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The Authentic You

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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.

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?

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

Using People

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Being a good individual is important to all of us. 

Being unique, authentic, “one of a kind”. 

But how original can any of us actually become?

Now, we all know the more cynical line, “There are no original ideas”. However, I argue that maybe what we are really saying is that there are no original words or phrases to describe something. We have reinvented the way we use timeless knowledge for thousands of years. 

Musicians, scientists, philosophers and other artists struggle the most, finding a balance between using the weight of their influences and discovering their own style. It is hard to escape the what is and the what has and to step into the realm of what if and what else. But every innovator, groundbreaker, and pioneer can easily list off who helped them, inspired them, educated them, mentored them over their lifetime. 

Steve Jobs would have told you that it was Bill Cambell who coached him through his time at Apple. Using his expertise to create phenomenal company culture and driving ambition.

John Mayer might list off a variety of blues artists like Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimi Hendrix, and BB King, Eric Clapton. Some of which he was able to directly learn from and derive his modern phrasing of blues and even performance technique.

Ryan Holiday, owner of the Daily Stoic and renowned author, is notorious for his distillation of past stoic writings and stories from the autobiographies of this world’s most influential people. 

They were all honest about where their inspiration, technique and writing came from. Yet it doesn’t seem to dull their glow as brilliant artists and creators. 

My point is, if you look around you and you are looking for it, these people are not tapping into some mythical land of creativity. They are innovating, however brilliantly, old dusty ideas. They are studying and emulating the past behind closed doors and then presenting a sometimes unrecognizable modern product. 

“Successful people get credit for the work they do behind closed doors”- Tony Robbins

Whatever you are trying to achieve, it has been done before. The process of tapping into that part of yourself, the planning, the strategy, perhaps even the exact timetable and half hour itinerary. So how do we find it? Books, podcasts, friends, here with us at Kykeon ;). 

But seriously, anyone, anywhere, with anything. Use the infinite knowledge that is surrounding us and start putting it into action. And most importantly, find someone that has failed and succeeded at whatever endeavor you are about to start. 

Aspire to Inspire Greatness.

Persistence

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Chances are that you have taken on some new strategies for the New Year. Be it a diet, workout plan, financial goal, or perhaps a relationship. I sincerely hope that you haven’t given up on them yet. Either way, stay tuned. Maybe this will come as a story of hope. Hopefully it will at least make you think.

This is a renewing time of year. You are probably incorporating a new daily behavior or attempting to develop a mindset that is better. And I wish you luck because that motivation is much harder to come by after the 1st, 2nd or 3rd quarter of the year. But whether it is meditating or selling more products– there are going to be pressures that knock you off your path. The practice is persistence. Constant readjustments, and recalibration. Because these goals are moving targets. You are growing older, experiencing more, working differently, and the weather is changing. The past fades and the future creeps on in. Always. Our goals are for a person that doesn’t exist yet. You are creating you, so don’t scrap it yet. 

“Without imperfection, neither you nor I would exist” – Stephen Hawking 

Outside of your mindset, I want to talk about a major force that is molding it… other people. The truth is that people will not support you all the time. I know, how mean? Those dumb pesky inherently evil people (he says sarcastically setting himself up for his next point)… Like it or not, we live in unavoidable competition with the people around us despite whether we are fully aware of it. And all your critics? They are as imperfect as you. I may even argue critics are severely more flawed. Because unlike the others trying their hardest, they are sitting back and judging. I think Hank Williams said it best, 

“Mindin’ other people’s business seems to be high-toned, I got all that I can do just to mind my own, why don’t you mind your own business, (mind your own business), if you mind your own business, you’ll stay busy all the time.”

I think in a perfect world, we would mind our own business, but humans are highly intelligent social creatures. Now I know what you’re thinking, “you obviously haven’t met my cousin ‘so and so’”. Even them. Yes, even them. We, as humans, are constantly comparing and contrasting ourselves with others. It used to keep us alive to mirror or avoid behavior. Like “maybe I shouldn’t go in the opaque swamp with that weird lizard thing”. But as the primal environment has changed to modern, we now do this to a point of paralysis. The comparison has become “the thief of joy” as Teddy Roosevelt famously said. It no longer serves in the same capacity it did for our more ape like ancestors.

We no longer use this skill set to gauge whether we are threatened by the misery and obstacles of the environment. Instead we threaten each other with our ambition or the emotional state we live in. Coworkers, friends, family, significant others, teammates– could all be threatened or challenged by your mindset. Challenged to rise to a different level and keep up with your new standard. This challenge to match the highest energy in a room feels like a threat. Why do some people react to your goals like you just slapped them? I think because courage in others scares us more than any alligator in a swamp could. It inspires massive internal change, change many are often unprepared to ask of themselves. This type of change doesn’t just call for a step over a crack or to throw on another layer of clothes. It sits within us until we fix it or bury it. If you’re wondering why maybe others may scoff, critique or even try to disintegrate your goals, it just boils down to the insecurity arising from comparison.

David Goggins, ex Navy SEAL and famed Ultra Marathon runner, has words on this insecurity: “Our light reflects off all the walls they built around them. Your light allows them to see the contours of their own prison, their own self limitations.” (Can’t Hurt Me)

We have all felt this. I am sure you can recall bullshitting a reason or playing devil’s advocate for someone when they shared their goals. And I am also sure others have done the same to you at one point and you’ve begun to learn. It is okay. We compete naturally and it isn’t always as pretty as the olympics when we do. Sometimes competition brings war and death and poverty. In other times, it brings justice to a courtroom, love into a marriage or a sea of gold medals to a humble freak like Michael Phelps. Competition manifests itself in beautiful ways as often as it does in tragic ones. So let it drive you in the direction you need to go.

I leave you with this car-themed analogy: 

Imagine we are a car on a long road trip and set on a specific destination, or goal. People around us are much like the dotted lines on the highway. They don’t really restrict us, but they give us a sense of clarity that we are in one lane or the other. Other people’s lives are guiding lines and we can leverage their success, their failures, their strategies and mistakes to better understand where we are and where we need to go. But they do not hold us back unless we choose to let them. 

Likewise, good friends are like the seatbelts across our chest, the headlights on the road, and the gas in our tank. They keep us safe, focused and running. The people closest to us are constantly navigating us through our lives. It is important that we distinguish who are the shotgun riders and who are the nagging backseat drivers in our life. Take a pragmatic view to whom you spend the most time with, are they adding or subtracting value? Are they a source of direction, motivation, inspiration, knowledge? Or just a bunch of lousy potholes?

Surround yourself with love and remember to be someone others want around them too.

Check out my podcast, on Apple podcasts, “Plant Your Flag” or “Jon Salmen”. That’s me.

More exciting interviews coming up, be sure to check it out ASAP.

Freedom Of Discipline Pt.3 — Fear

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The biggest obstacles to success are those we believe we can’t get over. Rarely are they the most difficult or the most demanding. They are merely the ones we think about. Our challenge is a predominantly internal thing. Stress and fear bounce around inside our heads until we feel hopeless and slowly begin to question our capabilities. So a key practice is to mindfully acknowledge why we are stressed out, where our fears still remain. It is only then that we continue towards a healthy lifestyle, an unhalting pursuit of our goals.

Today though, I don’t want to talk about the fluffy clouds of dreams and goal-setting. No, perhaps we shift focus from the ideal and into the real for a moment. Reality is that we will fail a lot more than we will succeed. But the failure, as you know, lies after the fact. True failure is giving up or not learning from past mistakes. Success lies in being vigilant not to overstay your welcome in some insane rabbit hole or depression.

So today we will focus on failure, discouragement, apathy, and any obstacles that may result in shortcomings. Along with the art of being unwavering in your values and persevering beyond your comfort zone. 

I think I would leave you at a disadvantage to strictly spew words of encouragement when discouragement is much more abundant. It would be like learning how to swim before your trip out to the desert. So we will focus on the barren parts of the cultural environment in which we live. Much like a desert, there is an infinite dryness and accompanying thirst caused by the hot flame of mediocrity that burns all around us. If we don’t prepare ourselves to deal with an environment like that, we are at a total loss for overcoming the many trials that live there. 

How do you deal with failure? I mean really. What does it do to you? Does it drive you to a dark place of self deprivation and regret? Do things like alcohol, drugs, sex, and music transform from pleasurable indulgences into emotional crutches? Is failure a motivator or a deterrent? Are the fears that you carry given the justice they deserve or are you too insecure to admit and address their influence on your behavior?

Our inability to address the things that hold us back do nothing except leave us unprepared. Living without fear is a terrible way to live. Live with courage. But this myth that one can live “fearlessly” is an ironically scared way to live in my opinion. A life afraid of fear. If it were possible, I would give that prescribed brand of living the time of day. But the truth is that any of the people living “fearlessly” have just learned how to win more of their battles in the face of fear. They didn’t learn how to side step fear when it presented itself, they learned how to beat its ass mercilessly whenever it reared up to derail their aspirations. They accepted fear.

These muted fears are the discouragement I am talking about. Arguably, all of our discouragement is chaperoned by these decrepit and shadowy doubts. We even have a built in fear machine in our brains called the amygdala. Although my neuroscience colleagues would have more to say, this brain area simply helps us recognize things that could hurt us or make us uncomfortable. A useful tool no doubt. The kicker is that physical and mental discomfort register the same way. A hot stove and a hard conversation are not all that distinguishable in this part of our psychology. But we can’t get a third degree burn from courage. Maybe if we are fighting fires. But asking for a raise, hiring a coach, paying for a gym membership, reading a few more books, going back to get another degree at school… these initially register as fears, but they present no harm by themselves. They are just unfamiliar to us right now. 

The issue comes when we delay the time between intention and action. This problem space is fertile grounds for fear as well as faith. If faith is the thing you want to grow, fear is the weeds that would happily grow in its place. Our brain waters the seed of fear first, if you let it. Our amygdala, our negative cognitive bias. The idea that we psychologically register bad more efficiently than we do for good. It is our job to retrain ourselves to water that seed of faith every time instead of the doubts. Without that important intervention, we succumb to a negative victimized view of our lives. 

So be unyielding in your optimism. Nurture a persistent positive perspective. People will fight you, people close to you, even those you thought were loyal friends. There will often be some sort of push back, but my advice? Hold the pillow down until they stop kicking. Don’t kill anyone, but cut their waste of air out of your life. Suffocate their negativity. Stifle that energy because if that’s the garden they tend inside themselves, it’s only a matter of time before those locusts spread to your field and infringe on your mind. Affect your life. Countless aspects of society will try to cut you down for no apparent good reasoning. And even your brain will fight to get you to surrender to comfort by any means. Out-think, outperform, out-optimism all of it. 

Lastly, don’t be overwhelmed by this pressure to be average or to fulfill a stereotypical identity you could pick up at the drugstore. Setting goals can seem like a fool’s errand sometimes, especially around helpless folks that want to bring you down. Don’t be discouraged to make “unbelievable” goals and end up goalless. Don’t let perfectionism drive you away from making goals either. Strike a balance between emptiness and cliche. And force positive thoughts. Scream them like a crazy person to yourself on the treadmill. Pray on it. Meditate around your intentions. Remind yourself where you are, what you’ve overcome and where you plan on going all the time. That is the key to sticking to a goal. The action that follows a positive, clear, determined mind surely bring nothing short of fulfillment.