Here’s something you might not know about me: I used to teach preschool. I love that age. Kids are learning their way in the world and are still so full of wonder. 

Somewhere along the way, authority figures (parents, clergy, teachers, other family) begin to impose rules that shut that wonder down. 

“Don’t be so nosy.”

“Stop asking so many questions.”
“Don’t be a pest.” 

And the wonder is stifled in trade for approval.

Almost every child learns this lesson – it’s a trade of behavioral compliance for the perceived reward of love. 

There are stories that are built around this. And life’s struggles come from those stories.

What if we kept wonder alive? One of my favorite things to tell people is, “Stay Curious.” 

When you live in curiosity, you cannot live in judgment.

“I wonder…” is so different from “That guy is...

There’s a saying that goes, “When one door closes, another one opens. But man! These hallways are a b**ch!”  Today, we’re going to explore those hallways. They’re where you stub your toe trying to find your way.

Finding your way is a BIG deal. There’s another saying that goes, “if you don’t know where you’re headed, any road will take you there.” That one is from Alice in Wonderland. 

Clarity about your intended outcome is like telling your GPS where you want to go. If you don’t have a destination, you’re just looking at a broad map. If you DO have a destination, a few things happen: 1) your current location is determined, 2) the “best” route is calculated, and 3) the destination is highlighted. 

You need to know your current situation/position.

From there, all things are possible. And when you are focused on moving towards an outcome, you make decisions based on...

Birthday Greetings!

That’s right. It’s my birthday. It seems to happen every year. So what the heck!!!

Every year on my birthday, I celebrate my personal New Year. What others do on January 1st, I do three months ahead of that. 

Whether you do this on your birthday, on New Year’s Day, next Tuesday, or with me today, you’ll be miles ahead if you join me in doing these few steps. They’re not complicated. They do require some (mental) effort.

Ready?

1. Get out a pen and a journal (you do have one, don’t you?) or a pad of paper
2. Write… write down your wishes – all of them, no matter how ridiculous. This is YOUR list. You don’t have to know how it’ll happen. Just write. Let it pour.
3. Close your journal.
4. Oh, there’s more? Open that thing up and write some more.
5. Now… rewrite everything as if it’s the end of the year. Name the date and write, “I’m so happy that I got to...

You’re busy, on the go, making things happen. We all are. And we take for granted that the people, pets, food, clothing, and everything else that surrounds us will be there later today or tomorrow. That’s called Object Constancy in the land of Perceptual Psychology. And yet, in an instant everything could change. 

It doesn’t mean that it will.

That just means that it could. 

Please don’t let your mind wander into a fear-space. My writing will never lead you there. It’s unproductive. This is simply food for thought: A few years back, I had surgery on my left wrist. The basic things in life like emptying the dishwasher became monumental tasks that I couldn’t complete without slowing down and gaining assistance from my other hand (or my wife).

Did I mope (actually grieve) the loss of function? Yes, yes I did. 

For as much as I write about the incredible trajectories that we each might have, I’m also human....

Your life is pretty okay. You know it could be better. And the truth is,  you don’t have to change anything. There is another truth: you could choose to change something and go after what you really want. 

Like it or not, you probably are like most people. That’s not a bad thing (and even if it were, there’s no judgment here). Here’s an odd thing – most people have wishes BUT (and I so seldom use that word) they actually don’t know what they really want. They can’t put it into words.

Two quick truths:

• Most people don’t know what they want
• Most people have a bias toward what they already know

The bias toward the known keeps you comfortably uncomfortable. You know what you know. It’s a predictable loop for you as you work toward the weekend or that vacation or retirement. And that’s truly okay IF you are truly okay with it. What I know from my own life and the clients that work with me is that...

Back in June, I wrote about a Wayne-ism about Keep Making Your Magic. That got some great feedback. It also got a response I didn’t expect when a friend of mine whom I hadn’t heard from in a while wrote to me with a serious question: What if you can no longer find your magic?

Sometimes you - people in general, not just you personally - get tired. Sometimes you get into the routine of giving until you don't have anything left to give. And then you look at your life and wonder where you're heading. You might even wonder how much is left. And at the very worst, you wonder if any of it is or was worth it.

Please, if you feel like you’re off purpose or lost your magic, there are a few things at play. 

You got into a routine of “doing the right thing” for everyone else and you forgot what it is that you truly desire. If you've leaned into all of the “supposed-to” stuff, then you let yourself get trapped into believing that...

When a tooth breaks, there are a few, very few options. Last week, we looked at how awareness leads to choice. When there’s an emergency, you don’t feel like you have ANY choice. The thing to remember is that there is always, always a choice.

Each choice leads to its own series of consequences and that leads to more awareness which, in turn, leads to greater choice.  After a decade of conservative treatment, I required oral surgery.

And with that, I had new awareness. 

I won’t be graphic here, just know that oral surgery is surgery. It’s surgery, in your mouth. For me, I was sore. There were tissue things I had to care for, but not in the same was as if you’d scraped your knee or something. And I was on a medication regimen.

Awareness of discomfort.

Awareness of a new spot in my mouth I apparently needed to keep exploring.

Awareness of where I could and couldn’t/shouldn’t put pressure.

Every meal...

Spiraling Towards Freedom is the name of the last chapter in my very first book, Choosing Your Power. In that chapter, I describe a process of circular philosophy. The short version is that you have to put yourself in a place of understanding so that you can know. And in that special chapter of Choosing Your Power, I introduce the concept that Awareness Leads To Choice. 

You have to understand so that you can know. You have to know so that you can understand.

And you the more aware you become, the more choices you have. The more choices you have, the more aware you become. 

Analogy: Let’s say you go to an Italian restaurant. You love lasagna and you’ve heard that it’s an Italian specialty. You could be given a menu and choose not to look at it, “Do you have lasagna? I’d like that, please” you order politely.  

Two things are at play here:

First, if that’s really, really what you want, then...

What is the mistake that leaders make that results in a pretty bad crash and burn?  They either fail their teams, their families, or themselves by ignoring one simple truth with two deliberate paths. 

Hint: You MUST do both!

You’re here because you are playing to win and not just playing not-to-lose. That’s another concept for another day and we’ll dive in deep on that later. For now, you’ve got to know that if you came over to my place and asked for orange juice, I couldn’t give you any.

Why? Because I don’t have any to give. And that’s a funny thing because, I know where to get it. So, let’s play out this analogy.

Your special person, your team members, your community – they’re each in need of something from you. What if you’ve been giving and going and giving, and going, and you just don’t have any “juice” left to give. You’re exhausted. And yet, you...

I just had a high-performing entrepreneur ask me if there were any tips I could offer to help him get things done along a timeline rather than wait till the last minute. “How can I create artificial pressure that I seem to respond to for a real looming deadline?”

He’s worried about being a procrastinator even though when he’s against the deadline, everything is produced on time.

You either are like this or you know someone like this. So, this blog’s for you!

Here ya go – 

You’re not doing nothing. 

That double negative is to say, you ARE doing something, even if it’s not fully expressed outwardly. Give yourself the gift of lightening up. Personally, I always failed the part of school assignments that required me to turn in an outline. Yes, I have five books out there and two more in the mix. And yes, each book is divided into chapters (like an outline). And NO, I didn’t start there. I started...