Freedomizing

 It's actually a pretty simple concept, yet, took so many discussions and arguments to fine-tune it. The premise is exactly as it's written; if you've earned it, it is a fully disclosed amount "paid" no questions, no grey. The Legally Stolen is in the minutia, in the back door deals, the distributor's kickbacks, the "all expenses paid" vacations ... I mean ... Trainings ... It's everywhere in every industry. Therefore it's legal and in so many aspects accepted and expected. That is until it isn't. In come the cowboy legal teams that are uncovering these legal crimes. And putting together compelling cases against the Legally Stolen money heist. All that has to happen is the legally stolen money outweighs the legal liability and boom industry innovation to figure out how to keep the golden goose on a laying! The cat and mouse game goes on, and I'm here to tell you the cats out of the bag. For years and years, retirement plans have been ...

I think that'll be the title of my book when I finally write one. The basis of the concept was brought to my attention as we were looking at a flowing grass landscape, beautiful, the occasional scrub oak with a horizon of snow-capped mountains. An artist friend pointed out the beautiful striations of color; being taller, I saw more of a giraffe coloring. The comment was, "imagine that was a 2 d picture". My response, "you can't compete with Nature" discussion then morphed into winning and losing, and therefore, you can compete with Nature, you just will always lose. However, to compete is to compete, and during competition, there is no winner or loser; there is just competition. Staying in context, did Michalango win when he took the stone and turned it into a masterpiece we now know as David? Or did Nature, because Nature supplied Michalango the image of David to make out of stone? Either way, I sure am glad that Michalango engaged in that competition.  Tha...

Let's see, probably the first barely symptoms were Monday night; I had a runny nose after soccer practice. Thought nothing of it because it was cooling off, and everyone gets a runny nose when they run outside. Tuesday, woke up feeling pretty run down, muscle aches, and a head ache. I was planning on just sleeping it off, and that's what I did, except I ended up binge-watching the squid game, a bad idea; that show is so slow, so sucky, and has so much violence, that sucked. I actually have a theory about that; I believe if I had just read like I knew I should, I would have taken my recovery down significantly. Because as my studies have shown, like social dilemma references, the reality of the shows these days trigger the stress hormone even though it's just on a screen. So that show was so violent, with such graphic violence, that I was just on a drip of stress hormones for a day. Absolutely NOT what you want to do when you are trying to recover. So I got worse well before...

 I experienced my first coach failure, not that I haven't failed in the past as a coach but my first recognizable fail in that I should have succeeded but failed because I didn't know what was going wrong at the time.  I come back to the unconscious incompetence, and how the team has achieved the move from UC to conscious incompetence. And as individual players, some have tried to move into a form of competence, this level of competence has created a false sense of confidence in skills necessary to "score." As a team the move from UC to CI was fascinating and launched them into a realm of actually having fun, now the competitive individual ego is getting in the way of the desires of the team. As with my experience on the sidelines, not at the coach, a power player tries to take over and the rest of the team just watches as the one-man wrecking show battles it out. When I saw that happen, I too was struck by the effort, the grit of the individual and didn't want to...

Through the lens of children, we can learn so very much! So often, communications fall flat because a baseline is not established; in other words, if you are talking down to someone of knowledge, you will lose them right away and talk too far above their knowledge level. Both attempts at communication fail because of boredom, and it's impressive watching my children get bored within a few sentences when I haven't understood their baseline.  The same is true with a group or a team of people. Human beings are very tribal, even in the work environment, so as a group, you must approach their baseline to nudge them in the direction you wish to move. An example is there may be a "leader" in the knowledge or skill that you are trying to work on amongst the group, and if you are not able to connect with that leader, the rest of the group will follow in the boredom.  The book "Inner Game of Tennis" explains beautifully how we learn from our peers, watching, and doing...

 Whatever you are doing, do it with purpose. Maybe the purpose is to escape and turn off for a minute, you turn on the boob tube, and with purpose, you enjoy that show! However, as soon as that purpose has been met, get off of your ass and do the next thing with purpose!  I struggle a little bit with purpose vs. intentions as I write this; my thoughts were purely on purpose. However, when I put it on paper, it feels like intentions may be the better word.  Intentions -  a thing intended, an aim or plan. Purpose -  a person's sense of resolve or determination. Well, isn't that a rock and a hard place! With purpose, I indeed to ____. Does that solve it? No, keep it simple. Though as I think it through, living a life without a moment of no "purpose" would be pretty stressful, whereas living a life without a moment of non-intention just sounds awesome! Every action has intention; maybe that's the better way of looking at it.  Make sure that every action has int...

 I saw this post the other day on LinkedIn; not necessarily appropriate for the site, but I loved the Meme, so I'll share it here. A picture of a boy and says, "Don't buy me everything you wish you could have had growing up, teach me everything you wish you would have known growing up." What's funny about that statement is that when you are in college, that is half of the young men's conversations. "Oh man, if I only knew then what I know now, I'd have ________." Think testosterone-filled statements. Fast forward 20 years, and I have two incredible daughters and the sentiment doesn't seem to correlate. So why did this Meme catch my eye? My daughters are young impressionable, and that's about the only similarities between my youth and theirs. Ok, that's a little broad-stroked, but the significant difference between my youth and theirs is social media, and as far as I'm concerned, that is such a difference you really can't even ...