Don’t be afraid to trust your gut. If something doesn’t feel right then pause and listen. I’ve made some of my biggest personal and professional relationship mistakes when I’ve tuned out my gut and intellectualized or rationalized the feeling that was telling me it wasn’t a fit or there was trouble on the horizon if I worked with the person. As I’ve become more secure and self confident I’ve learned to listen and muster up the courage to act when I get that feeling.

The feeling is primal and it’s the reason I’m here today. If my ancestors had ignored those feelings it could have meant death. Animals in the wild survive by tuning in to weather patterns, sounds smells, vibrations and unseen energy…they have a finely tuned sense for signal. When the tsunamis struck Indonesia in 2004, the animals were seeking higher ground long before the humans were. That’s because we’ve tuned out our primal senses that have kept us alive for thousands of years.

Don’t over intellectualize. Have the self confidence to trust your gut. That feeling got your genes this far and it’ll keep you in the game if align you with it.

Nature abhors a vacuum. Just look at an abandoned building. Within a couple of months puddles of standing water start to form on empty concrete floor plates, mold grows on the walls, grass grows through the cracks in the sidewalk, window panes break and birds start to roost in the rafters.

When you stand still in life, nature finds a way to attach, draw you in and grow around you like a bougainvillea. It’s software is programmed that way. You sign a lease, you sign a cell phone contract, you make friends, your kids go to school etc. Nature’s software starts to operate.

Don’t be surprised if after a while you look down and realize you’ve planted in some random spot and are attached to all of life’s usual attachments.

If you are going nowhere then you’ll go nowhere fast.

When I’m visiting a new place everything I experience is in stereo and multi-color. It’s like I’m tasting a new food for the first time. Everyday mundane things like hosing down a sidewalk, the noise of morning traffic and the evening light reflecting off buildings are a sensory delight in a new city.

New York always does this to me. As I step out onto the sidewalk – I catch myself looking up at the buildings and looking down the long alleys. Locals are looking down at their phones as they wait for a train to arrive while I’m standing next to them noticing the smell of the subway and whoosh of warm air hitting my face as the train arrives. It’s delicious.

Back home, the downside of daily rituals is that I zone out the brilliance of everyday living. When I catch myself and wake up, I notice the joys of morning coffee, the fog rolling into San Francisco Bay, the smell of Eucalyptus or the hilly topography of San Francisco where every intersection has a new view.

Appreciating everyday routines increases my joy and makes the normal new.

“Look to this day:
For it is life, the very life of life.”

– Kalidasa

When I meditate  I focus on sound as a way to still the chatter in my mind. Listening to the noises around me is a gateway exercise to meditation. I pay attention to the sound of my breathing, the sound of the city humming in the distance and anything else that makes a guest appearance like a plane rumbling high overhead or our cat padding softly down the passage. It quiets my mind and keeps me in the room. If a random thought appears then I try to observe it and watch it go past. If I attach to it and start unpacking it then I’m distracted and I’ve lost the moment. The mind has been described as a playful monkey 🐒 which really makes sense to me when I’m trying keep my mine still.

The other night I was oscillating between a calm mind and random thoughts when I heard someone jogging outside on the street. It was one of those hot and still nights – the kind where sound travels better than normal and it’s crystal clear. I heard the runner coming closer and closer and finally pass the front of the house and then slowly get softer and softer into the distance. It was a perfect illustration of how I should deal with the random thoughts entering my head. Listen to them coming, witness them as they pass by and then let them go. Don’t try to fight them or block them out, but just observe them. I settled back into breathing but this time surrendered. Taking deep breaths, I observed the thoughts as they entered my head and let them move past me and move away.

It was great lesson in meditation. The monkey mind was still there, but I wasn’t trying to catch it.

I’ve been publishing something every week day since April 3rd of 2017. My theory is that practicing every week will make me a better writer. With over 3 months behind me, here are my initial observations:

I get a lot of joy in the practice of writing. The more I write the easier it gets.

The first draft is just an idea and it’s normally messy and long winded. Editing always shortens the piece and it’s easier to edit later on. I jot down the idea when it emerges and worry about the editing later.

My most read pieces are the ones where I show up with my own personal experience and feelings. These are also the scariest pieces to publish because it’s when I’m most vulnerable. People resonate with authenticity and smell bullshit quickly.

Twitter is a great broadcast platform, but a tweet has a very short halflife. The WordPress community are way more supportive and are a more reliable source of traffic and feedback. Facebook is a mega booster of traffic but I don’t use it much so tend to stay away.

I’m been surprised by how much I compose and publish via my phone. I thinks it’s because it allows me to write when the moment is right…and my phone is with me most of the time.

I don’t stress if I don’t feel creative or don’t have time to write. When I create the environment for creativity then the ideas bubble up. New places, travel, friends and conversations with family all plant ideas. Sometimes I won’t write for 3 days and then when the moment is right I’ll get 3 or 4 pieces out of one session. My lesson is that I can’t  force creativity, but creating the conditions for creativity is way more useful.

Feedback is the breakfast of champions. I love reading comments and getting ideas back from my readers. The snarky comments burn a little but that’s part of putting myself out there.

I occasionally ask friends, colleagues and family to read a draft. Especially when I’ve hit a blocker. Sometimes the feedback kills the idea, but most of the time if helps me publish.

My ideas don’t just appear out of thin air. They are an amalgamation of tweets, books and conversations. I don’t think anything is original…everything I write is a patchwork of other ideas I’ve heard, filed away and regurgitated in my own voice.

That’s it for now.

I’ve had the experience of working in large corporations and small startups. My takeaway is that no company or industry has a monopoly on smart people. They are everywhere…in 50,000 people strong accounting firms, law firms and Silicon Valley startups. If I had to choose I’d say that some of the smartest people I worked with were in the large corporations. Some of these people have gone on to do amazing things in business and life and some of them have stayed at the same company quite content with their careers inside the organization and have built great lives.

The difference between the genius at an accounting firm and a genius founder of a Silicon Valley startup is their risk tolerance. I’ve worked with enough brilliant entrepreneurs to know that it’s not their smarts that differentiated them…smarts are table stakes…it’s their ability to operate in a high risk environment, their resilience and belief in themselves.

If you are sitting in a corporate job right now and itching to experiment and break out, then the barrier to success probably isn’t your intellectual ability…you are just as smart as the people you read about. Your success will have a lot more to do with your ability to take risks and then operate with that risk hanging over your head, capitalize on lucky breaks and persist when things look grim…even when every bone in your body is telling you to give up and hide.

This way of living is not for everyone, but don’t let fear of the unknown stop you from experimenting.