Category: Beliefs

  • Barenaked Ladies: An exercise in understanding why we are all subjective

    Barenaked Ladies: An exercise in understanding why we are all subjective

    You may wonder, what’s this “fluff” about a concert all-of-a-sudden appearing on this previously low-activity blog? The answer is simple. Time to get the blog rockin’ and rollin’ again.

    I haven’t shared enough of the insights and experiences that my dear readers seemed to enjoy in the past. It is time to restart, with a lesson/insight from spending a few hundred dollars – and almost a day of time – to go see one of the bands I enjoy with my family. The Barenaked Ladies have been rockin’ for 29+ years, and I first saw them about 24 years ago. They still have it…. but that’s not what the blog post is about. It’s about whether it was “rational” to spend that much money for my family and I to see a band play for just a few hours.

    To some, spending this much money and time may seem irrational. If you’re not a fan of this particular band – or of going to concerts in general – your first thought may have been “Morgan is crazy, I would never do that!”

    You may have different preferences. That’s what makes you different than me, and it would be mighty boring if we were all the same. Yet there’s this thing about “rational” versus “irrational” that gets people a bit confused.

    If someone were to come along and judge this as an “irrational waste of money,” they might actually be thinking rationally to conclude that there are better ways to spend it. Win for rationality! Yeah!

    But hold your horses: there’s this little X-factor in there that messes it up. Their rationality is based upon their preferences. And those preferences are never rational. If you don’t believe it, come visit one day as we have a family argument about whether broccoli is “good” or “bad.” It doesn’t matter how much evidence any side provides.

    I can hear the health nuts responding: but wait – if you want to live longer and healthier, then of course Broccoli is good – the evidence shows that it is! Unfortunately, you can’t escape the trap, even with that kind of argument. That’s because you’re just shifting the role of preference from whether a food is desirable or not, to a broader question of which is more important to you: 1) your longevity and health; 2) enjoying yourself here and now by not filling your mouth regularly with food you hate; or 3) some combination thereof.

    If you’re still in doubt, try to justify a desire for longevity based on pure rationality. The arguments fall down pretty quickly, especially when you start looking at a graph of world population and realizing that what’s going on with population is likely not very sustainable for long. (Exponential growth of anything never is, because it’s exponential – if you’re not familiar with the math, look up that term).

    World Population since 1300 AD: an explosion
    World Population since 1300 AD: An Explosion Illustration by Matt Lemmon https://www.flickr.com/photos/mplemmon/3203403780 – licensed under Creative Commons, right to use with attribution https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

    In my day job, I work with scientists and researchers. I do the best I can to help them with things like writing better grant proposals – and even enjoying their careers more by getting more of the good stuff done and not working as hard to do so.

    However, one of the largest stumbling blocks I run into that prevent both goals from occurring is this particular belief many researchers have been taught to hold that “as scientists, we are to strive to be objective at all times.” Yet if anyone observes the grant reviewing process for long, it becomes clear quite quickly: on the surface reviewers are very good at constructing rational-sounding arguments for the scores they give a proposal, but if you dig deeper, there’s always some subjective preference underlying why they did or didn’t like a proposal. If a grant writer doesn’t get this, she is very likely to trip over hidden, unexpected landmines.

    Yet hard as I try, so many clients are resistant to the idea that we actually have to embrace a measure of subjectivity to be successful. Objective “rationality” never by itself wins the day when it comes to grant proposals, careers, productivity, or much of anything else that truly matters.

    There’s a lot more on this topic to discuss, but I’ll leave you for now with this set of questions: 1. Do you ever find yourself working to rationally/logically justify something, which at the end of the day is really just a preference? 2. Is it worth the time and energy cost to do so? 3. What if you were to simply acknowledge that you are a subjective human who has subjective preferences which you can’t escape, and instead of pretending to be I, Robot, you embraced that part of your humanity?

    If you chose to do so, it can be quite an amazing journey.

    * I have to put a disclaimer here for the skeptics who may freak out and say I’m advocating for abandoning reason. To such persons: if you use your reason to analyze what I am saying (and not saying) here, and you do so in a truly objective way, you will conclude that I have said no such thing as abandoning reason. It has its place. But many people have come to far over-rely on reason, while ignoring their own subjectivity by pretending it doesn’t exist.

  • Embracing the “Inner Asshole”

    Embracing the “Inner Asshole”

    Administrative roadblocks, aggressive colleagues, and depressing news: things like these are rampant. The question is, how should we deal with them? Many of us often choose to take the “safe” route of staying cool-headed and rational. That’s what we’ve been taught to do for most of our academic lives. But who does that “cool-headedness” really benefit? Does it really have the positive effect we’ve been promised when we respond more like the level-headed Spock from Star Trek than the hot-headed Kirk? The answer you pick will have a major impact on your long-term success and happiness, and it’s not the most obvious.

    I wrote this piece for the Research Success Alliance, a group of researchers my team works with on grant writing and career success. I decided to share it with my followers… In it, I examine the often unintended side effects that occur when we try to always “keep a lid on it.”

     

    For anyone who’s gone through a Western education, you’ve likely been taught that one thing is important: Objectivity. Cold, hard, rationality, devoid of emotion.

    We are taught that in order to be a “good” person, a “right” person, and a “smart” person, we must turn off all that messy emotional crap.

    “Facts and data are where it’s at. Facts tell us the truth. Facts don’t lie. Facts produce logic that is infallible! Yay and hallelujah for facts!”

    And, so, the other thing, poor emotion – is left behind to rot. Worthless. Useless. Meaningless. It can’t be quantified. It can’t readily be measured, teased apart, and analyzed. It does not adhere to the oh-so-grand logic of mathematics and computers. It can go in unpredictable directions and do things that don’t make sense.

    So, we are taught, “Get that emotion out of there! Shut it down! Put a lid on it!It is useless, especially if you want to be a great scientist or researcher.”

    The vilification of emotion is similar to what happened with alcohol in the 1920’s leading to its (temporary) prohibition.

     

    Vilifying alcohol doesn’t make it go away, it makes it go underground

    One of the failed experiments in US history was a constitutional amendment that banned the transport and sale of alcohol. At the time this 18th amendment was added to the US constitution, alcohol was roundly vilified in many segments of society.

    The result of that attempt to “put a lid on alcohol” is written in history books for all to behold: Alcohol went underground. Alcohol turned violent. Alcohol started massive gang wars. Alcohol of suspect quality and safety was produced by thousands of illegal distilleries that dotted the landscape.

    It got so bad that pretty quickly we managed to overturn that constitutional amendment and make alcohol legal again. It is the only constitutional amendment in 2.5 centuries of U.S. history to have the distinction of being repealed.

     

    REPRESSION leads to unintended consequences

    I’m not saying that alcohol is “good.” (In many situations, it isn’t). I’m not saying that alcohol is “bad” (a fine glass of red wine with dinner can be wonderful – and I’ll arm wrestle anyone who says otherwise!)

    Alcohol just is. It is good and bad. It is both, yet it is neither. But trying to repress it’s use? The facts of history show that it doesn’t work, at least not in our Western culture. There are always unintended consequences.

     

    The same goes for emotion

    We can try to repress emotion. We can try to bottle it up. We can try to pretend that we are nothing but robots who can become devoid of that messy emotional stuff, only to operate from pure logic and rationality to be the “perfect” person.

    But just like alcohol, the emotion doesn’t go away, it goes underground. It is still there, hiding, waiting, repressed. We have desires, fears, excitements, and sadnesses that well up within us, no matter how “logical” we pretend to be. The exceptions to this are psychopaths. They are people who experience no emotional connection to other beings (though they may learn to act as if they do). They do things like killing people out of “curiosity.”

    If you’re not a psychopath, you likely have (lots of) emotion, no matter how well-buried. The question is then what to do with all that emotion. Since most of us have been trained to be rational, intelligent, and objective, we often don’t deal with this part very effectively.

     

    The pot boileth over…then explodes

    As an example of what happens with all the buried emotion, imagine a kettle with some water that’s heating on the stove. At some point, the water in that kettle will reach a boiling point, letting off copious amounts of steam.

    If we keep the lid on the kettle, pressure will build and build until there will be an explosion.

    On the other hand, if we take the lid off sometimes, to let some steam escape, it will just dissipate into harmless vapor.

    So on the one hand, we have a deadly situation involving shrapnel when we try to close off the steam and keep it bottled up. On the other hand, if we let off the steam, then it is far less dangerous.

     

    Emotion is like that steam kettle

    Repressed desires. Repressed fears. Repressed expression. Pretended Stoicism.

    In my family, which was very scientifically-inclined, emotion was something we were never encouraged to show. Emotion was something to be afraid of. Emotion made us “crazy.”

    This led to cultivating the belief that only rationality could win the day, and lead us on the golden path to the promised land of “truth.”

    Or so I believed.

    Unfortunately, all of my schooling amplified these foolish notions. It got worse the higher in school I went. While as an undergraduate student in college, there were moments where emotion was still allowed and occasionally discussed, by the time I was in graduate school?

    Forget it.

    Emotion was only for the weak and the irrational. Emotion had no place in this “serious business” of decoding the human genome.

     

    And because I adopted that common viewpoint that emotion is “bad,” I became a much more mediocre researcher.

    By striving to shut away all that emotion within me, I also shut away the excitement of doing science. I shut away the curiosity and the intrigue.

    Worse, just like that pressure boiler, I’d have occasional explosions. These happened not only in graduate school, but in my post-doctoral position, and worse, once I was in a faculty job. If someone were to do a forensic analysis of my past emails, they’d find a history of me sounding perfectly reasonable, compliant, and amenable, punctuated by episodes of YELLING.

    On any topic where there was strong emotion(space for my lab, funding, or difficult collaborations, for example), I would start out by repressing it to try to seem perfectly logical and reasonable.

    (And, in the process of being perfectly “reasonable” I’d often get walked all over by whomever I was interacting with on that subject). Eventually, the repressed emotions from me being walked all over would boil up. They would put increasing pressure on the lid I’d put on them, until the explosion would occur.

    A flurry of emails would go out. Angry, finger-pointing emails. LOUD emails.

    People would often be stunned by the switch from “perfectly reasonable Morgan, who can be walked all over” into “asshole Morgan, who fights back with vehemence.”

     

    Being an “Occasional Asshole” didn’t get me what I wanted…

    For example, in my almost 10 years at UNC Chapel Hill, I never had what I would consider a reasonable amount of quality lab space commensurate with the level of funding I brought in. I went through cycles of repressed anger about it, with occasional boil-over or explosions, time and time again.

     

    But the space situation never changed.

    It never changed because the “asshole” Morgan, who was willing to advocate for her and her team’s interests simply because she desired “BETTER” (one of those “irrational” emotions) – was so inconsistent. She would only show up in those occasional explosions, and those were so intermittent that, despite leaving her and others around her often shell-shocked, it wasn’t a formula for actually getting things changed.

     

    The episodes got so bad that in one of them, I sent an email to the department chair that said, “I QUIT.”

    Even though I had a cushy, tenured job with a great salary and a lab chock-full of hard working staff, I threw it all away. That was the mother of all explosions in my life.

    Sadly, I still didn’t learn the lesson.

    I carried this same tendency into my endeavors after leaving UNC, including my business and my interactions while at Boise State University. At Boise State, at one point I sent in a resignation (i.e. the “asshole” Morgan coming out to protect me related to frustrations I had there), and a short while later, I sent in an apology and attempted to un-resign (i.e. the “compliant, rational” Morgan who wanted to appease and please).

     

    However, neither quitting nor un-quitting solved the underlying issues of my dissatisfaction with my career at the time.

    A few months after the Quit/Un-Quit Scenario,I quit again. That was the next explosion, resulting from several months of pent-up frustration. I’m sure I left people baffled by that whole affair, and to this day, I feel much chagrin about it. (But unfortunately, un-doing is only possible on computers).

    Meanwhile I built a fairly thriving business of helping researchers. I have helped many achieve astounding successes in both grants and life, like my client Stefanie who recently received her 4th grant in a row as a second year faculty member, yet who has great work-life balance. (A note: Stefanie’s success was due to her unusually hard work at changing herself. Most people do not get such astounding results because they don’t do the difficult, deep work required).

     

    So what in the heck is the problem?

    Why did I say “fairly thriving business” when it has positive effects like Stefanie’s transformation?

    I know that I can reach more people to help them. I have facilitated other similar transformations for people, but there are SO many people out there still struggling with all the things Stefanie did, and more. And, because of my own repressed fear of being seen as a “pushy marketer” (aka an “asshole”), I don’t reach many of those struggling people who may want help.

    The trouble is the same conflict between the “wanting to be nice and liked” Morgan versus the “let’s make a difference” Morgan. Causing change and making a difference always angers some people. It is inevitable. That means these two versions of me are at odds.

    On the one hand, I have a deep fear of being seen as that  “pushy asshole” – and so I minimize my presence by avoiding sending out emails, posting on the blog, etc.

    On the other hand, that repressed fear eventually builds up pressure in my life and business. The pressures include:

    • The pressure of feeling like I’m not moving forward or expanding.
    • The financial pressure of keeping a team running and salaried
    • The pressure of feeling stagnant, without expanding our reach.
    • The pressure of knowing I can and want to be doing better
    • The pressure of not being able to do the travel with my family that I want to, because we always seem to be “on a tight budget”

     

    So, the pressures build up to explosions.

    I still have the explosions to let off the bottled-up steam, but sometime about five years ago, their nature changed. I used to have a level of consciousness where I was in “victim-hood” and would blame whatever bad sh*t was happening on others. I would blame it on a bureaucrat, a committee, or a collaborator. I would point fingers at stupid politicians for the stuff going on in the world, or at reviewers for not “getting” my work. It was easy to point the blame and make it all “their” fault that I was experiencing whatever crappy situation.

    However, in my path of personal development, I came to realize that blaming others for what I’m  experiencing is dis-empowering. Our choices truly do create our reality for us. So if we want a different reality, we have to make different choices. Pointing fingers at others and playing the victim is incredibly dis-empowering. So I chose to stop doing that.

     

    Instead, I started going inward

    These days when things go bad, I go inward. I take responsibility for it. I realize that whatever I’m experiencing is ultimately a product of my choices.This reaction is different than angrily lashing out at others.

    Instead, it has often amounted to angrily lashing inward.

    In my “explosions” now, I am often profoundly angry at myself, at life, and at the universe for creating a situation where I have to still sometimes struggle with money, or with such a limited reach.

    I’m honestly not sure that this has been more healthy than my previous tendency to lash outward at whomever was the “blame recipient du jour.” It is no more empowering to blame oneself than to blame someone else for the woes being experienced.

    The problem is that there’s a need for blame in the first place.

     

    The need for blame comes from the pent-up emotion that leads to an explosion of some kind

    It’s become abundantly clear that “lashing out inward” in such explosions is no more a healthy alternative to lashing outward than e-cigarettes are to tobacco. Maybe a bit better, maybe not.

    I have tried nearly every personal development strategy I could find. While they have positively transformed my life in so many ways, none of them solved this fundamental issue of these pent-up emotions leading to the seeming bi-polar cycle of being compliant, reasonable, and rational, alternating with moments of angst exploding outward and/or inward.

    The fundamental issue has been this repressed emotion, and the results that repression produces. What the heck is that thing I’ve been repressing?

    I have a desire to reach more people. I have a desire to live an even better life. I have a desire to see progress for my kids, and my team. I have a strong desire to do my small part in creating a better world. These desires are not “rational” goals. If you dig deeply, they can’t be clearly justified as any better than another choice. There is no objective rule of the universe that says one must help other people or make the world a better place. From an objective and rational standpoint, it seems pointless: if the universe will end in an ultimate “heat death,” then why worry about it?

    Worse, the desire to create changealways ends up pissing some people off. No matter what it is, there will always be people who resist anything new, different, or unusual. And in my family, which was very much based on always acting calm, rational, and logical, these messy things like desiring something bigor dealing with the ramifications such as pissing people offweren’t dealt with. All that messy emotional stuff was to be kept well-hidden under a guise of being rational. Pissing people off was definitely frowned upon, as was creating any kind of big disturbance.

    So here we have another emotion coming into play: the fear of pissing people off, and the resulting consequences of that. But here’s the thing – I didn’t want to admit that I had that fear. After all, I have done many things in my life that others consider pretty fearless, so I had this self image that I couldn’t possibly have such a simple fear. Therefore, I repressed it, until it would explode out in some kind of drama.

     

    Changing only when forced to by an explosion: Not a recipe for consistent progress.

    I would walk around with this fear, unintentionally playing small to not piss people off, until things got really bad in my own life and work. There would be some kind of event that would bring things to a head. Once things got to this point, I’d finallymake some changes, as the fear of things falling apart overwhelmed the fear of pissing people off, and so I’d finally do something.

    For example, if there were bills to be paid, and no money to pay them, then “being an asshole” and holding myself or employees more accountable would make sense. In a “do or die” situation, the asshole-ness could be justified “rationally.”I’d make some changes with a kind of willpower and determination that I didn’t normally have access to.

    Then as soon as the difficulty passed, I’d go back to “normal” which means repression: playing the “nice Morgan” and often getting walked over while I watched my dreams slowly die. During these times, I’d even feel deep guilt about the “asshole-ness” I’d acted upon in previous times when I moved things forward.

     

    Of course, none of the self-incrimination fixed the problem. It made it worse.

    All that negative self talk only served one purpose: to make me feel like there was something fundamentally wrong with me that kept creating these situations. And, feeling that there was something wrong with me led to a corresponding feeling that I don’t deserve more success than I’ve had. That led to further repression of my desires to expand my reach and impact, “because obviously I don’t deserve it, I’m too weird and flakey, and sometimes an asshole too!”

    Maybe this cycle is familiar to you. Or maybe you just go for it, and play big without worrying about how others see you.Either way, let me tell you from personal experience, it sucks. It is worth dealing with.

     

    Dealing with it comes at a cost.

    What is that cost? The cost is allowing – and even embracing all that messy emotional stuff lying under the surface. In other words, we must embrace our humanity, rather than continuing to aspire to be androids.  It includes embracing the “bad” with the good.

    You can’t just embrace the happy, loving, joyous parts, while repressing all the scared, angry, and selfish parts.

    It doesn’t work that way. As I’ve attempted to illustrate with these stories, anytime you’re repressing any emotional parts of yourself, you will eventually get a boil-over.

    It may be a health problem.

    It may be a career problem.

    It may be a relationship blow-up.

    But rest assured, if you’re not embracing all of it, an explosion of some kind is on its way. And unlike a controlled release, an explosion can create collateral damage.

     

    How to create the controlled release: Embrace the Inner Asshole/Bitch, and then transcend it.

    Your fears may be different than mine. But at least for many women, and some men, there is a big fear of being seen as an asshole or bitch. There is a fear of being seen as selfish, greedy, or pushy. There is a fear of being seen as not being “nice” and “amenable” at all times.

    Believe me, as someone who has lived as both man and woman, the social pressures that amplify these fears are much greater for women than for men. However, that’s not to trivialize their effect on men: I have had many male clients that also become paralyzed by them.

    In any case, I’m using this “fear of being seen as an asshole or bitch” as an example to illustrate a point that applies to any frequently repressed emotion, especially the fear.

    How can you measure whether this is affecting you? By considering a simple question: is there a part of you that feels like you could be experiencing more out of life than you currently are? Does it seem like something keeps holding you back from doing greater things, but you’re not sure what?If so, it is likely you’ve got some of this repressed emotion that’s behind it.

     

    So, how do we deal with that?

    The first principle is what not to do: we often can’t just talk it down rationally. These emotions we feel like an “inner child.” If you’ve had kids or worked with kids, you know what I mean. If a kid has a fear of getting on a rollercoaster, it is difficult if not impossible to talk that kid into getting on with rationality. It doesn’t matter how many times you say “rollercoasters are safer than the car ride we took to get here.” I’ve had just such a conversation with one of my daughters, and it led me nowhere. Her fear won out and she didn’t go on that ride.

    Trying to talk emotion down through reason alone often just gets it more entrenched than ever, whether dealing with a kid, your own emotional “inner child”, or with someone else’s. Trying to talk condescendingly to that part of yourself can often serve to amplify the very same emotional needs you’re trying to “talk down off the ledge.” It further builds up steam towards the next explosion. With my fear being seen as an asshole/bitch as an example, I haven’t been able to just reason it away. I’ve tried, and that has not worked, and the fear has slowly grown.

    In other words, by trying to invalidate the emotions, we amplify them.

    This is not to say that rational thinking should be abandoned; no. It is just saying that when dealing with deep inner emotions, it’s not a very useful tool.

     

    What’s the alternative?

    I’ve been experimenting with an idea that comes from the philosophy of Ken Wilbur, which is  “Include and Transcend.” The idea is that as we further develop our own consciousness to higher levels, rather than trying to push away and marginalize past tendencies or problems, we embrace and include them so that we can ultimately transcend them.

    An example from the popular culture that embodies this concept is Batman.

     

    Batman Embraced and Transcended

    As a kid, Bruce Wayne who would later become Batman, was terrified of bats. It was a deep and paralyzing fear for him. After letting that and many other fears paralyze him for years, he finally decided to embrace them. He went into a bat cave and exposed himself to thousands of bats. He had a brief mental breakdown while bats flew all around him, clearly causing tremendous fear and turmoil. But ultimately, he realized that he was still okay. He realized that while his fear of bats may never fully go away, he could live with it. He could include it and transcend it.

    And so he became the Batman, to represent his transcendence of the fear bats represented. He transcended it only by embracing and including it, and became one of the most famous superheros of all time.

    Perhaps what makes Batman so alluring is that he is a real human who has real fears and foibles like the rest of us, but has managed to transcend them enough to go out and do good in the (fictional) world.

     

    Embracing the Asshole…

    I recently took an inventory, and discovered that I still have lots of various fears and doubts at this emotional level to embrace and transcend if I want to move forward, but one of the biggest ones is this fear of being seen as an asshole. If I want to overcome it, I have to embrace it.

    What that means is embracing the fears of:

    • being pushy
    • bothering people
    • holding my staff accountable, or even holding myself accountable
    • having great boundaries with family
    • offending my rationally-oriented brother and mom
    • turning off a potential future client
    • turning off an existing client

    and a lot more….

     

    Relief from embracing Asshole-ness?

    Honestly, now that I’m “embracing the asshole” it is quite a relief. See, if I weren’t embracing the asshole, I couldn’t have written this. I know there is someone out there who will be offended by this post.Maybe the use of the word “asshole” will trigger someone, if nothing else. That’s just how the world is. With over 7.6 billion people to offend, someone will always be happy to take the offended position.

    I’ve tried many times to rationally talk myself into this very same point of view. I’ve told myself quotes about how “you can’t do anything important without offending someone” – or “if you’ve offended someone, it means you’re doing something worthwhile.”

    Those kinds of seemingly rational statements have occasionally helped in the short term, but have no brought any kind of lasting change.

    This “embracing the asshole” is different. It feels lasting. It feels like an acknowledgment of who I really am. It acknowledges that I am not perfect nor will ever be. It acknowledges that there will be people upset with some of what I do. It relieves me of all the worry and self judgment that goes with that.

    If I can just let myself “be the asshole,”  and embrace the surrounding fear about that, I can have more positive impact in the world. I can do better for myself, my staff, my clients, and the world at large.

    So, ironically, by embracing the asshole, I’m also embracing making more of a difference. I’m embracing more positive impact.

    That feels GOOD. After all those years of trying to fight off and run from being seen as an asshole, it is a profound relief.

     

    Another example: Embracing Arrogance

    I have a client who I worked with recently on a similar issue. But in her case, the big fear was of being seen as arrogant. The emotional baggage was around the concept of “who do you think you are to go out and do these crazy/big/ambitious things?!?” She grew up in a family and culture that told people to mostly play small, keep their heads down, work hard, and not make a ruckus. Yet this person has very big ambitions, and has already accomplished quite a bit. The more she accomplishes, it seems the more this repressed fear affects her. She’ll have moments of “going for it” interspersed with times of “who the hell do I think I am” where she’ll shrink back and withdraw. It reminds me of my own cycle, just expressed in a different way.

    So in a recent interaction where this fear was clearly holding her back, I said: “What if you embrace your arrogance?” I used the example of Steve Jobs. I asked “do you think Steve Jobs could have accomplished what he did without arrogance?” (The answer is hell no). It absolutely requires at least some arrogance to go out and do something big in the world.

    The opposite of arrogance is timidity. Nobody ever accomplished big things by being timid. While I’m not advocating that my client go out and be arrogant all the time, I am advocating that she embrace the part of her that is already arrogant, i.e. the part of her that has big ambitions, and is willing to act to turn those into reality. Even if some people will surely be offended by it.

     

    It is about embracing that part of us that already exists, not becoming becoming a total asshole or arrogant jerk.

    My goal is not to become a total asshole towards everyone, no. My goal is to embrace that ambitious, smart part of me that wants to change the world. It is embracing that part that sometimes gets impatient with foolish, stupid, and mediocre human behavior. It is embracing that part of me that myself or others may sometimes label as an asshole.

    That’s an important distinction. There’s a big difference between “becoming a total asshole” versus “embracing the asshole part of me that’s already there.” One is trying to become intentionally obnoxious and asinine. The other is just embracing the part that is a side effect of who we already are and the desires we have to move forward in life. It is embracing the part that other people might not like because it’s not acting the way they want it to act(becausethey too are being selfishand wanting everyone else to act in a way they see as right, true, and correct).

    This is the what I encouraged my client to do by embracing the arrogant part of her that already exists. I did not encourage her to just go out and be arrogant to everyone she meets to intentionally cause a stir.

     

    What is the fear or emotion you have most repressed?

    This is where it is often important to get help from someone outside of your head. While I eventually identified my own fear of being seen as an asshole, it has taken me over 10 years of serious self-development work – and also working with many others – to come to this conclusion.

    None of us – no matter how smart nor how introspective we are – are very good at seeing such things inside of ourselves. Nearly all of us have blind spots. Worse, seeking help on such things from family members or friends is often the worst way to get honest introspection. These people we’re close to in our lives like to uphold a certain image of who we are, just like we do to ourselves. Therefore, they often have the blinders just as much as we do about what’s really going on underneath the hood.

    This is something we work with researchers on in the Research Success Alliance*. We often observe that when someone is struggling with a problem like (lack of) grant funding, it is not only due to the inability to write killer proposals. It often goes deeper than that, and ties into issues like certain repressed fears that lead to various kinds of self-sabotoge. We love nothing more than helping to identify these patterns so that people can get un-blocked and move forward powerfully.

    * To find out more about the Research Success Alliance (RSA), stay tuned!

     

     

    Dr. Morgan Giddings is creator of programs and courses like Grant Dynamo, Grant Foundry, and Fearless Creators – all designed to help research doctors and scientists reduce overwhelm and frustration while increasing career satisfaction.

    Her newest program, The Research Success Alliance combines grant training and help with tackling the underlying stresses of every day life in academia.

  • Top-10 Beliefs That Are Ruining Your Life

    Top-10 Beliefs That Are Ruining Your Life

    Wait a sec. How can a belief ruin your life? It’s just a measly little set of biochemical connections in your mind, no way can it have that kind of impact…. right!?

    What if you believed that all water is toxic? If you truly believed this, deep-down, you’d avoid all sources of water… and soon, you’d die. It’s not the water that is toxic, it’s the belief.

    All beliefs are that way. Most of us are comfortable in our beliefs because we’ve surrounded ourselves with other people who hold similar ones. That helps us feel “safe,” because most of us have a herd-like evolutionary (unconscious) belief of “safety in numbers.”

    But being part of a herd doesn’t mean that our beliefs are supporting our progress towards things that matter. Whether the things you want are better work-life balance, more recognition, more money or funding, or whatever – it is most likely your own (toxic) beliefs that hold you back from having those things.

    1. I’m nobody important, and I’m not sure why they gave me this position/accolade/promotion! In a world of over 7 billion people, it’s sometimes hard to feel important – and that means it’s much harder to achieve anything big. When we’re younger, most of us have our parents filling the role of seeing us as important. Then there’s a transition to adulthood, and most of us never replace the parental role with our own inner sense of importance. Believing in your own unimportance leads to self-sabotaging behaviors that will slow or halt progress towards things that you care about.
    2. There’s never enough time to get it all done This time-scarcity belief causes its holders to rush around, always hurrying, cramming and jamming into every possible moment every possible action until exhaustion comes. Yet, if you’re trying to achieve a new situation or goal, that doesn’t come from frenzied activity and lack of sleep. No, the source of change is always clarity, and clarity generally only comes easily to a rested and relaxed mind. A single action made in clarity can be as effective as 100 actions taken without clarity. Stop. Breath. Get clarity, then act.
    3. It’s a dangerous world out there Fear is a paralyzing feeling. How much can you accomplish towards your goals when you’re paralyzed? (hint: none). The more you believe in the world being a dangerous place due to politics, violence, environmental destruction, or whatever, it’s the belief in danger that will hold you back from making things happen.
    4. I’m better/smarter/wiser than my colleagues When you get a rejection, it’s easy to start pointing fingers at “stupid” colleagues that “don’t get it.” Yet that ego-driven attitude also subtly places you in the role of victim and pawn to “them.” This is a disempowering belief, because it prevents you from seeing the blind spots in you where improvement may be needed to get the results you want. Humility is essential to self-improvement, and ego gets in the way.
    5. There’s never enough money or funding to go around This belief in money scarcity reproduces itself in your life when you carry it around. Just look at the facts: there are trillions of dollars and other currencies flowing around the world. Some people (including some of your colleagues) are better at diverting a bigger portion of that flow (both in And out). However, if you’re caught in scarcity, you’re often focused on tightening down the outflow. Think about this: what happens when you turn a faucet — which regulates outflow — to a trickle? You get a trickle of an IN flow. Now, let’s say your faucet is wide open but the flow isn’t very good. It requires a totally different set of mental and physical tools to increase the inflow than it does to reduce outflow. However, if you have a belief that the in-flow is scarce, your focus will be mainly on limiting out-flow, and you’ll be forever caught in a loop of limitation.
    6. Great work speaks for itself There’s this belief amongst idealists that if you do some great work – whether it’s a scientific breakthrough, a new invention, a novel, or whatever – that you’ll get recognized for it. While it is true that some people do get recognized for such greatness posthumously, the question is whether you want to wait until you’re dead to get the rewards for your work. If you’d rather have some of those rewards here and now, then a belief that “Great work speaks for itself” is toxic. It is exceedingly rare that “great work” alone is enough to speak for itself. No, great work must have an effective spokesperson to get it out into the world, and that spokesperson is always one and the same as the originator of the work. (Unless you happen to be a billionare, and can hire a full-time PR team). It is only by embracing the idea that you are responsible for “marketing” your work to the world, and learning how to do it more effectively, that your cure/invention/idea/novel/etc is likely to get into the hands of other people where it can have its intended impact – and bring you recognition/money/reward as a result.
    7. It’s dangerous to be “vulnerable” with my colleagues Many people are extremely guarded around their colleagues, because they believe if they show any “weakness” it will be exploited by hostiles. However, research by Dr. Brené Brown and colleagues has clearly shown that it is psychologically unhealthy to exist in a closed-in cocoon of guardedness. It prevents us from making deep and meaningful connections with people in our lives, and it also prevent us from acting boldly. Doing anything great requires “putting yourself out there” and being willing to be criticized. If you’re locked in a guarded shell, you’ll be unable to make the bold leaps that are required to accomplish anything truly great. This means being forever locked in a cycle of mediocrity. Vulnerability is essential to great accomplishment.
    8. I have to do exactly as my boss/chair/dean/supervisor says in order to succeed If you work at a big-chain-fast-food-joint, then perhaps it’s essential for you to do exactly as people above you say. But when you’re in a position that requires leadership – such as being a faculty member or entrepreneur – you must be willing to follow your inner drive and your own vision, even if it means going in a different direction than someone else thinks you should. Often well-meaning advisors/mentors/bosses tell us things such as “you must apply for more grants.” Many of us try to be people pleasers and therefore to follow such advice. However, at the end of the day, leadership is one of the most essential attributes we must develop, and leadership always means listening to your own inner authority first and foremost. This doesn’t mean ignoring input from others, but it does mean that as a leader you make your own decisions and take full responsibility for them.
    9. I’m struggling because the system is messed up The system may well be messed up but this is never why any individual is struggling. Even in terrible systems or bad economies, there are always people who do well. It is tempting to believe that that’s due to luck, but it rarely is. Instead, it’s due to a spirit of entrepreneurialism, creativity, and fearlessness. While TV and movies would have you believe that its only the greedy, power-monging manipulators who succeed in rough environments, the reality is quite different. The Great Depression produced a large crop of millionaires, many of whom made their fortunes by ignoring the “depressive” sentiment of their time to act boldly in starting new businesses. The choice of whether you thrive or not has everything to do with your own attributes of entrepreneurialism and creativity, and very little to do with the external environment around you.
    10. I’m just a meaningless blip in a vast, cold, universe Humans thrive on meaning and purpose. All great works throughout human history have resulted from people who felt driven by some bigger purpose. So, if you believe that the universe is a hard, cold, meaningless place, that belief will stand like a big cement wall smack dab in your path to achieving important things. It doesn’t matter whether you believe that there’s something bigger/deeper than the material world we see or not, but if you lack purpose and meaning you will be ineffective and mediocre. So, getting rid of this belief and finding your own personal sense of meaning, purpose, and even wonder is like rocket fuel for great accomplishment.
    11. That all top-10 lists should only have 10 items I included this one just to show you the power of your own belief… and to demonstrate the automatic cognitive dissonance that occurs when a belief is violated. I also included it a a tribute to the movie Spinal Tap 😉

    There are plenty more where those come from, but if you found resonance in one or more of these, going to work on them will yield a tremendous bounty in your life.

     

     

  • Why Artificial Intelligence Won’t Take Over the World

    Why Artificial Intelligence Won’t Take Over the World

    

    Any “free agent” that operates in our world must have an objective, or it is not going to get very far.

    This is true of people. If you ever observe people who “go in circles” or are “stuck” in life – it’s because they have no clear vision/objective. Many people give up on their dreams and objectives in their first few decades of life, and wander aimlessly after that.

    However, you’ll also notice that such people are often relatively “benign” – i.e. they may contribute to CO2 release by driving around to aimless jobs and activities, and they may over consume orange-food-colored chips and lite beer… but without an objective, they’re not actively trying to hurt anyone. If hurting someone does happen, it’s almost always an occasional reaction to something they don’t like, and it’s usually focused on just a few people close to that person. This is not the stuff of “taking over the world.”

    No. To understand the idea of AI taking over the world, we have to look at the movers and shakers, the people with a plan and objective.

    These are the people who have a true impact – be it positive or negative. That’s because they are clear on where they are headed, and they marshal resources to get there.

    For AI to have any chance of “taking over” as it’s been portrayed in many blockbuster movies, there would have to be a clear plan and objective “to take over.” It is certainly possible that an advanced AI could have this as an objective, and marshal resources towards that end. It may even make some progress in taking over parts of the world. However, the idea that it would take over the world misses the boat.

    If the technology sufficient to build one such AI exists, then that means more can (and likely will) be developed soon thereafter. There is no reason that distinct AI’s developed by different people (or other AI’s) in distinct contexts would all have the same objective. It’s just like people. There are people who’ve sometimes attempted to take over the world with nefarious objectives (such as Hitler) – but fortunately, there were other people with other objectives that pushed back and stopped it. It is silly to think that there would be one “unified goal” for ALL AI of “taking over the world.” Certainly, any responsible AI developer will bake into their AI cake clear objectives that are for the good of humanity, not to its detriment.

    In one popular movie series (which I enjoyed very much), a military defense network takes over and launches nukes to get rid of humanity. Yet a “network” is actually a collection of hundreds or thousands of machines, each with different goals, programming, and firewalls. The idea that these would all join together in one unified objective of destroying humanity, before anyone – or any other AI – could stop them, is farfetched.

    Think of it like a friends network. Even if you hatch some kind of evil scheme to take over the world, will all your friends automatically agree and join you? It’s unlikely. This is exactly why I’m not a big conspiracy theorist: any sufficiently powerful conspiracy would have to make sure that everyone agrees and doesn’t sabotage its goals. In the real world, that kind of consensus is extraordinarily hard to achieve – especially in the Internet age.

    While nothing is truly impossible, the scenario in which AI actually takes over the world is very remote.

    Now, there are a few hidden lessons in this for any person wanting to live a better life. They are:

    1. Operating without a clear goal or objective in life is a recipe for “failure.” Many people give up on their big plans and ambitions at some point in life, and just start living reactively – day to day – with no real purpose. We all must have purpose in order to thrive or to have any impact.
    2. Many people get so frustrated that there are other people in the world who have different opinions and perspectives. This post was written during an election season in the USA, when many people are decrying the “other side” and how awful they are. Yet it is exactly this diversity of opinion that prevents the world from being taken over by men like Hitler. All the diversity makes the world a truly glorious place. If you truly embrace the diversity of thought and opinion, it makes life a lot more pleasant than continually fighting the “other side” to “prove” who’s right and who’s wrong. It’s okay if you’re into that kind of thing, but it sure does waste a lot of time and energy – and it never really improves the world. The people who improve the world are those who follow point #1 above and accomplish great things.

    Is it your time to thrive? Get a clear purpose and embrace the diversity of opinion that exists – even those who might seem to stand in your way.

    

  • Speed Kills… And I’m not talking about the highways

    speed kills

    speed kills

    I was out cross country skiing with my 8 yr old daughter the other day. It was her first time on “skate” Skiis, a form of XC skiing that requires a lot of timing and coordination to pull off. She was doing quite well given that it was her first time doing it. I was skiing slowly and staying with her to offer encouragement and support. After several miles and lots of wipeouts, she was still in good spirits, and was getting into the rhythm of it.

    We’d been unintentionally tag-teaming with three college students from Montana State. Or at least that’s what their team-logo jackets advertised as they would speed past, then pause to chat and snack while we would catch up and pass them. They clearly thought of themselves as the “cool crowd” out on the trails that day, since they were a “team” and everyone else were just nobodies out skiing to “just” enjoy themselves.

    Maybe they didn’t like being passed by a 40-something woman and her 8 year old. After the second time this happened, as they came flying past, the guy in the rear turned to us and said: “Nice Snowshoes“ while looking at our skiis, then he sped on.

    I had no idea what he was talking about. I like to be be oblivious at times. When I’m feeling good, enjoying time with my daughter, out on the trails, why worry about what some kid who’s barely out of puberty thinks?

    Besides, I didn’t get the “Snowshoes” remark. We were on skiis. So we finished out our skiing and I thought nothing more of it. My daughter was excited to try it again. When any of my kids do that, it is always a good sign that they enjoyed it.

    Dreams as clues

    Consciously I’d not thought about the remark again, but apparently my subconscious mind wasn’t finished. That night, I found myself as a teenager again, a bit awkward and definitely an ‘outsider.’ We were at a party of some kind, at a house with large, fancy glass doors. There was a group of teenagers who were ridiculing me for being slow. After suffering their taunting, I ended up outside and the glass doors were banged shut. I could see them laughing about me, but could no longer hear their words. I was shut out. I felt isolated, scared, and sad.

    That was enough to wake me up. I don’t often have bad dreams nowadays, so this caught my attention. As I tossed and turned, I realized something: It wasn’t just the guy from Montana State or the dream, several other things had happened recently along these same lines.

    Just two days before the “Montana State Incident” I’d been in the chairlift line with my older daughter. There are three different “feeder” lines that all merge into one line to get on the lift. Normally at our local resort people are quite friendly (no, this is not the East Coast, yay). The standard routine is to alternate who merges into the main line. In five years of skiing here, I can recall only one or two times where people were rude about it and tried to “butt” in line.

    Well, this time there were – surprise – three ~16 year old girls in line who didn’t feel that they needed to be polite. They were in a God-given rush to get to the top, and felt entitled to cut in front of people to get there. They were attempting to cut in front of us, following directly on the heels of the other skiers from their “feeder” line without waiting.

    Now, I can be cantankerous with teenage bullies. Maybe it’s because I suffered enough bullying at their hands as a teenager until I started “fighting back” that I still have some of that fight left in me. I made sure to wedge my skiis in front of theirs, making space for my daughter and I in our rightful place in the merged line.

    Their response was some kind of rude comment about our ski pants. Neither my daughter or I could hear what the remark was or which one of us it was directed at, but it was clearly meant for us, and was derogatory. After we got on the lift, my 11 year old said the word ”teenagers” while shaking her head and sighing. That’s funny coming from a pre-teen! Maybe there’s hope for her yet!

    Anyway, those wonderful teenagers then proceeded to have a party on the chairlift, with loud music blaring and snide comments being lobbed at other skiers down below on the hill. After my daughter and I got off, they sped past haughtily, clearly showing us they were too cool.

    Three times is one too many

    It would have been easy to ignore one of those incidents alone, but the combination – including the dream – were clues to something deeper. When multiple “coincidences” happen along the same lines in a short span of time, it pays to take heed and understand what the deeper cause is.

    coincidence

    By “deeper cause” I am referring to what’s going on inside your own conscious and subconscious mind that brought these events to the forefront of your life. Coincidences of this sort always have lessons to teach, but unfortunately, most of us dismiss them as “just random” and we ignore them. In ignoring them, we invite more such events into our lives. These events are our inner being’s way of nudging us to learn something new and important. That inner being often communicates via events rather than words, because most of us have very noisy heads where any words just get lost in a sea of constant dialog.

    So, I’d rather “get” the lesson instead of repeating the same pattern over an over again with different faces and places, always feeling victimized like “the world is out to get me.”

    Those teenagers were the messenger

    My 3AM reflections while I tossed and turned in bed, pulling the sheets and blankets into a mess, came down to one word: speed. These teenagers – both the real ones and the dream ones – were all taunting me for being slow. The “snowshoes” comment by the Montana guy was implying that we might as well have been walking on snowshoes at the (slow) speed we were going.

    I found that intriguing, because I’m finally at a point in life where I’ve found some balance in not always rushing from one thing to the next. Yet part of me is still afraid: afraid that by slowing down in my life, I’ll be left behind. Here the universe was echoing that back at me, showing me how bogus it actually was.

    Ten years ago, back when I was younger and had a severe case of “testosterone poisoning,” skiing slow with my daughter and being passed by some young skiers would have been excruciating. I probably would have raced ahead to “prove” to them that I was just as fast (or faster), and only after proving that, returned to my daughter to see how she was doing.

    This time I had no such urge – at least not consciously.

    But there’s the rub. At a subconscious level, I was still feeling “left behind.” I haven’t reconciled my conscious beliefs – which are all about slowing down, focusing on quality and experience – with my subconscious beliefs, which come from that teenage version of me that was frequently “left behind.”

    My brother’s visit

    Why did this happen now? It just so happened that my older brother and his family were visiting us. If there’s one thing that’s true for most older brothers (or sisters), they don’t like being “slowed down” by their younger siblings. When growing up, I was left behind by my brother all the time — and sometimes taunted for being slow by he and his friends. I grew up having a “thing” about being left behind. It often seemed to happen, even though I hated it.

    I don’t hold a grudge about my brother’s actions now, 30+ years later — at least not consciously. But his presence, along with other things going on in my life and business, triggered this issue for me to recognize and go to work on. The teenagers, the dream, and my brother’s presence were all just hints that I had an opportunity to recognize and work on something that was holding me back in several areas of my life.

    And, here’s why this may be relevant to you. It’s not just something that has caused problems for me, it’s an all-pervasive MEME in our culture that causes problems for most of us.

    That meme is that going fast is superior to going slow. It comes with a whole related set of beliefs, such as:

    • You have to keep up with the Joneses, or you will be cast out to the wolves (or at least subject to great ridicule)
    • You have to work hard and fast to get anywhere worthwhile in life
    • If you’re a mom, you have to work hard all day, then be a great mom in the evening, and on top of it be a great partner, lover, and so on. Don’t ever slow down and take a break for yourself, or you’ll be thrown to the wolves!
    • That if you’re in research or business, you have to move really fast or be left behind by the competition in a “career wasteland.”

    It’s like we’re all plugged into our own little Lamborghinis with the foot to the metal 24/7. At least, until the engine blows up from overheating (i.e. heart attack), the gas runs out (chronic fatigue), etc. Ironically, most of us are just going in circles at 180 mph, and never really getting “anywhere” nor enjoy the journey on our way to that big blowout.

    Strange, isn’t it? We humans are an odd lot…

    My problem: wanting to go slow and feeling left behind

    I’ve long believed that this pace of “going nowhere fast” was unhealthy. I’ve cultivated a life where I can spend time with my daughters as they grow, where I can write a leisurely blog post like this, where I can sip my coffee in the morning without feeling the need to jump into work immediately just to “keep up.” And, ironically, it’s made me far more productive on the things that count (like getting books written and course lessons made).

    Yet there’s that part of me that’s still freaked out over the issue of feeling like I’m being left behind. I’ve often felt conflicted. Consciously, I know that taking days off with my family makes me more productive at work when I return to it. Subconsciously, there’s always been this dread, this fear, of being left behind, of not keeping up, of things falling apart…

    Unfortunately, the subconscious part, combined with all the constant cultural messages about “going fast,” has too frequently won out, causing me to “work hard” just due to fear of being left behind. I know I’m not the only one for whom that’s true. I don’t actually think that most people, if you asked them, would say that they want to constantly speed through life with little time to savor the important things. Yet if you look around, how many people actually translate that into action? Very few.

    Most people I encounter are feeling very rushed, always.

    When there’s a conscious/subconscious clash, healing is the key

    Most of us are walking around with more than one of these conscious/subconscious clashes. In order to identify yours, just look at any area of your life where you keep wanting things to improve, but they never really seem to in a lasting way. It could be weight loss, it could be grant funding, it could be cash flow, or it could be your relationship with your partner.

    Any time there’s been a persistent, chronic problem in your life, it’s a sign of the clash. When you have such a clash going on between subconscious beliefs and your conscious desires, the subconscious always wins. That is, until you do some reprogramming work to get rid of the conflicting subconscious garbage. Then you can finally straighten out the Lamborghini and get somewhpersistent problemere, while enjoying the journey.

     

    Pay attention to the signs

    Whatever is the “big issue” for you right now in your life, signs and clues are there, waiting for you to find. They can come in the form of people, circumstances, dreams, or fears, among others. Rather than ignoring them, take heed. Keep a journal, note when you seem to keep facing the same situation again and again.

    And ask yourself: what belief do I hold at the subconscious level that’s actually causing this cycle over and over again?

    If you do this, you’ll often be amazed by the power of what you find. If you take this exercise seriously, it has the power to completely transform your life.

  • Run and Cry

    Have you ever been in a situation – such as visiting with relatives (or dealing with collaborators, or etc) – where your head is ready to explode?

    I’m sure you have.

    Here’s the thing: It’s nothing wrong with them. They are who they are. You are who you are. Nobody is going to fundamentally change.

    This is true even when they’re good people who are well intentioned (as the relatives I’m currently visiting are). This is true when they are not so good and not so well intentioned.

    It is universal. It has nothing to do with the rightness or the wrongness of anyone involved. Yet so often we tend to make it about that. “They’re wrong and I’m right.” It makes your ego feel good but never solves the situation. Yes, I tried that for many years. Nothing changed.

    In this conflict between “who they are” and “who you are,” generally what ends up happening is one of two things:

    1. You “suck it up” and try to adapt. That strategy is one I’ve been familiar with many times in the past. All too many times I would subsume who I am and what I want for myself to the needs of others. Relatives, family, collaborators, kids. While I’m a strong personality, I also have a very strong streak of wanting to please others. When those came into conflict, the “wanting to please others” would often (usually) win.
    2. You make them “wrong.” I’ve done this too, usually when I reached my breaking point in any situation. I would just get to a point where I couldn’t handle “playing the good girl” anymore, and so I would decide that “they” (whoever they happened to be at the moment) were “wrong.” Once I brought that attitude into the relationship, things went downhill…. fast. Worse, it’s easy to feel guilty after doing this, and then make yourself “wrong.” So you end up with a whole buttload of “making people wrong” and nobody wins.

    There is another way.

    In my work with Core Analysis – i.e. using intuitive methods to get to the bottom of who we are at our Core – I found out that I’m highly “internal.” (It wasn’t a surprise). What this means is that my relationship with myself is  the most important relationship. I need lots of alone time to think, to process, and to work on where I’m at.

    For external people, this is bizarre. External people benefit greatly from being in relationship to other people, and not as much from “going inside.”

    I can be by myself for days in a row – and be VERY happy with it! Someone who’s external (like one of my daughters) would not do well with that.

    The conflict mounts

    When I go visit relatives with my family, it’s full-on. It’s round the clock people, people, and more people. It doesn’t matter whether they’re the nicest people in the world – being an internal person, I get burnt out. I get exhausted. I get frustrated.

    The point here is that each of us is somewhere on that internal-external spectrum (and similarly, there are a number of other spectrums) – and quite often when we’re in a situation – not just with relatives, but in any human situation – attempting the “suck it up” solution in the name of getting along – we end up exhausted. That often leads to the next phase, which is the making them wrong phase. Like I said, it’s all downhill.

    The pressure release

    This morning I was just about at my breaking point. I was going to snap at somebody or start the downhill trend. So I decided to go out for a run. Despite the cloudy day, I wore my sunglasses. I could feel tears coming on.

    In the past, I wouldn’t have let myself cry in public (even with sunglasses!). I would have still been in the “suck it up” mode, trying to adapt to a societal norm that says it’s weird to be out in public, running along a suburban street, with tears running down your face. Well screw that!

    So here I was, running down the tree-lined streets in gray, windy Madison, Wisconsin, letting the tears of angst and frustration flow. After I got over the first minute or so of “feeling like a freak” (a feeling that’s quite normal for me by now), I felt an incredible release.

    I ran faster. I let more tears flow. I ran up a hill at a speed faster than I have in over a year. And by now, the frustration was spent. There were no more tears.

    Why don’t we take care of ourselves?

    Social norms.

    Most of us are so caught up in “fitting in” that we subsume our health, our mental well being, and even our spiritual well being for the sake of avoiding negative judgements or conflict. (Or, alternatively, just cynically avoiding all such situations where we might be exposed to this kind of challenge).

    It’s c-r-a-z-y.

    Why do we do that? I for one am sick of doing that. I won’t do it anymore.

    That’s why I found myself running down that street with tears flowing – and ending up feeling better than I have in weeks!

    That one emotional release that I allowed for myself – in public – was better than meditating every day (which I do), journaling (which I do), regular exercise (which I do).

    Nobody should try to “fit in”

    The bottom line is that we are all hardwired – at our deepest Core – for certain tendencies. Most of us end up quite often very far out of alignment with that, and it’s usually in situations with other people. When we end up chronically out of alignment, it results in health problems. It results in relationship problems. It results in anxiety and bitterness. It ends up in unhealthy anger and blame (or worse, victimization). Some people spend their whole lives in these states. What a waste!

    We are not here having this human experience to try to “meld ourselves to fit in.” No, we are not.

    We are here to live our lives authentically self-expressed. We are here to align with who we are and look at the magic that happens when we do that.

    It’s a shame that society often gives us just the opposite message: suck it up, fit in, do your homework, work hard, be nice, get good grades, and all that bullshit.

    It really is bullshit, and I for one won’t do it anymore. My goal is to be able to have relationships with people where I don’t go down the route of “fitting in” and/or “making them wrong” – but instead, simply be myself – even if that ends up with me running on a public street with tears running down my face, looking like a madwoman.

    I am shedding the notion that fitting in is useful or healthy. (It’s not).

    My challenge to you

    My challenge to you is to join me. I challenge you to look at your life, identifying areas where you subsume your personality in order to “fit in” or “avoid conflict.”

    Then ask yourself this question: “what is the cost to me of continuing to do that?”

    Once you realize the true costs, I think you may decide that you want to stop doing that. Because for most of us, those true costs are simply too great.

    Let me know how it goes!

  • Lighten up, Life is an experiment

    Lighten up, Life is an experiment

    This is a first. I’ve not been very open in the past about my own spiritual path over the past few years – one that has led me from a very atheist point of view to now believing that there is much more to our universe than the material “stuff” that we see.

    It is not a journey that I undertook readily or with enthusiasm. I grew up to think of many religious people as a bit “nuts,” and by association, any form of spirituality was suspect.

    Yet my own path, my own questions, forced me to ultimately face up to this idea: we are far more than just the flesh-and-bones in these bodies, and we are more than just a random, meaningless lump of flesh in the universe.

    This is not about religion, it is about spirit. It is about finding meaning in an often difficult world, and finding a path that leads to peace, fun, love, and enjoyment of life. It is a very practical path indeed, and yet one that I – like many others – often resist due to our own biases and beliefs from the seemingly never-ending debate between religion and science.

    When you are willing to step aside from that debate, and go on an open-minded exploration of what our reality is really about, amazing things open up for you. One of those things for me has been that I have found I can get very quiet and still, and “tune into” some deeper voice, some deeper consciousness, that has a “knowing” that seems to go far beyond what I in this body could know about things. It has been incredible for me to start asking that voice questions about my life and our world, and to get some amazing answers back.

    Here I share one of those with you, that was spawned by a debate I saw a friend involved in about a rape that had happened, and whether the victim had somehow “attracted” that into her life or not. The flamethrowers came out… and it was not pretty. I wanted a deeper insight into what this was all about, so I asked the question, and here is what I got.

    Q: What about people who suffer severe traumas?

    A: Life is an experiment. Each event is one of a series of never-ending, eternal experiments, trials-and-errors, that happen to a soul over its eternal trajectory.

    For each “bad” thing that happens there is always a comparable “good” thing that happens, though not always in the same lifetime or in a way that is obvious to the person from their perspective at the time.

    You humans could do to lighten up, to chill out, to have fun with this ride you call Life. It is not much different than a play with actors, taking on different roles and trying different perspectives.

    A soul cannot reach it’s full potential if it never experiences pain, or what it is like to be a victim. Nor can it reach full potential without experiencing the opposite, being an oppressor or victimizer. These each lead to expansion and clarity of what is not wanted, which leads to more of what is wanted.

    All paths ultimately lead to Love and to Source (or what some of you may call God). And yet if the path was just a straight line, it would be boring. There would be no point, and certainly no fun.

    The only true thing that is “wrong” is the perspective you humans adopt into the “bad” (or “good”) things that happen. Rather than just letting those things be the past, you bring them into your present by focusing on them and recapitulating them over and over again. You like to think about them, memorialize them, teach history lessons about them, debate about them, stew over them, seek therapy to revisit them….

    And each time you re-live these so-called “bad” things, you bring more things like them to you. That which is like unto itself is drawn.

    So instead of experiencing relatively isolated incidents (or single lifetimes) of “bad,” you often experience a long-term perpetuation of the “bad.”

    We use that in quotes, because in the end, all of this is just an experiment. It’s an experiment that you agreed to participate in, joyously and willingly. How will it go? Will you as a species destroy the Earth? Or will you figure out a way to “make it work?”

    Either way there will be learning and growth and expansion. Neither way is a “dead end” in an infinite, evolving universe of possibility. There are other, countless, realities in which different scenarios play out, and it is never “done.” So if things go “bad” here, things will go “well” elsewhere.

    It is your choice. You do not need to fret or worry over what happens to others. Your job is to learn joy, love, and ultimately, your connection to source – to see as though through the eyes of your Source or your God. To see with love, connection, beauty, and truth, all things, all places, all occurrences.

    This does not, it cannot happen in one lifetime. This is a very grand undertaking, and again, one that leads to your soul’s expansion.

    This is not a “serious” game as so many would have you believe. The whole point of this is, shall we say, a step aside from “boredom.” Imagine an original state where there is nothing but perfection. Imagine that lasting forever. Imagine that perfection never changing. Imagine being a consciousness trapped in that state, aware, and yet trapped. Imagine the agony of that.

    How does one escape? By engaging in creation. Creation involves duality. You cannot create if there is not the thing you call contrast.

    Good/bad. Up/down. Right/wrong. Black/white. Male/Female. There are many, many contrasts that arise, and they are all part of the richness and complexity of this experiment you call “reality.” You cannot have the good without the bad, though some think that you can. The “good” is just as dead and lifeless as the “bad” without the other.

    Contrast leads to more contrast. For each refinement, there are further steps of refinement enabled. For each “BAD” there is new “GOOD” that arises. For each “GOOD” there is new “BAD” that becomes possible.

    It is a game. Kids know this, until you talk them out of knowing it, then they forget it and turn into “serious” adults like you.

    Kids know how to play, to imagine, to relax, to be in the moment, to have fun.

    You could learn from your kids (collectively) a lot about what life really is, but most of you are too busy “teaching” them what you know about life, much of which is bogus.

    You teach them the details of “how the world works” and yet the world changes at an ever-increasing rate, due to the expansion of consciousness that is occurring. How the world worked 10, 20, 30, or 40 years ago when you were growing up is different than how the world works now.

    They are wise, they can learn how the world works through play, through presence, through their own exploration of the “good” and the “bad” – unless you get in their way.

    Find the good in every bad. Find the bad in every good. Know that they are just two sides of the same coin, and that they are neither good nor bad, they just “are.” Your judgements are the only thing that make them so. And your judgements are never made from the higher perspective of your soul, because you cannot, in your daily life, see its whole, eternal, trajectory.

    So here you are, in daily life, judging and deciding, and each time you decide and judge, you separate yourself, you slow yourself down from that alignment with Soul that you seek. It is not a problem, because your soul is eternal – it will far outlast this universe you see around you. And yet, you could have so much more of a fun life if you weren’t slowing it down.

    Why waste your life that way? It’s certainly up to you if you want to. You can throw away many lives in that way, and there will be no problem, except for that in each of those lives you “threw away” in worry and doubt and fear and being a victim or whatever, you are not experiencing anywhere near the fullness that you could in that life. It is a choice and there is no right or wrong in it.

    When you see those “bad” things happening to others, do not judge them. Do not judge the people doing the “bad” things, either. This is not to say that someone who violates the rules by which you’ve agreed to play here on this Earth should just be able to do whatever they want.

    But there is a difference between saying: “you’ve broken the rules and there are consequences” versus saying “you hurt this person and you are therefore bad/evil/wrong.” The first is a simple matter of finding a consequence that is appropriate for the rule-breach, and carrying out that consequence, and letting the perpetrator’s soul grow in the way that it is here to grow from that.

    When you get into the judgement about bad/evil/wrong, however, you then involve yourself in those energies. To think about those things, you bring those energies into your system. You attract more challenges with those things that you are giving those labels to. Is that what you want?

    Let’s take the example of the rape that was discussed recently. Both the victim and the perpetrator’s soul have grown from this incident. Was there another way to produce the same growth? Many of you seem to act as if you think there is. And yet if you, the reader, thinks about all the times of major growth in your life, was it not *always* on the heels of a major challenge you overcame? Is that not what every good story, movie, tv show, or book is based upon?

    It is a silly, utopian notion to think that souls can truly expand without challenges like this.

    Now, you may be thinking, “but I don’t want that in my life!” You don’t have to have that. Your soul has a trajectory here, but that trajectory evolves through the power of your choice.

    From an external perspective, often those “bad” things seem so random, so strange, so unfortunate, and so different from the “perfect” person you observe who had that happen.

    Yet you are not a mind reader. You do not see what is happening inside of the person’s conscious mind, nor at the soul level.

    People in your world have become very good at putting on acts. Acts as if everything is wonderful – when inside – there is turmoil, worry, fear, and other things you might call “karmic baggage.”

    So when someone has something you consider “bad” happen for “no good reason” – you are judging that from a very ignorant point of view, without nearly all the “facts”.

    The best that you can do in your life is to focus on your own soul’s trajectory in this body, finding ways to maximize that, and letting other souls do the same. If you do that in joy, in fun, in love, you can have a very expansive, clarifying, wonderful life experience.

    Either way, whether you choose to do that or not, your soul grows.

  • I GIVE IN!!!

    It’s time I come clean, put my BS aside and take responsibility for my truest, most raw BEING.
    Why?
    To serve & honour myself…YES! And just as important, to lead by example.
    To inspire & facilitate your most extraordinary evolution through my deeds NOT JUST THROUGH MY WORDS.
    And to bestow on you, what you are worthy of….choice.
    See…
    For years I’ve been focused on bringing you things like grant writing and productivity because that’s what my ego thought you wanted.
    Did you ever notice that your ego creates many illusions? Mine certainly does.
    One of the illusions it created is this: “my story isn’t important.” I had a false sense of modesty, thinking that “I’m not interesting, let’s not talk about me…”
    And yet…
    Every time I’ve told my story of transformation (several of them!) and of ultimately “finding myself” I’ve had far more requests for help than at any other time. It has inspired people to grow and change, because my story shows that it’s possible despite great obstacles.
    So I finally had a “duh” moment the other day. People have been craving this for a reason:
    Our society is set up from day one to program us to NOT be ourselves, but to live for other people’s impressions of us.
    Our ego gets addicted to the positive feedback that others give us when we do things that are pleasing to THEM, and we un-learn how to just be ourselves.
    Yet being ourselves is THE platform for truly inspired creativity. Lots of people claim “I’m not creative” which is total BS. The lack of creativity is simply a lack of being tuned into “being oneself.” This goes on to impact all other areas of life, limiting career progress and satisfaction.
    Being disconnected from who you are, and living from ego gratification, presents challenges to deep, satisfying relationships. It presents challenges to being truly healthy. 
    Who you are is a wonderful, loving, beautiful, fun, unique being.
    Who you’ve been programmed to act as is quite likely competitive, skeptical, reserved… constantly having to “prove yourself” to others around you in order to feel worthy.
    This way of being leads to things like the “impostor syndrome.” If you’re not being you – but operating out of your ego’s notion of what you think others want from you – you’re going to feel like an impostor! Operating from this false platform will never lead to truly good things in life.
    People who’ve achieved so-called success in that way always end up self-sabotaging at some point. Like the guy I just heard about from a friend who was wealthy, until a particular self-sabotaging behavior (coming from Ego) sunk the whole ship, and now he’s destitute.
    Yep, that was me, for many years of my life. And it continued even after I had the sex change. One surgery didn’t suddenly resolve this disconnection I had from myself. (Oh I wish it were that easy!!) It took far more work than that.
    I had PLENTY of self-sabotage going on, despite my apparent successes that my ego has been able to brag about (like the track record of grant funding and business growth).
    So anyway….
    I give in! I give up on my own illusions that my story is unimportant and uninspiring. I give up on the notion that people need help with grants and productivity and creativity… when if I’d been listening, I would have heard the message loud and clear:
    “Morgan, help us learn how to powerfully express who we truly are in the world, with no illusions, games, or false fronts!”
    And in doing that, I strongly suspect that the “troubles” with grants, with sales, with relationships, with health, with employees, with feeling like an impostor… those things will start resolving themselves. (EVERY big breakthrough in these areas I’ve had has been directly correlated with work I’ve done on aligning with core.)
    Honestly, it’s a bit weird to do this. It seems too “easy” – but that’s only because I’ve spent years and some major ups and downs learning how to do just that. Learning how to finally be myself! So I’ll see how it goes….
    And, if you’re ready to go to work on this – to remove those layers of falsity that keep you from expressing who you are in the world – then reach out to me. I can help.
    Morgan

  • What Lies in Stone….

    When speaking of his historically famous Statue of David, Michelangelo said this, “Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” He made similar comments throughout his lifetime about his artistic abilities and how he did not carve stone to look like figures, he simply released the figures from the stone. What a genius perspective to have. Michelangelo recognized that there was beauty within a block of stone and it was only up to him to reveal it. The same can be said for us and our authentic selves. I love talking about creating and how much better it can make every aspect of our lives, but when it comes to our core, its not about creating at all. It’s about what’s revealing whats already there.

    Who we are at our core is who we we were always meant to be. As we grow and experience life that connection to inner self can become foggy, and then layer upon layer we cover up that magnificent being and become who we think society, our families, our spouses, or our bosses want us to be.

    It is time to chip away at the layers surrounding our core. It is time to let go and release false beliefs and false judgements about ourselves.

    Just like Michelangelo’s beloved David, your authentic self is there, waiting in the stone to be uncovered.Screen Shot 2014-11-04 at 9.10.41 PM

  • Victimhood vs Vulnerability

    Being authentic in vulnerability vs. the hidden agenda of victimhood.