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Jon Salmen

Dealing with the Undealt

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Intention is of key importance. Let’s use the example of a murderer.

Imagine you are the murderer.

To start, simply, you just murdered a person. Because they made you mad I guess and, in the raw spiraling emotion of that moment, you murdered them for whatever reason. Now, you feel bad and regret it, but you run from the scene. Uh oh. Naughty…

You spend days rolling inside with guilt, but surprisingly, there is no police knock on your door. Weeks go by and it becomes a cold case. Soon, you are well in the clear. You are the only one that knows what you did. 

What can you do, outside of turning yourself in, that can quell this feeling inside yourself?

One idea might be to throw yourself into community service. Perhaps helping enough people might mitigate the fact you are a killer. Or you could become a vigilante, hunting murderers in hopes that their justice also counts as your redemption. You might even become a cop bringing legal justice to the wrong doing in your community. There is an opportunity for you as a preacher or spiritual leader to bring life lessons of sin and wrongdoing to a congregation of people in your town. You may even just shove it down and become a regular person in the hopes that time will erase the feeling that resides deep in your gut. 

But despite all of these empty efforts, the feeling still comes up. That feeling still rises like a strong acid up your into throat and into your idle mind.

There is not a religious lesson here as much as there is a logical one, a psychological one: That we have to address our feelings straight on. We have to deal with our undealt, directly. We cannot dance around these feelings or they become even more inflamed and undealt with. Much like a garbage bag nobody wants to take out, these bad feelings begin to swell and smell and become more of a problem than they ever were originally. 

Dealing with the undealt has become a staple of fields like psychology and coaching for years. Unconscious forces as they are more familiarly known. Carl Jung, the famous early 20th century philosopher and psychologist used the analogy of our “shadow self”. He firmly believed through his experience that if we don’t accept all of us, we don’t really accept ourselves at all. 

So what are your shadow forces? Your undealt? How do we free those suppressed feelings and let them go?

Here are some ways that have worked for me, maybe they’ll help you too.

Talk to someone that you trust.

It is important to talk to someone that you can confide in like a best friend, family member, a coach or trainer or a therapist. This allows you to get it off your chest, and it is also to help them really help you and deal with root causes. Honesty out loud can be the cure itself. 

Gain some perspective.

There are plenty of books and movies that hit on these feelings. There are also adults that have lived these “scenes”, you could say. One of the hardest things that I have ever done is to devote some level of faith to the lessons I have learned from art and older people. Life is short, and older people know this, let them help you so you don’t make the same mistakes that they have. 

Find a way to talk to yourself.

This is the most important and the easiest step to take. It requires courage to ask questions or meet people, or to be vulnerable in front of others. Being upfront with yourself, though, is between you and you. For most of us, this is a required first step. Find a journal, take time in the park, go on a walk, sit down in the shower, turn off the radio in the car. Wherever you can be with your own thoughts, make it a point to understand yourself first. 

Make sure you are not doing good deeds to make up for a bad feeling you have inside. 

It is hard to build your future if you are always filling the holes of your past.

Live abundantly, discover your true intention, leverage others for progress and become more.

Finding your “IN” from Intention

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In an attempt to connect the chaos and divide it into our little folders, we overlook a lot of important truths about the nature of who or what we are dealing with, ourselves included. If you spend enough time thinking about anything, your brain takes off and creates patterns. After enough hibernation inside, those random patterns start to look a hell of a lot like facts and we risk forming our entire lives around these patterns. We may even nurture them and look after them. This certainty we desire is dangerous to the open mindedness that we value.

This is what I think we are talking about when we say ‘egocentric’. To be egocentric is to let your stories spill out into the realm of opinion, all dressed as facts. In an attempt to be kind to our egos, we sometimes lose track of what it means to be right. Right is situational and requires higher processing, compromise, time and tact. If you make the target big enough or become close minded enough then anyone can make their ego smile. Let’s ask more.

What about making the REAL you smile? 

Tony Robbins always had a saying, “In your head, you’re dead.”, and as a rampant thinker myself, I try to refer to this when I reach that state of analysis paralysis. This doesn’t mean not to think, that would be absurd. But when the time comes to make something happen, if you’re in your head, you could be in big trouble. Conversations, stock buys, coffee drinking, oncoming traffic– it all has its time. You could end up lonely, broke, burnt or run over by a car. There are consequences if action isn’t taken at the right time.

To my knowledge, time doesn’t slow down or speed up for any of us. We can’t herd all the follies of the past or predict the future to any avail. It is action, present movement, that sets us free and makes things happen. Making things happen is what intention is all about. I believe that it is called “the present” for a reason… perhaps because it is a gift to be here, wherever we are, right now. How many coincidences and ambiguous turnouts have placed you in this absurd present moment you are in right now? The more often we choose to accept the presents that we are always being provided, the more present we are, and the more we have.

Back on the previous podcasts and blogs, we talked about intention a lot. We talked about how the motivation from within is what makes our work meaningful. If we intend on doing things to please other people or to conform to someone else’s standard, then we won’t enjoy our results. 

Then we continued on, and talked about how our stories determine where we go and how honest feedback can untie us from those runaway trains we have created. Honesty pokes holes in our delusions and frees us to see the things we care about. Honesty puts the truth right in front of us. That’s why there is nothing more honest than taking action and seeing how it goes.

“I believe that it is called “the present” for a reason… perhaps because it is a gift to be here, wherever we are, right now.”

Today, though, I think it’s great to get out of our heads and talk about where to start out in the world, unchained from our thoughts and introspection. Let’s wander a little bit and leap out of the pages of the books we read. What can we do to set ourselves free and gain some momentum? How do we turn intention to action as quickly as possible? How do we start to see intention and action as nearly the same exact thing?

How do we find our “IN” from our intentions?

Pioneering our Purpose

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Growing up in Kentucky, I was raised around the story of Daniel Boone. A raccoon hat wearing badass with a knack for blazing trails. And although, as a Kentuckian, I learned the many insignificant details of Boone’s life, an underlying theme started to connect with me over time. I thought, in some small way, his story was just the story of humanity. The story of humans is the story of pioneers. Pioneering our way from ape to man, east to west, canoes to ships, earth to space, even from humanity to gods and the discovery of something greater than ourselves. We are our own heroes on our own pioneering journeys if we can perceive it. There is something, strange, yet inherent to our soul, that craves the sensation of uncovering the beauty within nature and within ourselves.

Often we shoot ourselves in the foot before we even begin this adventure. It starts up top. Our brains are tireless story-tellers holding the material for a thousand years of hollywood-caliber scripts. We can architect any real or hypothetical scenario down to the finest details and emotions. But another story of mankind is that we don’t always take advantage of this creativity for good. We could always simply choose to envision hope or wonder, yet we imagine terrible scenarios and cast fearful shadows over our futures with exaggerated obstacles. Sometimes this attitude manifests into blaming others, making temporary things last forever, and occasionally just lies, all to get ourselves out of taking action towards our goals and making our way.

“If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin.” -Søren Kierkegaard

So why do we become our own enemies? Do we hate ourselves? Like failing? I don’t think so. It may have something to do with how our goals scare us half to death. At least any of the good ones should, and I think we have a right to feel this way about our ambitions. We are scared because although the landscape of pioneering has changed over time for most of us, from bears and dangerous uncharted terrains, the sentiment towards blazing a new path has hardly changed a bit. Perhaps it has even gotten more terrifying to many people. It’s a frightening ordeal to become something new. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”  And, to me, that is our greatest accomplishment because no matter what titles we hold, trophies we accumulate, or money we hoard… all you will ever be able to become from the time you are born until your death– is you. 

We are always being marketed, told, even just plain coerced into believing someone else’s story for who we should be, how we ought to think, or what we should do with our time. But we have to remember that all we are responsible for during the course of our lives is the effort we expend and the purpose we attribute to our experiences. It is all up to us as individuals to pave our own roads. The degree to which we steer ourselves is up to us, the trajectory is in our hands, and as long as you have breath in your lungs, you can tell a different story of who you are. “You” is always in a state of change and flow, so don’t anchor yourself to certainty and safety when there is so much left to discover, so many new paths to pioneer.

Who knows, maybe you’ll find your real self somewhere along the way.

Immortal by Intention

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I believe that anyone can go from nothing to something. But I also know this is possible only if we are brave enough, at every crucial moment, to come to terms with our infinite process of becoming. Once we accept that we are in a state of constant transformation, we can transform into someone better. I have found that it is typically at this crossroads that we take pride in our weaknesses, find comfort in our limited strengths– that they start becoming who we are more permanently. Seneca once addressed this paradox in his epitome, On the Shortness of Life, by stating it this way:

“You act like mortals in all that you fear, and immortals in all that you desire.”

Perhaps we begin seeing our fears less permanently today. Unfortunately, we can all recall aspects of ourselves or someone we may know who maintains a sense of identity from their flaws. “I am just a bad test-taker”, “I have trouble focusing”, “I struggle with commitment”, “I just have no self-discipline”, “it’s that sweet tooth of mine”… typically followed by the worst of all sayings, “That’s just the way it is.” If only we peeked ever so slightly into the abyss of history or an old high school yearbook– we could recognize that the way it is never was anything, really.

Surely there are many reasons why we tell ourselves this story…

It feels good. It it lets us off the hook, allowing us to circumvent the guilt we feel for being mediocre. Which we all feel in some aspect of our life from time to time. There are times when we are killing the game in one way and we are down in a ditch somewhere else, but we shouldn’t make excuses for our shortcomings or even go as far as to make them permanent parts of our identity. Expecting failure grants us the comfort of being right when we don’t get what we want.

Mark Twain put it like this, “It’s better to be an optimist who is sometimes wrong than a pessimist who is always right.”

Our fear is impermanent, so it might as well be faith.

Imagine you are on the beach and you are tasked with building a sandcastle of any kind. Now, you know the tide will rise and take the castle away much later in the evening. Knowing this, what sort of design do you build? Do you have fun and make a magnificent design? Or do you build something small and insignificant?

Whether you choose magnificence or mediocrity, it will be washed away.

Now this is not an original play on the old adages of “castles made of sand”. However, there is something we can do that is uniquely human and profoundly impactful to the world. We can choose to build the magnificent castle anyways. With artful design and creativity. One that inspires others on the beach. One that lasts in memory.

Our lives are not much different. Surely you can live a safe and conservative life. But there are no laughs to be had in that, there are no lessons to be learned, no memories made, no story worth telling.

I think that our immortality lies in the decision we make at these trivial crossroads: The choice whether to live trivially, or triumphantly in spite. Whether we choose faith over fear, magnificence over mediocrity, triumph over triviality.

What We Want

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Think about the goals that you’ve set. Which ones are still sitting around waiting for that first try? Ones that haven’t seen an ounce of quality effort.

Let me put it this way: What did you intend to do? You might respond “Well, in intended to lose X pounds, make X money, feel X way about Y part of my life.”

One could argue that you never intended on doing any of it. Had you? It wouldn’t have come to mind.

Shadows only become more apparent on the brightest days, do they not? We are always obstructing sunlight to some degree, but it isn’t until the most beautiful sunny days that we become aware of our close, dark companion. It follows us and begs us to accept it. On dark days it seems that the shadow can creep inside of us, and awaits the warm sun to conjure it back out. My point? Many of us have some major work to do. Problems that need dealt with right now. Work we’d much rather delay, procrastinate, or entirely ignore. 

This is the start of reevaluating what we want and what we will tolerate. Some might argue you need pain to feel the urge to change, feel ashamed to start the work. But what if you can just want it and make it happen?

The Buddha once said, “The two human tragedies are when we don’t get what we want and when we do”. Further, that “Our thoughts determine our reality.” Can we even begin to understand what any of that means?

Well, it starts with thoughts. Thoughts become our beliefs which then determine our intention and intention is the most powerful force. Intention leads to action.

If motivation is a one lane dirt road to living the life we want to, intention is the paved runway for our deluxe private jet. Motivation comes and goes, it could you there at some point if you can keep it. Intention, on the other hand, assumes success. Intention annihilates apathy, breeds brilliance, corrupts confusion, destroys doubt, and engenders a new enthusiasm that can last forever.

Once we master our own intentions, we can begin to do a lot of good for ourselves, others, and do a lot of focused work in our corner of the world. First, we have to accept one bitter truth: We always do what we want. Yes. We always either do things or avoid doing things for a reason we choose. We act for a reason we have clearly laid out for ourselves at some level. Whether we actually articulate “I hate doing ______”  OR “I love doing ______” or if we just silently corresponded back and forth inside our own heads with the slightest hint of doubt or bit of courage, we are laying down a fertile foundation. We are always crafting stories, hypotheticals, and other false beliefs about our capabilities. Worst of all, we go on to take our own misguided advice.

For better or worse, we tend to get exactly what we believe we want.

The address to which we can send our thank you notes for these beliefs is somewhere in our past. Deep into our psychology lay millions of small details and outdated stories that have kept us from progressing. We concrete these beliefs and steer our lives. There is a strategy we can use to regain control in our lives though, we make the choice to create new beliefs.

I see it this way: We all have beliefs that influence our intention, and we do exactly what we intend to do. We are what we do, but we are all originally what we say we are to do. Understanding this wisdom is the first step in regaining the control we have lost in our lives. Putting ourselves back in the driver’s seat of our brain, the belief factory, is absolutely crucial to begin our ascent to wherever we intend on going.

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Podcast Episode 8: Quarantine Connection w/ Jake Bension

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I sit down with a good friend and coworker and we talk about how something we value dearly, connection, has been disrupted by this quarantine. Hopefully, we don’t have to suffer much longer as a people, but going forward, we talk about some tips at home and how to stay on top out there. 

Click to Subscribe

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/plant-your-flag/id1487670897

Google Podcasts: https://play.google.com/music/m/Ihroqg4bdjh23vdlyuxsf63ofiu?t=Plant_Your_Flag

Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/jon-salmen/plant-your-flag

TuneIn: http://tun.in/pjD7k