A Day In the Epic Life
A friend told me some years ago that the Epic life is lived in the good and bad. His counsel has stayed with me. If you’re not careful, you could fall in the trap of believing an epic life is found in great heroics, acclaim or fame. It can be that, but honest people know it’s all about the moments. The following is a glimpse of a day in the epic life-mine:
Friday, August 18, 2017
7:30 AM – A walk in my neighborhood. Music playlist titled Yoga. Observing the moodiness of the clouds above me. A conversation with God
7:45 AM – Yoga and prayer
8:05 AM – Checking email and posting on social media
8:30 AM – Listening to Insight for Living and reflecting on living and dying
9:00 AM – Breakfast and listening to the news (local and national)
9:15 AM – Gig stuff (not Epic Living related). Quite bored and not finding it very meaningful. I push through because I have to
10:00 AM – Reached out to friends to check-in
10:05 AM – Back to the gig stuff
11:30 AM – Somethings wrong. Feel like my blood glucose is high. I test. 400 is the number. WT…
12:30 PM – Test my blood again. Still high. Take dosage of insulin. Getting frustrated because I haven’t eaten since 9.
12:45 PM – Cancelled 2 appointments, with apologies
1:30 PM – Feeling drained and listless. Take a nap
2:00 PM – Test my blood again. Lower number, but still too high. Decide not to take another dose. I’ve been burned before by getting too aggressive
2:45 PM – Looking at a draft version of a press release
2:45 PM – Prepare for a conference call
4:00 PM – Call medical provider about billing issues with insurance. I don’t like insurance companies. I see them as a legal racket. Very frustrated by the lack of competence and the game playing
4:20 PM – Talk with my wife about new opportunities and her so-called manager/leader. Hate seeing her go through. I listen.
As I look back over the day, it was epic. One thing that leaps out is the importance of morning prep. You never know what’s coming your way.
Succeeding in What Matters
“Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.” – Francis Chan
The above quote came from a friend of mine. It is sobering and provoking.
Here’s what I did with it:
- I looked back and reflected on my pursuits
- I made a list of my successes and lined them up in two different categories (what matters and what doesn’t). I have changed a lot
- I was impacted by the second chances given
- When I considered the quote, I could make sense of my journey over a good ten years of living
- Life is a story, I’m leaning into it. Happy or sad, I’m leaning in
You should make discovering what maters your greatest priority. Please know too, many will not encourage you to succeed in what matters. It’s a crazy irony that often we’re encouraged to pursue what ends in the meaningless.
Living Music
My friend, Marc, shared this performance by Carlos Santana and Wayne Shorter with me and it truly inspired. Instrumental music has always created space in my head to dream, write and most importantly live freely. The genre of jazz has always struck me as a living music as well. The movement, the improvisation, the unexpected beauty.
I hope you enjoy the video as much as I have.
The Value Proposition
Welcome to 2013! In today's post I'm focusing on the value proposition. Not in relation to your investments or sales process, but your epic life. Don't turn away. Reading this may be the most important thing you do all year. Not because I'm such a great thinker or writer, but because your life is worth more than you can imagine. Sounds cliche doesn't it. Your awkward smile and feeling of embarrassment that you haven't paid enough attention to life's rhythm is hanging on your sleeve.
I watch people intently-live and written. I gauge their behavior and their words. I want to see if they really are as "whole" as they portray themselves to be. My review isn't to judge or make light, but to see if I've been given the opportunity to focus on helping them move to a place of Epic (their movie, their symphony, their happiness) Living. In many ways my blood runs with a sense of how their story unfolds.
We are in great danger.
I told a friend and fellow-pilgrim some time ago, that I've seen this recurring vision of a large building with an office full of people. On any given day I see a band of mercenaries planting bombs and traps for the people going in and out everyday. I have some experience with bombs and traps. I used to set them. How's that for irony? If you've been reading this blog for awhile, you know my story. In the end, my calling and mission is to save as many as possible. And, yes, I've been called and construed as one of the "crazy ones."
At this point in your story, I would like you to consider how the value proposition can create great odds for success. It will not be easy and it will create a crossroads, just a friendly warning.
Here's how to do it:
- Turn off the world (the marketing, the people, the employers, etc.) before you begin this process. By the way, the world will not like this. If you ignore my warning here, you'll go into a form of mental slavery. Someone or something else will sieze control.
- I'm giving you 5 diamonds worth millions, the rarest of the rare. Each one represents what you value most in life. Things like God, family, a cause, friends, career, etc. Choose wisely here.
- Now, the condition of me giving you the diamonds is you must take care of and keep the value of the diamonds growing at an annual 10% clip each year. Every day in the given year will be the measuring stick. The take-away is, you must take care of your diamonds every day.
- If you fail in number 3, you lose your life.
- As an added bonus, I will stay with you during the year to help you with perspective and give feedback. I will only do this when you ask. It's your life after-all.
Intersted in this value proposition? You should be, you're already invested.
Length and Width
It's pretty clear that you're going to live the length part of life, but the biggest question is whether you will live it's width.
Here's how you can tell the difference:
- Length-livers focus on what they think they can get their hands on. This would include things like benefits, salary and job security.
- Width-livers believe that the unknown is where opportunity can be found.
- Length-livers desire fame and fortune because they believe their self-worth is attached to it.
- Width-livers believe they should leave the graveyard poor.
- Length-livers don't believe in the impossible.
- Width-livers accept that many will consider them nuts.
- Length-livers are controlled by fear.
- Width-livers know that life is beautiful because it is a gift.
- Length-livers come to the end regretting much.
- Width-livers see people as infinitely valuable.
If you're a length-liver and want to change, get in touch with me, I want to help you in a practical way.
Don’t Save the Best for Last
I wrote the following post almost 5 years ago. In some ways timeless. I'm convinced everyday that I don't "have time." A great sadness that many live everyday thinking they do.
I'm all for finishing strong/well. However, the myth of your best years being found in some future day is insane. I say that due to the importance of the choices you make now and how they will determine those years-taking for granted that you'll see them. Forever now!
I can't think of a more fitting place than our career to illustrate how this type of logic reigns. It's subltle and deceptive all at the same time. If a leader doesn't see his or her life as a whole, then a incongruent outcome is almost always certain.
As leaders seek to navigate a career and a life, I would suggest the following:
- Think long and hard about value. Specifically, the value you're creating over time. In many ways it's like starring in your own motion picture. Create Epic Value for all those playing a part in your story. Keep in mind, there are no do-overs. You will either create value or you won't.
- Before you read that next journal, newspaper or marketing pitch take a step back and question the motives of the messengers. For example, many marketers are dying on the vine, so selling is job 1. What they're selling might be designed to move you in a direction that isn't aligned with your destiny.
- Stop thinking you have time. We're all terminal, its just that some know and some don't. Don't mean to go morbid here, but seeing life as a limited time offer should inspire you to stop screwing around with small desires (titles, money, fame, and power).
- Be Authentic! Let the world see who you really are! If you don't like who you are or think that who you are has no value, then contact me and I can prove that you have a reason to be who you are.
- Place more value on people than math, no matter how much the numbers say to do otherwise. Besides, if you're in a position where numbers matter more than people, be afraid, be very afraid.
See the below story from The Guardian/UK on Stephen King for more connection:
"The accident happened on June 19 1999. King was strolling alongside Route 5 near his home in Bangor and looking forward to seeing a film with his family later that evening. As he walked, a Dodge truck barreled towards him. It was driven by Bryan Smith, a drug user with multiple driving convictions. A Rottweiler called Bullet was loose in the truck and had jumped on to a seat where there was a cooler of hamburger meat Smith had bought for a barbecue. Smith became distracted by his dog, swerved across the highway and hit King. The writer managed to turn his head a little before impact and thus missed being struck by a steel support post on the truck that would probably have killed him.
King's head left a many-tentacled crack in the windscreen. He broke his right hip joint, four ribs and his right leg in nine places. His spine was damaged in eight places. "The accident gave me a real sense of mortality, a sense of hurry that I didn't have before. Not immediately, but about a year after the accident I was able to say: 'That guy nearly killed me.'" Smith died of an overdose 15 months later on September 21, King's birthday."
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
The Man in the Chair
I was at a doctor's appointment a few weeks back. It was a normal appointment. I checked-in, sat in a chair in a non-descript waiting area and counted the minutes until my name was called. The process is not unlike what maybe you've experienced.
My visit coinsided with the 2012 Olympics. This is an important part of this story.
As I sat and waited for my eyes to dilate, I witness something that entranced me. A man sitting in a wheelchair.
I know that on the face of it, seeing a man in a wheelchair is not strange. I would agree with that. But this man was bright, alert and Engaged with the sport being played out on the screen in front of us in the waiting room. Stay with me.
The man in the chair was someone I noticed when I arrived at my appointment. He was hunched over and almost catatonic. He seemed to be a man alive, yet without life. At first glance I felt a level of sadness at the reality of struggling in the last act of living. Fast forward, I see him watching an Olympic competition and fully engaged. It was if someone woke him from the dead.
It was clear to me that this man in the chair found something worth coming alive for. I offer no definitive explanations. He saw something, maybe something lost.
The sad reality is I see people half the age of that man who look the same, but without a wheelchair. Alive, yet dead. Call me extreme and I will tell you to look around (really look around) and see the following:
- An overly medicated population
- A sedentary population
- A surrendered population
- An unhappy population
- A population unable to resist
I'm not pesimistic and I don't belive things can't be turned around. I'm trying to shake you with what I've seen. Maybe the man in the chair would say we need somthing to cheer for, be for, fight for.
Learning How to Live
We live in a world of skills. Skills are endorsed, encouraged and praised. What's not to like?
One thing.
Ever notice how learning how to live is a forgotten skill? Learning how to live can be equated to terms like:
- Managing Relationships
- Leadership Development
- Critical Thinking
- Well-Being
- Stress Management
From my expereince, I didn't have many people in my life who Deliberately sought to advise me on how to live life effectively. Besides my mom, a teacher here and there, or a book selected by random, it seemed like the real emphasis was on the other types of skills. Like:
- Managment Training
- Reading, Writing and Arithmatic
- Consultative Selling
- Business
- Communication
This post is not an indictment of skills development inside of the organization. It is the indictment of leaving life skills in the dust for the sake of an imaginary outcome (retirement, promotion, economic status) that will never satisfy. Running into the same walls again and again, won't make things as good as they should be. And don't be surprised when you see someone making major dollars with the social skills of a baboon. As I'm sure you know, many of our organizational (work, family, school, etc.) problems can be traced to a lack of life skills development. It truly is the 800 pound gorilla in the corner. If you or your organization flipped the priority and began to make "life" number 1, I think we'd see the needle move.
Let's face a fact that we all know deep down inside; if leaning how to live is essential to our well-being, then we best place it at that level. Anything short of this will lead to a major helping of regret-lifetime.
Paying Attention to Your Role
"All the world's a stage. And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages."
-William Shakespeare
If Shakespeare was right, and I believe he was, then the implications are vast. Not because it's some kind of complicated riddle. It's really quite simple, and hard. We live in an age where human beings willingly give up their role in the spirit of conforming or just plain fear. In our limited mind we see no other way, so we punt telling ourselves that we could be worse off or we're lucky to have a job. You can fill in many more blanks here. The trading of identity is a no-excuse game. I don't recommend it.
In my last year, I've had some experiments that didn't go as I had hoped. But I am undaunted in playing the role heaven gave me. Sets change, production units revise the scenes, directors are replaced, but I have a part to play. You and I are alike in this.
If your alert and awake, here's what can help you in the art of paying attention to your role:
- Faith
- Perseverance
- Optimism
- Vulnerability
- Communication