Leaning Toward Wisdom

1989. I was being courted by a business owner looking for new, fresh leadership. The business was located where Rhonda and I most wanted to be, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Texas. The kids were in elementary school. Early elementary school. Life had been hectic for the previous 3 years. Situations had changed that were beyond our control - things that we didn't feel were favorable for training and raising our children. So, we took our aim for Texas - DFW. It was Rhonda's home and we were familiar with it.

Among our reasons - and in this order - church. Spiritual reasons were at the very top of our list. Next, the kids. Where did we feel we could give them the best advantages spiritually, educationally, personally (future spouses), and careerwise? DFW checked all the boxes for us when we began to strategize ways to accomplish this goal. That was somewhere around 1987. It took me a few years to pull it all together. By the end of 1989 I had started the process. By the end of the school year, May 1990, we had made the transition.

Sometimes it takes awhile. Our goals - what I now call "our ideal outcome" - don't always happen as quickly as we'd like. This ideal outcome was one we had time to carefully consider and plan for. There were days we questioned if it might happen. Mostly, it took over 2 years before I was given the opportunity to make it a reality.

That was then. This is now.

In 2018 another life situation provoked Rhonda and I to ask, "Now what?" The clarity we experienced in 1987 didn't happen this time. It would come much more slowly, like the slow turn of a focus knob on a telescope. In fact, it took a couple of years - not for the opportunity, but for us to even figure out what we might want. "What is our ideal outcome?" was the question we wrestled with. And it was anything but easy or clearcut. Not like life back in 1987. That focus came faster for us. The decision was more easily made beforehand back then because the path seemed evident to us. Not this time.

But this time was different. This was a gut punch. Back in the 1980s it was more of a slow burn. Our knees weren't buckled in the 80s. This time, they were. And that takes more time. To catch your breath. To get back on your feet. Besides, things were well beyond our control mostly so we were having to figure things out in real-time. Deciding how you'll react - asking yourself how you can make the wisest choices - can take time.

When the stakes are high we felt we needed to get it right the first time. There may not be an opportunity to correct it. You don't know.

For me, the barometer has always been regret. Will I regret doing this? Will I regret not doing this?

Back in 1987 I knew - Rhonda did, too - that we would regret staying where we were. We had to make a move. For the welfare of our children. But I admit I hated that we had to do it. It was a move I wished we wouldn't have had to make. It was a sad decision because of what once was - and what could have been. But life does that to us. Throws us curveballs that we must figure out how to hit.

Today, things are different. There is no sadness. I'm not romantic or sentimental about what once was or what could have been. I'm just ready. Ready to move on. Ready to grow. Ready to embrace a new chapter - our encore chapter.

By 2020 our focus was clear. So much so, that by the end of 2021 we had put our money where our mouth and our fantasies were. We bought a piece of property in a place that had captured our heart. A place of solitude. Respite. It was likely because when our knees buckled it was the place we went to sort things out. That was our first encounter with the place. Maybe that made it more special. I don't know, but I do know we found it beautiful. And the closeness of the community, the diversity of the positives (trails, lakes, creeks, trees, wildlife, golf courses, mountains and more) was appealing.

It only had one downside.

It wasn't in DFW. And DFW is where our entire tribe was thanks to our decision back in 1987 (and the execution of that decision in 1990).

Grandkids didn't exist back then. Now we had five.

Lots of things had changed. Many of them blessings. Some of them curses. But the tribe was all blessing, all the time. But...

We weren't (aren't) prepared to leave the tribe and our happy place is only 5 hours away...so it made sense to us, in the short-term to spend time in each place. The plan was to spend way more time in Texas than in Happy Serene Village, five hours away. We figured we'd get over to HSV (Happy Serene Village) 3 or 4 times over the 12 month transition.

What transition? Transitioning from what to what? Or from where to where?

That's the rub. We're navigating a number of transitions.

Transition 1: Selling a house we've been in for 25 years and moving to a new place.

Transition 2: Buying another house in Happy Serene Village and spending more time there.

Transition 3: Creating new career chapters - both of us - as we march toward hitting full-retirement age for Social Security.

They're all pretty big and they're all intertwined. There are many moving parts to our life right now. Frightening and exciting.

Being open to opportunities has always been our way of life - just like cash flowing life. Sometimes we've been more open to them than at other times. Determined mostly by our comfort level or lack of. Whenever we've been most comfortable, we've been much less open. That is, when things are going well, we're not real open for opportunities. Why mess up a good thing, right?

But that's the ideal time to more closely look for opportunities. Strike while the iron is hot and all that. Doesn't it make sense that our optimum time to see and jump on opportunities is when we're riding high? But that's not how it usually goes. Comfort forms around us like a Tempur-Pedic mattress, enveloping us so strongly it paralyzes us from doing anything different. It just feels too good to stay put. Mostly, that's what we do - we stay put - when the better option might be to seize even bigger opportunities. After all, we say it 'cause it's true - the rich get richer. That happens because they tend to get more opportunities, but they have to take advantage of them. Hum.

This impacts The Yellow Studio because the original is now gone. No longer in my possession. But now, here we were mere days away from signing the paperwork to sell the house, which included The Yellow Studio. We had no thought of buying a house or any other property. Moving was on our mind. Enter months of a secret I'd been holding.

Sometime in the late fall a house in Happy Serene Village caught my attention. Initially, the curb appeal snagged it. It was a new house with an attractive front. And thus began the happy accident that we never saw coming. But we were open to it.

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It's a digital age and I fully embrace it. But I still need paper in my printer.

Let's ruminate on these and other urgent analog matters facing us in the digital age.

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Jo Marsh is the dreamer and a scribbler character in Louisa May Alcott's novel, Little Women. Here's an observation about her life in the book.

“I keep turning over new leaves, and spoiling them, as I used to spoil my copybooks; and I make so many beginnings there never will be an end.”

 

It means making a change. Improving. Doing something differently. Doing different things.

Our unwillingness to make a change is detrimental to our life and everybody else influenced by us. It's rebellion. And selfish.

My willingness is high. I wouldn't describe myself as stubborn, but I do know I'm resolved about some things - mostly things in which I believe deeply. Beyond religious truths, there aren't very many things that qualify because I have lived long enough to experience getting it wrong. Getting eternal things right is important because the stakes are so high.

Eternity changes everything.

Let's consider what it means to avoid poison ivy and to turn over a new leaf.

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Computers have a clock speed.

The clock speed measures the number of cycles your CPU executes per second, measured in GHz (gigahertz). A “cycle” is technically a pulse synchronized by an internal oscillator, but for our purposes, they're a basic unit that helps understand a CPU's speed.

The higher the clock speed, the faster the computer. There are other factors, but depending on your computing - gaming, graphics, CAD, video rendering, and other intensive tasks - you'll want the highest clock speed CPU you can afford.

Humans also have a clock speed. I'm not a neuroscientist so I have no idea if it can be measured, but you know it when you see it. We talk about how fast or slow somebody is. Some of us are fast at some things and slow at other things. Some of us are fast most of the time while others are slow most of the time.

Clock speed is evident in our walking pace, communication, handling adversity, facing opportunities, navigating new or strange situations, and just about everything else. Ben Shapiro has an extraordinarily high clock speed.

 

William Buckley had a high clock speed, too. It illustrates how clock speed isn't merely gauged by how fast somebody talks. Like Shapiro, Buckley had a high clock speed intellectually.

 

 

We mere mortals definitely are operating at a slower clock speed than these guys. I'm not sure what, if anything, we could do to rise to their level.

Let's think about our potential, our natural inclinations and upping our performance.

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There are about 9.84 BILLION search results for A.I. - which we mostly think stands for "artificial intelligence." ChatGPT is the latest, greatest, coolest, trickest A.I. It is pretty spectacular. For mere mortals like me, I don't know how A.I. improvement could even be measured, but I do know there's a data gap that is a constraint. A.I. needs high-integrity data.

I'm intrigued by artificial intelligence, but I'm far more obsessed with a different A.I.

Always Improving

“Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Do not bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.”    ― William Faulkner

We all have default behaviors driven by default viewpoints or approaches to life. One of my major default behaviors spawns from a default viewpoint that things can always be better. Not in some, "let's give it time and it'll sort itself out" kind of a way - but in a "what can we do to improve this?" kind of a way. It's how I see the world. It's also how I see most things. It's a default because I'm not consciously trying to do it...it's more of an auto-pilot thing for me.

Years of self-introspection and self-examination taught me that I did a poor job of properly communicating this for too many years. The power of others - seeing how others view things - proved most helpful so I could see things more clearly. Through my eyes, it looks and feels like the never-ending quest for improvement based on my belief and optimism that just about anything can be made better! It hasn't got anything to do with dissatisfaction necessarily - although I admit I can be dissatisfied with the status quo. It doesn't look or feel critical to me either.

The most helpful thing to me was learning the power of personality traits, specifically my own personality traits. Part of my personality that drives my passion to ALWAYS IMPROVING is summed up in a phrase I've seen when studying about those of us who lean toward perceiving or judging.

Making Things as They Ought to Be

That typifies my life for as long as I can remember. The judgment comes in my view of how things ought to be - that's where that perception comes in.

The contrasting personality trait tends to be more reactionary and flexible, taking things as they come. Their default behavior makes it harder for them to focus on one thing at a time.

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It's happened. The Yellow Studio is in a new iteration.

Let's catch up a little bit and talk about whatever version of your life you may be working on.

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“You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.”

― John Irving, The World According to Garp

It's time to say goodbye! Only to The Yellow Studio 2.0. It's officially over. Done.

Next week I'll be getting The Yellow Studio 3.0 set up. Version 3.0 will be a transition studio that I hope will take me through the end of 2023. After that, I'm planning to settle into The Yellow Studio 4.0.

Around 1999 The Yellow Studio 1.0 was born, dubbed with that name because I wanted the walls painted this yellow color. Bright. Sunshiney. Cheerful. That was the goal. And it worked. Especially after I invested in four Ballard Street prints. They worked well with a yellow background. Truth is, everything worked well with the yellow walls as a background.

Over more than 2 decades every "podcast" episode - save those done from the field - was produced right here from inside this yellow room. Except for the first audio files that I uploaded to the Internet, 100% of my podcasts have emanated from The Yellow Studio.

A few friends have inquired, "Are you gonna miss it?"

No, not really. I'm sentimental so I'm leaving with fond memories. The countless hours spent - especially in the nighttime hours when sleep evades me - listening to music, writing, reading, researching, studying, recording, coaching, conversing with friends (in person or online)...an awful lot of life has happened in this room. I'm thankful for all of it, but it's time to turn the page and start creating a new chapter. Time for a new beginning. That excites me.

Version 3.0 will not be yellow, but The Yellow Studio has grown to represent more than a color. It's optimism. Positive vides. Wisdom. Insights. Experiences. It's figuring things out. Learning from mistakes. Always improving! Those things matter more than the color of the walls. But I do love the color. And I will miss that a lot.

What I won't miss is this moving business. Talk about a whipping!

I enjoyed the hard work of purging, but boxing up 45 years of your life together - even post purge - is a ridiculous amount of work. Rhonda has been diligently packing the most tedious items like china, glassware and lots of breakable stuff. Additionally, she's had to box up her sewing room, which has been daunting because of the sheer volume of things she needs to keep. Thankfully, during the transition she'll continue to have some needed space for her craft. Just today I told her, "I'm sure glad podcasting isn't as space intensive as your passion." ;)

I don't plan on skipping more than a beat or two during this move so be patient. I'll try to get back in the groove was soon as I can.

The old "broadcast table" of Version 1.0 and 2.0 is gone!

The old Heil Audio boom arms, which have served me so well for 20 years, gone! They've been creaky for awhile now so it's past time to retire them.

The original Toshiba 43" flat panel TV hanging in the studio stayed in the studio, proudly owned by new masters.

The original Rode Rodecaster Pro that YOU helped me get...not quite gone, but it will be soon. It's pristine and I'll be selling it to help defray the investment I've already made into the newer Rode Rodecaster Pro 2.

Boxed up, but not going away - except for the rest of 2023 - are the Ballard Street prints, the ladies that welcomed folks inside The Yellow Studio, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum - and the dragons and other figurines that populated the studio. These things are going to be safely stowed away in the location of The Yellow Studio 4.0. They'll just remain boxed, safely stored in the comfortable warmth of bubblewrap. ;)

The new studio will have a brand new 62" long desk, on casters. That'll be a first and I'm looking forward to the prospect of moving the studio around as I want. Maybe I won't move it around much at all. But it's nice knowing I can.

The new studio will have a brand new chair. I sold my Herman Miller Mirra chair because the armrests are awful. They drove me crazy for years and so I made somebody happy with a killer deal. I was ready to move on. I know the Mirra and Aeron get rave reviews, but I don't personally think they're worth the money. One day I may break that down further, but that's not the point today. I've invested in a modestly priced, highly-rated chair. I've about decided that those of us spend a lot of time in office/studio chairs might be better served investing in a chair that can serve us well for 2-3 years. After that, we can do it over again. Easier to do when you're not spending over $1,000 for a chair. Besides, I'm kinda ready for a change after a few years - just because.

The new studio will have at least two new mics. The only mic that isn't stowed away for the rest of the year is my Tech Zone Audio Stellar X. That's what you're hearing right now. It's been my go-to mic for the past few years. I break the first rule of podcasting by using a condenser mic over a dynamic mic. But I don't care. I like the crispiness of condenser mics and The Yellow Studio was always conducive for the condenser mics I've leaned on - this Stellar X and the Rode NT1.

The new studio will have the Earthworks ETHOS broadcast condenser mic and the brand new Gen 5 Rode NT1, another condenser that has some cool tech built-in.

The new studio will have some new headphones. Most of my headphones are packed away. They'll stay that way until early next year. The Sony MDR7506 has been my most used phones for years. I've replaced the ear cups more times than I can count. They're really great headphones. I have no complaint. I'm just ready for a change so I'm going back to a brand I used long before these Sony's made their entrance, Sennheiser. I'm keeping the Sony's and I also have the AKG K240's, which never get used. They're uncomfortable for me. And I prefer phones that fit a bit tighter on my big 'ol head. They don't.

The new studio will have a new boom arm, the Rode PS1+. I hope it's everything folks claim. I'm really tired of the squeakiness of the Heil's. I've endured it for at least the past 5 years so I'm looking forward to seeing if the Rode's can be adjusted during recording without embarrassing me.

For now, the same computer will serve at the heart of the new studio - an i7 Intel-basd 27" Apple iMac. I hope to squeeze another year out of this machine, after which I'm hoping to replace it with an Apple laptop of some sort.

I need to huddle with fellow podcasting buddy, Jim Collison (TheAverageGuy.TV) about outboard/external data storage. Jim's much more technically proficient than me. I've got a handful of external spinning hard drives. I also use BackBlaze for online backup, but I'd like to organize my data storage more efficiently. Jim's likely the perfect coach to help me figure that out. I hope to do that sometime this year before I make version 4.0 my permanent home.

The new studio will also have a new white photo-video retractable background. You won't see it unless you pay attention to some of my video work, which never happens here at LTW. I want a clean background and I plan to keep the details of my space more confidential for the balance of 2023 (in my Elmer Fudd voice, "ssshhh, be berry, berry quiet").

The new studio will also feature two new Elgato Key Light Air desk lights. They'll serve as my work lights as well as video lights. I've not had good lighting...EVER. This will be a first. I may have to start wearing makeup like those fancy TV news anchormen.

Lots of changes for version 3.0. And I suspect 4.0 will have fewer changes like these, but it'll have a monumental change in location. So it's all exciting.

Everything is hard until it's easy.

Everything is slow until it's fast.

That's how this process has been for us. 2022 was a hard year. Well, to be more accurate, we've had a bit of tough go since 2018. I've shared enough here - for those who pay close attention - to satisfy the most curious. But personal difficulties aren't unique to us. You have them, too. This year began much like the past 5. Until things began to take a turn. When they turned, they really turned. At first, we were thinking it may not be real. Maybe we should be reluctant to think momentum is happening. It could be a trick. Turns out it wasn't a trick.

So we pushed hard and leaned into wisdom to figure out what our next steps should be.

That's when it went from good to better. For months I'd been casually keeping up with a possible opportunity. But I never thought of seizing it. I was just paying attention to see what might happen with it. I figured somebody would find it suitable, but time went on and things continued to grow even more enticing. More favorable for somebody willing to see it for what I saw it for - a pretty solid opportunity.

Yes, I'm talking about buying another place - the place where The Yellow Studio version 4.0 could be born. The goal was to sell where the original studio was, sit tight and see how the world might unfold between now and the end of the year. When it comes to real estate, my prophet skills are terrible. It's easy to predict what might happen. It's more difficult to put your own money on the line to back up your prediction. These are unprecedented times and I'm happy to report, I have no clue what might happen. But I'm a business guy. And I'm now an old business guy, which means I know what I like and I can spot a good deal for me. That doesn't mean it's a good deal for you.

So this property I'd been watching continued to get more attractive. Around the middle of the month it got so attractive I couldn't ignore it. Up to this point I hadn't shared with Rhonda my fascination with this place. So on a Saturday I told her about it. I asked her to do two things: a) find a reason to not take advantage of it, and b) ask yourself if you were lose it would you regret it?

I'd been doing both of those and I wasn't able to find a reason not to jump on it....

The story may date back earlier than 1917. President Reagan made it famous because it was among his favorite jokes. That's likely where I first heard it.

A couple had twin boys who were six years old. Worried that the boys had developed extreme personalities – one was a total pessimist, the other a total optimist – their parents took them to a psychiatrist.

First, the psychiatrist treated the pessimist. Trying to brighten his outlook, the psychiatrist took him to a room piled to the ceiling with brand-new toys. But instead of yelping with delight, the little boy burst into tears. “What’s the matter?” the psychiatrist asked, baffled. “Don’t you want to play with any of the toys?” “Yes,” the little boy bawled, “but if I did I’d only break them.”

Next, the psychiatrist treated the optimist. Trying to dampen his outlook, the psychiatrist took him to a room piled to the ceiling with horse manure. But instead of wrinkling his nose in disgust, the optimist emitted just the yelp of delight the psychiatrist had been hoping to hear from his brother, the pessimist. Then he clambered to the top of the pile, dropped to his knees, and began gleefully digging out scoop after scoop with his bare hands. “What do you think you’re doing?” the psychiatrist asked, just as baffled by the optimist as he had been by the pessimist. “With all this manure,” the little boy replied, beaming, “there must be a pony in here somewhere!”

With all this manure, there must be a pony in here somewhere!

Dr. Martin Seligman is the Fox Leadership Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1991 he published a book, Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life. As the dad of two elementary school-age kids who were fast approaching junior high, I was particularly interested in seeing if I could help my children learn optimism. Self-talk was a pretty active conversation with my kids because I understood that their futures would be greatly impacted by the messages they told themselves. The book had a chapter about teaching kids to be more optimistic and included an assessment you could give them. I had my kids take the little quiz to display their level of optimism. Turns out they weren't overly optimistic, but nor were they overly pessimistic.

The whole notion of learning optimism stuck with me. Seligman contrasted learning optimism with learning helplessness, the belief that we're incapable of changing our circumstances. Mostly, we think of it as having a victim mentality, but I grew increasingly fond of Seligman's term, helplessness. It seemed more insidious and made me think more people would likely disapprove of admitting helplessness when they might embrace being a victim.

As a dad I spent a lot of time coaching my kids to tell themselves positive messages. That little engine that could may have been an early childhood development story, but it's true no matter our age.

“Think you can, think you can’t; either way you’ll be right.”  -Henry Ford

Many of us have heard this all our lives, but that doesn't mean we've mastered doing it. Frequently there's a big gap between what we know and what we do. The challenge is to control our thinking. Experience has taught me that for many of us, job one is to learn we can control our thinking because it's easy to think we're simply stuck with our thoughts. "We are who we are," is the refrain of resignation. It's as though we're unable to grow, improve and change to develop into a better version of ourselves.

The twin boys in President Regan's favorite joke were predisposed - one toward pessimism and the other toward optimism. We're amused at the behavior of both of them. Maybe you're thinking that both of them reacted ridiculously. Maybe they did, but those viewpoints had a direct impact on what each of them did. They both took action based on how they viewed the situation.

One, the pessimist, embraced misery and suffering. Helplessness was the chosen path. I've never found any good reason or outcome associated with helplessness.

The other, the optimist, embraced elevated expectations even in the face of apparent negativity. And again, I've never found any good reason or outcome that makes his viewpoint counterproductive. The only response people offer as a downside of optimism is, "You'll be disappointed." I laugh out loud and tell them, "We're going to be disappointed anyway! So how does optimism hurt us?"

Listen, learning optimism isn't about avoiding disappointment. It's not about chasing a perfect life where everything goes exactly as we want. It's really about something much more important.

Responsibility.

Accountability. 

Pessimism is about embracing helplessness. It's about excuse-making. It's about seeing ourselves as helpless victims unable to do anything to improve our circumstances.

Clients regularly tell me, "Well, when you put it like that..."

How else would you put it?

I'm sitting across a CEO, business owner. He's rehearsing a possible market move when he mutters, "That won't likely pan out." I stop him and ask, "Why not?"

He gives me a litany of reasons why it's likely going to fail. So I ask, "Why might it work?"

He gives me an equal number (maybe more) reasons why it could likely succeed.

Then he stops and says, "I see what you did there." And I said, "Good. I didn't want to have to explain it again." We chuckled.

High performers aren't immune from bouts of pessimism. We never conquer our mind. It's a constant act of courage to get a grip on our thoughts. But it's the most profitable work we can do.

You Find What You're Looking For

Some things are easy to spot and find. I was the proud owner of a Phoenix Yellow 2000 Acura Type R Integra. I easily saw the few other yellow Type R's on the road. In fact, I more easily spotted all yellow cars because that's what I was driving. In similar fashion, it's easy to spot opportunities when that's what you're looking for. Or, it's easy to spot challenges and difficulties when that's what you're looking for. Just like it's easy to be angry, disgruntled or filled with blame when those viewpoints dominate your thoughts. We become what we constantly think about - and how we think about it. All the more reason for to be cautious and carefully guard our thoughts.

Can we change how we think?

Of course. We've all done it many times. We've changed our minds more times than we can count. It's not always provoked by external influence either. Sometimes we just altered our decision. We choose something different. Sometimes I feel like regular mustard, sometimes I want brown spicy mustard and sometimes I want honey mustard. It's not always something so insignificant, but it's often not something that important either. "Where do you want to go eat?" "Do you want the green shirt or the blue one?" "What do you want to drink?" Life is filled with lots of daily decisions that vary depending on our mood or preference in that moment.

Those changes in our mind don't usually have anything to do with optimism.

Optimism is...

hopefulness and confidence about the future or the successful outcome of something

Mustard. Dining choices. Color selections. Those aren't choices made with hopefulness or hopelessness. They're just whatever we want at the time.

Weightier things - like relationships, careers, finances, and other activities that define our lives - tend to be determined by our outlook, our approach and how we see the world. And our place in it.

I'll bet you, or somebody you know, frequently say things to demonstrate how unlucky they feel they are. I understand why people who feel just the opposite probably just keep quiet about it. It'd sound like bragging, but I do know people who - from where I'm looking - appear to have a Midas touch. Remarkably, they're not the brightest or the best, but they sure do seem to find success in most everything they attempt.

Years of looking at folks like that has shown me a few things.

These folks expect to succeed. They don't ever begin something thinking it'll fail. In fact, they don't even consider it as a possibility. That doesn't mean it's impossible. It just means they don't give it any space in their brain. They make their first step and every step after that with the assumption that it'll work.

These folks have an unabashed zest for promoting their work. They have no reservations about shouting to the world that their pursuit is worth supporting.

They don't let challenges or setbacks determine the final outcome. They have a resilience forged in their optimism that they'll figure this out. The challenge is merely a blip to be dealt with. And quickly. Challenges are not roadblocks, but speed bumps that slow down their progress. It's often humorous to me how they get angry at challenges, not discouraged. It's a "how dare you slow me down?" spirit.

They have no reservations about changing their mind. If success isn't quite what they were aiming for, they'll pull the plug without fear. If the success is wonderful, they may find a great exit so they can get on with their next conquest. Most don't start with this in mind, but they quickly adapt because they don't get hung up about changing their mind.

Confidence plays a big role. Confidence in what? Confidence in our own competence. It doesn't mean we have to be the smartest. It just means we have to be confident in our abilities, skills and whatever else we've got to accomplish this thing. Or to figure it out. In what else would we be confident?

Optimism isn't based on being world-class. If that were the case, then only a very select few would be able to practice it. It's based on our belief in ourselves, but that seems rather self-centered so there must be more to it. Or is there?

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We're closing in on saying goodbye to The Yellow Studio version 2.0. It's where every podcast episode I've ever produced (other than a few field recordings) was recorded. But I'm looking forward to the next chapter, The Yellow Studio version 3.0.

Lots of people want more money, but they don't necessarily have any specific thing they want to do with it. They just think having more of it will make them happy. Or maybe they do know what they want - or think they do. A nicer house. A new car. Exotic vacations. Fancier restaurants to frequent.

Many people want more recognition, but they don't know why. They envy famous people. They imagine what life might be like hearing applause or being chased for an autograph.

Everybody wants something. Everybody wants many somethings. We all want a lot of things.

Does that speak to our lack or our lack of gratitude? Or neither? Maybe it just speaks to our discontentment with whatever the status quo is. Warren Buffett is worth $87 billion, but he's still working every day to achieve and amass more. And he's giving away 99% of it so he's not doing it to lavish anything on himself. Reports claim he lives a fairly modest lifestyle. Ridiculously modest by the standards you'd expect of somebody with his income. So why does he want more?

Why do you want more?

Because you don't yet have it. And when you get it, it won't be enough. Never is.

I'm gonna start by using LTW as a case study.

Leaning Toward Wisdom kinda sorta officially began on Tuesday, October 30, 2001, as a blog. But I was posting content online beginning in the fall of 1996 and using the moniker, "Leaning Toward Wisdom." It was all done in HTML and the domain name wasn't LTW. This was before I was domain name savvy. Proved by the fact that I didn't register my own name domain until December 1999. It would be February 2005 before I'd snag LTW. I'm a slow learner.

Why did I want to start journaling (we didn't call it blogging at the beginning) under the guise of LTW? I was approaching my 40th birthday when I began to chronicle things. Random things. I was all over the board. No focus. Just a bunch of scatter-shooting of thoughts, opinions and takes on whatever was on my mind. I had two kids in high school with my oldest having already turned 16.

I can't remember why I wanted to do it at the very beginning. Maybe it's because the next year I would turn 40. Maybe it's because I could sense the high school days of my kids wasn't going to last more than a couple of more years. I was operating a retail company and putting in the typical long hours required of running any multi-million dollar enterprise. Maybe the journaling was therapeutic. I'm certain it was, but I'm old now and can't really remember all the details of the beginning. Give me a break. The Internet was young and so was I (reasonably so).

Within a year I had put an audio file on my HTML site. No, it wasn't podcasting. We didn't yet know what that was. Keep in mind, Apple iTunes was launched on January 9, 2001. It would be about 3 years before the term podcasting would enter in 2004. But I do remember hearing about and reading about audio blogging. That's what prompted some of my first audio files going up on my horrible website. Hard drive space was hard to come by, and drives were expensive...so no, I do not have those original files. When I abandoned that original website - which I can't remember what it was because I didn't keep any of those original sites - all the content went away. Probably a blessing. I'm sure the stuff was dreadful.

But the point is the question - why did I want what I wanted?

Expression? Brain dumping? Venting? Chronicling?

I suppose all those things were on my mind. I can tell you what was NOT on my mind. Building an audience. Only in my business endeavors did I really want to do that (for obvious reasons). Fast forward to the beginning of 2005 and I was much clearer in what I wanted. I registered the LTW domain name and started the podcast. Wordpress wasn't commonplace, but it was around. I found a local guy who did freelance web work on something called Expression Engine. It was a CMS like Wordpress, but it was on the scene at least 2 years before Wordpress. I think I spent a few hundred bucks to have the guy design me a site because I knew nothing about CMS and I wasn't interested in continuing the old HTML strategy. I was using Blogger at this point and I had been really regular in using it, linking it to my ugly long-winded URL where I had created an ugly HTML site.

I liked the design the guy gave me, but my blogging and audio blogging slowed to a crawl after I got the design in place. I was busy with work and family. I just didn't have time to figure out how to pilot this stupid new web-based software. The site began to grow moss, weeds, and thorns. I had so wanted a new, snazzy design --- or thought I did. Instead, I found myself reverting back to the analog world where I was writing in my notebooks.

Why did I want a new, cool design? Because I thought it would have the opposite effect. I thought if I had a site that was more captivating to ME, that I'd create more content. I still subscribe to that idea. In fact, whenever friends ask me for a bit of web help (no, I’m not a designer), I urge them to get a site that's not perfect, but one they're reasonably proud of --- because they'll be spending more time looking at it than anybody else. And in my experience, especially for folks just starting out with their first site, if people like their site they'll spend more time pumping out content. It's like the photographic evidence of our first child. We capture everything. By the time the second kid rolls in, we're lucky if we pay much attention to all the small moments.

So I know some of the why's, but not all of them. But I do know the important ones, I think. Mostly, by the time I was really approaching LTW with more strategic intention, I only cared about one thing. Chronicling ideas for my kids. By now I was 45 and my oldest child was 22. That's very different than being 39 with an oldest child who is 16. And some important things had happened in those intervening years, too. I was about 5 years into a new role of leadership at church. I was still running a retailing company and I was pushing as hard as ever professionally. I've never been accused of lacking drive. ;)

But something was happening. The church work was taking priority. My kids were nearing the end of their college careers. I knew what was likely to happen next. Marriage. Launching their own careers and lives. And I knew we were close to emptying the nest. It wasn't a mid-life crisis. I don't feel I've ever experienced that. Mostly because it feels like every phase of my life has experienced some degree of "crisis." :D

Mortality is ever present. I'm weird. I get it. I think about subjects that depress others. Like death. It's inevitable. Yours, too. (Sorry, did that come as a surprise?) ;)

But it started with a more positive, although for me depressing thought (because of what might have been) --- what if our great grandparents had been able to chronicle their lives? How cool would that be? But how sad, or angry, might you be if the technology had been available to your grandparents and they didn't do it?

I was having these thoughts before the mobile revolution. Before everybody's cell phone contained a great camera and mic. I was thinking like this when podcasting was harder, but totally doable - even for a non-techie.

And I'm a communicator. So it was deeper than an urge. It was more of a "I gotta do this" kind of a thing. So I did. Mostly to capture some things for my now grown up kids. Neither of them was married when I started. Rhonda and I now have 5 grandkids - four boys and one girl. What began as a project mostly for my kids (and my wife, only in that when I'm gone - yes, that's a metaphor for being DEAD) has now grown to expand 5 grandkids.

Along the way, you joined me somehow. I recruited you. Coerced you. Bribed you. Begged you. Or you naturally found LTW so entertaining, compelling, or disturbing that you couldn't resist. Well, whatever the reason --- I'm thankful. And appreciative. Thank you!

I knew what I wanted when I began. It's changed a bit, but only because the tribe - my tribe - has increased. But I was clear at the outset why I was doing it. And Simon Sinek has made a career of being the guy most people think invented the one-word question, "Why?" It's a great question and a better answer. I know my why with LTW.

I've known all along why I wanted to produce LTW. Like that Westie dog attacking that ice cream cone (the graphic for today's show), I was clear about the reward. For myself. It was an entirely selfish endeavor. I wanted to pass on what I wanted to pass on. I didn't ask my kids about it. Rhonda and I have never talked about it. Truth is, I've never asked any of them if they've ever listened to a single episode. I rather doubt they have. And that's fine. I understand it. But I also know how people are when somebody dies. Photos, notes, and possessions that prior held not much meaning become very important. So it's likely to go with LTW and that's perfectly fine. Probably as it should be.

Like I said, there are many older folks I once knew - and many more I never was able to meet because they died before my birth (or my ability to remember) - who I wish I could hear speak. That thought of a grandfather or great grandfather (or mother) recording some thoughts on audio or video fascinates me. What a gift it would be, right? LTW is my gift to my family. You're crashing our party and that's cool.

Most people think about what they want in terms of jobs, incomes, and possessions. Increasingly, the younger generation is thinking in terms of experiences, too. But so do some older folks who love to travel. We want what we want....

I leave a client's office after a normal, but intense 2-hour conversation. These are common conversations for me. Twice, during the course of a few hours, the client grows visibly emotional. I love these moments because it means we're speaking to issues of the heart. These are the things that really matter.

As I walk to my car, leaving the client's office building, I'm thinking about podcasting, co-hosts, having guests and engaging in conversations. But mostly, I'm thinking about two words: compassion and leadership. Both of which are defined in my mind (at least in part) as "a focus on others."

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