This title makes even me roll my eyes but it is accurate. Whoa, I already demonstrated it. There are so many books and talks and podcasts about the power of this or that, and we begrudgingly trudge through it and see if there are any takeaways. Spoiler: usually not.

But this time it’s different. Ooh, I did it again.

As I’ve said before humor is a fantastic thing—but can get in the way of communication. e.g. – You ask a question and someone makes a joke, then expands on the joke but doesn’t ever get around to answering the question. There are other things that can get in the way of communication, and that’s where “but” comes in.

If you’re overly-perceptive you may focus on the things that seem out of place before you answer a question. If you do this it can be problem. Learning to to use the power of but, and however, and other ‘informational separators’ can save you (and those you communicate with) a great deal of time and energy. This works if you are a speaker and have an audience (we all have an audience—see a future podcast on that), or have work peers, or clients, or a spouse or loved ones. So it is something everyone will find useful.

Behold the power of but and listen for more. And stop giggling.

What? How can you do that? it sounds crazy. Well, it is a very real and serious condition when someone does indeed wall off a part of their brain and lives in denial of actions. There are dire consequences for the person and people around them I have seen this with my own eyes. But we are not going there today.

I could have asked “Do you lie to yourself” or “Are you living in denial?” Both are sort of offensive, yes? But they mostly mean the same thing.

This concept stems from writing fiction—you have to keep secrets from the characters so in a way you’re keeping secrets from yourself (the author). So that made me think about keeping secrets in general, and how we as humans do that.

I have two questions for you in the podcast, and I’m interested in your answers.

Of course. Adding SEO-rich H2 headers is a great way to structure the content for both readers and search engines. I’ve broken down the transcript into logical sections and crafted headers that capture the essence of each part.

Here is the revised transcript with the new headers.

Welcome back. Let’s get right into it: Do you have secrets from yourself?

I could have asked, “Are you living in denial?” and you might have rolled your eyes and clicked away. I could have asked, “Do you lie to yourself?” but that feels like an accusation. If someone came up to me at a stoplight and asked if I was living in denial, I’d probably suggest they roll their window back up and leave me alone.

I’m being a little silly to soften what can be an offensive question. We all have internal programming and layers of safeties in place that keep us from doing crazy things. When you get mad and think, “I’d really like to push them down a flight of stairs,” you don’t do it. You have foundational safeties and a sense of integrity that prevent it. Later, you might even have a beer with that person and joke about it.

But there are times when we aren’t quite on the up-and-up with people. We all have to keep some things from others. I become a tremendous liar around Christmastime because you have to keep secrets about presents. You tell little white lies like, “Oh, you look great in that.”

What I’m talking about is keeping secrets from yourself. This isn’t about a clinical issue where someone sections off a part of their brain to hide from terrible things they’ve done—that’s a real and tragic condition. I’m talking about a different take on this, one that comes from my experience writing fiction.

When you write fiction, you have a general outline and an idea of your characters’ personalities. As the author, I have to keep secrets from myself because I have to speak as the characters and narrate as someone who isn’t always omniscient. You can’t have every character know everything all the time; they have to make mistakes because they simply don’t know a simple fact, or they ignored it, or they never noticed.

So, have I softened the blow enough for you to consider my version of this question? There’s a version of keeping secrets from yourself that you already do, and it can be constructive. For example, maybe you have a real treat waiting for you at the end of the day—seeing a friend, going on a fun date—but you consciously ignore it to make the surprise even bigger when it happens. Or perhaps you start to detect that your wife is throwing you a surprise party, so you keep that “secret” from yourself and go about your business. You see how those are constructive?

But your brain can do this in other ways, too. A great example is weight loss. You’re choosing a meal and you say, “Ooh, that’s kind of bad, but I’ll have a salad with it.” Or you make a bargain: “I’ll eat those vegetables rotting in the refrigerator for dinner if I can eat this delicious thing for lunch.” Then dinner comes around, and you’re too full from the chicken.

Come on. You knew you weren’t going to eat those vegetables. You knew when you bargained with yourself to get that pleasure that you weren’t going to follow through. You kept that secret from yourself. You could say you lied to yourself—and that sounds terrible, even if it’s pretty accurate.

That’s where I’m going with this.

Think about a secret you’ve kept from yourself, or a method you use to do it. Like anything, it can be used for good or for bad. It can be beneficial and make life more fun, like when you keep yourself humble before a big moment. You might tell yourself, “I’m just like everyone else,” to keep the secret that you truly are great at what you do.

Or, you can use it for something insidious. You don’t intentionally decide one day, “I’m going to lie to myself,” but people fall into it. I would surmise that when you have a stuck habit you’re trying to break, it is because you are keeping a secret from yourself.

So, think about a secret you’re keeping from yourself, and then think about a stuck habit or a stuck situation. As always, let me know.

What would you do if all your tech was taken away?  If your loved ones were gone before you knew it?  What skills do you have to survive—without a government, a military, or electricity.  Are you ready for that?  And what would you do if the saviors of the human race came.  How would you react to The Saints?  And what would you do if your world was turned Upside Down.

Join me in the podcast for an interesting thought experiment that we can do right now.

 Without too much fanfare I am releasing my seventh book and it is very different from anything else I’ve written.  When I wrote The Sword and the Sunflower duet it was from a very special place and a poem that seemed to write itself.  It was a story of love, family and adventure and the hero’s journey.  I’m a happy endings kind of guy.

While writing it I often referenced a history of pain and suffering and catastrophe—of horrible times in which the Earth lost most of its inhabitants.  What created the beautiful and wondrous yet dangerous world of Stojan and Anastazja was a long history of what occurred after an apocalypse.  What happened was mostly a memory in my mind as I wrote.  It was a place I dared not go.  But I knew the story eventually had to be told.  

So, now I am telling the story of exactly what happened.  The catastrophe, the deaths, the suffering.  The tale of how the interlopers manipulated humanity and used their beliefs against them.  You can now learn how we lost our technology, how we were made to rely on their wisdom—a wisdom that actually came from us.  It is not a story of broad brushes but of intimate relationships, and how not people, but each person dealt with such a thing.

So listen to the podcast, participate in the thought experiment – no tech, no power… nothing. And the check out the book.

There’s also a book giveaway on Goodreads right now too!

There are millions who suffer—for one reason or another—from chronic pain. It’s a pain that doesn’t go away and even for many who have sought help there’s no relief. For others they just don’t invest the Time, Energy or Resources (Resources is typically the limiting factor—let’s be honest) to find relief and just ‘deal with it.’

If you are someone who suffers from a rare disease and/or chronic pain then you will very much appreciate the interesting chat, the advice and the groundwork that has been done for you by my guest Barby Ingle.

Contact info:

Twitter – https://twitter.com/BarbyIngle

Her site – http://barbyingle.com/

I’ve found that the best ‘to do list’ isn’t a list but items on a calendar. That way not only do you have a list, but you can assign a time and length too. And if you don’t get a chance to do it in the alloted time you can adjust the length accordingly after the fact. It makes for a very nice historical record. it is this historical record that I am referencing in the podcast.

We know that one of the five facets* of life is productivity/obligation. if you keep a calendar then it is probably full of events in this category. But is that all that’s on there?

As we know you can’t tell if you’re doing too much, or not enough unless you measure. Anything worth knowing about is worth measuring, right? So why not indirectly measure your fun too. We’re not talking about a two week appointment on your calendar called “vacation.”

So what about the little things? You know, the little things that everyone does during the day or week that makes them happy? Something you would never make an appointment for…. But what if you did?

*Remember the five facets of Alchemy are Productivity/Obligation, Rejuvenation/Fun, Learning, Health and Spirituality. Learn more on Alchemy for Life™ or in the book of the same name.

OMG I’m not going to say that. I’ve already spoken my peace on the whole [INSERT THING] is a superpower. News Flash: it isn’t. But being a ‘creative’ allows you to have something that ‘non-creatives’ do not have, and its liberating, empowering and downright wonderful.

You know how I feel about labels (hint: The same as Nietzsche did) but for purposes of the podcast lets compare the two labels. A creative is someone who typically creates content as part of their gig – art, videos, stories, writing, performances, etc. Non-creatives typically don’t. That’s it. We won’t get into the whole “dual-brained” thing I pontificate on all the time and muck things up.

If you are a finance person*, you probably won’t spend hours just making pivot tables for the heck of it and go “ooh, cool.” Creative people, however, sometimes do things start to finish because they want to see how it turns out. They want to see how it looks. Sometimes they make a thing because it’s in their brain and they want to see it in real life because they want to.

To others this could seem like a huge waste of time, or a flight of fancy. Maybe it is, but for the creative it’s a way to experiment with sculptures, textures, story ideas, plot elements, video effects… It’s a substantial investment of…

To have this freedom of investing all three of the elements is the super secret power of a creative.

(Listen for more…)

*No disrespect meant to finance people. I love fiance people.

We understand ownership in the traditional and physical sense. But there is another type of ownership, and our brain assigns it often when we aren’t looking.

There are too many things / blogs / Articles out there that are based on just random interactions. This is normally not one of them. I’ve done 100+ episodes and they have almost all been from consideration, popular topics, a unique take on something, etc. But they are not because I just had something anecdotal happen to be and hey you should drop everything and listen to my day. Nope. Well, except this time.

Yeah, that’s probably not something you didn’t know. And as you can imagine when it comes up I’m happy to talk about it—all authors are and have to be shameless promoters. This time it was because of my swag. I was wearing the hat pictured here. it started a conversation about the two fiction, The Sword and the Sunflower and Amira. it was the second book that sparked the conversation. She very much did not like that word, because to her it was a name, and a person and…

(listen for the rest)

We already covered staying in your lane in the podcast of the same name. The truth is that I was so focused on this version that I may have forgotten about that one. See, they are equally as interesting and useful. The first stay in your lane focused primarily on the benefits of adding skills to your stack. However, this podcast is different.

This podcast is about deconstructing the metaphor of “Stay in your lane.” While that may sound very fancy, it just means that we are going to actually address the metaphor—the actual car or vehicle driving in a lane and what the Big Hairy Deal it is to go into another lane. What’s the problem? And what does that mean in the metaphor? If you like this kind of deconstructing perhaps we will do it again for another metaphor.

You are told to stay in your lane in a physical car because the lanes keep us safe. That’s why we signal, check out blind spots and then mope, right? If you weave all over, or don’t signal (my pet peeve) then you could cause a lot of trouble—even death. So stay in that lane—we are counting on you.

The metaphor

When we tell someone to stay in their lane but we aren’t shouting at them in a car we are probably speaking metaphorically. In that case we are telling them to stick what they know, or focus on their job, or the skill we think they should be focussing on.

But in both cases you can’t really stay in your lane, can you?

Listen to the podcast to dive in deeper—which of course is another metaphor. 🙂

You’re all familiar with staycations, and self love and doing things for yourself. We all get that, but those words are probably hollow and really don’t motivate a lot of us to do nice things for ourselves.

If youir friend is coming over you would definitely make time and plan to do that thing they like—a show, a play, an event or even something that is specific to your city. You’d do it because they are important and you can provide it.

Or, you may also plan to have them over because they agreed to help you with something, and having help always makes the time go faster. It’s one of the things I discuss in my talk called Do it to a F.A.U.LT. Either way let’s take that concept and and make it work for us—without having to even involve a friend.

There are two aspects of this: Doing something fun, and getting something done. So for our takeaways we have two challenges.

1. Choose something fun you’ve been wanting to do, and then make an appointment to do it (you can just say ‘tomorrow’ and don’t necessarily have to pick a time of day). Then act like your friend is coming over to enjoy that. make the arrangements you normally would – ignoring your phone (or using it less—you don’t want to be a rude friend), actually setting aside time, making sure it is the best experience and even cleaning up your home a bit or buying snacks (or arranging proper transportation for an external event).
2. Choose a task that you’ve been dreading and make sure it’s not something that requires that you have another person help you. We don’t want you being crushed by trying to move a piano up a flight of stairs! Again, set a time, and commit. If you ask a friend for help what do you always do (or at least offer)? A reward of course. Go to dinner, have a beer, etc.

Let me know, as always, if these crazy change of perspectives work for you.

Its fulfilling and validating to talk about success. One might say, almost addicting, yes?

We talk about invisible things all the time. This is the thing that is above and below business. it’s the great filter of being successful. it plagues entrepreneurs and big business alike, but the former are far more susceptible.

It hearkens back a little to Stolen Validation – getting the kudos and the patting on the back before you actually do a thing.

Of course there is spreadsheets and white boards and so forth. The larger the business, the more meetings, schedules and systems you have to go through before something is accomplished. Small businesses turn on a dime; large ones do not. Typically.

As an entrepreneur, you tend to work with others a lot—peers, partners, partnerships. But what happens sometimes?

It’s really easy to get together with a peer or possible business partner and talk about what you intend to do. And then you feel really good about it. Because you’re moving closer to the—probably mutual—goal.

What if that’s all you ever do?

Then you’ll never be successful. Eventually you have to pull the trigger. People who fall into this trap are similar to people who are going to write a book, or are writing a book—for over a decade. It’s enjoyable to tell people you are writing but it takes a different mindset to actually finish it. I’m not even talking about all the steps to get to publishing—cover design, marketing, market research, genre and keyword selection on places like Amazon, editor choice—just actually finishing it.

Do you have a meeting that occurs on a regular basis? Can you look back on them and tell me what you and your gang have actually accomplished?

Meetings are like video games and aps like Candy Crush. They give you a false sense of accomplishment. There a productivity dopamine hit that you don’t deserve.

Not getting down on people who plan, or meet regularly, or are plan-intensive. I started planning the father’s day week interviews in January, and had reach out to two of the people in the previous year. So I’m not getting down on the plan-intensive—as long as they finally have an outcome: a product, a service, etc.

I’ve been a magnet for this kind of thing for some time. because I like to get my hands dirty as well as look at things from the 30,000 foot view, people want to engage with me to build for them. They enjoy the relationship because of all the possibilities. But, we eventually get to the point in which there has to be an investment of Time, Energy and or Resources™ on their part—and that’s when things fall apart. It’s exhausting to put a lot of effort into a connection only to have them just be there to enjoy the discussion.

What I am suggesting for you to do is look into the eyes of your peer, partner, would-be partner, group members and ask, “What are we doing here, exactly? What is the plan? When do we do the thing we are talking about and are you as invested as me?”

Look into those eyes. And sometimes those eyes you need to look into are yours, in the mirror.

Let me know if you’ve experienced this. And what you’re going to do about it. Thanks.