in the future is really here in the now.

To start building the future you need first to figure out what you’ve already got to build it with.  Look all around you, look into the details that surround you.  Try to separate the emotions from the observing.  Just take an inventory of the place where you live – the assets of the town/community, the people you know and what they do for work or their special skills, the things you own.  Write down this inventory.  Think of what all this means.  If you were a business (which you are actually) what is all this inventory worth?  What could you make with all of these different ingredients- these people with their different strengths and locations, property and places, items?  So many things just sitting around in your inventory wanting, waiting, and willing to be a part of something awesome.  Look at this list you’ve created.  You have a massive inventory and as a business you can only generate wealth (in all its forms) if you put this inventory to use.  What may be stopping you from building the future is your lack of skill.  But probably not.  Most likely you’ve forgotten about your inventory.

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September 2, 2010 | Posted in Uncategorized

The most humane solutions win out

In the process of trying to make the world a better place- more sustainable, less poverty and hunger, less war, more love- it’s hard to remember that no one person or company is to blame for the negative aspects of where we are now.  To single out one person or company is to make a mistake because we are all part of the mass that has pushed us to the places where we find ourselves now.  And of course, it’s also good to remember that with the bad has come uncountable good.  We need to remind ourselves that pushing for change is part of the process of advancement.  Figuring out the best way to move forward from each small step is how we work.  There are no enemies here just different views on how to best keep pushing this thing forward.  Take faith in the majority of good people who you’ve met eye-to-eye.  Lastly, see that over the course of history the most humane solutions eventually win out.

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September 1, 2010 | Posted in Advancing Sustainable Civilization

How we dismiss dreams and why we shouldn’t

Last night I attended a dream interpretation talk by Len Worley, a writer/speaker/therapist/rolfer/dream worker and Charlottesville resident. Now, regardless of how serious a person you consider yourself, no doubt you have dreams. Sometimes those dreams are magical, fantastical, sexual, and often times seemingly non-sensical. Well, that’s the part that has always tripped me up. I couldn’t believe that these things were just random pictures and stories. They often felt like something to me… I mean they really had a feeling about them as if I was dealing with some emotion through the dream. But that’s the farthest I ever got with interpreting them.

Two recent occurrences made me realize that there was something deeper to dreams. The first was that I read a book by Carl Jung, a man who had analyzed thousands of dreams from thousands of people, in which he stated that many people experience similar scenes in their dreams.  For example, a common dream is one involving rotting teeth falling out. I’ve had the tooth rotting dream before myself. Apparently many people do. He went on to theorize about why that is but it’s beyond the scope of this piece.   If you’d like to go deep into the dream world theory you can check out “Man and His Symbols” by Carl Jung.  The second experience was a chat I had with Len about a dream I had.  As he tried to help me understand it, he asked me to describe the place I was standing in the dream.  At first I just said, it’s a ledge on a cliff.  But he didn’t accept that, he asked me to step into the dream and look around.  Sure enough, as I put myself back into the dream, what I thought was a limited view of the place turned out to be an expansive understanding of the place.  I could look up and down and back and front and describe the place where I was standing.  What I discovered in this moment is that often we think of the place in dreams as what was apparent right in front of us, but when we take a moment to explore deeper we really have a much more detailed awareness of the place.  I know this may sound strange to all of my readers interested in business talk, but try it for yourself and you’ll see.  We humans have a tendency to generalize when we see, think, or describe a place or event but if you allow yourself to be with the moment your mind opens up to all of the little details around you.

With these two recent revelations about dreams, the opportunity to attend this talk seemed like a good next step to learn more.  Last night was a further exploration into what our mind goes through on a regular basis every evening.

There is some science to this: we dream about 2 hours each night, and go through approximately 4-5 REM cycles each night.  As we move further into the evening, the REM cycles tend to elongate so that the final REM cycle is about 40 minutes long.  We only remember a few seconds of our dreams.  All mammals dream.

There was some history: Freud had a theory of dreams that they are just “day residue” – a chance for our subconscious to release the pressures of the days thoughts that we bottle up inside.  They meant nothing in particular and were often there to deceive us in some way.  Jung broke with this theory, felt that dreams were there to teach us something and were inherently good.  To this day, our society largely holds the “day residue” idea and thus most of us “explain away the dream.”

Now for the good stuff – ideas on how to interpret dreams. In good dreams (not disturbing dreams which speak to the “shadow” side of us) the people, places, and things we see are reflecting things about us.  With the nouns you encounter in your dreams, your goal is to get to the essence of each.  Describe the things you saw in your dream, write down the descriptive words about it.  What was the essence underneath those things.  For example, what is the essence of a rocky cliff?  Solid, earthy, treacherous, beautiful and it might feel challenging if you’re trying to descend it.  Once you can get the essence of what you saw, you can ask the question “How am I unlike that?”  You ask this because dreams are typically showing you images of your opposite.  These are things that your subconscious mind is trying to bring into your life.  Those sexual dreams you’ve had?  Often times those are showing you ideas of yourself that you want to merge with – ideas that you want to assimilate.  Describe the essence of the person you were intimate with and you may find traits about yourself you are trying to adopt.

In all, Len has 10 principles that guide his dream interpretation work.  Though he outlined only a couple last night, he will be laying them out in a new book to be released soon.  I’ll be sure to mention it when it comes out.

Suffice it to say, even this little bit of insight was a welcome window into the wild world of dreams.  Whether you choose to go down the road of interpreting your dreams, whether you want to learn what your subconscious is trying to teach you (which can sometimes be hard to deal with), it is certainly worth opening up to the idea that there just might be something more to learn from them rather than just “explaining them away.” That’s where I stand with it right now and it’s feeling pretty good.  I’ve already got last night’s figured out…

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August 31, 2010 | Posted in Opening and Expanding, Self-Aware, Mindful, and Balanced Living

Making the world go faster to make us… happy?

Up until perhaps the 1950s the industrial revolution was providing some sense of greater happiness to the populace of the US. Our companies created more things, maximized outputs for the inputs and paid us more money and gave us more security.

Day to day life still hung in the balance for the majority of people prior to this era. Food, clothing, and shelter weren’t by any means secure so people worked hard to secure these things.

As things began to become more secure and almost guaranteed (with government safety nets), a consumer revolution kicked in and suddenly the basics were covered as well as gadgets to make us even more comfortable. The icing on the cake if you will.

The trouble now is that for the past half century, we have continued on that trajectory but we are increasingly leaving behind the simplicity of those times – we are moving toward an ever faster, noisier, and more connected world. This trajectory is pulling us further out of our orbit from the center of our basic, simple humanity – our connections with each other and nature. I think many people are finding that more of more isn’t bringing happiness on top of happiness.

One of the greatest questions of our time then is – where and what is the balance of happiness and advancement and how to we get ourselves there?

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August 30, 2010 | Posted in Advancing Sustainable Civilization

Some commuting math

Several months ago a good friend was considering switching jobs – taking one final position before retiring.  At the time she was commuting 25 miles to her job each way but it was on busy streets or freeways.  The commute time was approximately an hour each way.  Pay was good, benefits were good, environment was good.  In all it was a good job.

When she was offered a position to work at a small organization based in her small hometown she was excited except for one thing… it would be a significant pay cut.  Would it be worth it? The pay really did matter as retirement was coming close. In seeking an answer to this question, together we went through the math:

Time spent in the car each day commuting
current job: 2 hours (or 41.6 hours per month or 500 hours per year – that’s a full work week each month or 12.5 work weeks annually)
job offer: 20 minutes (or 7 hours per month or 83 hours per year)

Amount of traffic stuck in each day. Or could be seen as time/energy/resources wasted idling in traffic:
current job: 30 minutes (given that the drive would only take 45 mins without traffic)
job offer: 0 minutes

Amount spent on gas/auto maintenance (using the IRS standard rate of $.50/mile)
in current job: $25/day (or $520/month or $6250 per year)
job offer: 5 miles each way, so $5/day (or $104/month or $1250 per year)

In addition, we figured that the spare time saved commuting could be spent starting a small consulting company. Assuming a compensation rate of $50/hr as a consultant,
multiplied by 417 hours per year (saved from commuting) you get a whopping $20,850/year.
Granted it wouldn’t be possible to immediately monetize the free time but it certainly gave some perspective.  It was also reasonable to consider this time could be spent doing more productive and relaxing activities – gardening, exercising, connecting with friends and family – even if it wasn’t monetized.

Apart from all of the left brain calculations there were the added benefits of working for a local, community-based organization. Having a sense of belonging to a community and the feeling of making a difference improves happiness so this should be seen as an added benefit.

When looked at from all of these angles it became clear that even if the job paid $5000 less it would be a break even just on the commute alone. Add in all of the other benefits of lifestyle and the winner was clear. The new job offer won out and everyone lived happily ever after.

This story speaks to many aspects of deep living, but perhaps the most simple point is that there is always more to life than just increasing its gross revenue.

2 Comments
August 29, 2010 | Posted in Human-Centric Business, Money and Value, Simple Living Ideas

Lots of Answers, Way More Questions

How do you express what you know?

You communicate your beliefs through how you live, how you interact, and what you say.  The rest of the world can see and feel who you are through these expressions.  It’s good to know what makes you tick and to take a stance in defining that life for yourself.

How do you express what you don’t know?

The question is, in the course of putting your stakes in the ground, how do you continue to express the questions you have?  Because you do still have questions.  In fact, if you look deep enough you will find that you actually have way more questions than answers.  You’re constantly wondering, though the mind doesn’t always frame it that way.  Instead it often comes across as fear, confusion, anger and so on.  For example, “how could they do that?” or “why hasn’t he/she called me back?”  Look closely, separate the emotion, and you’ll see those are actually just questions.

Most people handle their questions in two ways.

First, many people bottle them up inside to let them stew without thinking much about it.  Secondly, a more successful way I think, is to outwardly express your questions.  Ask them out loud.  It takes confidence to know that you don’t know and to be willing to ask the question.  It takes even more to be able to ask the question from a place beneath ego where your emotions aren’t tangled up in it.

The question, when asked from this place, is going to help you see the world from other people’s perspective.  This way opens you up to the world – it allows answers and experiences to flow into you. If we all did this then the whole world would slowly open and blossom in playful curiosity.

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August 28, 2010 | Posted in Powerful Communication, Questions

When Paralyzed by Big, Take Action in Small

This began with a conversation. (photo by indigo_jones)

You are an artist of life – we all are.  I have talked deeply with enough people to know that most, nearly all, of us have a life in mind that we are trying to build.  For some of us there are more ideas and visions inside our minds than we could manifest in a lifetime.

The visions that exist beneath the surface can be debilitating.  So grandiose, so amazing in concept these ideas often paralyze us by the shear breadth.  You think: How could it be possible to birth all of these wonderful ideas to the world?  I wouldn’t know where to begin.  Perhaps you don’t even ask these questions.  Instead you are just stuck.

There is a direct correlation between size of plans and friction of action.  The bigger the plans inside the head, the harder it is to start and gain momentum.  There is also a correlation between the size of the plan and the need to express the idea out of the mind and into the visual or physical world.  By this I mean that if the idea/plan is big then it becomes necessary to write the idea onto paper to see what it looks like.

Next time you are paralyzed by big try this process:

  1. Barfing – Start by barfing up all of the ideas trapped in your mind.  Like I mentioned yesterday most of your thoughts are stuck beneath the surface and will never see the light of day.  If you leave them there, this will eventually lead to festering… and you don’t want that.  Barf up these ideas.  Get them out on paper… all of them.  Give yourself at least 30 minutes to allow the subconscious to rummage around, loosening up stuck thoughts, bringing them to the surface to be disgorged.

  2. Cataloging and Organizing – Once you see all of the thoughts in front of you try cataloguing them.  Do certain ideas belong together in some way?  Are there separate ideas here or one singular idea?  Are there steps within a process?

  3. Prioritizing – Now that the ideas have physical form, now that you can see them, prioritize at least 3 of them.  Pick which one you are going to act on first.  Which of these small items will be the first to go, the first to help gain some momentum.

  4. Act – Lastly all you need to do is take action on that item.  Once it is done move on to the next item on the list, each time acting on the small.

In summary: Make the big idea physical – get it out of your mind.  Once you can see the ideas, make sense of them.  Prioritize and pick a small item to take action on.  Repeat as necessary.  Live the dream.

2 Comments
August 27, 2010 | Posted in Opening and Expanding

Like an Iceberg, Your Strength is Beneath the Surface

Power lurks beneath the surface. (Photo by jeffmikels)

You are an iceberg.

With an iceberg, what we see on the surface is only 10% of the actual mass.  90% of the mass of the iceberg is beneath the surface.

With a human, we are essentially our thoughts manifested in physical form.  What we see on the surface is that manifestation.  On the surface, I see you.  I see what thoughts you have taken action on.  I see how you dress, how you interact, what you drive, what you do for work, what you’ve built here, and the family you’ve created.

Beneath the surface is a beehive of mental activity.  Who you are beneath that surface, who you are inside your head, no one knows that but you.

It is estimated that each individual has 50-60,000 thoughts per day.  Of those how many do you think are vocalized or realized?  How many are brought to the surface?  And which ones are brought to the surface – the right ones or the wrong ones?  Ones that help you build what you want or ones that limit you?

You are not like an iceberg in that you have the opportunity to shape the thoughts beneath the surface.  What you bring to the surface, what you manifest, is also in your control.

What’s beneath the surface and held deep within the iceberg is yours to excavate.  Chances are there are powerful things in there you want to bring out.  The power to sink the mighty Titanic came from what was underneath the surface.  Interestingly, the power that created the same vessel came from beneath the surface too.

1 Comment
August 26, 2010 | Posted in Opening and Expanding, Powerful Communication, Self-Aware, Mindful, and Balanced Living

What does an Ideal World look like?

I ask this question a good bit.  It turns out that if you want to make the world a better place, it is helpful to know what it is you’re working toward.  ALL motivational speakers, business and success gurus will tell you this… visualize what you are working toward then make plans to get there.  I don’t know that we could all come to complete agreement as to what the ideal world looks like, but I am curious what it looks like to you.  I am curious to know what the whole world thinks about this question.  What are we working toward here?  So….

What does an Ideal World look like?

I know many of you read the blog and don’t respond but in this case I would really love to have your thoughts.  I’d also encourage you to retweet or forward this around to as many friends as possible.  I would love to see what we come up with here.  Please include your thoughts in the comments section below.  Thank you for helping me with this “research project.”

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August 24, 2010 | Posted in Advancing Sustainable Civilization, Questions

Addicted to (Helping You Have) Powerful Experiences

Feeling It! Photo by kwanie

I find nothing more exciting in life than experiencing powerful moments. Perhaps you are like this as well. I look around and see plenty of adrenalin junkies – snowboarding, big wave surfing, skydiving. It seems there is also a variation of the adrenalin junkie, one a lighter shade of gray- that appreciates the success of business or the thrill of performing in local theater. I get it. Why not chase the thing that makes you feel great and makes you come alive?! I can’t think of a better way to experience life.

Well, I would mix in one other thing and that’s being able to appreciate all of the moments for what they are. The rush and the hit can’t last forever. That’s the point – it’s a high worth experiencing but it is a high after which there comes a decline.

How do you stretch the consistently good feeling past the high? Figure what feels great nearly all of the time and build that into your life. It’s not a high but it’s a good feeling. What makes you feel good? Make a list of 20 things that make you feel good and build at least one of those into your daily routine. This way you know you’ll feel great for at least some part of your day. That’s a start toward balance!

**

I’ve long thought about what makes me feel good and I’ve built several of those practices into my daily life. For me that includes cardio exercising, spending time outdoors, reading time, eating healthy foods, down time with my wife and the like. Recently I’ve discovered another thing which I’ve built into my life…

And it’s been my greatest expression in life thus far – helping people “figure it out.” I have met and interacted with thousands of people in my life. By far, the conversations I find most exciting are the ones with people who are trying to figure something out – a philosophical stance on life, a way to grow their business, a way to improve their relationship. I have found that even the smartest and most successful people are still trying to figure something out. Some get good at just doing things but everyone benefits from talking through things to someone who listens well. This is my gift to the world: loving, and I mean LOVING, to listen and then to categorize all that I heard, and help make sense of building it into a solution.

My innate ability isn’t so much to offer advice as it is to listen to what each person has to say, organizing it, and reframing the information to help the person build solutions. I am intensely inquisitive which allows the person in conversation to vocalize and reflect on the issues they are working through. There is a secret skill I have which allows me to hear what they are saying underneath what they are actually saying. I can visualize and see their words. When the person is speaking I can see (hear) areas that they gloss over that are filled with unanswered questions and unexplored information. It’s as if they are giving a tour of a house by telling me the story. In the house, they have taken a room full of junk and sealed it off. In giving the tour of the hallway (the story) they walk on by the closed door, just barely mentioning it’s existence. I can see/hear this so I’ll ask to open the door and explore what’s in there. I do this through deep questioning until we can outline and categorize what’s in the room. Often these things will give clues as to the building blocks needed to set your foundation. By the way, this isn’t psychotherapy I’m talking about here. This is good ol’ fashioned, life/work-oriented, solutions building. It happens (or should be happening) every day with great leaders throughout the world.

Though I look at each case from a holistic, life coaching point of view, I have also used this technique to help companies build more technical solutions like database and workflow systems (6 in total). Life, like work, has many moving parts. Trying to keep each part moving and in balance with each other part is difficult work. I provide the service of listening, helping you catalogue all of the moving pieces, prioritize, and then position each piece into the structure you are building.

Recently, I’ve really come to realize that this is a gift I possess, that it’s the truest expression of me right now, and that I want to share it further. Though I thoroughly enjoy writing – it is the experience, the interaction, the exchange of words that I enjoy most. Deep and powerful moments happen so often in this work that it keeps me coming back for more. I’ve been considering how to best spread the word that I am looking to work with more individuals – to help more people build and create. It finally occurred to me tonight that I should share this with you, given that you have a good idea what I’m all about (at least through words).

In detail, I am looking to take on additional clients for one-on-one coaching/consulting. The ideal client is one who wants help “figuring it out” (“it” being open to interpretation). I have a special affinity to people who are wanting to push the world or their lives in a positive direction. Though many of the 20 clients I work with are entrepreneurs growing a business, not all of them are. Some work for companies and are high-powered people just looking for balance in life. Most importantly I am looking for people who want to grow, who want to learn, who want to ask questions, who want to dig in. You have answers inside you wanting to come out and my talent is to help them come out. This is my gift to the world and I would love to have you be a part of it.

Yes I am asking for this… and yes I am “asking for the sale”… but this is coming from the right place… the deep place. If you have ever considered talking about yourself unabashedly for an hour every week, now is your chance! If you know friends and colleagues who might be interested, kindly let them know about me and what I do. I will be happy to get on the phone to explain the process further for anyone interested. As always, thank you for reading and for your support in helping me grow this vision. I truly believe we are collectively making a better world. I look forward to working with you, your friends, or your loved ones more closely!

Ben
benjacoe(at)gmail.com

4 Comments
August 23, 2010 | Posted in Powerful Communication, Self-Aware, Mindful, and Balanced Living