CLARITY

We want to not only define your definition of health healthy life, but elevating that to a definition that's even potentially more vibrant than you might have thought of originally. How do we make uncertainty work for us in a life that is uncertain, in a world that is uncertain? We'll talk more about that as well as how do we create in a way, perhaps a word or two that's a. That will help us remember our best future self. Because as soon as we hang up, we're going to forget it, as I always do. So let's just start real briefly. We did this self life audit last time and has anyone either they thought differently, they're starting to percolate something, or perhaps they actually did something different from last time because, you know, you could be a consumer and just sit back and be an eternal learner yet that's not going to dial us move our life unless we actually do something about it. So if you aim for nothing, you'll hit it every time. I won't put everyone on the spot all the time, but I will ask Clay because I ask you guys to do a small habit, nothing giant or a small commitment. Clay, you committed to research yoga. How did that go?

Researching yoga didn't go well. I recall it was about. My objective was to actually think about the things that I need to spend 15 minutes a day thinking on the things that I need to see if I have a fulfillment, a fulfilling day. And what I started doing was I started going out for a walk after dropping off my kids at school and I was actually able to think out in the woods. I live near the forest and I was really trying to think about what are the things that will make me feel fulfilled. And I was able to do that multiple times this week.

Even better than researching yoga for sure. Beautiful.

Thank you.

Anyone else who had a small minor to maybe us but not to you upgrade moving forward in any way?

I had a tiny thing. I bought a book which is not anything different than. Because there's lots of books I buy and like read a little bit. But it's called Tiny Habits which. Yeah. Which is super interesting. I've only gotten through sort of the first chapter. But basically the guy is a. I guess he's a psychologist and studies behavior and really talked about. I really liked the. I mean we all know about sort of, you know, starting small but the way he sort of frames change as really sort of. We rely way too much on something like on motivation for instance, which he calls sort of a fair weather friend. And really it Just needs to be sort of very small little things that you anchor to something else. And that sort of propels much larger changes. And if you sort of. If it doesn't work, then it's because your system that you've set up is somehow sort of at fault, not you. So, yeah, so I started. I've been feeling a bit out of shape. Even though I walk the dogs a lot, I really haven't been doing sort of as much yoga and sort of barre and things that I did, you know, before the pandemic. And I just haven't been motivated and I've been really down on myself about that. So when I brush my teeth in the morning, I do a few squats and after the shower I do a few semi push ups and while I watch the news, which is very. Yeah, I don't even know. I'm not even like, yeah, I'm not even going to talk about the news in this country because it's just been so such a whirlwind for the past four years. I do a few leg lifts and then I do some of my art. I draw.

So, yeah, it's been great inserting just these little ones. Thank you.

Very small, very small.

And Jennifer, one more and then we're gonna move on. I'd love to hear what's happened for you.

Well, it's really, it's quick and it just kind of like, you know, connects to what Duff was saying. Just like what I had said was, you know, just getting out of bed and doing a few sun salutations. Just like my basic, you know, just basic wake up stretches. And so I, you know, and like, that's not new. It's something I just needed to bring back because I just easily just get very distracted and do a million other things and then there's no time for it. So I just, I've been making that happen every morning.

And I think building on that is what Daphne said about having a system in place. And I think your system is having the yoga mat right at the foot of your bed. Right. So you roll right onto it and something like that. So it makes it easier for you to actually build that in as a routine. Beautiful. All righty. We're going to actually continue with some interaction and let's see if I can make this happen here. All right, What I'm going to do now is this is the interactive part. As quickly as possible, I would like you to give me the opposite of these words. I'm going to type them in. So just shout it out. The opposite of black.

Thank you.

The opposite of heavy.

Light.

Light. Okay.

The opposite of tall.

Short.

And one more. The opposite of legal, illegal. We could go on with conservative, liberal, and, you know, political names, et cetera, but you got that really quick and fast. Now just as quickly as you did before the middle. In between black and white. Gray. Okay. And quickly. Heavy and light. Medium weight. Okay. Tall and short. Medium. And then legal and illegal.

Questionable.

All right, we're going to come back to that exercise and I'll do one more. And then this one is. Imagine that you. It's a hot day on the weekend, you have a lot of things to do, you just dropped your child off to the birthday party and you realize, oh, I didn't get a present for the person. So now you have to run to the store and get your child, but you're busy. You go here, the one spot that you can find, and this is what you see.

So.

And then you know what goes on. And let's not be this like, namaste, open minded, patient person, let's build person in a hurry. What would be your reaction to that, you fucking moron?

Thank you. I would say, you rich asshole from.

California who clearly can't drive, welcome to the East Coast.

Okay, good.

So you did exactly what I was hoping and expecting versus open minded. Nicey nicey. And the point that I'd like to make is that whether it was thinking, the two extremes, which came faster, if you will, the black and white, those were faster than the part in the middle. And that's typically because whether we don't have the words and the vocabulary or the thinking, but we think in kind of black and white, right or wrong, win or lose, when the world, if you will, is really more characterized by diversity, by ambiguity, by being gray. And it's not this easy, win or lose area, but somehow our minds go there. So if we were to think not in a snapshot right here, but that there is a pull ourselves back into the eagle vision, that there is a past, a present and a future, what might be going on, this context, and this is where you could bring in maybe some of that namaste mind, and thinking bigger, what might have happened here?

Person parking next to that person parked poorly. So this person had to park poorly.

Yeah.

Okay, thank you. And that's just a little fun little exercise to get us going, that our minds, unless we're awake, which 95% of the time I'm asleep and you're most likely asleep, it's back to this mechanistic industrial Age paradigm, we see the world as linear, just passing it through the conveyor belt if you will, when really our world is far more complex. It's non linear, adaptive and evolutionary, always adapting. And you can see it in companies and you see for example, even the Apple logo has evolved. And we see it in technology, whether it's a candle or a light bulb or a new evolved technology or the wheel as an example. We know that if we look all around life, it is complex, non linear and evolving. So are we as living human beings and we live in a social system. Look at the mass that we've all gotten used to now and how you all as parents have had to deal with your children differently than before. And so with anything that's living and social, we are adapting and evolving. So with that as a perspective, what does that mean for our potential? And I'm pushing of course, that we can evolve and grow. So regardless of age, are we evolving and developing consciously and deliberately and putting in the sweat that might be needed? Or are we staying status quo or are we devolving and rusting out as examples? I saw this and I'm going to read it to you. You don't have to stare at the computer because I know we're doing that all the time, but when I heard this word rusting out, I wanted to share you. And then of course we're going to move for the rest of the time on evolving and developing and life affirming choices. But let's just hear this because I thought it was an interesting way of thinking about rusting out is the slow death that follows when we stop making choices that keep life alive. It's the feeling of numbness that comes from always taking the safe way, never accepting new challenges, continually surrendering to the day to day routine. Rust out means we are no longer growing, but at best we are simply maintaining. It implies that we have traded the sensation of life for the security of a paycheck. Rust out is the opposite of burnout. Burnout is overdoing. Rust out is over being. So just a little poke in helping us. I like to disrupt our thinking and disrupt us. So this is something, I don't know. What's your reaction to this?

Under being.

Underbeing. Rust out is under being.

Rust out is under being. Is that what I said or no.

You said over being. So for a minute I was like, ah, thank you. I know, but it's just, it's super interesting to think, to think about.

Yeah, yeah.

That we're as human beings, are we human Doings, as I mentioned last time, the ever ready battery, always going and going and going and doing. Or are we a human being and being aware of that?

Of course we do as well.

So we're going to reflect again and I'm going to ask some questions. You might want to put the line down the middle so that you can not only answer the questions, but make a note of the reflections that are happening. Either a thought that's going on or physical sensation or some type of mood that's happening. As we start focusing on clarity.

What.

Do you value the most in your life right now and why is it important? Spend a few moments on that.

It's.

What do you feel most certain and clear about in your life right now?

It.

Imagine you were mentoring someone and you wanted the best for this person. How would you explain to them what makes you successful about who you are and what's important? What makes you successful that you want to share with this person you love and care about? Maybe three things. Just do that first, not the last bullet there. Maybe three things about what makes you successful, who you are, what is important.

And how consistently are you living in alignment with what you say is important to who you are and what's important in life? Maybe on a scale of 1 to 10, one would be rarely and 10 would be always. And think about not only the big things in life that you feel are key, but also your daily routines or activities. How consistent are you? It.

Just about a minute more.

It.

Okay, so without giving a blow by.

Blow answer, sorry, I'm going forward. When I want to go back. Stay here.

We don't want, I don't want you.

To share your answer to each question, but if you pull back and you just reflect on the, the process you went through, what has, what was your reaction or your. What might have shifted for you. Liz, you talking, dear? If you are, you're on mute. I see the lips moving.

I'll unmute.

Can you hear me? Yes, dear.

I think for me maybe I was a little surprised when I really thought about it that it was, you know, much more fundamental things. Like, you know, like for instance, the first one. What do I value most in my life right now? Like it came down to it when I really think about it. I think for me it was just like my health because I think like there's other more sort of esoteric things or whatever. But you know, if you're not healthy, what's the point? So and then about my most certain and clear about it was really just like I actually Had a hard time answering that because I think I feel so uncertain about pretty much everything in my life. But I guess it was just like my job in my house. Like that I have a roof over my head and that I have a job that I can get up and.

Go to every day.

Good.

So you might want to. When we're going to unpeel this even more in a couple more slides, you mentioned.

There'S uncertainty for you.

You might want to dig into that a little bit more.

Okay.

But it's what comes up by then. But thank you. Okay. Anyone else?

I mean, the process for me was just really thinking about, you know, if I had to choose one thing, what would it be? Because I do value a couple of things right now. I think similar to Liz health and then just family. Because what we're dealing with just even on a global effort is we know.

That.

Tomorrow and who's in tomorrow isn't always certain. So then what do you feel most certain about? It's just really thinking about, well, what are you secure in? Because we do live in an uncertain world. And if you're always thinking about, I've got a. Everything is so uncertain. I'm not going to make decisions or I'm not going to do things. Well, what do you feel secure in? So it is your ability to. I feel secure in the ability to figure things out. But I think the third one was the one that they didn't always. When I started thinking of the third one, at least my mental process, it wasn't the three things. What are those big things that if you were describing what does success mean? You know, that was a bit harder because how do I define success and what does that look like or sound like? That was a bit tricky, at least.

From my point of view.

Sometimes I know I get awkward when.

It'S around like thinking about what I'm.

Good at and what my strengths are.

And it's amazing how much.

The thought in the head is, you got to get better, you got to get better.

And last we talked about self compassion for having some self compassion for ourselves. All righty.

Thank you for that.

I'm going to keep moving because I mentioned there's a number of things to talk about today we have like this and then another whole set of exercises. What areas are you feeling uncertain or unsettled or directionless? It could be from that life arena.

Thing that we did your life audit.

Maybe a certain area, finance, relationships, etc. It could be a certain situation that you're dealing with right now or Work, but just jot down what comes to your mind. We will unpack that more. I just realized there's an edit there, so I'm trying to. A typo. So I'm trying to figure out what I meant. What should you decide to stop?

Where in my life might it be.

Overgrown with weeds as a metaphor?

And where do I need more focus?

The weeds or the clutter are blocking my clarity.

The word decide, I think the root.

Mean is means to cut off to make a decision or an incision or a cut.

So how do you cut off something?

Because maybe there's so much going on you can't find the clarity in life. And with that, you might even say, what? I should stop.

It? Just another minute on this.

It.

It's.

Okay. In a moment or two, I'm going to ask you.

We're going to do a deep dive.

On something.

But I want to set up the exercise first. If you recall from that beginning exercise where I asked for the words for the extremes, we got those really quickly. So let's call those the two forces at play. And in life, you always have something that's activating. It wants to do something. But then there's always a block happening as well.

I want to do this, but I don't have the money. I want to have my cake and.

I want to eat it too. I'm Little Red Riding Hood and then I meet the big bad boy over and over again. So let's unpack that for us in.

Terms of what is it that we.

Want in our lives and do we have some restraining forces at play? So if you think about.

And you're going to jot this down.

But I need to explain it for you first. And you might want to put these two arrows at the bottom of your page with some space to write. But on one action or force or energy is what change is seeking to be created. As you start thinking about your life and designing your life, maybe there is something that is actually energizing you to act. It's giving you ghanas in Spanish, something you want. It's craving to do something. So you're desiring something, so drop that down.

But also, well, I'll give you the.

Exercise and then I want to just explain it.

And then there is also, of course.

Something that is pushing to define or refine or upgrade it or limit it.

And often we think, oh, you know.

You'Re a buzz kill. I was on my way doing all these happy things, and then I hit this roadblock for me sometimes.

Often I think If I'm at work, it's senior management.

I want to do something, then you.

Have to present it to them. And then they go, oh, you can't.

Because of blah, blah, blah. And so they're the ones who are resisting something that I want to move forward. Oh, the culture isn't ready for this and we don't have the budget, etc. But one thing I want you to think about here is the restraining isn't always like an ultra negative. It actually is trying to, let's say, refine or contain whatever it is a little bit more, maybe want some governance around whatever action I was trying to take. So the exercise that was just explaining the two forces at play, but then for you to think about what change is set, seeking to be created. This is the activating what gives me energy or hope or will, the will to act or the backbone. It's really driving me. It's a deep and persistent tugging at my life. And it just won't leave me alone until I address that.

So that.

And then on the left and on the right, there's some other questions there that are more blocking or obstacles or restraining. So I will stop and let you write that and then we will share.

These are my questions. You might find other ones that best suit you. This is just an instrument for you to use, but you can fill in the blanks. You don't have to follow my cookie cutter directions. Okay, so this is part one of this step one of this exercise. And then this is a tool that you can use, I think, in other situations. Who would be willing to share? Gerardo, we haven't heard from you. I know you are a deep thinker. What's going on when you did this exercise?

Just trying to relate to what these restraint forces are in my life. And then a lot of ideas came about what I think this could be. And at least for me, a big thing is just the fear of failure. That is permanent presence around me. And that's something I think holds me back big time at work, mainly in my business life, but sometimes even in my personal life and also in that journey. Sometimes what holds me back is that I have this feeling that I might be uncovered who I really am and that others might actually realize who I really am. And sometimes that's a bit frightening that they realize who I truly am. And sometimes I don't. Like, oh, what a. What I stand for or what I believe I am. And that sometimes holds me back. And the other piece which is, I think is sometimes present is the fact That I don't want to let anybody down, you know, I don't want to disappoint others. I have always have this idea that there are big expectations around me in my business life also and at home, and I'm occupied most of the time about not letting anybody down. So immediately these things came to my mind. More occupying of what holds me back. And there are many things that energized me, but for some reason I kind of was faster realizing what holds me back then what energizes me really. So that's the way I experienced the exercise so far.

Well, you have 10 people, eight people, nine people on the call here, and they're all very.

Would be considered successful and educated.

None of them ever felt that about it being a failure or fraud or anything. Right.

No one ever else.

It's a continual struggle.

What can I say?

It is.

Yeah.

I mean, the amount of education and experience in this room is over 100.

Years, maybe 200 or more.

And that's the point. Amazing if we all knew.

The Emperor's New Clothes. Right?

Very good.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Any one other person reflection on this exercise before we move on?

I took it from the other side. I think it's. I started with the activating force, so I didn't get to the restraining, but there are plenty. So for me, it's. I've tried this exercise several times, but I tend to go a bit too big. I tend to boil the ocean. And then it becomes a bit. Maybe difficult to make it practical, But I'm thinking getting energy from what is.

Not.

A stereotypical kind of approach. So a big benefit for me of the past 12 months, though, you know, it's been difficult to be home and everything, but is that I took time to connect to completely different way of thinking, community, people, and. And that gave me a lot of energy and initiated this. This, well, accelerated, I would say, this process of wanting to do something else. And so when I think about. There is a bit of a cycle in me between energy and passion. It has a lot to do with not repeating history or, you know, not feeling a bit constrained. And that's maybe a bit of a restraining force, but feeling a bit constrained of certain kind of behavioral situations that we live in life or in corporate life, but even outside of corporate, I have to say, even in society, even in families or stereotypes, that maybe you feel they expect you to be in a certain way. And so. Or I feel I am expected to be that way. So that's a bit of a restraining Force and the. And the energy is really like counter current in a way. How do you do it your way? And how do I complete myself understanding that I'm not. I don't know it. All right. It's just an interest to. To get to the next level. And there are multiple layers, multiple levels, I guess, of myself.

I have the benefit of it and the joy of knowing you quite well. I could discern the difference in your tone of voice, talking about what gave you energy and inspired you.

And then the obstacles.

But remember last time when we did talk about the negative thinking that negative, in this case restraining our brain more hardwired to linger on the obstacles and the restraining than on positivity. We have to actually make a deliberate intent to savor the good, if you will. In meditation. I taught a class on resilience for my company because of COVID And I use the example of going to a fancy restaurant where you're like, oh, look at the napkins. And even the bathroom was so nice. Everything you're appreciating, we have to raise that up. Because often we're looking through the lens of the glass half empty.

Just the way our brains are hardwired.

So to build on that, I'm going to have us think if we just stayed at these black and white right or wrong kind of thinking, we're not going to really elevate to that life affirming, adaptive and evolutionary path that I.

Keep pushing for.

If we stay here. What would happen if I get my. Oops, hold on there. Look. I went to a Catholic school for 12 years. So I remember quite well the story about the two women fighting over the baby. And so then the king says, okay, cut the baby in half. And so if you stay at this level of pulling this tug of war, you'll get no high quality decision from that. It'll be like just compromising. You're sub optimizing. That means optimizing one side or the other. One side wins the other a little bit, but not all the way. So if we stay at this level of thinking, we really don't go anywhere that is up at a higher level. What I want us to think about is how do we get up to this third force? Not these two areas here, but a higher level thinking that is out there beyond the ideas of right doing and wrongdoing. But there is a field out there. I'll meet you there. So thinking of it that way, and we are in a world of interconnected life. We're not all by ourselves. So that's why we have the picture of the Russian doll. We're in that middle there. And so not only do we have to work on ourselves, but there's the ripple effect that goes out to our family and wherever that other area is, whether it's our company or community, and then it goes back and forth. So we want to play with that a little bit to see if we can elevate the thinking. Here we had the left and right activating and restraining, but can we jump it up? Not just compromising, not just cutting the baby in half, but reconciling to redefining and elevating the whole game that we're thinking about here. Thinking and acting beyond activating and restraining, seeing a whole new way that encompasses and surpasses the other old way of thinking. This way here, it's independent of those two and it actually brings harmony in the context of this system that we're in, because we're often pulling this tug of war. Now, I have a couple of examples. They're not the best examples, but I thought of them quickly. One would be to think, what would Yoda do? Really thinking, this wise wisdom, that best future self that we talked about last time, coming from the past and poking you on the shoulder and telling you, this is what you need to do. I know you. I love you. Sometimes we've heard, you know, what would Obama do? What would Jesus do? Or what would Yoda do In this case, I'll give a couple other examples. Then we're gonna have you go back to your story and see if there is potential. You might not get to it. You might need a couple of walks in the forest for this. But how can you elevate your thinking into a whole new game? And business came to mind. So I don't know if you ever have heard about the story of Netflix. So it's kind of interesting where Reed Hastings, he was a businessman, so the AF is the act together invading force. He wants to watch movies at home. And what happens is they used to go to Blockbuster, which was the one, the company at the time that was the top in the industry. And Blockbuster had like library late fees and his wife was nagging. Return the DVD, return the DVD. He finally returns the DVD and it cost him $40 in late fees. Now he's driving to work, or I think it was to the gym, and he's thinking about, my wife's going to kill me. And then, oh, I'm not going to tell her. So he's the story of that. He's thinking, I'M not going to tell my wife how much it is because then she'll yell at me for this. And this is a little story going on in his head. And so he gets the to the gym and he takes his pass and he swipes it and he goes to the gym and then the importance of exercising. He does his exercising and it comes to him. Wait a minute. There was something about just swiping that card and being a member that I could go right in. Why do I have to pay these fees? So it was the story that I'm just giving you as a background of how he could elevate the game from the DVDs and lying to the wife about the charges to let's have a whole new game and a whole new industry. And so that's when he started. Actually, first it was you rented them, they got mailed to you. Then of course, it was streaming, inventing them. Now he's reinvented the game of movies where he has his own movie actors and company and he's beat out like Hollywood now. So it's reinventing the game in that case. Another simple example of was how the ice cream cone got invented was guys wanted to sell ice cream. They ran out of glass cups at the time. This is, I think in the 1800s. They took a waffle, wrapped the waffle and put the ice cream in there. So it's just kind of. I'm not sure that was the best one, but wanted to give a couple of examples. I'm not sure you might even have other ideas of how do you elevate the game above this kind of one wins, one lose, etc. That would be helpful for you. So it's back to this one here. If I get this slide up so it's not one wins or the other, but elevating. So percolate on that one for a moment on your slide to see. Here's some questions for you to think. It's hard. I'm not sure you're going to get it in this short amount of time, but it's worth thinking about what is the higher purpose of the larger whole that you're talking about. Whatever it is, it includes you and that next level of your Russian dollar. I'll give you a couple of minutes to read those questions and see if anything elevates in your thinking. Another simple example. Pardon me for interrupting just one example if this helps. Daphne and I walk around the fresh pond all the time and there are pedestrians walking like we are. There's people with dogs that are off their leash. And there's bicyclists and all of that. And so you could say the people walking don't want the dogs or the bicycles. And so there's this fighting back and forth. Or put your dog on a leash. Shouldn't be off a leash. How do you elevate so that all this community can enjoy the beautiful place of our pond that is beyond the field of right doing and wrongdoing. It includes us all. That's just like a simple example, because these happen all the time. And there is something else I'll ask you to consider. It's in the homework on the website. But could you think of a mantra or a little phrase? Typically it helps if you get a verb and a noun, but you don't have to. That would help remind you. Kind of like an elastic that you slap on your wrist or something. What would that word or the phrase that would remind you to define and to be best future self. So you might want to think about that for yourself or also for relationships and then also for your own unique essence and potential to not only evolve, but to show up. So a word or two you can play with this. You will see in the homework that there is actually a worksheet for you to write it. It's editable and you'll be able to do that. So I'm giving you a lot of homework just for the sake of time with the three words around yourself, your relationships and your potential.