Tag: attention

The Hero of Heroes: The Osiris Myth & Attention

“Where you spend your attention is where you spend your life.”

James Clear

The Hero of Heroes

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been obsessed with discovering what makes people win. I used to think what made someone good at one thing was different than what made them good at another, and while there is some truth to that, I’ve noticed that there are a few things that make people good at everything. It’s almost like a Pareto distribution of skills necessary for winning. There are a handful of skills and traits that we can learn which can help us get to the top of all the pyramids, so to speak.

While analyzing the “winners” of our society, I’ve noticed that they all possess certain trains to get to the top of their fields. What makes a successful professor is different from what makes a successful athlete is different from what makes a successful musician, or businessman, or mother, or soldier, or fashion designer…you get the idea. Each one of these people has developed themselves in the areas they need to in order to reach the top of their game.

Well, life is more than just one game, it’s a series of games.

So that poses the question, what are the traits and skills we need to develop to win the series of games?

In some ways, that’s different from what it takes to win one particular game, but in other ways, it’s also the same. That led to me looking for patterns, not only in successful people of my time but in the heroes of the myths of all cultures.

For generations, even predating written history, people have been trying to figure out this question and share their findings with the ones who inherit their world. They shared these ideas through stories of heroes that would display the traits and ways of being necessary for “winning.”

Let me give an example, Hercules is a kind, strong, brave, and persistent young man and because of that, the story ends well for him. When little boys are told the story of Hercules, they want to emulate his heroic qualities and be one themselves. Adults are happy to tell them this story because they know (on a subconscious level) that these lessons will help the children in winning the game of games, life. The same can be found in religious stories, ancient myths, and popular culture. The Avengers is a perfect example of this. Spider-man is my personal favorite.

So I started thinking, what if I analyzed what was common among all of these hero myths?

Will I find the skills needed for success everywhere?

I don’t think I know exactly what will make someone successful everywhere, but I have compiled some commonalities between the heroes in every story I’ve come across. This is a pretty big idea so I’m going to be going over each of them with their own blog post.

These series of posts will not be an exhaustive list of these traits and skills, but they are the ones that I’ve found to be most important. This post is going to focus on the power of attention.

Attention

Eye of Horus

This story has a similar arc to Disney’s famous The Lion King, one of my favorite movies of all time. I’ll be making various connections to The Lion King and it’s relevance to the modern world throughout the story.

This story is one of the oldest, but most elaborate and influential, myths of the Egyptian Gods. This is the Osiris Myth.

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It begins with the god Osiris, the King of Egypt, ruling a fair and prosperous kingdom. Osiris is extremely wise and well-liked by his subjects. He’s harsh with his judgments but fair with his punishments.

Osiris is analogous to Mufasa in The Lion King. They are both a representation of The Wise King archetype.

Osiris was married to Isis, the Goddess of health, marriage, and fertility. They had a good marriage and Isis was lovingly devoted to Osiris. Osiris also had a brother named Set, the God of deserts, disorder, and violence.

Isis seems to be the ancient Egyptian representation of the anima. Set is analogous to Scar from The Lion King. Like Scar and Mufasa, Set’s relationship to Osiris represents “the hostile brothers” archetype.

Set was jealous of Osiris and his power. He wanted to be the King of Egypt. Osiris knew his bother had these feelings but chose not to acknowledge them. Instead, he was willfully blind to his brother’s hostility. Set used his brother’s voluntary ignorance against him and killed Osiris. Set chopped Osiris up into little pieces and spread his body parts across Egypt.

These different pieces ended up representing the different districts in ancient Egypt and were thought to be the origins of their old borders.

Mufasa was killed by Scar because Mufasa did not want to see the evil in his brother. He chose to be willfully ignorant. Just like in The Lion King, Set was able to kill Osirus because Osirus didn’t want to see the evil in Set. This is one of the biggest lessons I took from this story: Willful ignorance is strong enough to take down a good, powerful, and wise leader. Or maybe the ancient Egyptians were trying to say that only willful ignorance is strong enough to take down a wise, powerful, and good leader. Either way, willful ignorance is destructive and the forces working against us will use our ignorance to catch us off guard. Choosing to not see the evil will kill us, maybe when others may need us the most.

Of course, when a king dies it’s big news and it’s not long until Isis finds out. She’s furious and goes around to each district gathering Osiris’s parts. Eventually, she finds his phallus and impregnates herself. Once she’s pregnant, she leaves for the underworld where she can raise her baby, the hero, Horus the Younger, away from the disorder and violence of Set’s reign.

Horus the Younger is commonly depicted as a falcon-headed man because he represents attention. The agent of attention is born from the wise king and the anima. I think it’s also worth mentioning that Horus is raised in the underworld. To the modern person, the underworld has connotations of Hell or other terrible places but in ancient Egyptian mythology, the underworld was another dimension where the gods could watch the humans from afar. Horus, the agent of attention, is raised in a world separate from the one he will inherit. Similar to how children are raised in environments separate from “the real world.”

This is where the Osiris myth diverges from The Lion King a bit. In The Lion King, Simba (Horus analogous) “grows up” with Timon and Pumba singing Hakuna Matata, whereas Horus was raised in the underworld by Isis. Those are obviously different, but in some ways they are similar. Both of our heroes are learning the ways of the world in a safe haven away from the real burden of responsibility.

As Horus gets older, he learns the truth about his father. That Set usurped him and is running Egypt into the ground. Horus decides to return to Egypt, confront Set, and avenge his father.

This is like when Simba decides to leave Timone and Pumba to go take his rightful place as king. This is the quintessential coming of age story (at least for boys), a boy leaves his friends so he can go an answer the calling to be greater. Usually catalyzed by a woman, in Simba’s case, it’s Nala.

When Horus returns, Set tries to win Horus over the same way he did with Osiris. But Horus has something is father didn’t, the gift of true attention. With his attention, Horus could see Set for what he was, an agent of betrayal and malevolence. When Horus confronts Set, they have a great battle. Set tears out one of Horus’s eyes, but Horus ultimately defeats him in the end. Since gods cannot truly be killed, Horus banishes Set from the Kingdom.

This is one of my favorite parts of the story because it has so many of the lessons that make this story worthwhile. 1) Attention is the one thing that will give us a fighting chance against the forces of malevolence. 2) When we are confronting the forces of malevolence and disorder, we will get hurt in a serious way. 3) We’ll never truly destroy the forces that are working against us, we can only fight them off and make them leave temporarily.

Horus picks up his eye and returns to the underworld, where Isis had kept all the pieces of Osiris. Horus gives Osiris his eye, restores attention to the old corpus of wisdom, and together they both rule Egpyt into prosperity and peace.

The ancient Egyptians believed that the pharaoh represented the union between Osiris and Horus. A good ruler needs to have the wisdom of the past as well as attention to the present in order to lead the people into a prosperous future. I think it’s great that Horus knew that to do what’s best for Egypt, he needed to give attention to the wisdom of his dead father. There is powerful meaning to be found in the journey of giving the attention of the youth to the wisdom of the old that runs deep within the soul of every human being. There are so many myths that depict that exact journey. It is not solely attention nor wisdom that will lead us to freedom and prosperity, but the union of both in a way that allows us to recognize and overcome the forces working against us.

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Attention is what’s needed to brings us to the top of every hierarchy and overcome the forces of evil, so to speak. This idea has been expressed through archetypal images and myths throughout history and cross-culturally.

What’s at the top?

I think the image on the back of the American dollar bill depicts this perfectly. Attention is the thing that is at the top of the pyramid, but it’s also more than that too. Attention transcends the rest of the pyramid, it’s almost as if the ones who are paying attention are no longer part of the rest of the pyramid. (I’ve noticed this to be true in my experiences as well.)

Attention is the thing that will take us to the top of every hierarchy and overcome the forces of evil, so to speak.

But why? Why does attention sit on top of the hierarchy?

I’m not sure if I’ve come up with the answer to this question, but one of the answers I’ve come up with is that with the power of attention we can plan for the unknown, create the future, avoid danger, and predict the future.

I believe this is a huge part of the reason why so many internet influencers (and the Kardashians) make so much money. When you harness people’s attention, you have the ultimate power. Our attention is the most powerful thing any of us has to offer. That’s why companies are willing to pay millions of dollars for advertisements and people will dedicate their lives to being famous. Attention is the real currency, everything else is illusory.

Paying attention to where we pay attention is critical for living a powerful and fulfilled life. When we pay attention to our minds, we can improve our mental health. When we pay attention to ur bodies, we can improve our physical health. When we pay attention to anything, we can improve it. What gets measured gets managed, and what gets managed gets improved. Attention is the first step to all of that.

I recommend looking into mindfulness exercises and practices. Meditation is a fantastic way I try to train myself in paying attention to my mind and myself. There’s so much research today that grounds the value of paying attention to ourselves in hard science.

Pay attention to where you pay attention. It’s the most valuable thing we have to offer.

The Relationship with Ourselves

46651291 - wooden little men holding hands on wooden boards background. symbol of friendship, love and teamwork

“How can a man come to know himself? Never by thinking, but by doing. Try to do your duty and you will know at once what you are worth.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Maxims on Life and Character)

I have spent many weeks putting off writing about this topic simply because it is so big and I didn’t know where to start. I kept scrapping intro after intro because I felt like none of them could accurately express the magnitude of importance that this idea holds. I was getting frustrated because I had this huge message inside me, but I had no way of getting it out! So rather than try to build up to the idea I’m just going to start from the point I want to make and work my way around it.

The main idea is that people are relational creatures and we do not pay enough attention to our most important relationship, the relationship with ourselves.

We see it everyday, so much energy, attention, and money are dedicated to our relationships. In fact, we have entire industries built on this phenomena – therapy, self-help, sports, the arts, the list can go on forever.

We put so much care and attention into how we relate to our work or our loved ones, but rarely think about how we relate to ourselves. This is peculiar because how we relate to ourselves impacts us far greater than how we relate to anything external of ourselves. I’ve read so many different books written by people from all different time periods, and it seems like the biggest influence on our experience of reality, life satisfaction, and peace of mind is ourselves.

People are constantly looking outward to change their lives or find happiness. The inconvenient truth, is that everything we desire is within.

They tell themselves “Once I get _____” or “Once ____ is over” or “When I’m finally ____” then I can be happy.

Most of us intellectually know that this isn’t true, but to internalize it is a different story.

Our life satisfaction, our abilities to take on new things, and potential opportunities are all dictated by how we know ourselves.

We all have feelings and thoughts about ourselves that we do not share with other people and these patterns control our orienting reflexes. People are purpose driven creatures and I talk a little bit about how we need to track things in order to succeed, but the relationship with ourselves decides what we believe we can even keep track of at all.

The relationship with ourselves is the sum total of all our achievements and failures that we observe in ourselves. We subconsciously keep score of everything. Every time we said we were going to do something but didn’t creates a relationship with ourselves that suggests we aren’t reliable. Every time we’ve done the impossible and surprised ourselves with our abilities creates a relationship with ourselves that proves we can do amazing things in the face of adversity.

Everything we do is kept record.

Christians believe that God is watching them always. I believe that we were made in God’s image and it is not only God always watching but it is the god within ourselves that is always watching. Regardless of religious affiliation, we are the only ones who have been with us since the beginning.

No one understands the experiences and situations we have been in better than ourselves and it is through this understanding which we develop the relationship with ourselves.

Who we know ourselves to be is not based in what we say to other people, but how we feel about ourselves. Our perspectives of ourselves is the only thing that has truly been with us through all of our situations. This part of ourselves keeps score, it pays attention to what we have and haven’t done and casts projects of what we can and cannot do. How we relate to ourselves dictates our orienting reflexing and ultimately our lives.

Imagine that you’re planning to meet a friend for dinner. You plan to meet them at the restaurant, but they don’t show up. You try getting in touch with them, but they’re dodging your calls. Eventually, you get a hold of them and they give some weak excuse that barely explains why they couldn’t show up. You just got let down. Your friend did not fulfil what they committed to you. Naturally, we’d feel disappointed and upset, but the real truth is we will forever see that friend as less reliable and accountable. Their word has taken a slight dip in believability and the person can no longer be counted on as much as they were before. It can seem harsh, but it’s the truth. Now, the real kicker is that we can replace that unreliable friend with ourselves.

We rarely pay attention to the expectations and commitments we put onto ourselves. Partly because we like to think as long as only I know, then it didn’t really happen. However, the feelings associated with that unreliable friend can easily be put onto ourselves if we pull the same stunt. Our self-esteem, self-efficacy, confidence, ambition, life satisfaction is a direct result of this. It’s easy to put things onto others and it’s even easier to put things on ourselves, but sometimes we tend not to notice the relationship with ourselves.

In a world of legally mandated education, I’ve noticed a lot of students wondering why they’re forced to learn and work on countless “pointless” concepts and it’s a fair argument. Most of the concepts and “education” people recieve is only useful in an academic setting and rarely applicable in The World Beyond. Admittedly the education system, at least in the United States, needs a ton of rework. However, there is something invaluable we can get from our education.

Our current education system provides students with an opportunity for them to prove to themselves what kind of person they are.

Are you the kind of person who gets things done when the going gets tough or do you quit the first chance you get?

The relationship with ourselves is always transforming and refining with every situation we encounter. Since most kids spend most of their time at school or working on their education, a large portion of the relationship with themselves is rooted in how they handled their academic responsibilities.

We can choose who we are, but first we need to discover what our relationship with ourselves is like. We can ask ourselves the follow questions to get a quick snapshot of what our relationship might look like:

What degree is it damaged?

What can we do to make it better?

Do we trust ourselves?

Do we believe we are capable of helping ourselves?

What kind of person do we think we are?

What kind of person are we actually?

The good news is we can build the relationship with ourselves no matter where we are. First we have to know what our relationship is like for ourselves, then work on ways to prove to ourselves that we are the kind of person that we want to be.

This starts with our integrity and identity.

Integrity

A common definition of integrity is what you do when no one is looking. People who having integrity are typically considered moral and trustworthy because we know that even behind closed doors they will still make the right choices. This definition of integrity is fantastic and if we see it through the lense of the relationship with ourselves, we will see that integrity is important because we, us, ourselves, are always looking. We constantly are watching us and we know how we would act behind closed doors. People with integrity have a healthy and strong relationship with themselves because they know exactly what kind of choices they will make.

There’s another definition that I believe is much more useful and powerful. Integrity is also known as a state of being whole or undivided. Every commitment we break, to others or ourselves, puts a little crack in our integrity. Every aspect of our lives that is not aligned with our chosen commitments also puts a little crack in our integrity.

When our integrity is not perfectly whole, we are prone to negative emotion and lose the ability to live in the present. This creates intense dissatisfaction with our lives.

Living with perfect integrity is better than anything we can ever experiences. It’s comparable to true peace of mind and contentment. It is our goal to seek out what does not make us whole and undivided and reorient that part of our lives so it serves us, or at least does not hold back. When we have perfect integrity, the relationship with ourselves is pristine. We get out of our own way and become our biggest ally.

When we have a commitment, or vision for our lives, we create a value structure which deams certain actions as “good” (they bring us closer to our goals) or “bad” (they bring us away from our goals). When we stay on the path, so to speak, we are operating with perfect integrity and are creating a positive and powerful relationship with ourselves. If we were to stray off the path, make a “bad” decision, we won’t be able to have perfect integrity until we make up for the damage done. In a Judeo-Christian context, this can be seen as atonement – at one, at return to a state of wholeness.

States of Moral Trajectory

I believe this is why the world religions have this mechanism built into their structure. Human beings must stay on a path towards something they find valuble. This is clear when we have a goal or a commitment. However, sometimes we may choose to act in a way that does not align with that path.

In archery, they call missing the mark a sin. In a religious context, they say not staying on the path is a sin. I’m saying that from the perspective of developing a relationship with ourselves, not saying on the path is a sin, in the technical sense of the word.

When we sin, we must correct our trajectory in order to return to the path. The world religions have their own ways for doing this, but I believe they all contain the same basic mental exercises.

In order to restore integrity we must:

  1. Admit that we have missed the mark
  2. Understand the impact of our sin to the highest degree that we are capable
  3. Discover methods to make up for the sin
  4. Implement those methods in the real world

This can look an infinite amount of ways. In the future, I’ll write more about integrity because I feel like it is one of those HUUUGE ideas that could make a significant positive impact in many people’s lives.

Kintsugi – Japanese Art of Scars & Repair

Living with perfect integrity requires us to clearly understand what our values, goals, and commitments are. This is not an easy task, and many people love to not clearly articulate themselves so they can escape the responsibility of paying attention to their actions. I talk about this idea in a few of my posts, but it first came up in The Reality-Possibility Exchange.

If we could be honest with ourselves and understand our commitments, we know when we’re doing something right and when we’re doing something wrong. If we pay enough attention, there is a specific moment when we decide to do the wrong thing. There is an actual second that we can point to on a clock when we decide to not follow through on our commitment. Pay attention and you will notice it when it comes. What we decide to do in that moment determines the relationship with ourselves.

Identity

I talk more about identity in my posts, Utilizing Our Identities and The Brain vs. The Mind (Part 2). In these posts, I talk about the utility in understanding our identities and how we can use that knowledge to design and build the lives we desire.

Our identity, in terms of the relationship to ourselves, is how we understand ourselves to be. We know what we like or don’t like. We understand what we are skilled in and what we are ignorant of. We know ourselves as a certain kind of person.

Our identity is one of the strongest motivational forces and determines what our goals and aims are. Our identity shapes our ideals and the paths we walk towards them.

No matter what we declare our identity to be, we can act out of line and define ourselves whenever we want. This is a turbulent process which comes with its own set of stages, but it can be done. Our identities aren’t permanent, not until we’re dead.

Don’t sacrifice who you could be for who you are now.

Our identity is closely related to our integrity. We see all of our own actions and know all of our own thoughts. Our identity is built from our integrity. If we aren’t following through on our commitments and projects, then we are supplying proof to ourselves that we aren’t trustworthy and reliable. Creating an identity of being unreliable prevents us from creating an identity of someone admirable or virtuous.

The game is pretty rough, but it’s what we all have to play. It’s play the game (whatever game you choose) and play it well, or know yourself as a loser.

“When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground.”

Cersei Lannister (Game of Thrones Season 1 Episode 7)

We try hard to stick to the identity we give ourselves simply because we hate being wrong and what’s worse than being wrong about who we are? Additionally, our identities are usually justified by the people around us. Our friends and family members will consistently remind us of how we are this kind of person or that kind of person. Their perceptions of your identity are just as malleable as our own. Our identities are never permanent in our minds or in the minds of others.

Consistency & Toughness

Life is hard, but we’re tougher than we think, the only issue is that we have to prove it to ourselves. How do we prove it to ourselves? Through consistent action.

Consistency is key to building a relationship with ourselves and it’s also key to building a lasting and formidable identity. Developing a relationship with ourselves is much like developing a relationship with another person, it takes a lot of time. So we need to create consistent action to create ample proof that we are who we think we are. However, unlike relationships with other people, the relationship with ourselves is 20% discovery and 80% creation. Relationships with other people tend to be 80% discovery, and 20% creation.

We need toughness because relationships are hard work and working over the long term will require us to be tough. A lot of early life relationships end because people don’t have the toughness to deal with the challenges of intertwining the life of another. The unique part about this relationship is we can never leave it! We are always going to be in a relationship with ourselves and it’s damn hard to craft it into something steadfast and powerful.

Lev Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development

A couple tips for developing toughness – do not say things that make you weak. You are listening to yourself when you speak, and if you say you’re weak then you’ll listen and internalize it. Be mindful of the comments we make about ourselves. Also, try operating in your Zone of Proximal Development. It’s an excellent way to grow yourself in any domain of life you choose.

Grit

This is the difference between success and failure in terms of someone reaching their full potential. The “talentless” can surpass the naturally gifted individuals and reach unimaginable heights as long as they cultivate the grit within them.

According to wikipedia – grit is a positive, non-cognitive trait based on an individual’s perseverance of effort combined with the passion for a particular long-term goal or end state (a powerful motivation to achieve an objective). It is the key to stellar performance in any field and the best part is anyone can create it within themselves. The simplest way I think about grit is as passionate persistence.

Renowned scholar and author, Angela Duckworth wrote a book appropriately titled “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance” and has a TedTalk which has over 6 million views on YouTube in which she gives a fantastic overview of grit and how we can use it be reach out full potential.

The reason why I bring up grit now is because the key to understanding grit and using it to our advantage is to know ourselves as someone with high levels of grit.

Developing a relationship with ourselves where we are full of grit and cultivating an identity that matches can give us full proof armor when we encounter difficulties such as The Attack, or what Steven Pressfield describes as Resistance in his book, The War of Art.

Grit can be thought of as having 5 characteristics. Focusing on developing each of these characteristics in ourselves will help us cultivate grit as a whole.

The 5 Characteristics of Grit

Courage – developing courage does not mean ridding ourselves of fear, it means to accept the fear within us and act anyway. In order to create a relationship with myself in which I know myself to be courageous, then I have to pay attention during the times when I’m more afraid, decide what they best course of action is, and take it. No withdrawing or freezing in hopes that things will go away on their own.

Conscientiousness: Achievement Oriented vs. Dependable – being conscientious a useful trait to develop within ourselves because conscientious people work like mad. Knowing ourselves as someone who is focused on achievement and dependable makes us invaluable in any industry at any level. Conscientious people tend to rise to the level of expectation, but only because they prove to themselves that they can over and over. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but they laid bricks every hour.

Long-Term Goals and Endurance: Follow Through – nothing is worthwhile without follow through in the long term. Things that take longer are usually better and designing our lives is a long game. We need to be able to know ourselves as people who can follow through even if they goal is years down the line. We need to know that we can maintain vision over the long term. Sometimes I think that the true test of success is just maintaining the vision over the trials and tribulations.

Resilience: Optimism, Confidence, and Creativity – we will encounter hardship and challenges that rival our wildest dreams. The only way through it is knowing ourselves as resilient. If we know we have what it takes to get through it, then we will. The only thing is that we’ll need to know how to get through most challenges. Knowing ourselves as optimistic will help us keep faith and push forward. Knowing ourselves as confident will give us the willingness to push the boundaries into unexplored territory. Dragons lay in the unknown, but so does treasure! Knowing ourselves as creative will give us the means to solve some of life’s toughest puzzles – the challenges which impede us from obtaining the life of our own design.

Excellence vs. Perfection – excellence is a difficult idea to wrap our head around without tangling it up with perfection. If we know ourselves as perfectionists, or someone who produces perfect work, then we are frozen forever. Our super egos would be too strict and that would leave no room for any kind of action. However, if we know ourselves as excellent, or someone who produces excellent work, then we will inevitably put our best effort into everything we do. Going the extra mile is only tough if you don’t normally do it.

Self-Efficacy

The relationship we have with ourselves can be reflected in our self-efficacy. Self–efficacy refers to an individual’s belief in his or her capacity to execute behaviors necessary to produce specific performance attainments (Bandura, 1977, 1986, 1997). It reflects confidence in the ability to exert control over one’s own motivation, behavior, and social environment.

If we have a powerful relationship with ourselves and know ourselves to follow through on our commitments, then we will have high self-efficacy.

If we have an unstable relationship with ourselves and we know ourselves as wishy-washy, then we’ll have a low self efficacy.

Components of Self-Efficacy

Remember, part of us is always keeping score and self-efficacy is the part that controls our confidence and willingness to try new and difficult things.

Now, this is not the same as self-esteem. Self-esteem is more like the amount of self-respect we have rather than confidence in our ability to perform. Self-esteem is important too, but self-efficacy is what I believe really controls the trajectory of our lives.

There is more I’d like to go over when it comes to the relationship with ourselves, but I’m going to cut it off here for now. How we treat ourselves and how we act affects us. All. The. Time. The relationship with ourselves is a part of our lives that doesn’t get as much attention as it should, especially considering that it determines the majority of our life outcome.

Love yourself. Trust yourself. Push yourself. Earn yourself.

Lessons from an Application + Tips from Winston Churchill

“Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena)

My girlfriend recently emailed me a potential dream job that she thought I was the perfect fit for. I was elated to discover that renown author and habit-guru, James Clear, is hiring a podcast writer/researcher and producer. Given my nerdy passion for self-improvement and audio engineering, I figured this would be a fantastic opportunity to pursue.

I’ve always hated applications, but this one has taught me a few lessons that I think are worth sharing. Some came from the application itself, others came from my overachieving spirit taking on unnecessary challenges.

Future Opportunities are Difficult to Imagine

A part of the application that made me think was when Clear asked the applicant how much money they expect to be paid for the position. I know I’m fairly new to the “real world,” so to speak, but the idea of getting handed a blank check to do meaningful and potentially life changing work is so beautiful to me.

How crazy is it that there’s this job that appeared over the recent years that has no established monetary value. Then I got to thinking…how many other unforeseen opportunities are coming? How many other jobs will come that will give people the opportunity to write their own checks? It’s so wild to think about the seemingly boundless opportunities that come with our rapid technological growth. Podcast writer/researcher/producer was not a popular job just a few short years ago, but now there are people who will pay handsomely for someone with those unique set of skills.

After seeing this, I see that it’s so important to focus on developing skills that interest us because future opportunities are difficult to imagine and perhaps one day a well-paying and flexible job will look for someone with those particular set of skills in that particular combination. In a world of niches and specialization, we need to find new ways to make ourselves relevant and it seems like cultivating our inclinations is our best bet.

Modes of Growth

When I looked at my website, my writing, and resume, I was unsatisfied and embarrassed. I was so frustrated because I felt burnout creeping in and I couldn’t see any ways to make my situation better. I took a step back and saw this as an opportunity to level up everything, so even if I don’t get the job, the energy dedicated to this application is worthwhile. I had to stop with experimenting and work on presenting. Off with Experimentation Mode and on with Presentation Mode.

Once I switched gears, I was working harder than ever before. Suddenly, I knew what had to be done and saw multiple ways to get to where I needed to go. This was an important realization in a time of burnout and complacency. Once I switched my mode of growth, I had a whole new set of problems to tackle. I was so inspired that I made plans that will take way longer than the application window to complete, but that’s totally fine.

Being the nerd I am, I started to wonder why I had this newfound energy. I wanted to know what exactly broke me out of my burnout and complacency. I was thinking about Big Sean and when he goes into “Album Mode,” he’s focused, setting his intentions, attentions, and energy all in one place. That got me thinking…we all have different modes to our outward development. We don’t necessarily have to have “Album Mode” or “Presenting Mode,” but having different creative “modes” helps us switch to the perspectives we need to take action.

Paying Attention Paid Off

I kept stopping the application to work on the musical pillar of my online city and realized that I kept wanting to dedicate my energy to myself and my own endeavors. I’m not saying I’ll be James Clear, but James had to dedicate a huge amount of energy in order to create the body of work he has today.

If I’m naturally gravitating towards working on my own endeavors, then I ought to get out of my own way. For a while I wondered if I was paying proper attention to my own patterns and behaviors, but now I have another example as to why paying attention to our own behavior is worthwhile. When I made the switch from working on someone else’s plan, to working on my own, I felt less anxious and stressed. The application didn’t cause me a huge amount of stress, but it does feel a hell of a lot better to work on my own contribution to humanity.

In the end, I decided not to submit an application but the lessons I got from it felt like a good trade.

-Future opportunities are difficult to imagine, so focus on what keeps you interested and useful.

-Have different modes of growth to help change perspectives in times of burnout or complacency.

-Pay attention to what I’m subconsciously trying to do and get out of my own way if it aligns with my values.

How to Be a Better Leader: Tips from Winston Churchill

One of the questions on the application was asking us how we would handle writing a practice podcast transcript on the topic “How to Be a Better Leader: Tips from Winston Churchill.” I thought this was an excellent question to ask because it gave Clear a clear idea (no pun intended) of how this new hiree will work once everything is said and done.

When I read The 4-Hour Workweek (which is on my Must Read List), Tim suggested to have a preliminary task set up for potential hires to see how each person would work. This way you can evaluate their workflow, how quickly they can complete the project, a sample of their work, and if you like working with them in general.

Given how I saw the question, I figured the best thing to do would be to actually write out the transcript and detail my workflow. Since I decided to not follow through with the application, I didn’t finish writing the transcript, but I did do a good amount of research for it and learned some valuable lessons. Without further adieu (in a much more casual manner) here are some lessons I learned from Winston Churchill on how to be a better leader.

Never ever stop.

“If you’re going through Hell, keep going.”

Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

I’ll start with one of his most popular quotes. Churchill was no stranger to situations akin to Hell. He participated in many wars as a soldier and a Prime Minister. War can be seen as close to Hell as we can get and Churchill had experience with it on the front lines as well as being in charge of millions of lives. On top of that, the guy lived to the ripe ol’ age of 90! If you’ve read some of my other posts, you know that I truly believe life is suffering and to reject that suffering is to reject life itself, so we must do everything we can to learn how to deal with that and other tragedies of life. I talk a little bit about this in my post Proclivity for Comfort. Since Churchill lived for so long, it’s safe to assume that the man has seen the innate hardships of life, which I believe can also be akin to Hell. I believe it’s safe to say that Churchill knows Hell and how to get through it. Keep going. If things get hard, keep going. If things aren’t hard, they will be. Plan for the worst and keep going.

On a slightly different note, I was also reading Austin Kleon’s third book, Keep Going, which is a solid book on how to stay creative in good times and bad. I’m pretty sure Kleon didn’t reference Churchill, but I want I mention this too since this week’s post is more about lessons I’ve learned over the last week. Kleon offers many different ways to stay creative, but the most influential idea for me was to make gifts. Basically, when you’re in a creative slump, make gifts to get in touch with your gift. When you think of creating something of value for another person, we see tons of new ways to utilize our talents.

Persistence will conquer strength, intelligence, talent and hard work. Without persistence, we are nothing. Being strong, smart, and talented can give us a leg up, but someone with more persistence will be the champion.

I feel like Churchill’s advice to keep going is amazingly perfect and simple, but to take it a step further, we should look for specific methods to keep going. Persistence is the goal, finding the methods to get there is our task. Excellent for leadership, excellent for conducting ourselves powerfully in the world.

Intentionality is for the strong.

“I like things to happen, and if they don’t happen, I like to make them happen.”

Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

Churchill has so many quotes, but a common thread between a lot of them is his reverence for intentionality. In a phrase, Churchill believed that people want things to happen, but don’t try to make them happen. He wanted to participate in life, not just observe it. He suggests that great leaders will bring out what they want into the world despite other forces working against them. The good leader delivers results, on purpose.

What comes with intentionality is confidence. When someone knows themselves as someone who can bring about their own will into the world, then they are confident, especially in times of uncertainty. Leaders view themselves as being able to impose their will on the world and NOT the other way around. Leaders have an Internal Locus of Control. Now, this isn’t to say that we should just do whatever we please and force others to act how we’d like, this is simple a mindset to approach potential problems from. When we are intentional, we build confidence, and when we’re confidence, we build intentionality. The combination of these traits gives us a backbone, and are way less likely to fold under pressure.

Pick your battles.

“You will never get to the end of the journey if you stop to shy a stone at every dog that barks.”

Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

This is similar to intentionality, because fighting every battle you come across, or stopping to shy a stone at every dog that barks, is not intentional at all. Getting distracted by ever disturbance you’ll come across will eventually stop you completely. Some things are worth ignoring or letting go. A good leader knows when to move on. A good leader knows when to quit. However, when the time does come for a fight a good leader must know how to conduct himself in battle, be it physical, verbal, or mental. We can’t give our attention to the barking dogs, for they are just beats who follow their lowly urges. These animals cannot see what we see and therefore their judgment cannot be taken into consideration. Haters gon hate.

Move beyond the failure.

“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”

Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

Churchill was big on failing early and failing often. I’m not surprised because Churchill was a smart guy. I talk about The Power of Failure a lot because it is the basis for learning. Churchill, without all the modern research on learning, understood that you have to be willing to fail again and again in order to achieve something of significance.

There is no other way to heaven except through death. We must be willing to sacrifice the part of ourselves that is wrong and inadequate in order to make room for the part of ourselves that is correct and competent. Learning that we’re wrong hurts and leads to suffering, but if we can willingly confront that part of our lives then we can fasttrack our abilities to learn and develop skills. Fail all the time, but don’t let it take you down. Excellent leaders are so because they have learned how to be.

We are never done.

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts.”

Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

This also ties into never ever stopping. Persistence is what will bring us to the promiseland, so to speak, but what comes with persistence is the assumption that there is more that lies ahead.

It makes sense that Churchill thought this way, given the events that he lived through. He saw the end of WWI, the war to end all wars, just to see the beginning of WWII. He saw the futility in trying to end the problem of problems. Our success are only successes for now. Our failures are only failures for now. He understood what matters in the face of this absurdity, to develop ourselves to have the courage to continue.

This fascinated me for a while. I couldn’t understand why someone would not want to try to solve the meta-problem (that problems exist) and would rather focus their energy in building the courage to keep fighting, but then it hit me. Success, fulfillment, the peak human experience is not defined by what we are aiming in the earthly sense. Aiming at”worldly” outcomes yields a temporary release, but aiming at virtues gives us a whole new set of skills. Churchill switches the conversation from aiming towards vaguely defined earthly success to aiming towards the virtues. This gives us the ability to contend with existence with a whole new, and more effective, arsenal. Success is a journey. Whether we failed or succeeded yesterday, it doesn’t matter. The truth is, we must do it again today.