Jon Salmen

Goal Setting for the New Year

November 23, 2021 by Jon Salmen

In the spirit of the pending holidays and the coming new year, let’s talk about goals. Not coals in your stocking, but how you’re planning to hit the ground running in January or even before then with concrete goal setting.

There’s a bottomless buffet of advice for how to set goals. When it comes to my personal experience around school, fitness, and my career, I have 3 factors to which I can attribute lasting, fulfilling success. Here they are:

Clarify your ideals and direction.
Take action and stay motivated.
Surround yourself with people who inspire and support you.

Before You Set Goals, Start with an Ideals Framework

First, and most importantly… Ideals. Have them.

“If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable”
– Seneca

There is no glory in effort alone. If effort is just being cast into the world around you frivolously, there is no guarantee that life will return what you want. You are not entitled to anything just because you “tried really, really hard,” Hard work does bring success, true, but what is success to you? For all your hard work to pay off, start by defining your personal, specific vision of success.

Ask Yourself: What Is My Ideal Life? Then Match Your Goal Setting to Your Answers

In fitness, specificity training is important, especially for endurance events like marathons, century bike rides, or long swims. For the sake of a familiar example, let’s talk about a marathon. Whether you’ve participated in one or not, entertain me here.

If you need to run 26.2 miles straight, then where is the effort going for most of your training? Swimming? Biking? Weight training? No, running. Running is what you’re trying to do, so running is what you need to do more of, get better at, and devote more of your energy toward. (Yes, alternate exercises like weight training, swimming, and stretching are valuable as part of a well-rounded running regimine, but these are accessories to your running practice, not your area of focus.)

The takeaway is this: Practice who you’re trying to be by being that, now. (In this case, a runner.)

Similarly, our goal setting should reflect a level of commitment and consistency.

Next, Match Your Actions to Your Goals

“Begin with the end in mind.”
– Steven Covey

This ideal goal of 26.2 miles is what sits in the back of your head as you sweat your ass off on a treadmill or cramp up during a neighborhood jog. The ideal inevitably becomes your intrinsic motivation. So, let’s pause for a reflection moment: What ideals have stayed dreams for too long?

Ask yourself: What specific actions I can take today, right now, to execute this dream?

Once we’ve established our ideals, we have to center ourselves back in the present. Now we’re charged with taking our first steps toward making our ideals our reality. To do this, we have to act.

“TAKE MASSIVE ACTION.”
– Tony Robbins

No dipping your toes in the water, either. Our actions should be big, bold, and consistent. Go all in. I bring life to this idea in an episode of my podcast, which you can listen to here.

There will always be a reason to quit. At anything. A sport, school, on family, your marriage, your friends, your job. Yes, it’s critical to draw boundaries and know when it’s time to walk away from something if it’s toxic or simply no longer serving you. But if you’re looking for a reason to quit just because something is uncomfortable or challenging, you’ll certainly find it. Do your best to eliminate those reasons. Keep going.

“As is your sort of mind, so is your sort of search: You’ll find what you desire.”
– Robert Browning

Chasing a Goal? Burn Your Boat

Fight as if everything rides on accomplishing this goal, which it does. Vikings, upon entering the west, had a tradition of burning the boats as they arrived. In doing this, they eliminated even the tangible possibility of retreat or failure at conquering the land they’d just entered. They believed a warrior couldn’t give a 100% effort while knowing there was a way out. How well do you work when distraction is close by?

We Don’t (Usually) Reach Our Goals Alone

Lastly, similar to your motivation and conquering mentality, consider the direct influences that persuade you and shift your wind. These are your people. The people around us sway us off our path on accident or sometimes maleficently. Which way are the people in your life moving you? And how much is this impacting your goal setting or your motivation and actions that follow?

Do you have a friend who is always spilling the tea, eating fast food, gets you to drink too much at the bar, or maybe straight up discourages you? Who knows what that person’s motivations are. Maybe it’s insecurity or fear. Maybe it’s something else. You cannot control how another person acts or feels or what they say. You can only control how you react. Control what you can and leave the rest. As my uncle once told me, “You can’t change the people in your life, but you can change the people in your life.” Maybe it’s time to make some hard decisions and uncomfortable concessions toward renovating your social landscape.

We have all heard the sayings like “You’re the average of the five people you hang out with,” or, “You are who your friends are.” And plenty of others. These ideals are based on Harvard studies of socioeconomic studies and cohorts, current social/positive psychology research, and lifetime longitudinal studies of people. A lot of extensive work has been done to drive home this takeaway: Who you surround yourself with matters a lot. The people in our community affect how we act, how we spend our time, how we eat, and even in some ways how we think. This goes on to affect how healthy, happy, and successful we are.

A Formula for Productive Goal Setting

A concept that I think brings us full circle today is: Gleicher’s Formula for Change.

D * V * FS > R
– Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

A timeless business and life concept similar to the brilliant philosophy from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, which gave us Hegel’s dialectic (thesis–> antithesis–>synthesis). Beyond the years of philosophy and science in which this is based, there is a simple formula for how we change when it comes to goal setting and staying motivated to work toward those goals. We move directly from what is, to what is not, to a new what is, and then repeat.

The first thing that encourages change is dissatisfaction. How dissatisfied are we with the status quo (that’s the “what is” or thesis).
Next is vision. Our vision, which is the antithesis to the status quo, is what we compare to our ideal.
Lastly, we have our first steps. Our massive action, action plan, and confidence as we step into a part of the world and a part of ourselves we don’t know yet. A synthesis of our dissatisfaction and our goals. Sustaining this is what builds our motivation.

The formula has one last element, however, and that’s resistance. The three pieces above must outweigh any resistance to the change we’re going to make. Resistance obstacles could be a lack of commitment, fear, insecurity, bad friends, close-minded family, limited support, you name it. Just as you can augment the side of the equation for the better, you can decrease the resistance against your plans too.

As we head into the new year, use this time of renewal to engage in some goal setting. What’s making you dissatisfied, and what actions can you take to bring yourself closer to your vision?

Need a guide for practical goal setting? Use this SMART worksheet for identifying goals:

Looking for more comprehensive coaching for clarifying your vision, goals, actions, and community? Learn more about our programs here.

How NOT to Communicate

April 28, 2021 by Jon Salmen

I often feel disingenuous speaking on topics, regardless of how well-read or studied or peer reviewed my content becomes. So instead of a tip, how about some basic confessions? I hope I can keep you from falling into the same pitfalls that I have found myself. These are strategies, most of which unconscious, that have stifled relationships, kept me from specific opportunities, and plain displeased others. These are my top three communication no-nos.

Number 1:

Giving the Long Story Long

If the prospect of wasting the only finite resource we have on this planet doesn’t concern you, perhaps just some basic logic can. Telling a story and communicating like a marketer is great if you’re making a commercial, but the vast spectrum of listeners in your world would rather you make your point clear. Whether you are talking to creative types or what seems to be a living computer, they want to know as quickly as possible if what you have to say will be worth their interest. If you aren’t adding value, then not only are you wasting their time and yours, you are essentially just talking to yourself.

If you find yourself constantly trying to regain the attention of the person across from you or they are trying to clarify with questions as you are speaking, you have most likely failed up front to answer their questions or make your point clear. An example is the classic “tell me about yourself” question. A bottom up communicator may begin with “so I’m from so and so town blah blah blah…” and bounce from idea to idea. A top down communicator would start off with “I would have to say who I am is a combination of three things: where I am from, what I enjoy doing and studying, and an array of experiences.” Now the interviewer knows exactly the framework that you’re going to speak in. This gives the listener dumbo ears, it allows them to take in more of what you’re saying. When others have incentive to listen combined with a way of categorizing and organizing what is being said to them, they’re more likely to retain the information. After all, that is the goal of communication in the first place.

Number 2:

Talking like Icarus

Stop going way too big picture. It is important to think big picture, but it is not your best move to speak to everyone this way. We are built to pick up on snippets and pertinent details within conversation. The longer the story, the more your audience will be trying to remember relevant details. So what if there are no details? This is what I like to call the Icarus flight of ideas: A series of loosely aligned ideas with no particular feature that ends in nothing. Talking big picture is fun, but if effective communication is the goal, you’re missing it if you talk like this. Just imagine a clock catching on fire.

Too many times have I caught myself on a manic roller coaster of thoughts and tangential idea sharing. One thing reminds me of the next thing and before I know it, I’ve created a cool band name and drafted a bill for the state senator’s office. All without the help of the person or people listening.

Like I said, creative conversation and ranting is great, I think more people should interact authentically like this with one another. Personally, idea sharing is my favorite thing to do on this planet. #1 overall activity. But this is foolish if I am trying to really persuade or convey an idea clearly. Most people are looking to hear me say what they want to hear. Do not assume every person you talk to is consensual to challenging belief systems, truth-seeking, and exploring ideas every waking moment of their lives like you.

Number 3:

Sucker Punching

Imagine you are sitting down to dinner at your favorite restaurant and, before the waiter gets to your table, you scream your entire family’s order out loud from across the restaurant. What are the odds that he says “what the f#%”? Moreover, what are the odds that he picks any of that up and brings it to your table with no mistakes?

This is how people feel when you skip over the introductions in presentations, rapport building in meetings, and any scenario where a general social easing is expected. Skipping immediately to business disallows trust building, emotional priming, or idea preparation for the other side. They might feel stressed out, tense up and send the conversation in a totally different way than you intend. They feel like the waiter, “what the f#%?” Even if they don’t directly express it to you.

Always get to know the person, the context of their day so far, their life, and their purpose for meeting before diving into features, sales, negotiations or propositions. This information is sometimes more valuable than the minutia of points and topics covered by the conversation. The small talk has giant returns on relationship strength, networking, and executing successful sales. But more importantly, this is an efficient and polite way to communicate smoothly and effectively.

DM or put in the comments all the ticks, devices, strategies, and nonsense that has messed you up too.

Stress Management

October 15, 2020 by Jon Salmen

Right now, this year, the year to come… it is all very stressful and the world is a bit tense. But I believe that we can approach our lives with more optimism and hopefulness despite each negative circumstance. We are trying our hardest to field every piece of information we receive and filter them all out, but what if we can put a positive attitude on auto-pilot?

Our lives consist of more than just randomly occurring events and individual moments and they are more than our routines. The way a painter or writer takes days, months, even years to craft something beautiful, we too can approach each of these moments with similar finesse and style.

Stress gets in the way of our patience to see things through and it hinders our ability to look ahead. Stress often begs us to look down at each and every small step. We sometimes go like this until we are brought to our knees, consuming to make ourselves feel better; TV, alcohol, social media, food, drugs, etc. But as we all know, those are not permanent or healthy solutions.

If our vision is ahead of us and we are looking down, of course those steps feel like chores, like useless expenditures of our time, money, and energy. Likewise, we will create other games and states of mind to distract ourselves from our problems. But it is only when we are able to see that what has been is in the process of creating what will be, that we can begin to appreciate each and every moment as a moment of our own unique creation.

When we are constantly moving closer to our vision, each step feels more important, and when something is important to us, the stress becomes a motivator instead of a depressant.

How do we do this?

First and foremost, Create a Clear Vision.

Get your What Will Be extra clear. This is your vision for life! Have you no vision for your life?! Of course you do. But we forget sometimes, don’t we? If you haven’t already, create a clear vision for your life or go back and revisit one you’ve already made and adjust. Feel welcome to use the P3 commitment coaching format available for planning out each category of your life.

Additionally, Have a Silent “I” Time. SIT.

Show daily appreciation to yourself by sitting undistracted for 20-30 minutes. There are plenty of ways to do this outside of your shower, but you have to make the effort. There are hundreds of guided meditations online (headspace, youtube, podcasts) and plenty of beautiful peaceful lo-fi beats or piano compositions wherever you get your music. Just plain silence is also nice, and this time to yourself allows you a safe space to analyze your thoughts and feelings so they cannot control your day. During this time, reinterpret your emotions and thoughts and remember that they are not 100% true. You decide what your thoughts mean. Thoughts are not dictations, they are interpretations.

Lastly, Turn your emotion into motion.

Yes, there is only so much vision boarding and nirvana reaching you can do before you must move your body into action. Set physical goals that are as ambitious as your career or relationship goals and do them together. When we put ourselves to work, we can consciously choose to see ourselves manifesting something healthier and better for ourselves. This commitment to your health will carry over to your other commitments as well.

The Authentic You

August 26, 2020 by Jon Salmen

How many times have we found ourselves in a conversation with someone that is full of it? Unfortunately, it is likely we all know at least one person, family member or coworker. Someone always trying to sell you on who they are, or promote themselves with every chance they get to speak. But this piece is not to complain about others.

It is about you. How do you know that’s not you?

How do you know how you are coming across to others? Who do they think YOU are? I have three things.

One: Get to know yourself how others know you.

Well first, you’d need to ask. The fascinating thing about feedback is that it is totally necessary and crucial to our progress in life yet most of us have learned how to totally avoid it. For those of you that love giving honest feedback, you know that it doesn’t “make people happy”. Remember that critique is an art though and it is important to understand that if someone doesn’t already respect you or have that relationship with you, then they won’t be able to receive your feedback.

So whose feedback do you respect? Who gives you the real answer and doesn’t sugar coat it or try to manage your feelings? Are the people around you dedicated to pleasing you or building authentic connections?

Therein lies the primary issue with getting to know ourselves, we may have surrounded ourselves with a lot of “yes sir”, “yes ma’am” followers and nobody that gives it to us straight.

“Fake friends write the wrong answers on the mirror for me” -Lil Wayne, Right Above It

Find a few real friends and and get some real feedback… ASAP.

Two: Be thankful for the honest feedback.

Imagine yourself at the dinner table and your mom or dad is telling you all the things that they are worried about… Do you get defensive?

Why do you think that is? If what they were saying really was crazy and off target, then why did it provoke such a response?

Here is a better response: Thank you for caring enough about me to be honest with me.

Often we are defensive after we get some feedback, but, in my experience, the more triggered I am, the more true the feedback. If someone were to call you what you are not, then you would not experience emotion. You’d think “who cares?” But when someone says something that lands, we can feel our response build and grow inside of us. I.e If you call an honest man a liar, he will be indifferent but if you call a dishonest man a liar, he might try to hurt you.

The point is that we have conditioned ourselves to react a certain way to our emotions and our beliefs about ourselves. So when someone critiques us, instead of accepting it, we deflect it and continue on being whatever we are being. It feels like they are attacking our identity when, in essence, they are merely critiquing a set of behavior that is bothersome.

Try saying thank you instead, even if they are dead wrong, it is good practice for patience. Also, take feedback for what it is: words.

Three: Be consistent and be committed moving forward.

In scientific experiments there are dependent variables, independent variables, and constants. The dependent are dependent upon the outcome, the measured data. Whereas the independent variables are manipulated in the experiment.

As humans, free will enables us to view everything as impermanent, ever-changing. Constants are the most important variables to focus on though, this helps scientists to further understand results and also enables replicated and repeated testing. Or, in our case, replicated and repeated failure and success. You would like to repeat the latter, right?

In science, this might be temperature, size, pH, or instrumental measures, but in everyday life, we use values. Things like integrity, confidence, passion, love, courage, etc. The level of alignment we feel internally with these values are our objective data on which we can understand ourselves.

How we stick to our values is how we are typically judged inaccurately. Often we try to connect our head to our heart by putting our heads up our you know what. Similarly, as an experiment can be unreliable, our judgement of ourselves can be just as untrustworthy. The way in which an experiment can be inaccurate, we can have unrealistic beliefs about ourselves and our abilities.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” -Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

We might not be able to choose what happens and we end up having, we may not even be able to choose what we are forced to do to get by and make ends meet, but we can choose who we are going to be, what attitude we are choosing to have in any given set of circumstances. Perhaps the authentic life we want to live can be replicated, refined and repeated. We can maintain that consistency today, tomorrow and even long after our time here.

Seeing Ourselves in Others

August 1, 2020 by Jon Salmen

If we are able to accept the set of circumstances that have transformed us to who we are, we are enabled to accept how others exist too. A practice of self tolerance unlocks our tolerance of others.

Imagine you wake up less energized than you wished. It could be that you ate late the night before, too much caffeine, maybe too much TV. But then there is a cause for those actions, an argument at work, a scuffle with a friend. Something that caused you to unwind with food and media. Even the confrontation arose from a previous state that might have been built over weeks of physical neglect or bad diet. Each experience we have is the result of so many circumstances that preceded it, that it would be impossible to keep track of each little cause.

Our problems are very complicated, but there is no need to focus on the irreducible questions of how they came into existence. We can only look at them, how they are presently, and be mindful of our efforts to improve.

When we are unaware of our own actions, we neglect the points of view of others as well. We cannot understand and sympathize with the multiplicity of causes for how they arrived to this moment if we cannot also grant ourselves some slack. If we have to idea what is happening in our mind most of the time, how can we assume to judge others? We can always assume others have lives just as problematic as ours.

If we write off, with no uncertainty, that wants are just wants, likes are just likes, and that feelings are frivolous– it is then that the source of our suffering becomes entirely uncertain. Our impatience to go somewhere else is barring us from seeing where we are.

Like how distracted drivers cannot recall details of the road for miles while they are on their phone, if our attention is not properly directed towards our actions then we will also miss quite a bit.

Advanced empathy, an alternative introspective approach:

Oftentimes when we are lonely, it is not because we are alone, but that we are absent from the companionship we desire. In times of company, we are aggravated because we cannot find the silence that was once present before our time of companionship. We see this back and forth in our lives a lot.

Likewise, when we have a full stomach, we wish to feel lighter. When our bodies are empty and light, we crave the fullness and richness of a nice meal or tasty drink.

The problems that we face and the discontent that arises is less a question of what is absent, but what is being refused, prohibited, and disallowed from becoming present. Within each of these moments are opportunities to engage with ourselves, others and our existence as a whole and to enjoy each respective time. This string of moments becomes our life.

Bad days and good days are just 24 hour increments of the Earth’s rotation around the sun:

If the day is filled with happy moments and the unhappy moments seem brief or rare, we call that a good day. If it is the opposite, then we call it a bad day, but this is all perception and likely to change. For each moment of happiness was as much of a choice as each of the unhappy ones. Each good day as much of a choice as the bad days. Moments in time are neither happy nor unhappy, good nor bad– they just are. Like us. We bring good and bad to a neutral world; we bring good or bad to a neutral self.

The most that we can do is be thankful when circumstances turn in our favor and resilient when dealt a bad hand. When we can acknowledge the grace of our good times, we can overcome each ‘bad’ moment as our opportunities to grow. If you view your suffering as permanent, then it will outlast your happiness and you will not grow. Similarly, if you view your happiness as what is permanent, then it will far outlast your suffering.

C.S. Lewis once wrote, “All that can be shaken will be shaken and only the unshakeable will remain.”

Our happiness is our natural state of being. The only thing getting in the way is our struggle to let the suffering fall away from our unshakeable self.

Curious is the cat:

As humans, our yearning for the “next big thing” is the source of a lot our suffering and also tremendous joy. Our ambition has pushed us to do incredibly humanitarian things, and our biology and psychology always seem to align to push us beyond our limits. These moments are notable. Civil rights activism, calls for awareness, and selfless aid from local communities wherever tragedy arises. We really are built for each other.

Likewise, our ambitions have drawn us historically to unequally proportionate oppression. The same human innateness to build things brings upon atrocities like ethnic cleansing and genocide, tribal wars, and violent outbursts from those that wish to seek power over others.

There is a yang of order, a yin of chaos. A neat balance within our own bodies as well as our politics. So it becomes increasingly necessary to become attuned with where our ambitions are leading us. To shake the unneeded, shakeable things away and leave us with the joy we deserve.

So how do we tame a world so volatile and complex? How do we lead?

The first step that must be taken to see monumental change, is with your foot:

In both our greatest and most sinister ambitions there lies an equally terrific disrespect of the present moment. Each requires a false belief, a deceiving promise that the grass is greener on the other side; That happiness will result from all the hard work; That the next rung on the ladder will be high enough. But see, it is not the next invention, the next promotion, the next award and especially not the next war that can bring upon lasting happiness.

The sense of fulfillment you are reaching for is within you always.

When we find ourselves in a state of discontent, it is not because something is missing, it is because many great things are not being acknowledged. The first step you can take today is into a life that sees things as they are, not how you wish them to be. To step into an abundant life, where your dreams can breathe and each moment can be fully absorbed. Where every perceived bad day can be good and each perceived good day can be better.

Negativity is not a giant force in our lives, but it does grow the fastest. It is much easier to be negative, critical, and pessimistic. Misery will always have company, and blame always has a name. Negativity proliferates throughout our lives and poisons each consecutive day. Positive thought can stop this train completely. Try it. One amazing thing that happened to you, feel it and experience it. The most brief escape can change our entire view.

There is a reason that the present moment is called the present moment and not the IOU-moment. You are rich right now with time and opportunity and you just have to have the courage to pick up the gift life has given you. In a world where everyone is bidding for your attention, time, energy, and love– you can give all of it to yourself first and find yourself wealthier than royalty. Happiness is not easy to cultivate. If it were, we wouldn’t want it.

Mastering others is strength, mastering yourself is true power. -Lao Tzu

Radical Open-Mindedness

July 14, 2020 by Jon Salmen

Social conflict is a part of any relationship on the planet between individuals or groups of people. In the age of globalization and media, we are especially attuned to these conflicts and often overwhelmed by the seemingly terrific magnitude of them.

The question we will focus on today is: How can we make a better effort towards conflict resolution?

In the 1970s, yes a long time ago, Kenneth Thomas and Ralph Kilmann developed a model of conflict, describing conflict as “the condition in which people’s concerns are incomparable”. If the things which two people care about are opposed, then there is conflict.

There are two ways to approach conflict according to the Thomas-Kilmann Model:

1. Assertiveness

2. Cooperativeness

Assertiveness is the degree to which you wish to satisfy your own needs while cooperativeness is the degree to which you work to satisfy the other person’s concerns.

Beyond this, there are 5 strategies to employ in any conflict, those of which I hope can shed light and prove useful in today’s turbulent social scene.

Avoiding = sidestepping the conflict
Accommodating = satisfy the other person’s concerns at expense of your own
Compromising = find an acceptable settlement that only partially satisfies both people
Competing = satisfy your concerns at the expense of others
Collaborating = find a win-win solution

We don’t even have to engage but if we do, then we need work to find a compromise or collaboration. They are the only two sustainable methods.

Avoiding will not solve anything. There is no “head-in-the-sand” model for finding solutions. So if you are to avoid, make sure that there is absolutely no way to find a positive outcome. Avoidance is a last-resort. Darryl Davis, an african american musician and activist, converts even the worst of us. He attends KKK rallies and has given countless talks and advice on the potential for even the most indoctrinated among us to radically change their minds. So before you deem someone or something as a lost cause, give them another look.

Accommodating and competing. Think: Why does someone have to lose? We need to approach every conflict and every situation with a positive psychology. We need to think abundantly and optimistically, not win or lose. Be curious, not competitive. Our approach is often the outcome in everything that we do in our daily lives. If you dread the work day, it will be dreadful. If you are anxious about tomorrow, tomorrow you’ll be appropriately filled with anxiety. So if we approach a conflict with an idea of winners and losers, then there will be losers and those losers could be us. If we have an idea that people have to lose when they talk to us, who is really the loser?

Compromise. In Kentucky, there is a famous statesman by the name of Henry Clay. But he had a nickname too, “The Great Compromiser”. Clay brokered some of the most controversial deals in history and is regarded as one of the most influential leaders of his time. There are also many issues in our time as well that need skillfully addressed. Perhaps we should all tap into Clay’s mindset when we approach our conflicts. If we can approach every conversation with the intention to find common ground, we have a better chance of finding it. But if our approach is one of animosity, we will just as easily find that too. It is our moral duty to assume that another person is somewhat justified in where they are coming from. We have to give people a chance for them to give us one too. Compromise often requires a heightened sense of compassion.

Lastly, the best turnout we can get is a win-win. A win-win situation looks like compassion followed by correction. Human conflict with race or socioeconomic disparity is a long and tragic story in western society. But there are heroes along that journey too.

There are people that led and progressed their relative times to a place of understanding and marked change. They did not do so with animosity or a scarce mindset. They did so with a sense of curiosity, courage and compassion. It takes courage to find a win-win solution where we can find love and progress.

The main problem with conflict, in my opinion, is our failure to delineate our beliefs from our identity. When someone disapproves of our opinions, we are quick to believe that they disapprove of who we are. But this is simply untrue. When someone doesn’t like our social media post, we assume that they dislike us or completely lack respect. Many then act the same in return. The importance of the ideas that we need to discuss are being undercut by immature personal attacks. Which is why we need to solve a lot of our conflict with ourselves before we can solve conflict with others. If we are not forgiving or compassionate towards our own mistakes or ignorance, we are led to condemn others likewise for their own. This cycle creates more conflict!

So the next time someone says something that provokes you, be mindful and analyze why you were provoked. And when you assume someone is so very wrong, examine why it is that you believe you are so right. An admittance of our own arrogance prevents us from being offensive while the mindfulness of our provocations keeps us from acting rashly.

It is not often you find someone that is a renaissance person or well-rounded genius and expert. Most of us know a little about a lot, or a lot about a little. There is a high probability that they and you are ignorant to some degree about something. It could be race, it could be biology, it could be psychology, accounting, feminism, whales, trees, chess, or 19th century existentialist literature. You name it. There are things some people are familiar with and others are not. So we need to accept we do not have the full story of other people’s life experiences or education, and this disconnect could be the cause of even more conflict.

We are always working on our own knowledge. Learning more, experiencing more, seeking more, earning more, creating more. So let’s seek not to condemn or compete, but to learn and teach with compassion and co-create a newer more positive mindset and achieve real progress.