You’re probably like, ‘mind control, what’s this guy talking about?’ Either he’s going to tell us how we need to get in our heads and understand what’s going on, or he’s going to talk about how the algorithm has us under its spell. It reminds me of this scene from Monsters, Inc: This week I’m taking about the first thing. Although I’m a huge fan of getting out from under the algorithms, I think that…
Have you read anything by Don Miguel Ruiz? His most famous book is, ‘The Four Agreements: The Practical Guide to Personal Freedom‘, but he has several more. And both of his sons, Don Miguel, Jr. and Don Jose Ruiz have multiple books about Toltec wisdom. Don Miguel just released a new book, ‘The Mastery of Life: A Toltec Guide to Personal Freedom‘ and it is incredible. These guys Toltec ‘men of knowledge’ from a long…
Ok, so I got pretty lucky (again) when Dalton Johnson agreed to be interviewed on KEW. Like Dawn Bates, I met Dalton in a facebook group that links podcast with potential interviewees. All I knew about Dalton is, again like Dawn, he seemed to live more in his ‘are’. From what I could tell he was a digital nomad interested in rock climbing and photography. He seemed like a total bada$$. Well, I wanted to…
I learned about the personal inventory reading Carlos Castaneda’s book series about Don Juan and the Toltec ‘men and women of knowledge’. The idea of a personal inventory describes the process of examining one’s total life from every possible angle. By looking inward and examining one’s life, we can summarize all the things that we have done, what has happened to us, our system of beliefs, and what comprises our ‘self’. This is a metaphysical…
I’m using the Forest for the Trees metaphor to suggest that humans have become exceptionally myopic. The only reason I know what myopic means is because after defending my Master’s Thesis a professor proclaimed that I was very myopic – meaning I had a terribly narrow view of the question I had asked and answered. I thought I was being pretty broad and was a bit hurt by his statement, but I also understood his…
For years I was stuck trying to THINK my way into changing my behaviors, beliefs, habits, actions. Not that I was all that bad or needed massive changes, but there were things I wanted to be different. I would get anxious a lot. I would get defensive sometimes. I would say no to social invitations. I would be afraid to try some new things. You know, just some things I wanted to change. So, I…
Don Miguel Ruiz, author of many books including ‘The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (A Toltec Wisdom Book)‘ uses the term “Domestication” to describe the process by which humans are taught how to live. I have been fascinated by this process, whatever you wish to call it, for as long as I can remember. In fact, I still wonder, often out loud, why no one ever asked whether or not I was…
As we pursue the “Are vs. Should Problem” and examine our personal inventory, I want to describe two main ways we can understand our selves and the realities we live in. First, there is the measurable world. The ‘Hard’ world where science reigns supreme. Things are measurable, quantifiable, and therefore fit into the well oiled scientific machinery. Problems stemming from economics, medicine, and food supply are easily boiled down into testable hypotheses and theories used…
As I navigate through the ‘Are vs. Should’ Problem‘ I see an initial split as we start to unpack our personal inventories. If we first have to lay out all the elements of our lives for inspection and understanding, it becomes obvious that there are (at least) two types of elements to consider. I’m calling these ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ elements, and they are defined within their respective realities. I’m not trying to make this esoteric…
On our journey to define the ARE vs SHOULD problem (Episode 50), we must first define the ‘existing conditions’. Like many scientific endeavors (and I’m NOT saying this is a scientific endeavor, rather, that I will take a scientific APPROACH), the Are vs Should investigation needs to know where it’s coming from to understand where it’s going. And, really, the personal inventory is just that – it defines where we are at the beginning of…