Genuine Insights

BEFORE YOU DIE

Three months ago I met a Fat Brain named Ben Nemtin on a shuttle bus heading to Lake Tahoe for a Summit Series gathering. I was pleasantly surprised by a question he asked me only seconds after sitting down beside me and introducing himself.

“So what do you want to do before you die?”

Never a fan of small talk, I smiled at this question and instead of answering, I asked him if he had an idea of what he would like to do in his lifetime.

“Well, I’ve already accomplished 80 of 100 things I want to do before I die,” he answered.

This wasn’t any ordinary fellow sitting next to me. This was a Practical Genius who had created a list of 100 mutual lifelong dreams with a group of friends, including Jonnie Penn, Dave Lingwood, and Duncan Penn. Wanting more of out life than what college was offering them, they hit the road in a rented Winnebago and began crossing items off their list and helping strangers achieve their dreams at the same time.

Their epic six-year adventure eventually landed them a show on MTV and as of today, they have completed 80 items on their list, including playing basketball with President Obama and delivering a baby. Especially exciting is their most recent accomplishment, #19 on their list: “Write a bestselling book.”

What Do You Want to Do Before You Die? published on March 27th by Artisan Books. Ben sent me a copy and I soaked it up in one sitting. It’s vibrant, hyper-visual, and is full of beautiful artwork created by Kevin Brainard. And the best part is instead of just writing about their own accomplishments, which they could easily have done, they included many chosen from tens of thousands of submission answers to the question: “What do you want to before you die?”

I cried when I read this entry: “Before I die I want to let my English teacher know that she saved my life.”

I want to ask you the same question: What do you want to do before you die?

Here’s #1 on my list: Before I die I want to positively impact the lives of a million people.

If many of us have mutual quests, dreams, and aspirations, maybe we can collaborate and accomplish them together.

What’s on your list?

Posted Apr 16, 2012 Tagged under: fat brains, goals and goal setting, motivation, reflection

Ladies, Future Proof your Career

The Game is Changing: Are You Ready to Take Control of Your Future?

Please join me at the 6th Annual Invent Your Future Conference March 22, 2012, at the Santa Clara Convention Center, where business experts and thought leaders will help you navigate the new workplace and learn game-changing strategies for success.

The Invent Your Future conference is a great opportunity for women and men to reach their full career potential, with over 12 educational sessions, outstanding networking opportunities and power-packed keynotes on Practical Genius, Adapting to the Future and Finding Your Way in a Wild New World.

Keynote speakers include Reid Hoffman*Co-Founder and Executive Chairman, LinkedIn, author, The Start-up of You – Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career, *Martha Beck author, Finding Your Way in a Wild New World: Reclaim Your True Nature to Create the Life You Want, and columnist, “O”, magazine and Gina Amaro Rudan author, Practical Genius, The Real Smarts You Need to Get Your Talents and Passions Working for You

Register

Individual and group registration for the one-day conference and tickets for the luncheon are available at http://www.inventyourfuture.com or call 408-554-4249.

Follow conference updates on Twitter @IYFconference or join us on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Posted Mar 18, 2012 Tagged under: events

Sundays with Abuela

This past week I lost the matriarch of my family and the guiding light of my life, my grandmother, Jovita Quintana, at 92. In her great honor, below are some of the important lessons I learned from our family’s shaman, with whom I spent every Sunday for 30 years.

My grandmother, my abuela, had the gift of being able to see into the near future and she also had the gift of healing. She used her gifts every day with her family and within her community across the South Bronx as a futurist, a healer, an adviser and a life coach. Some called her a witch doctor, a fortuneteller, and a spiritual master but I called her Wella, short for abuela, which is grandmother in Spanish. This is what she taught me:

1. Always walk through life with an open and forgiving heart.

She never held on to anger, resentment, or remorse and instead walked through life in a constant state of gratitude and inner peace.

2. Honor your ancestors and remember from whence you come.

She taught us to preserve our Puerto Rican heritage and culture and to walk with pride in our cultural identity.

3. Pray, meditate, and never waiver in your faith in God and his angels, who are always with us.

As a spiritualist with a third eye, she was in touch regularly with the spirit world and was a messenger with a great ability to read people, the environment, and circumstances.

4. Heal yourself before trying to heal others.

As the community healer, she maintained a healthy boundary around herself and reminded us to self-preserve if we were going to effective caring for others.

5. Success is a state of mind.

She was a big believer in “act as if” and always used to tell me: “Once you believe it, own it, and act as if it is so then will it be so.”

6. Protect your resources and save your money as if it were gold.

She saved more than she ever spent and provided for us in so many ways, which is incredible given that she was a poor woman who by saving turned pennies into quarters.

7. Create and honor rituals, which empower your mind, body, and spirit.

For example, she taught me to always offer flowers to the ocean before a swim as a thank you for nurturing our planet, which I have always done.

8. Share your stories and remember that storytelling is about teaching something new to whoever is listening.

Although she never learned to read or write, she was a master storyteller and I write about her in Practical Genius and celebrate what she taught me about storytelling.

9. The heart should always be in the driver’s seat and the brain is only a passenger.

She believed the heart was the guiding force in our lives and taught me to challenge the logical side of who I am. Today I lead from the heart and live out loud in full Technicolor because of her.

10. Helping others isn’t a nice thing to do, it’s a must thing to do.

As a servant leader, she helped hundreds maybe even thousands of people throughout her life and taught us that it is only through service that we will experience our full human potential.

Wella, I will miss you and I will forever carry forth your lessons, insights, and legacy. I know we will be reunited one day and until then I will look for you in my dreams for I know you will continue to speak with and through me.

Posted Mar 9, 2012 Tagged under: inspiration, motivation

How To Fail

How to Fail

There can be no progress without failure. If this is true, then why do so many of us avoid failure at all cost? Since launching my practice four years ago, I have learned how to fail forward and want to share a few insights to get you to test your ideas, take risks, and, yes, to learn how to fail. What I call “smart failure” is vital to the successful experience of starting a business, launching a new venture, or even stepping out of your comfort zone on a new project.

When disappointment from our mistakes knocks us down and keeps us down, we miss out on the huge opportunity to get up, revise the approach, and make it better. How can something be improved upon without recognizing and learning from the mistakes? Here are some of the best ways I know to learn how to put failure to work for you:

Put your ego in its place. The greatest barrier to taking risks and diving into new areas of work or exploration is the ego. The ego doesn’t want to look bad. The ego doesn’t want to be embarrassed and the ego falsely believes it can create genius without failure. Put your ego in the passenger seat, never in the driver’s seat. You must be humble enough to make mistakes—and smart enough to do something with what you’ve learned.

Test out your ideas. The only way to know whether an idea is a good one is to test it. Many of us are overflowing with big, exciting ideas and sometimes we’re so pumped up by our ideas that we dive into them without testing their potential and practicality first. Put down the triple latte, slow down, and test out your ideas in small ways. Some will fail and fall to the wayside, making room for those in which it’s worth investing yourself. Small, instructive failures build your knowledge and confidence, while big failures can knock you on your heels. When you learn to fail small, you’re better able to get up, dust yourself off, and get back on the horse when you fail big.

Be brave. Courage—inspirational, game-changing, needle-moving courage—can be expressed in the smallest, most subtle but deeply impactful ways. Practice being courageous every day, not the jumping-out-of-a-plane kind of courage but the courage it takes to try again. Having the guts to try again—and again and again, if necessary—is the secret weapon successful people have in common.

Remember what Woody Allen once said, “If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.”

Posted Feb 18, 2012 Tagged under: uncategorized

Summit Basecamp An Expedition that Blew My Mind and Opened My Heart

This weekend I had the humbling honor of participating in the Summit Series Basecamp in Squaw Valley, California. This highly curated gathering of trailblazing entrepreneurs, activists, scientists, thought leaders, educators, artists, authors, provocateurs, spiritual leaders, and three-dimensional creatives produced a spontaneous combustion of conversation, collaboration, and adventure the likes of which I have never seen. And the best part is the masterminds behind the whole thing are an awesome group of young Fat Brains who have literally broken the mold on the large group experience.

The only way I can come close to describing the experience is to say think TED meets Burning Man meets the X Games—a truly non-traditional, break-all-the-conference-rules happening that featured a group of hand-selected rock star innovators as speakers and participants.

Genius peaks

I don’t know if it was the altitude or just the collective consciousness doing what it does but the energy exchanged amongst us all was one of the most powerful, radiant energy fields I have experienced. It was as if we were all of one intuitive and intellectual organism, connected for three days by an invisible pulsing vibe that allowed us to rapidly build upon our ideas and passions together in a cross- disciplinary way that only innovation labs seem to be able to pull off.

Whether it was for the span of an elevator ride or a three-hour, deep-dive, fireside conversation, there was constant sharing, learning, and building upon the assets of each and every person who shared an exchange. Dialogues about new disruptive technologies, to a groundbreaking scientific discovery in health care, to an original perspective on the entrepreneurial mindset combined to suggest monumental potential for communities, businesses, and individuals across the globe.

Some talks were held in a Buckminster Fuller-style dome especially created for us to be immersed in multidimensional media experiences. Sessions were held around the clock, regardless of hour. There were 2:00 a.m. jam sessions and 4:00 a.m. yoga. There were group meals, lectures, mind-game activities, skiing, and extraordinary mediation sessions. If you didn’t want to shut down at all, you didn’t have to. It’s like Steve Jobs said: “Who needs an on and off switch?” Many grabbed a few hours of sleep here and there, but everyone seemed to be in a perpetual state of engagement.

I know that nothing should surprise me, but the unexpected beginning and end of most interactions was punctuated by a six-second hug. If you hug someone for six seconds, your brain releases oxytocin, which gives you a warm, nurturing, emotionally invested feeling. This practice was introduced at the start of day one and we spent the rest of our time together testing and confirming this finding, discovering it produced an invisible, unstoppable, round-the-clock connectivity of mind and heart for all of us. Astonishing.

As both subject and observer of my experience during Summit Basecamp, I couldn’t believe there were 750 incredible examples of what life, play, work, and ventures can look like when they exist at the intersection of heart and mind. This is what I teach, speak, and write about in my book, Practical Genius, and for the first time, I was in the midst of a tribe comprised entirely of practical geniuses living wholly in their genius zones. It felt like I was home at last.

This post is dedicated to the amazing masterminds of Summit Series and Summit Basecamp.

Posted Feb 2, 2012 Tagged under: creativity, entrepreneurship, events, fat brains, uncategorized