Genuine Insights

Rise Up!

What I love most about the spring isn’t Opening Day of baseball season or more daylight after a long winter. It’s the intoxicating smell of change the season brings to each of us every year. It’s strange, but I am seized with the desire to create, curate and change directions. And although starting something new or taking something in a completely new direction can be daunting on a good day, there is no better time for you to dare to activate your ideas because most of the planet is in creation mode.

Every time you see a sign of spring—from a flowering bulb bursting from the ground into bloom to a pile of little kids scrambling around on a ball field—make a point of acting upon your own possibilities for renewal with your business, projects, relationships, or creative endeavors.

What parts of your life are begging for renewal? And how—on a practical level—do you go about initiating this kind of change?

Innovative Café Time
From an entrepreneurial perspective, one way to get you started on this path is to fill your schedule with phone dates, hikes, museum jaunts, or café time with other interesting, successful, innovative entrepreneurs who you have been admiring from afar. I have seen many a venture start from a tea date of genius. Don’t think of this time as “social”—think of it as a boost, like a shot of B12, to stimulate your thinking and get your energies flowing in sync with growth and renewal of the season.

Organizational Idea Retreat
For folks within large organizations, create a list of the most inspiring people across the organization and reach out via text, IM, email, or phone to schedule “an idea retreat. “ These are ideation sessions—off the record and intended only to give voice to new concepts, recommendations for change, or new directions to explore. Encourage colleagues to take that muzzle off and spring forward with ideas during these curated idea-sharing meetings. In an ideal world, the meeting would be “recorded” graphically by a visual artist. Nothing is a more inspirational reminder of the energy and excitement of collaborative ideation retreat than that.

Go Solo
If you are a quiet soul who would rather curl up and die then participate in an idea retreat, consider taking your imagination out for a walk. Change up your weekly routine and carve out time for your imagination to play, paint, doodle, explore, and experiment. Every good idea is born from the imagination and we sometimes neglect this beautiful space within our minds. Feed it this season, nurture it and be sure your creative sensibilities lead the journey.

Happy Spring, Tribe!

Posted Apr 17, 2013 Tagged under: creativity, entrepreneurship, ideas and innovation

The Paradox of Success


I have always believed that books are born in order to help change the world in a small way—or to change individual lives in a big way. The big surprise for me in the year since publishing, my book, Practical Genius, is how much I have changed, by far more than at any other time in my life.

What’s funny about goals, life dreams, and the crazy things that end up on our bucket lists is that when you set out to achieve these milestones you start off with a certain epic notion of what achieving them will feel like. In the end, though, you discover that you were way off on those expectations, which makes all the things that do happen when you actualize your visions or realize your dreams, well, they’re kind of shocking.

When you set goals and visualize all that you would love to achieve for yourself, your business, or your community, the real trick is to be consciously open to the self-exploration and the emotional expansion that takes place as you reach your milestones.

Even as you read this you may be deep into a quest of your own, busting your tail to get closer to the finish line you’ve been imagining forever. Although it’s been the be-all and end-all of your thoughts and energy for so long, once you reach your destination you won’t necessarily realize that something has changed about your reality, about your sense of who and where you are in your own narrative. Prepare for that.

For me the change was a huge surprise. I set out to write something disruptive and inspirational to impact the lives of my readers and instead I disrupted and inspired myself! For those of us who are obsessed with our goals and who work so diligently toward the success we envision, in the end it’s not the success we achieve that changes things but rather it’s how the journey we take to achieve success changes who we are.

In the year since publishing Practical Genius, as I’ve traveled around talking about the book, I have learned that what really matters to my quest isn’t how many books are sold, but how many people’s eyes I look into and recognize the passion and curiosity and genius we share. It’s not been how many companies I can reach but how profoundly immersed in the heroic journey I myself have been.

I’m not the only person in the world to realize this, of course, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it so clearly: achievement in itself is somewhat anti-climatic. Yes, crossing the finish line is exhilarating and the destination is gorgeous but the learning, fulfillment, and pure pleasure of the heart and mind is in the burning climb. You know I’m all about the foreplay!

So in celebration of the one-year anniversary of Practical Genius I share with you my twist on “the journey is the reward” adage: The journey is ass-kicking hard, but it ends up being the greatest kick-ass asset of the whole experience.

So if you are in the thick of a big project or a new venture, focused like a laser on achieving what you set out to do, pay close attention to the process along the way. Observe your experience as closely as you can—it’s not just about smelling the roses, it’s also about feeling the prick of the thorns…and there are plenty of them! Once you cross the finish line, things take on a different perspective and suddenly you realize you’d give anything to be back in the learning, growing, problem-solving, innovating mode that got you to your goal.

Success is a paradox. The pursuit of success or accomplishing a lifelong goal pulls us along by the nose and creates in us a bullish determination that makes everyone else look like they’re sleeping by comparison. And yet when you finally have some hindsight on your experience, you see where the prize was all along. So accept this paradox for what it is and pay attention to your experience so that your takeaway is the whole of it, not just the final moment.

And finally, remember how energizing and inspiring the start of something can be. No matter where you are in your journey toward a goal, never be without a next objective or a new creative pursuit taking shape in your head. Your mind is never more fertile than when you’re in the thick of the chase, so there isn’t a better time to be seeding your next phase of learning and growing. You’ll know you’ve got it right when you realize that there are no big endings to your pursuits, only an ongoing series of fantastic beginnings that overlap and provide a constant source of growth and wisdom and fulfillment.

Posted Oct 15, 2012 Tagged under: business, entrepreneurship, goals and goal setting, reflection

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

The Curse of Being a High Achiever

This morning I sat down to devour my June issue of Harvard Business Review, heading straight for my favorite column, “Managing Yourself.” Imagine my delight to discover this month’s article, “The Paradox of Excellence.” Not only did it feature my favorite “P” word—Paradox—the article was written by a father—Thomas Delong, a professor at Harvard Business School—and his daughter, Sara DeLong, who is a psychiatrist in private practice in San Francisco. You don’t see that every day!.

If you are a High Achiever playing it safe, this one’s for you.

Read the rest of "The Curse of Being a High Achiever"

Posted Jun 2, 2011 Tagged under: entrepreneurship, goals and goal setting, motivation

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