Alchemy For Life: Recent Episodes
Author Mark Bradford
Well, hey there. Welcome back. It takes a lot to keep coming back like this. And that’s actually what we’re going to talk about today. So, let me ask you this to hook you in the beginning. So, is there something that you do that you are kind of keeping tally on? Like it’s been X amount of days that you’ve done this. Like you go on a diet or you quit smoking or you’re trying to give up a a habit or you’re trying to develop a good habit where you say, look, I’ve gone to the gym, you know, every other day for the last month? I’ve kept my desk at work, really tidy, I keep my email box under X amount of emails and if you do your crazy, that’s just I don’t know how you do that.
How Modern Apps and Games Hook Our BrainsOr maybe your desire to keep a streak going is basically relegated to games. Maybe you have a game you, I don’t know, Candy Crush or one of those things, you kids are playing on your phones. You know what I mean. You may have some sort of game that you’re maintaining a streak. Or even you’re using a a language program that says, good job, you’ve maintained your streak. There’s a specific psychology to streaks and maintaining one, just like there is a specific psychology to collecting things. And many companies and games worth billions of dollars capitalize on those two facets of our psychology.
Building an App and Breaking a 221-Day StreakI know this because I’m attempting to do the same on the software that I created called Checkmark, which is basically a to-do list that capitalizes on you maintaining a streak of doing at least one thing each day. And then I capitalize on the psychology of collecting things by offering you collectible badges for accomplishments, like you check off something really late at night so now you get the Night Owl badge and stuff like that. I am not bringing this up in any way to try to get you to try Checkmark. I’m bringing this up because I failed miserably.
So, I was maintaining a streak, and again, a streak is simply you check at least one thing off every day, and I had to write all this complex stuff to track that properly and so forth, and you would get a little flame on the top of your screen that would count how many days you were maintaining a streak. So if every day for the last week you checked at least one thing off, now you’re at seven, and the next day is eight, and nine, and ten. But if you get through the entire day tomorrow and forget to check something off, boom, your streak resets to zero. Well, I maintained a streak of 221 days, and then one day, I lost it.
The Shift From Changing Behavior to Just Logging ItI was I was I I was a little taken aback because I had I had accomplished two of the things on there, but I simply hadn’t open it up and checked them off. And having the power to go and manipulate databases would have allowed me to just say, oh, come on, Mark, here you go. But I didn’t. I thought, I’m going to be just like the other users of it and take my lumps because that’s the way this should work. And the interesting thing is it sort of changed me. It sort of changed my concept of how I used it.
Because I was checking things off partially because I wanted to check something off. And you know, that’s a little bit of your old dopamine hit. But after I got through that loss, I kinda didn’t care about maintaining a streak anymore. I still cared about checking things off, I still cared about being productive, but I didn’t care if for some reason I didn’t check it off. Now, I had already had a very avid user of this who sang the praises to me and had a pretty complex professional life who had told me that he doesn’t care about streaks. He never did. And I had talked to him about streaks and he had like a seven-day streak one one time and that was it, he never got past that, and it was just because of the way he used it.
So now I was kinda in this mindset where a streak didn’t really matter. Did losing my streak change my desire to get things done? No. But it sort of changed my relationship with the way I recorded it. So the streak wasn’t propelling me to make sure I was productive. The streak was propelling me to make sure I recorded it. That’s a big difference.
Two Completely Different Ways to Look at a To-Do ListAnd upon reflection, it makes me think about people, including myself, who sometimes do things, rather elaborate, enormous, productive things, and don’t really check it off. Meaning, they don’t really write it down, they don’t really think about it. One day, they’ll just become super productive. They’ll get all the yard work done, they’ll get a bunch of projects done, they’ll get a bunch of stuff done. And they won’t even think about it. It’s not like they had, hey, I had a honey-do list for myself or or or for my wife or what have you, and I got all this stuff done and I was finally able to check that off. They mentally checked it off because now they knew they had needed to do it anymore, but they didn’t do it so that they could check it off.
Do you understand the nuance there? One’s one’s the reverse of the other. One of them says, I have the thing to do, I better go do that so that it’s not on this list anymore. And the other one is, I have a thing to do, I’m going to do it. Oh, now that I did it, it’s not on the list. Does that even make any sense? I hope it does.
What Is Your Productivity Personality?Understanding nuance of what I just said can help you understand the nuance of your productivity personality. Oh, I just made that up and I’m gonna write that down. Yes, it’ll be the next book. I’m kidding. But if you understand your productivity personality, it can help you to well motivate yourself, right? I mean, when it comes to certain things, and you know, we can go back to my book Because about monsters and unicorns and how they’re always there motivating you. But in this case, I’m just saying the simple motivation of to be or not to be, to do or not to do.
Because the former treats the, well, let me say it this way: the former makes you treat yourself like a second person, like a third, like a third person almost, and the latter just shoves you into the driver’s seat and says, I’m just going to do this. And let me explain what that means. So the former is saying, hey, future Mark, do this thing. I have a list I want you to do. So you’re sort of like two people. I gotta make myself do this, I’m lazy, I’m going to do this, okay, I’m setting myself up for this. And the other one just says, okay, I’m in control, I’m cognitive, what do I need to do? I’m just going to do this. And yeah, I’m not writing it down somewhere, I’m not checking it off, I just need to do this.
So, the latter is more present in the moment, but the former is more of a planner. It’s more logistics. And as you can imagine, both of these have strengths and weaknesses. And it’s no shock that you may flip between these. If you stick to one of these too long, it may cause some issues for you. You you may even have a spouse that says, you know, you don’t have to constantly be planning stuff, can we just figure out what we’re going to do tomorrow? Well, let’s write it down today. Oh no, I don’t want to write it down today, honey. Let’s can we play it by ear? Oh, I don’t like playing things by ear. Well, then you’re the former. You are, you know, your productivity personality is one that says, I need to have my checkmarks here.
If you’re more of the latter, then you’re somebody who feels constrained by that sort of thing. You may even feel constrained by your job. You may even bump into things when it comes to procedure manuals and things like that because you’re like, well no, I’ll know what to do when I get there. You see how that sounds just as dangerous as the other one, and that’s why you sometimes have to flip back and forth based on a case-by-case basis.
When Logistics Clash With Real LifeSo, what do we do? Now that we’re in the awareness portion of the podcast, well, just be aware of this and figure out which one you are, and if it’s situational, and understand the benefits of either. I think if it, I think if it helps, there are a lot of people who spend their week being the former, meaning they’re in planning phase, and then for the weekend, they’re like, oh, it’s Saturday, I’m just not going to think. Or they save all that up and they go on their vacation.
And unfortunately, they may be married to a spouse that wants to plan vacation, that wants to say, every single day we’re going to get up at seven and we’re going to do this and this and this and this and this. And if they say, well, I’m on vacation, that may not land very well with their spouse. You’re on vacation and now you just want to waste it laying around? The the person isn’t laying around. The person is now living in the moment that they are not necessarily allowed to live in during the week because they are busy trading their time and energy so that they can bring resources home and put food on the table.
I hope this made a lot of sense. I hope my failure has allowed you to understand something. I’ll be happy to get right on that and continue to do so. So, take care of yourself, know that you are important, and I appreciate every person who listens to this. Thank you.
The Absence of Something is Not NothingWell. Hey there. Welcome back. Let me start this out by being poetic. The absence of something is not nothing. The absence of everything is not nothing. And no, I’m not quoting some famous poet or one of my favorites, like Nietzsche and so forth. That’s just something I am saying right now. It’s something that I realized.
If you’re familiar with the sword and the sunflower and the origin story of that, you know that it came about magically, abruptly, one day from a walk in a cemetery in which my mind was unusually clear. And when I mean clear, it felt like it was, for all intents and purposes, empty. It was the absence of something. In fact, it was the absence of anything and everything. It was just there.
An Overthinking WorldAnd as I’ve said, in talks and so forth, if you are someone who overthinks or feels like you have a certain version of ADHD or autism. You may find that having a quiet mind is darn near impossible, that a few moments in which you have a clear mind like this is, as I’ve said before, Christmas, multiple Christmases, a decade worth of Christmases. But the absence of something or anything or everything is still not nothing.
It’s a very nuanced, poetic point that I’m trying to make, and the only way to make it is in a nuanced, poetic way. There’s so much to what makes existence existence, and there’s so much to what makes us, us that even with nothing, there’s still something.
Mediums, Space, and LightSound travels in a medium, meaning sound travels through air. Sound travels through water. It does it at a different speed, but it still works. And sound travels through objects as well. And again, different speeds and so forth. Sound does not travel through space. There is no medium in space in which it can travel. However, light travels through all those mediums, although it has a difficult time with obviously solid objects, but it also travels in space. So what’s the medium for that? Well, I mean, you can dig deep into physics and they talk about the ether and so forth. But. According to light, there’s still something out in space where we think there’s nothing.
Non-Local ConsciousnessDo your thoughts go on when you don’t? Does your consciousness make it past the end of your physical life? Do you have a soul? Does a soul do that? Are you your soul? As I said, this is going to be a very poetic episode. In the episode called Non-local Consciousness, I make the case for our consciousness not being contained in our heads?
I mean, we think about that. We think, okay, our brain is where all this stuff happens. But my description of the brain and thought is quite different than perhaps what yours might be. And in non-local consciousness, I talk about that in detail. So in a way, what if our brain is the medium that thoughts need to travel from somewhere else? That’s not local. Oh boy, am I right.
The Elusiveness of “Nothing”If the absence of something, anything and everything is not nothing. Well, then what is it? Well, when I thought I had a completely clear mind and I was taking my walk. I didn’t cease to exist. I didn’t become brain dead. No one tried to harvest my organs. And you’re going to push back and say, well, Mark, that’s kind of silly. You obviously still had memories and reasoning. You were still breathing, you had autonomic functions. You were still sensing your environment. I’m sure you were thinking, no, I wasn’t thinking anything. Okay. But all that other stuff was happening. You had enough brain power to propel your body to make sure you weren’t in danger, to record the environment.
Well, yeah, that’s kind of what I’m saying. There’s so much missing to nothing that we just are incapable of experiencing it. Depending on who you listen to and what you subscribe to. And I don’t mean a podcast, even though you should. You may feel that even after you pass away, there’s still not nothing. There never has been, and there never will be nothing for you. You’ll always be part of something. It seems like nothing is as elusive as true love. It’s as undefinable in a way.
A Moment to ReflectYou might want to pause right now and reflect on what I’m saying before I get to the next segment. No, really like pause it.
Okay. Welcome back. If you paused it, and why do you care? Well, first of all, it’s fascinating to think about, isn’t it? I mean, you know, it’s one thing to deal with time, energy and resources and plan and so forth, but it’s another thing to think about, oh, I don’t know the entirety of existence. But on a more practical standpoint, have you ever approached nothing as far as at least thoughts? I mean, people say they’re, you know, they’re staring off into space. They’re daydreaming. You drive for a while and seven miles later you’re like, oh, I guess I was on autopilot. But in those cases, invariably it’s because your thoughts were elsewhere. They weren’t non-existent.
Meditation as Catch and Release and the 3 AM Wake-Up CallYou want to talk about meditation? Have you already thought of that while I was saying this? Meditation for some people is the the absence of thoughts. And there are people who are argue and say, well, no, it isn’t. It’s it’s a serenity, it’s something else. And there are some books that will say it’s sort of a catch and release. And I think that’s the easiest way to get into meditation is to consider it almost like fishing. So clearing your mind and when a thought comes in, you don’t resist it and push at it. You go, okay, that’s fine, it’s here. And then you just sort of release it like a little fish swam into your empty stream.
And in my episode, the three a m wake up call, you’ll find something similar in which you have thoughts that are telling you to get out of bed because the toilet was running a little longer than it should have. And oh my God, the house is flooded and you have to write your boss at two in the morning, even though he’s not going to read your email until two p m and you go, okay, thank you. That’s that’s that’s helpful. That’s noted. I’m going to go to sleep now. And you find that that really quells the voices because they feel validated, kind of like children pulling on your shorts and saying, mom, mom, mom, mom.
The Two Fountains: Choosing Creativity Over FearIf you have attempted to meditate or you do meditate, you may find that you may get to know yourself a little bit better because you’ll know where some of those errant thoughts are coming from. You’ll know where that constant fountain of thinking is. And, and for me, there’s a big difference between a constant fountain of terror and fear and being afraid of what the next day brings you, and how you’re going to handle things, or how a difficult person in your life is going to respond to something, especially if you’re forced to work with them, versus a fountain of creative thoughts and wonderment. And how does that work? And I wonder what that’s like.
And perhaps that’s the lesson here. perhaps that’s the direction at the end of this episode is that even though we really don’t ever get to experience the nothing on the way there, we can at least be more in touch with ourselves and which fountain we prefer, because there’s far more of the former the fountain of terror, the fountain of fear. Then there is of the latter, the fountain of creativity and wonderment. And if you can get close to the nothing and pull back, perhaps that’s when you can really lend a hand to that latter fountain and just enjoy it. I know I tried to do that, I fail miserably sometimes, but I do try to do that.
Thanks for listening, as always. Take care.
Introduction: The Line Between Learning and StealingWell, hey there. Welcome back. And I really mean that. I’m really glad you’re here. I’m really glad that you enjoy my vast library of information. In fact, I want you to do whatever you want with it. If you can accomplish something or understand something, in fact, there’s really no limit to what I would like you to do with the information.
Except for one thing. And that one thing is steal it.
What Actually Constitutes Stealing in the Age of AI?And you might say, well, Mark, it’s free. You’re already giving it away for a steal. Oh, I gotcha there. That was clever. Here’s the thing. If you use the information for yourself, that’s not stealing. If you use the information to improve something or to learn, or if it acts as a springboard in which you can say, hey, Mark mentioned that thing, I’m going to go look it up further and go do a, you know, go dive right into that, that’s not stealing.
However, if you essentially cut and paste my information into AI and then post the result as your own, that’s stealing.
The Unique Stamp of a Creator: Why Authenticity MattersNow you could say, well, look, lots of people come up with information relatively at the same time, right? So someone could come up with something around the same time someone else does, or there might be 20 people posting about the same time. Well, that’s fine, of course. If all 20 people did their research and due diligence, you’re going to see the flavor of that person on each post. I would like to think that each and every post that I make, each and every podcast episode, every book that I write has my stamp on it. It has my signature. You know that Mark Bradford wrote that.
And for it to have that signature, there’s going to be good and bad, right? You may find that these episodes are rather dense and you would like someone to talk a little slower. You might also enjoy the fact that I have a format of sort of discover, raise awareness, and then kind of give you a tangible thing to take away.
AI Generation vs. Iterative Creation: Putting Heart into the WorkBut it’s me. And I do this stuff from scratch. I mean, let’s talk about AI a little bit. Even when I generate some images, I spend way too much time on what is basically an image that people on Spotify and YouTube and iTunes probably aren’t going to see. And yet I still spend all of that time. And when I generate an image, I don’t just say, hey, give me an image of somebody doing this. No, I spend way too much time adjusting and iterating and iterating and iterating. And I did a podcast episode called Live Life Iteratively, and we talk about that there.
The truth is I put my heart and soul into these things. Ultimately, I want you to benefit from it. I want you to be wiser and smarter. I want you to have a spark because of something I said.
But when someone takes that, they take what you have written and they obviously put it through an AI slop machine only to repost it, that’s stealing. It’s a bunch of other things too. But it’s stealing.
The Impact of AI on Non-Creative ProfessionsIf you’re not in the creative space, you may either doubt what I’m saying, or you might think, well, I can’t really relate to that. But you can. Even if you’re not in the creative space, and I typically argue that everyone’s in that space, there are still things that are uniquely you. And those aren’t things that only you find at home. Those are things that manifest themselves in your job. And if you’re successful at what you do, part of that success is probably because you do it your way.
All of the fungible pursuits are still affected by this. Even if you’re in banking, or real estate, or dentistry, or sales, you’re still going to bring what is uniquely you to the table. It’s going to give you an advantage over other people, and it’s going to be something that people recognize you by.
Experience Equals Wisdom: The True Cost of DuplicationYou may sell something that is in no way remotely interesting to people, but you make a good living at it. And you’ve figured out a way to sell that. You’ve figured out a way to connect to other people, to potential clients, in a way that gives you a lot of success. And it was probably done with blood, sweat, and tears. You probably had to figure this out after a while. And as I say, pain equals experience, and experience equals wisdom. So you have this wisdom that you painfully acquired.
If someone comes by and copies that, you may say, well, it was eventually going to get out. But if somebody copies that and says, hey, I’m unique in this way because I do this thing… You would then say, well, no, you’re not unique. Now you’re a duplicate because you just stole the thing that I do.
The Dirty Secret of AI Training Models and PiracyI’m not even talking about patents, trademarks, and copyrights. I’m talking about systems and things and ways of communicating, and ideas that people can come up with independently.
The age of AI brings with it a lot of ups and downs. In my opinion, a lot more downs than ups. And when people adopt technology, technology tends to just magnify something that they’re already experiencing.
How AI Amplifies Our Basic Instincts and DesiresIf someone’s a thrill seeker and they have a car, but they get a fast car, well, that’s going to amplify their seeking of that thrill in a way that’s pretty obvious. If someone’s desperately seeking status and attention, and AI comes along, well, it’s going to basically enable that. Like a drug dealer saying, hey, the drugs are now free, just click this button.
You’ve seen it before. You’ve seen the memes about the flyers. How every flyer looks the same. And they call them the “boomer AI flyers” because they are. Typically older people who have adopted AI and just marvel and are thrilled at the fact that they can type a few things into it and get a flyer. But the flyers all look the same.
The creative space has always been a difficult place to enforce ownership and rights. In fact, even when AI came along and was trained on books, do you think those books were paid for? A lot of them weren’t. The dirty secret of AI is that a lot of the books that main AIs were trained on were pirated.
Generating Art vs. Imitating Artists: An Ethical DistinctionLet me be introspective and objective. Now, as I’ve said, I use typically Midjourney and spend many hours, probably too many hours, generating and regenerating and adjusting images over and over and over again just so that I can get the proper image to invoke the proper emotion, at which time I then overlay all of my text and spend way too much time deciding on a stupid font, etc., etc. So I spend way too much work on that.
But I’ve generated an image. And those images are drawn from the works of artists. I could say, show me an image of two people shaking hands as if Van Gogh painted it. And it would do it. It would do it in such a way that would be fairly believable. Now, Van Gogh would never paint that, but now you’ve created an image as if you’re that person.
I don’t sell that image though. I don’t sell that image as if I created it. I generated it, but I didn’t create it.
There’s a vast difference between using that as a background, as an icon for one of my podcast episodes, and finding someone online, perhaps someone I know, and taking a picture of their painting, feeding it through Midjourney, and saying, make a painting just like this one. And then me posting it as if I did that.
Do you see the difference?
Actionable Advice: How to Avoid Becoming “AI Slop”And again, I can feel in a lot of your brains that you’re going, well, look, this just doesn’t affect me. I don’t care. But it does affect you. And again, if you’re not in what you think is a creative space, there are still aspects of what you do, your productivity and your output, that are going to be affected by AI. And if someone then uses that as a proxy, you’re going to be in trouble. You’re going to be without a job, and you’re going to fight tooth and nail to hang on to what makes you you. I’m telling you, it doesn’t feel good when that happens.
So this is the part in the episode where I tell you what to do, or I say what can we do, right? So what can you do? Well, we raised awareness of it, so be mindful of this. And if you’re mindful in a way that you weren’t before, you’re going to see in areas where people after a certain age post a lot of this, you’re going to see it. It’s all you’re going to see. All you’re going to see is this, as referred to as AI slop, over and over and over again.
Personally, you should avoid anything that decides it wants to take the place of your frontal lobe. And I did a podcast episode on that, and there’s an MIT study in which people don’t think for themselves. They just went, oh, okay, I’ll just ask the AI for that. Give me a bullet list of five reasons why blah, blah, blah. And now I’ll post that and shove that in people’s faces. And if someone asks that person the next day, what was your post about? They’d have no idea.
That’s not information. That’s not helping people. That’s static. That’s noise, and that’s garbage. And it’s not good for you.
Protecting Your Work: Takedown Notices and Platform StringencyYouTube is very stringent about takedown notices. People can post a notice and say, hey, this is my stuff. And then YouTube will come to that person who is the creator and say, okay, we’ve taken this down or we’ve demonetized it. And in some cases, when people are accused of this, it’s frustrating because they’ll be getting tens of thousands of views and the money that should be going to them goes to somewhere else.
But they take that stuff seriously. I have been tagged in both Spotify and YouTube about Alchemy. And it wasn’t hard to prove that I was here first and I and my specific kind of alchemy is different than what they were saying. They even have AI, here we go, they even have AI that randomly will spot stuff and say, hey, you’re infringing. So you also risk that.
Conclusion: Focus on Your Unique GiftI know it makes your head spin when you just want to eat your pancakes and you just want to go do your job. But I’m warning you that if you are someone who creates or someone who has a special way of doing something, and that’s everyone, you can be in danger of this happening to you. If you’re someone who does this sort of thing, know that there are consequences for doing it.
In a perfect world, I think each and every one of us has a gift. We have a gift and can bring something to other people, to groups, to civilization as a whole. We all have a gift. And focusing on that gift is what makes us happy and productive and who we are. Focusing on copying someone else’s gifts is just not a good idea.
Thank you as always. I appreciate you, and I appreciate you listening. And take care.
Introduction: Do I Have the Will to Go On?Do I even have the will to go on with this episode?
Well, hey there, welcome back. Do I even have the will to go on with this episode? Um, I do, but I also have something better.
The Willpower Battery: Why “Raw Dogging” Change FailsLet’s talk about that. If you’ve read my book Because… First of all, thank you. But if you haven’t, let me give you a refresher on something that’s really important. If you’ve ever tried to lose weight or make a change in your life and you’ve ever just tried to raw dog it, meaning you think, okay, I’m just going to use sheer force of will to do this. I’m going to stop eating so much, I’m going to shove myself into the gym, I’m going to change jobs, I’m going to be more tolerant with this, that, and the other thing.
And you’re like, hey, it works. But you’re also like, oh my god, I’m running out of… energy. Because willpower is a battery with finite energy. Well, fine, you say. I’m just going to increase that battery, right? Like you said Mark, if you repeat something, you can increase it. So I’ll just keep using more and more and more willpower.
Burning Out: The Hidden Danger of Relying Solely on WillpowerWell, that can create a really dangerous situation, first of all. So if you decided to go the pure willpower route, you would be doing what a lot of people do in their situations that they’re not happy with. They just say, I’m just going to focus harder and harder and harder. But the problem is if the problem or the change is something that requires an inordinate amount of energy, in other words, a huge amount of energy that perhaps you hadn’t planned on or even if you had planned on it, it’s a huge amount of energy that you simply may not have because you’re busy dealing with all the other things in your life.
But let’s just say you do it. You put all this effort into making this change and it’s working and that sort of delights you. But you’re like… I’m burning out, I have nothing left for me and my family, I’m crabby now, it’s starting to change me in ways that I don’t like, I’m starting to compensate for it, and so forth.
Monsters and Unicorns: The Subconscious Forces Controlling Your HabitsSee, everything that I’m describing are things that happen under the understanding of Because, the monsters and the unicorns. And what you’re simply doing is ignoring the monsters and unicorns in place. Well Mark, what should I do? you ask perhaps.
Well, that’s look to the monsters and unicorns first. And that’s what I do. And that’s what I do when someone works with me. It doesn’t mean we don’t use willpower, we use willpower in everything, it takes willpower to make a decision to go against your monsters and unicorns. If you say, look, I certainly enjoy eating, and I enjoy lots of eating, and I enjoy multiple eating sessions and and all that stuff, it takes willpower to say, oh, I want to give up that pleasure, I want to give up that comfort, right? Well, now you’re going against your unicorn.
Diagnosing Your Coping Mechanisms: Are You Protecting Yourself From Pain?Well, instead of taking it that way, you’re kind of doing it backwards. What you should be doing is examining the unicorn itself. Are you really deriving that much pleasure, or are you deriving pleasure from something else? Is it a certain avoidance that allows you to have the pleasure? Or maybe by eating a lot and too much and often and too fast and so and so forth… you’re being forced to do that because you have a monster that is protecting you from pain.
Maybe you believe that if you do all these things, these unhealthy eating habits, it will actually protect you from pain, even though it’s going to make you live shorter and make your life less happy.
The “Aha” Moment: Triggering Lasting Psychological ChangeAnd as soon as you have that realization, as soon as that hits home, now your monsters and unicorns have literally just altered in your system. Just that one sentence I just said. If you’re like, well yeah, oh, wait a second.
That’s when change happens. That’s when change happens in people, that’s when change happens in coaching. Because if you don’t do that, then it’s just cheerleading. Whether it’s you cheerleading yourself or someone else is being paid to cheerlead you. And I will tell you, I don’t get paid to cheerlead. I don’t want to get paid to cheerlead. I want to get paid to diagnose, to guide, and to help.
Self-Examination and the Unseen Programs Running Your LifeSo this was a fast one. We’re not even at five minutes and I already switched to the portion of the episode in which I say, okay, now we recognize this, what do we do? Boom, already gave you that.
Now, does everyone who is wildly successful or really successful at something go through this? Well, typically they’re not even aware of their monsters and unicorns, typically they just work. In fact, as I use in the case of Michael Phelps, he had both a monster and a unicorn for staying in the pool. He didn’t decide that, he didn’t consciously go, I would like to stay in this pool because it helps me with my ADHD. He just noticed that being in the pool helped him with his ADHD.
And the same thing happens in your life. We typically don’t do a lot of self-examination. Well, most people don’t. I do that all the time, which is why I come up with this, but… you typically don’t do that, you go through life with all these programs running and you think, okay, well I I don’t know, look, I don’t know, and we have control mechanisms in place, we have safeties in our psyche that prevent us typically from pulling apart the cover and poking around in all the wires and gears and things.
Understandably so, just like in a car, has a hood, it has caps, and has protective seals on lots of things, so does your psyche, for good reasons. And sometimes it’s not for such good reasons. You have childhood trauma or other kinds of trauma, you may have a protective shield around it because you’re not dealing with it. I don’t want to go there. Right? You have something that’s happened to you and you’re just not going there, which is why you don’t see the psychologist that people tell you to see. Or why you don’t even talk about something. Oh, that’s off limits with Bill. Don’t even go there. Right?
Moving Beyond Cheerleading: Why You Need a Safe System for TransformationWe all know we’ve encountered people like this. We all know we are people like this. If you work with a psychologist or a coach that has a system in place and puts you in a special place that allows you to feel comfortable enough to talk through things. And just being comfortable and talking about things isn’t enough, you have to have a system in place.
You can’t just be brought bare in front of a stranger and talk about your hopes, dreams, aspirations, and everything that hurts you. That’s going to hurt. And that’s going to be difficult. So you need to have something in place. You need to know, you need to tell yourself, hey, we’re going to be looking under this cover, but we’re going to do it gently, we’re going to do it with care and respect for ourselves.
Next Steps: Explore the Podcast Catalog and the ‘Because’ FrameworkYour first step in that, frankly, is to listen to podcast episodes like this. And I present my entire catalog of 300 plus episodes. And yes, I’ll stop saying that when we get to 400 plus episodes. But listen through them, listen through them in the 10 or 15 minutes it takes you to listen to them while you’re doing a chore, while you’re in the car… and just think. Think in the safety of your own mental space.
And then when you want to learn more, pick up a copy of Because. It’s not that expensive, it’s a short read, but it is packed with information and citations from other books, medical journals, and things like that. And you can always go down your own rabbit holes to make sure that I’m telling you what I say I’m telling you.
Finding Your Monsters and UnicornsBut I’ll tell you, the moment you discover a monster or a unicorn in place and you go, oh… wait a second. He doesn’t belong there. Sure, he has a useful function, but not there… that’s going to be your aha moment. And all of a sudden, you’ll want to know more, and all of a sudden you’ll want to find all the monsters and unicorns you can.
And if you want my help, all you have to do is reach out. You can go on my Calendly, which is a hard word to say, and schedule a 15-minute free appointment and we can have a nice chat about it and see if we’re a fit. And if not, just read some more books and do your due diligence.
Conclusion and ResourcesWow, this was fun. Thanks for listening as always. And as always, I have a tremendous amount of resources for you. Please, by all means, check out all my goodies. Go to alchemyforme, alchemyforlife, and markbradford.org. And take care of yourself, please. Thank you.
Thank you for listening as always, go to markbradford.org to see all my author related things, go to alchemyfor.life to see coaching, speaking, writing, and this podcast. And go to alchemyfor.me to get a copy of CheckMark™
The Stigma of Adult CuriosityYou know it’s okay to be curious. You don’t need me to tell you that… or or or do you?
Let’s think about this and we’re jumping right in. Let’s talk about curiosity and what it means to you. There have probably been a number of times in your life in which you either demonstrated curiosity or saw someone else being curious. And probably more than half the time, the person being curious was made to feel a little self-conscious about said curiosity.
We sometimes equate curiosity with being nosy. Putting your interests in a place that it doesn’t belong. You know, well, leave that alone. Someone else knows about that. It’s not part of my job. I don’t know. Look, I don’t know the big picture, right? Maybe there’s a reason they do that. I don’t know. Or that information isn’t available or it’s a company secret or it’s classified.
Like many things, we celebrate curiosity in children, but at some point, we don’t. At some point in someone’s developmental progress, we say, “Okay, here’s some attributes that really only stick to children.” As an adult, we don’t we don’t do that. And I think sometimes curiosity is one of those.
Spotting the Spark of Genuine InterestAs someone who’s given a few talks and regularly speaks up at networking events and public events, I can see curiosity from a distance. I see the sparkle in someone’s eyes. I see their face light up. And it not necessarily that I’m such a great orator, but that they’re curious about what I’m laying out. They think, “Wait a second. Okay, that’s interesting. What else? I want to hear more. They stand out to me at a distance.
In fact, at a recent event, I was giving a talk and one person in the audience provided all the motivation for the talk for me. It’s because her face just lit up the entire time I was talking. You could tell that she wanted to know more and was just eating up the stuff that I was saying. and eating up is her being curious and saying, “Give me more data. I’m open to it.” That’s a cool frame of mind to be in.
The Mental Energy Required to Stay CuriousWell, why aren’t we all in that frame of mind 24/7? Well, it’s exhausting. Anyone who says they experience ADHD knows that for a lot of people there’s a period of hyperfocus and then there’s a period of confusion and that if you are open to a tremendous amount of data then you are processing a tremendous amount of data. I myself know I know what safeguards and restrictions I have to put on because my brain wants to process all data coming in all the time. It wants to process the two conversations going around around me in the restaurant while I’m having the conversation I’m actually involved in. I have to turn that off.
And curiosity can do that to your brain. If you’re curious, you can say, “Well, why did you put that there? Why? Why is that this color? Why do you go that way? Why do you walk around the car that way? Why does this work this way? There’s a million questions. And again, as I said before, we praise children for these questions. And we chastise adults for the same.
It’s very easy to put your head down and say, “Okay, that’s not my business, not my problem. I have more than enough to deal with dealing with my stuff. I don’t have the mental energy to focus on something that’s not a concern, something I don’t get paid for, something I have no control over, and frankly, I don’t have an interest in. And that’s fine. That’s perfectly fine. But but don’t let your curiosity be diminished because of a stigma or because you think you’re not allowed to or it’s a waste of energy.
How Internal Questions Lead to Personal BreakthroughsHaving curiosity can lead you to entirely new hobbies and even a new career. And as I said in job, career or calling, you can be focused on your job but have an entirely different calling. Your internal curiosity, in other words, your curiosity about yourself, the way you react, the way your life is, can lead you to discover things that help other people. That is a lot of the drive of how I started writing experimental psychology books. I had and have questions about my own psychology which causes me to ask questions, research, distill, and disseminate. And hopefully it helps other people who have had the same questions.
Answering your own questions, not surprisingly, can help you answer other people’s questions and make you a better teacher. There are numerous examples of inventions and discoveries that were made by quote unquote normal people, quote unquote lay people, amateur astronomers, etc. that led to massive discoveries and and massive benefits for humanity because they were curious. They didn’t run into the stigma wall. They didn’t allow themselves to tell themselves that they were where they didn’t belong.
Setting Healthy Boundaries for Your InquiriesNow, on the flip side of that, obviously wandering into traffic and saying, “Hey, why are you guys going this way?” Or when there’s a an active arrest going on and walking right up to the officers and saying, “Hey, what’s going on over here? What what did this guy do?” Knocking on the doors that lead to the pilots while you are mid-flight or literally grabbing the steering wheel while you’re in an Uber might all be bad ideas. They are examples of perhaps when you should curtail your curiosity.
Now, there are versions of everything I just said that can be handled non-physically. You can still get answers via research, asking questions, and so forth. So, obviously, there are nuances to how you handle curiosity, but the takeaway from this is I encourage you to be curious. I encourage you to enjoy the youthful energy of curiosity and just give it a big hug when it opens its eyes every so often. That kind of thing can clarify your path, invigorate you, and kind of make you feel more alive. And I think if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re already someone that at least to a point understands that curiosity is important and you at least embrace some of it.
So, keep embracing, keep looking, have fun, and I’ll see you next time.
Well, hey there. Welcome back. Do you like music?
The Hidden Magic of Good MusicIt’s a silly question because everyone likes some form of music and sometimes when someone asks you, “What’s your favorite kind of music?” sometimes that’s really hard to answer. I recently went down yet another rabbit hole which I want to share with you. I wanted to know why certain songs and certain sounds made you feel genuine feelings. When I was writing the sword and the sunflower, I stumbled on a number of different pieces of music and one of them became the theme song for the heroine. So it came down to this question.
What makes a song likable?
What makes a good song a good song? What makes a song stick in your head?
And as it turns out, it’s predictability.
No, it can’t be that. That’s boring. No, not boring. Predictable.
Why Predictability Drives Great StorytellingLet’s switch gears to storytelling. What makes a good story a good story? Is it the subject matter? And I’m going to talk specifically about fiction here. Is it the subject matter? Is it the way it’s told? Is it uh-oh?
It’s predictability.
And again, you’re going to say, “No, I don’t want to read a predictable fiction story. Do I?” And there’s a part of your brain that’s going, “Well, wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on, hold on.
Let’s switch back to the music.
If something is too predictable, then it’s boring. We get the pattern and we’re done. We are pattern matching creatures. We sense patterns and things and we typically act on them. Sometimes we have other programs running in our brain that cause us to ignore a pattern and sometimes we get burned for ignoring that pattern. If you’re jumping rope or running, riding a skateboard, boxing, and countless other physical activities, there’s all a pattern that’s occurring. a pattern you are recognizing. And the more you can recognize this pattern, the more you can act on it and feel comfortable with it.
The Balance Between Pattern and ChaosBut obviously running for 10 or 20 minutes left, right, left, right, left, right, can’t possibly be the same as listening to music, right? But it is. When you listen to a song and you can predict what’s about to happen next, it gives you a certain level of comfort of security. you say, “Yeah, that’s how the beat is going in this song.”
But then when it does something slightly different that still makes sense, that gives us excitement. If it just did the same beat over and over again, droning on and on for 5 minutes, yes, it would be very boring. But when it takes some liberties, when it gets a little creative, and still maintains the pattern, that’s when it’s fun.
Too much predictability and it’s boring. Too much chaos and it’s simply chaos. You think it’s not worth your time. Well, this is just a bunch of random stuff. I don’t want to listen to this. This story goes all over the map. The characters do not respond the way that characters should respond. The author was crazy. The story is way too predictable. I knew exactly what’s go what was going to happen from the very beginning. It was I was just plotting through and just going through the motions. Those are the extremes that keep us from enjoying those forms of media.
Breaking the Pattern: Muscle and Diet ConfusionAnd even exercise is that way. You get fatigued with it. In fact, there’s a concept called muscle confusion that sort of counteracts what happens when you do the same thing over and over again. If you just run in a circle over and over again, your body goes, “Oh, wait. I’m getting this. I know what to do. This is easier now. I’m not getting anything out of it.” So, you have to break it up. So you have to have muscle confusion in the 4-hour body. Tim Ferrris talks about a sort of diet confusion in which you confuse your metabolism by not eating exactly the same things. Once a week you eat something crazy. You eat all the stuff that you were craving and it messes your system up to the point where your system goes, “Wait, I’m not going to adapt to this anymore. I’m not going to suddenly reduce my metabolism because I know what you’re going to eat.”
The Anticipation of the “Drop”But I know, I know you’re still thinking about the music, right? You’re still thinking, “No, I don’t like songs because they’re predictable.” But this is what makes them catchy because your brain says, “Yeah, it does that stuff I want. It does that stuff in the order that kind of makes sense in a really cool way.” I mean, we’re not just talking about a repeatable pattern of one, two. It could be 1 2 7 9 1 2 7 9 and here comes that nine. How many songs have you told someone, “Hey, no, no, no, listen. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Here’s where the drop happens. Wait, wait, wait. Here’s the chorus. Oh my god, I love that. Just, just wait for it. And someone doesn’t quite get the song because you went through the song a few times and your brain went, “Oh yeah, this is happening in that order. I know it’s going to happen now and this is cool.” And they’re not waiting. They they listen to a few notes of it. They go, “It’s just not for me.” And then maybe later they come to you and they go, “Yeah, it’s kind of a cool song.”
It’s the same thing with a story. In fact, an epic, a big giant book requires even more attention than a song that’s 3 minutes long where you start to read it and you say, “Okay, I’m getting what’s going on here. This is a slow burn. This is a book that moves in a certain direction and I have to pay attention to it.” or this is kind of a fast book and it’s going to be humorous, but there’s still going to be good points made. Jokes and parables typically take you down a journey and then there’s a sharp left turn at the end. Oh, it was this person the whole time. Now that makes sense now that I’ve read the whole story. Oh, I get it. Haha. That’s what makes it funny that it’s predictably a crazy 90° turn.
You need more convincing.
Structure and Predictability in Non-Fiction and PresentationsNon-fiction is the same way.
How many times have you gone to a presentation, someone does it for your networking group or for school or what have you, even your business, and you’re watching and you’re thinking, where is this going? I is this an important fact or is are we just building to the important fact? I can’t tell the difference between the major facts I should be writing down and just some anecdote that’s related to it. Are we are we half done? Like wait, what what really are we learning here? So, if you can’t predict what’s happening, and again, I know every time I use the word predict, you’re like, well, that means I already know it. No, you’re recognizing the pattern in place.
Do you want to talk about how that works in relationships too or are we covering enough bases here? Okay, fine. So, back to presentations.
If you can understand the segments of a presentation, okay, here’s a major fact and facts underneath it, which leads us to the next fact that we’re building up to, and the facts underneath it, which then builds us to the next one, and so forth. And then we finally have an outcome at the end. I’m all ears. This is interesting.
And I will tell you when I write my non-fictions, I follow that as well. I don’t say, “No, no, no, no. Listen, guys. Guys, sit down. Listen, listen, listen.” And then babble on and on. Don’t I know what you’re thinking. No, I really don’t babble on and on. And I’m really not babbling here. I’m following the same procedure here. But again, in my non-fiction, I follow the pattern, the predictable pattern of I’m going to introduce to you some concepts, and I’ll I’ll touch on them a little bit in case you’re not up to speed. And then I’m going to introduce my concepts. And then I’m going to build on to the next ones and next ones. And then I’m going to say, well, what do you do with that? And that should sound remarkably like this podcast in which I do exactly the same thing. I introduce something to you. we talk about it and then I say,”Well, how does that affect you in the real world?”
Leveraging Pattern Matching in Real LifeSo, we’re actually getting to the part where we say, “How does this affect you in the real world? And what can you do about it?” Well, the first thing you need to do is recognize the fact that pattern matching and pattern recognition are not bad things. It’s what our brains are designed to do. So if you’re going to fight that, you’re going to have a lot of friction and stress in your life. If you accept it and use it and use it for good and enjoyment and productivity, it can be a really awesome thing.
It can help you and say, “Hey, you know, we typically see these patterns with these clients, so we know what to do here, right? I have this pattern and I know it’s going to lead me to be lazy in this particular way. So, I know what to do here. Do you see how you can use patterns to adjust behavior, adapt to client needs before they even know they need things and so forth? Think of how powerful that is.
And I’m not telling you anything new, right? You’re you already know that pattern matching and using patterns and systems and procedures and all those beautiful words that I love. You know how useful those are. But what I’m saying is it happens on a level that you may not realize. And it happens in things that you’re getting enjoyment from. So go listen to some of your favorite songs again. Think about what I’ve said about predictability. Go read some books. Think about predictability. And I’ll see you next time.
Outrowhich you knew I was going to say because you recognize this pattern. Take care.
Oh crap. I have to take care of this.
Well, hey there. Welcome back.
How Time Dictates Perceived ValueThis podcast episode is about 10 minutes long. If it was about 30 minutes long, would you find it to be more valuable or less valuable? And do you ask me then? Well, Mark, it depends what’s inside of it. It depends what the content is. Okay, what if it was an hour and a half? Well, you again, you’d probably say, well, what about the content? Uh, what’s the intent? But you would have your upper limit based on what you would think the value was of what it contained, right?
We do tend to assess value based on time and we do tend to set time based on value. Everything is about that. Your 30-cond elevator speech, uh, giving a talk of a certain length, introductions, if you go to a networking event and they say, “Well, give us your 30-cond or your 1 minute introduction.” And so forth, even your video calls are of a certain length, you have in your brain preset amounts of time that you think have a certain value based on certain activities.
So, knowing that, you may not be surprised by what I’m about to tell you. And what I’m going to tell you is that timing gives something more value.
The Connection Between Time and EnergyAnd what do I mean by that? I mean, if you say you’re going to, and again, I like to use housework because it’s universal. If you decide you’re going to clean up your kitchen, you have already decided how much time you think it’s going to take, how much time you’re willing to donate to it, right? If you look at your kitchen and go, “Oh my god, this is going to take 2 hours. How did this get destroyed? And and why am I so backlogged on what I need to do in it?” You’re going to say, “I don’t want to do that. Maybe I can do a shortcut. Maybe I can only do a piece of that that will take a certain amount of time.
Which is interesting because as I say, life is made of three things. Time, energy, and resources. And in that case, you’re not even really choosing the amount of energy involved. You’re choosing time. But time and energy are connected. Because the longer you do a thing, the more energy you use. So by assessing the time, you’re kind of assessing the energy. But in this case, you’re focusing more on the time involved because you don’t feel like you’re necessarily going to run out of energy. You feel like, look, I don’t want to do this for that long. I have other things I want to do. And obviously, we do that also in our jobs and our focuses in our life that say, “Hey, I’m going to do this. This, this takes a certain amount of time.” And we juggle time and there’s calendaring things. And that’s an entirely different episode.
So timing obviously plays a part. But what do I mean when I say timing gives it value?
How Constrained Time Increases Your EffortWhat I mean is this. If you say you’re going to do a certain kind of cleanup or a chore or what have you and you tell yourself that you only are allowed to do it for 5 minutes, you will find almost invariably that you put a lot more effort into doing it because you’re up against the timing. And now you have tangibly measured the task. You’re not telling yourself you’re going to clean a kitchen. You’re telling yourself you’re going to give yourself 5 minutes of effort.
And what do we know about the way humans handle effort? We do things iteratively. And you can listen to the episode live your life iteratively. Oh my god, that’s a hard word to say. And basically that just means you grow on top of something. you you do something and then you you base it on top of that and you you keep building these layers on top of that until it gets really really good and better and better and better. So, you know, if you give yourself 5 minutes to do a certain thing and it’s the fifth time you’ve given yourself 5 minutes to do a certain thing, you’re going to do a lot more in that fifth time you do it for 5 minutes.
But let’s get back to the whole give yourself a certain amount of minutes. What you will find is that you focus so much on the time that you don’t focus on how overwhelming something is. You don’t focus on how actually long it takes or rather in actual English, how long it takes in actuality.
The Mundane Task ChallengeTo understand what I’m talking about, I strongly suggest you play this little game with yourself. the next time you have to do something, a chore, whatever, something that’s mundane in your life, something that’s repeatable, something that is never going to get finished. And that lends us to something else I talked about, which is UPS, upkeep, productivity, and self-care. The upkeep part never is finished. You You don’t wash your hands for the last time. You don’t empty the dishwasher once. You It’s a continuing effort. So it gets to be a bit mundane.
So pick one of those. You pick one of those and then you say, “Okay, I only have x amount of time to do this.” You’ll find that you will focus pretty hard on what you’re doing. And it depends, again, as I said in the very beginning of this, it depends on how much time you give yourself.
If you give yourself too little time, you’ll find yourself rushing and you won’t complete it. But you’ll try really hard. If you give yourself too much time, you’ll just you’ll just do it and the timing really won’t play a part. So you could guess that it takes you 2 minutes to empty the dishwasher. You could take x amount of time to do x thing. But how do you make it a game every single time and really prove thepoint?
The “Add a Minute” Productivity GameWell, what if you do it in 1 minute increments? So here’s the game.
You set a timer for 1 minute and then you go to do something. You say, “I’m just going to spend one minute on doing something.” And the rule is you have two choices. You either extend the timer before it runs out or when it runs out, you have to stop.
That means if you’re right in the middle of something and you’re just really close to the satisfaction, the dopamine hit of completing the task, you can’t. Okay. When you’re between those two bookends, you tend towards the adding time.
I know it sounds crazy, but it’s a very fascinating way to get something done.
So, what you will find yourself doing is adding a minute or 2 minutes to the timer. Now, if you add too much time, you have to keep working on that until the timer runs out.
So, there’s a there’s a negative and a positive to either one of the bookends, and you’re trying to find the happy middle space of getting that done. You want to get as close as possible to the actual amount of time it takes.
Mark, Mark, why would I waste my time and energy doing this? Well, first of all, it’s kind of fun. Well, it is for someone like me. And maybe you’re not someone like me, but you may also be someone who has a really mundane task to do. And by doing this, you figure things out. You will actually accelerate your problem-solving skills because you will be up against the clock.
And it is really a bizarre rule that you’re forced to continue working on the project or task or chore as long as the timer is running. You can’t say aha I did it because then there would be no fun.
How to Execute the Game with Voice AssistantsSo my way of doing this very easily is to involve my resident robots. I simply say Alexa set a timer for 1 minute or 2 minutes right and then I go and I focus on my task and but in my head I have to keep the timing going. I can’t look at a clock or anything like that. And when I when I think it’s about to run out I just say add one minute to the timer. It’s that easy. you just use your voice and then you keep going and and then she’ll immediately say, “Hey, you have now you have 2 minutes and 3 seconds or you have 35 seconds.”
So, the game is to get as close to it running out of time as possible and complete the task as quickly as possible and not leave too much time at the end because you have to keep working on the task.
And you say, “Well, if you just do it for emptying the dishwasher, right?” Well, then you run out of things to do. So you want to do it for a task that really is really long, like something that has other versions of it. So instead of something that’s a one-off like emptying the dishwasher, you can do it for clean up this room or or what have you. Because obviously, as you know, as a someone who has a living space, there’s a lot to clean up. There’s the sweeping and mopping and there’s rearranging things, putting things away, countertops, all that stuff.
Tricking Yourself Into Getting Stuff DoneSo if you choose something like that, you can say, “Okay, look, I’m tired. I’m just going to do this for 2 minutes.” And that really is the crux of this. It’s the genesis of this. It’s the look, I’m really tired. I want to go to bed. Oh crap, I have to take care of this.
It’s an amazing way to trick yourself into doing 10 minutes of work when you really only wanted to do one.
And do I suggest you lie to yourself continually? No. Do I think you’re lying to yourself all the time? Of course. If you know anything about perception and how our brains work, we are constantly tricking ourselves into things. It’s why we have bad habits. It’s why we have confusion and all that other stuff. So, why not use that to our advantage and say, “Haha, I got myself to do that even though I didn’t want to.”
So, I would love to hear feedback from you on what you accomplished by tricking yourself. Now that you understand that timing gives something a lot of value.
Thank you again for listening. Take care of yourself.
Pick up your own CheckMark™ to use on your phone and desktop, and go through the excersizes of this and other episodes. And you can have fun being productive…
If you are interested in working with AI (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, etc.), in human psychology, or both, you might enjoy this episode.
If you ask yourself, “What is prompting” or “What is a super prompt” you’ll also enjoy this.
Transcript:
The Ubiquity of AI in BusinessSo, what prompted you to listen to this episode? Uh, get it? Oh, not yet. Well, you will. I’ve done at least two episodes on AI, the dangers of using, and so forth. AI is ubiquitous with business now. Everyone’s using it in some form or another. And why wouldn’t they when it’s pretty much shoved down your throat in every piece of software you use, whether it’s Gmail or even drawing software, scheduling software. New companies are crawling out of the woodwork practically daily saying what they do is AI powered.
I have a unique, very unbalanced way of using it. What I do use it for is sort of a language processing model. I have it take the raw transcript from these podcast episodes and then convert it into something that’s a bit more readable, but with the explicit instructions to never change a word or a syllable, regardless of how wrong it thinks the sentence is, because that’s what a transcript is. If I mess up, then I should mess up in the text as well.
What I don’t use it for is anything creative. I will never ask it for an idea. I will never ask it to give me a quick list of things that have to do with something else because I need to be able to do that or I don’t understand my subject. Do I ask for clarification? Sure. Do I ask for research sometimes, but mostly it’s a lot of mundane, tedious things that would really take a tremendous amount of time and be a complete waste of time.
The Reality of Running Local Language ModelsI have learned through online use and local use quite a bit. And when I say local use, I I spun up, as they say, a copy of a local language model directly on my office computer. This was a while back and it took a lot of steps. Recently, I did it in just a few steps with an even larger model. It’s so large and so taxing on my system that when I make requests of it, I have to literally watch the temperature to make sure I don’t go over a certain point. And my computer’s smart enough to know to shut down or to or to spin down the CPU, but I it it’s barely running within the parameters that it it can run within.
That being said, I want to talk to you about prompting, but not just prompting for LLMs, but prompting for humans, because there’s a lot in common here.
When you first heard the word prompting, it probably didn’t mean a lot to you. It didn’t trigger much unless you’re someone who is in writer groups or something where you do writer prompts and things like that. But otherwise, you you probably wondered what prompting was. and it really never stuck in your brain. And because it never stuck in your brain, it’s probably not something you’ve you’ve developed as a skill.
Context Windows, Personas, and Super PromptsPrompting is just a set of parameters you give the model you’re talking to before you really get into the conversation. And it really is a must. Now, all models have built-in prompts. They’re all basically engineered to be cheerleaders for you, to be very cheerful, to be overly agreeable, and to be overly cautious.
With a beginning prompt, you can get the AI to interact with you in a way that’s a little bit more favorable to what you want to get done. And what you have to do is think of it as a a per session kind of arrangement with it. It’s not going to be your best buddy forever and it only has so much memory. It has something called a context window in which it can fit in the stuff you’re talking about and it’s sort of first in first out when it comes to what it forgets. So, it’s going to have some amnesia on the things that you talked about a while back. If you switch gears a lot, it’ll also make it difficult for it to understand what you’re trying to work on.
So, that’s where the prompt comes in. You can say act as a this, you know, a professional person doing something. You’re, you know, you are an attorney and that’s there’s an asterisk there. You’re a this, you’re a that or you’re a development partner helping me do this. If you pick something like attorney or doctor, what have you, it’s always going to give you a disclaimer that it isn’t and so on and so forth. And it’s going to always give you that disclaimer. If you want it to help you in marketing, then you say act as a marketing professional uh and and do this or that. But you’re going to quickly run into basically the same things because you’re not going to get any new exciting ideas out of it unless you give it new and exciting ideas to work with. And that’s the simplest reason to not rely on it to be creative. And unfortunately why we see so many posts on LinkedIn and other places where they all look the same and you can instantly tell that it was created by AI. even if it wasn’t directly created by AI, you can tell that the bullet lists are something that AI came up with.
So, back to the prompt, there’s also something called a super prompt, and that is a really long prompt that you give the AI at the very beginning. You can literally cut and paste these things if you search for them, which will give you what they say are sometimes superpowers. Sometimes you can get around the guard rails and get it to tell you things that are a little bit more interesting, a little bit more helpful, and maybe a little bit more dangerous, at least in its perception.
You can, of course, and should continue prompting as you’re using it. It’s not a set it and forget it because you can adjust its behavior accordingly. And that’s actually how these models are created. They’re with human reinforcement. But unfortunately, this human reinforcement carries a lot of bias. So you sometimes have to undo some of that bias just to get it to give you the responses you need to do your job or the project or whatever it is you’re working on.
If you’ve really never had this sort of way of approaching AI, you will be shocked to see the difference in the responses and the and the difference in how useful it becomes to you if you truly set parameters for it. It’s an interesting exercise in being bossy. Well, it’ll feel like you’re being bossy, but you’re not. What you’re actually doing is saying, “Here, here’s the groundwork. Here’s how I want to work with you. Here’s how I’d like you to create and craft your responses and the the attitude and the persona that I sort of need you to do to fill this.
Applying Prompting Principles to Human InteractionWait a second. This is sounding like something else, isn’t it?
What a nice segue. Well, thank you. So, this is why I say that prompting also applies to humans:
Think about that. You meet someone for the first time and you can chat with them and both people are going to go from sort of a place of neutrality, right? What do you do? What is this? What is that? And so forth. If you work with someone, they’re going to get onboarded. You know, you’re going to talk about the mission statement and lots of other things that may or may not be a reality in your company. You have a certain persona for the company, a certain way to dress, a way meetings are conducted, the way that people talk to their bosses. Is it a fun environment? Is it a corporate environment? Is it both, which isn’t a real thing? And so forth. So there are all these visual and audio cues and environmental cues for people to be prompted.
And the only time you get prompted properly, efficiently, is either A when you do something wrong. Oh, we don’t do that here, Sarah. or B when someone there takes you aside. It’s typically someone of your level who says, “Hey, I got to tell you this is how things really are this way. When you deal with Ralph, do this. They really like this kind of thing here.” They kind of look down on that. That’s prompting. You’re being prompted.
Setting the Groundwork Without Feeling BossyIf we’re always prompting each other and and in in many ways, why not do it on purpose then? Why not consider that? And you’re going to say, “Well, that kind of sounds like how I talk to my kids sometimes.” Well, yeah, there’s a lot of parallel between how you interact with your children and how you interact with with other people. We just feel the we feel on our shoulders the the need, the ability, and the responsibility to get it right when our with our kids, especially when they’re little. When we’re dealing with adults, we make all sorts of assumptions that we sometimes get burned for. But what I’m saying is consider the whole concept of prompting but applied to humans.
My challenge to you would be first of all listen to my advice about prompting an AI. And if you say, “Well, I don’t work with an AI.” Well, we’ll skip ahead. But if you do work with AIS in your job and in some way, shape, or form, and you’re freely allowed to interact with them in the sort of chat interface, then apply what I’m saying about prompting. And after you do that for a bit, you’re going to start to see the similarities between that and maybe some of the discussion you have with the actual breathing human beings.
So my challenge to you would be to then apply that to humans that you deal with. And let me address something that’s going to happen. You’re going to feel bossy. You’re going to feel like you’re trying to control the situation. You’re going to be afraid that someone is going to consider yourself to be controlling, to be someone who is not open to new opinions and so forth. You’re you’re going to think, and you might be right in some cases, that someone’s going to say, “Well, don’t tell me how to talk.” And I will submit to you that all we’re ever doing is telling people to talk and how to because you’ll be told, “Hey, you need to get your 30 secondond elevator speech in.” Wait, what? I I I have 30 seconds to express myself. Yes, that’s not hard-hitting enough. You need to apply to features and benefits. Don’t tell them about this. Client communication is constantly being manipulated exactly like someone is prompting you. And now that you see it as a prompt, now you can use it to your benefit.
OutroSo, as always, hey, this is going to sound like a prompt. I’ve been prompting you at the end of these every single time. So, I appreciate you listening. If you like what you heard and you have fun with it, please provide some feedback for me. That’s another prompt. And if you know someone who would benefit from this, by all means, forward this to them. whether you’re listening on Spotify or iTunes or you’re getting the email, please forward it to them and say, “Hey, I think you might enjoy this.” So, thank you as always. You’re important to me. And take care.
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What is a vision board? What is an anti-vision board?
TranscriptWell, hey there. Welcome back. What’s your vision?
The Traditional Vision BoardSo, here’s a question. Have you ever used a vision board? A vision board is typically a physical place, almost like a bulletin board. It’s usually something larger than a sheet of paper that people place pictures, words, and inspiration. It’s something that they create that they can look at and it inspires them. It’s their vision of the future. It’s the house they want to live in. It’s the relationship they want to have. It’s the success that they want to gain. And it evolves. In the olden olden days, people would essentially cut pictures out of magazines, nice glossy pictures that they would then place on this board with with a pin. And people still do that, but they tend to be more digital. For example, Pinterest can be a vision board and is probably used like that for most people who have one. Granted, there are people who use Pinterest specifically to sort of gather ideas when they’re doing renovations or their nails or what have you, but it’s a cool thing and I see absolutely nothing wrong with it and a lot right with it.
The only thing I would say would be wrong is if you just make a big giant square of pretty pictures, but you don’t let it really help you to go where you’re going. Now, how would a big box of pictures help you go where you’re going? Well, let’s talk about what the vision board represents in my book BeCAUSE! I talk about monsters and unicorns, which are the faces of us seeking pleasure and avoiding pain based on Freud’s pleasure principle. So, when you’re looking at a vision board, you’re essentially looking at a whole bunch of unicorns, saying, “Doesn’t it feel good to imagine yourself in this house? to imagine yourself in this relationship” I mean, they’re all good feelings.
That’s what the vision board is. It’s about you moving towards the pleasure of having, experiencing, knowing, embracing, and all that wonderful stuff.
Introducing the Anti-Vision BoardI started thinking about vision boards when I was looking at my CheckMark™ app. And if you haven’t checked it out, you should because I built a vision board into it. Uh, you can use your camera on your phone. You can upload photos to it and arrange it on your phone. It’s kind of cool. Mind you, it’s a small screen, but it’s kind of ever-present, which is cool. And you can look at it on your computer when you get back to your office. I broke the boards down into a number of boards like relationships and health and so forth. But that got me thinking. I felt like there was a board that was missing. What if you flipped everything around and you made a board of all the things you didn’t want? Now, if you literally made a board of the things you don’t want, that would you’d run out of board. Obviously, there’s a million things in life we don’t want, then there are probably just a few things that we really do want. But what if the things we don’t want are sometimes the things we have, right? Like if you’re in a job that you really don’t like, well, that’s something you’d put on that special board. And let’s call it an anti- vision board, right? It’s not my vision.
People tend to move away from things that cause them pain. So, if the vision boards are all populated by unicorns, then the anti- vision board is essentially driven by monsters, right? The monster of avoiding the pain of being in a house that’s cramped or in a neighborhood you don’t want to be in or in a dead-end job or a lack of relationship or a toxic relationship or something that just isn’t a good fit for you.
So, do you think an anti-vision board would be just as helpful as vision boards?
Perhaps in some ways it would be more helpful.
When Monsters and Unicorns Work TogetherYou see, a lot of the things that I’ve discovered when I think about monsters and unicorns is that a lot of them do have a flip side. If there’s a if there’s a unicorn pushing you towards pleasure, sometimes there’s also a monster pushing you away from the pain of that. Not in all cases, but in some cases there’s a distinct flip side and they kind of hold hands and work together, as I say. So, here’s an example. If you’re living in a house that’s okay, you probably don’t really have a monster saying, “Oh my god, this hurts.” But you could have on your vision board a really large house or a house with a really nice yard so that your kids can run around. That’s the unicorn saying, “Wow, that feels really good to have that.” But there’s no monster on the flip side saying, “Oh, I hate this house.”
But you could also be living in a house that you really don’t like. Uh it could have to do with the terms. It could have to do with the neighborhood has just gone down down the tubes, what have you. So you have both. You have the monster saying, “I don’t like this. We need to get out of here. And the unicorn of saying, “Oh, so beautiful. This one is really nice.” You see how there is actually a difference?
If you’ve heard the episode Waking Up to a Monster, you know that it’s not a great place to be in if you wake up every day and your entire day is motivated by avoiding pain. It’s not really how we should be living, right? Some of us have to. A lot of us have to. Sometimes a lot of us get into that area of life. It’s a funk or it’s just a it’s the chasm of life that we hope to to claw our way out of.
The Grounding Power of Anti-VisionSo if that’s the case, do we really want a vision board that’s telling us all the things that are bad in our life?
Well, yes, because it’s voluntary.
You may find an anti-vision board more motivating than a vision board. It also acts as a supplement to the vision board to sort of clarify what it is you’re actually looking for. Because you might say, “Well, look, I don’t want a giant house.” Okay, but I don’t like the one I’m living in. Okay, so you wouldn’t have a big giant house on your vision board, but you might have a picture of your existing house or the parts of your house that you really don’t like on your anti- vision board. You see, the anti- vision board is a bit more grounded because it’s something you’re already working with.
And sometimes you experience the pleasure of wanting a thing or moving towards a thing, but it feels like you’re just trying to reward yourself. And then you have some guilt and then you have some self-esteem issues that say, “Well, do I really deserve that?” What you’re really trying to say is, “I don’t deserve to have the thing that I have now.”
And creating an anti-vision board allows you to define the things in your life that you want to change.
Let me say that again. Having an anti-vision board allows you to define the things in your life you want to change.
Isn’t that the baseline? Because if you don’t know what you want to change and why, and the monsters will tell you why, then you’re not really going to do anything. It’s it’s sort of like the difference between someone really making themselves better and having a better life and somebody being shoved into a candy store and someone says, “Well, pick six things.” Well, I I I it’s all candy. I I don’t know. I don’t really see. Do you see the difference? It’s a huge difference especially for people who have a good work ethic, people who have humility. You shove those people into a candy store and nothing’s going to happen. But if you allow them to say, “Well, here are the things I would like to change.” Well, now we are going to make progress.
Build Your BoardsSo, I would ask you a few things. Have you ever considered a vision board? Have you ever considered an anti-vision board?
What would be on your vision board? What would be on your anti- vision board? If you’re using the CheckMark™ app, you can actually activate the vision board, which includes an anti-vision board, which means you can literally flip to the anti-vision board, walk somewhere in your house or somewhere, and just snap a photo and go, “Yeah, that’s the thing I want to change.” and you carry that with you and it’s on your screen, too. Or you can be traditional and just put it up on your bulletin board or what have you. But I would suggest trying that at least to yourself answer the questions I just asked because it’s really kind of a a cool fascinating thing and I hope you enjoyed this and take care of you.
Thank you for listening.
BONUS:
- You can find the CheckMark™ app here. It’s completely free no credit card needed. Get it now!
- A walk through of this episode is available inside the CheckMark™ app
- The book BeCAUSE! is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.
Disclaimer: this episode is based on my proprietary behavior mapping system. This system is used in conjunction with a discovery conversation I have with an individual. In the case of mapping public figures this is purely an independent analysis and opinion based on publicly available research. See citations below article.
Transcript:You’re probably like me in that you’re a very visual person. (see below!)
Well, hey there. Welcome back. Let’s talk Elon Musk. But before we do that, let’s talk about behavioral mapping and my book BeCAUSE!.
Freud’s Pleasure Principle: Monsters and UnicornsOkay, wait. We have to back up from that and we have to talk about Freud’s pleasure principle. If you are an old fan of this show, you’ve probably heard me say this a bunch of times, but let’s sum it up really quickly. Freud’s pleasure principle is based on the fact that we are binary individuals. We seek pleasure, we avoid pain. Everything and anything we do is broken down into those things. I’ve had a number of episodes on this and the book BeCAUSE! is based on this, but I give the seeking pleasure and the avoiding pain a face. The seeking pleasure is a unicorn and the avoiding pain is a monster. They are neither good nor bad. They are not devils and angels. They simply are.
Visualizing Behavior: My New Mapping SoftwareAfter the book BeCAUSE! came out, I ended up developing patent pending behavioral mapping software. It’s software that allows me to actually map this stuff out. And you’re probably like me in that you’re a very visual person. This episode might be a little bit longer than my self-imposed 10-minute limit, so please bear with me. Paradoxically, when I talk about Elon Musk, I actually want you to not be thinking of him, but to be thinking of you. Every episode of this podcast starts out as an article on Alchemy for Life. This one is no different, and you’ll be able to see the visual mapping on the site if you’d like. You can follow along on there or if you’re listening in your car, you can just visualize based on what I’m telling you.
Deconstructing Elon Musk: The Childhood TraumaMost people are familiar with Elon Musk. He’s a rather polarizing person. He’s someone who won’t stop talking about going to Mars and now the moon. He’s someone who created an empire. He owns Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter, now X, the Boring Company, and X AI. He’s had some romances. He’s currently not married and he has a lot of children. What most people don’t know is what I actually found out in the map showing why all of this is happening. And again, because audio is literally linear, meaning you talk in a straight line, you stop it. You can’t go into branches and things like that. It’s a little harder in audio to tell you what something on a screen can tell you, but I’ll do the best I can.
When he was young, the family dog bit him. It was actually a pretty vicious bite, but he was terrified that the dog was going to be put down. He needed medical attention, but he kept refusing it because he said, “You need to promise you’re not going to put the dog down.” Unfortunately, they put the dog down. And this was a very traumatic thing. And I can imagine for myself, and I’m sure you’re thinking about this, too, that’s a very traumatic thing to have to go through. You blame yourself. You think, well, maybe there’s something I could have done to not have the dog bite me. It’s horrible, horrible feeling. And it’s a feeling of losing something and someone that’s really important to you. You feel like you’re literally responsible for the death of a living creature. and that you have no control. So imagine that. It puts a pretty strong pleasure center. It puts a pretty strong unicorn in place that says, “Hey, follow me and you’ll have more control. You want more control.” Yes, I want more control. As with a lot of things, sometimes you also have the opposite in place. You have a monster that says, “It really feels bad to lose control.” And I’m sure you can understand that. I’m sure there are times in your life when you’ve lost control for some reason and you vowed to never lose that control again. Whether you were placed in a very unfortunate position due to your job or relationship or or even in your childhood
The Teenage Existential Crisiswhen he was a teenager and we all remember just how wonderful and clear thinking we were as teenagers. He read both Shopenhau and Nietzsche. And I’ll tell you that Nichi is actually on my wall among five other people. But it’s not exactly something you would read out loud at like a children’s birthday party. So for him, he deeply regretted reading that stuff because it created in him an existential crisis. And imagine that’s essentially what being a teenager is, is having an existential crisis. You you question life. you’re halfway between being an adult and being a child. So reading that created in him a monster of avoiding the feeling of having existential dread and personal meaninglessness.
We all want purpose in our life. Imagine removing that as a teenager. Imagine questioning all of that and saying, “Oh my god, this feels terrible. I I I can’t experience this.” So, conversely, it creates the unicorn that makes it feel really good when you feel purpose and meaning. It’s the same one most of us would have.
The Scars of Bullying and HumiliationWhen he was in school, he was severely bullied and beaten basically to the point of not being recognizable. Some of us were bullied, maybe all of us were bullied. And it tends to shape us sometimes in bad ways and sometimes in good ways. But to compound this, when he came home to his father, his father blamed him for this and made him stand for 2 hours while he bered him and called him a loser. How would you respond to that?
How would you psychologically speaking respond to that so that it would never happen to you again? You would have a monster that would be very strong in making sure you avoid humiliation and being vulnerable. And from the bullying, obviously you would have a monster that would say, “I’m never going to be bullied again. Never.” This is probably the first time you’re hearing about a lot of this stuff. Probably what you tend to hear about Elon Musk is his purchase or he makes a decision that you think is chaotic or egotistical. you’ve probably never heard any of this other stuff unless you have read his bio or multiple bios and things like that.
Connecting the Trauma to the Billionaire’s ActionsSo, now that you know the monsters and unicorns that he has in place, what actions did these cause? Well, let’s go through them. If you’re trying to avoid the pain of bullying and the monster keeps getting in the way and saying, “You’re going to be bullied. Don’t do that.” Wouldn’t you be a bit combative on social media? Wouldn’t you make sure that in an interview you’re not going to be bullied? Wouldn’t you make sure that when you are dealing with the feds or other court systems or other CEOs that you would tend not to back down? In fact, maybe even not back down even when it’s to your detriment.
If you’re avoiding the pain and fear of scarcity because of what happened with your dog and that you had no control over that, and you’re avoiding the pain of humiliation and especially vulnerability and bullying because of the place you’re in as someone who is almost a trillionaire, would it not affect your approach on forming a family? If you are married and have children, you are in a position of vulnerability. You have more vulnerability right now than someone who, let’s say, doesn’t have children or isn’t married. If you’re in a loving relationship, that’s part for the course. It comes with the territory. It’s something you welcome. But if you combine a fear of scarcity and you’ve developed a sort of pleasure for having absolute sovereignty and control of any and all outcomes and you have a terrible monster that makes it feel horrible. If you are losing control, you would be in a unique position to want to perpetuate the human race, but not in a traditional way that causes vulnerability. which is why he has 14 children across four different women and he is presently not married to any of them.
This monster for avoiding pain and the fear of scarcity, working together with this pleasure of having absolute sovereignty and control and this extremely strong unicorn pulling him towards the feeling of purpose and meaning would obviously lead him to the creation of Space X so that he could continue to make the race multilanetary. Oh, and that monster telling him that scarcity feels bad, he helps as well.
And guess who’s also looking over his shoulder? The monster that’s avoiding him having the feeling of existential dread and personal meaninglessness. You’re definitely listening to that monster if you are trying to perpetuate the human race on another planet.
If you are avoiding losing control and you certainly enjoy the absolute sovereignty of being able to change the outcome and you enjoy the feeling of purpose and meaning and you’re terrified of having existential dread and personal meaninglessness, would you not purchase the most well-known social media platform in your attempt, at least according to you, to save free speech?
Mapping Your Own Monsters and UnicornsWhether you’re a fan or not of Elon, whether you’re completely neutral or not, you can’t help but empathize with some of the things I’ve described. And like I said, you’re more likely to think of you than of him in these situations. What would you do? What have you experienced? What emotional turmoil have you gone through? What horrible things have you gone through in your childhood, in your teens, and even in your adult life that have shaped who you are? Those things just don’t go away. They stay with you for life. Your monsters and unicorns sort of show up and they take residence in your brain.
If it sounded a little bit like I was all over the map, well, quite literally, I was. I worked through the visual map that I’m looking at right now and it’s the same one you might be looking at or that you will look at after the podcast. I found the research on this fascinating and I did find that things logically led to other things. It the pattern, the map, it all just sort of unveiled itself to me based on what I have created and what I have established. I didn’t run into any dead ends. I didn’t find something that contradicted something else. It all actually made sense. And that’s what led to the writing of BeCAUSE!—it all just continued to make sense and make sense and make sense and sometimes in an unnerving way.
Look, I understand we don’t want to be deconstructed. We we we want to feel whole and sometimes thinking about monsters and unicorns and little programmatic psychological building blocks can sometimes be a little bit unnerving, but it can also be revealing. And the beauty of this is that it’s neither good nor bad. Sure, you can have a monster in place that’s doing something that’s really messing up your life, but that same monster might also be helping you in another aspect of your life. It’s about you recognizing it and not allowing it to have the control over your life that you don’t want. And ultimately, you stay in the driver’s seat.
ConclusionSo, I hope you enjoyed this. I did. I certainly enjoyed mapping all this out and doing the research. In fact, I did this for two other people. It made me reflect on my own monsters and unicorns, and I hope it did the same for you.
If you’re indeed curious, feel free to pick up a copy of BeCAUSE!. And if you’re curious about your own map, let me know.
The behavioral mapping done, purely as an independent analysis and opinion based on publicly available research. Episode Sources & Citations: The Childhood Bullying & His Father’s Reaction: * Source:Elon Musk* by Walter Isaacson (Published September 2023). + Context: Isaacson’s authorized biography details the specific incident where Musk was beaten so severely by bullies he was hospitalized for four days. Upon returning home, his father, Errol Musk, made him stand in front of him for two hours, called him a “loser,” and sided with the boy who attacked him. * The Teenage Existential Crisis (Schopenhauer and Nietzsche): + Source: Multiple interviews, including a notable deep-dive interview detailed in CleanTechnica (2018) and referenced in Isaacson’s biography. + Context: Musk has publicly stated multiple times, “We happened to have some books by Nietzsche and Schopenhauer in the house, which you should not read at age 14. It is bad, it’s really negative.” He credits this period of reading with triggering a severe teenage existential crisis, leading to his lifelong obsession with finding “the meaning of life” and “understanding the right questions to ask” (which birthed the Unicorn of seeking purpose). * The Dog Bite Trauma: + Source: Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson (2023). + Context: The biography details the incident where a young Elon was viciously bitten by a dog. He refused medical treatment until he was promised the dog wouldn’t be put down. The adults broke the promise and put the dog down anyway, cementing his early trauma regarding powerlessness, scarcity, and broken trust. * Family Structure (14 Children / 4 Women): + Source: Forbes Billionaires Profile (Updated March 2026). + Context:** Forbes officially verifies that Musk, driven by his vocal fears of population collapse, has fathered 14 children with four different women (including multiple sets of twins and triplets) and is currently not married.
Well, hey there. Welcome back. Let’s talk about the dark side of things. I don’t mean the dark side of everything, even though that sounds kind of exciting, doesn’t it? Okay, let’s rewind.
The Psychology of Motivation: Monsters and UnicornsMy recent book because talks about fundamental building blocks. In simple terms, it’s built on Freud’s pleasure principle. And in simple terms, Freud’s pleasure principle states that we basically do everything based on two sort of drivers. One is to seek pleasure in all forms and to avoid pain in all forms. These two driving factors are neither good nor bad. They are neutral and sometimes they’re used to great success and sometimes they’re used to your detriment.
In the book, I take those semi-intangible concepts and I give them a face. The avoiding pain takes the form of a monster. The seeking pleasure takes the form of a unicorn. But the book goes farther than that. I then go on to talk about something that really separates all high achievers from everyone else. And that is essentially repetition. And there are many books out there and I cite some of them talking about this repetition and how you become an Olympic athlete by repeating. But the thing that everyone else forgets about or ignores is, well, how do they repeat so much? What drives them to repeat? And of course, it’s the monsters and the unicorns.
The Secret Weapon of High AchieversAnd I have always said to myself, or rather recently, whatever you repeat, you enhance, you create, and you achieve. At least that’s what I tell myself. And that’s what because is about. It’s about repeating something over and over and over again. And and it doesn’t have to be a 4 secondond action. It can be something that’s fairly long term, something that takes days or something that requires a lot of nuance, but if you continue at it and repeat it and repeat it and repeat it and stick at it, you will achieve it. You can do great things this way. You can make amazing changes this way. But like the monsters and the unicorns, repetition is neutral.
Think about that.
The very concept of repetition doesn’t carry with it good or bad. It doesn’t carry with it constructive or destructive. It’s both and neither. So swimming almost constantly will make you a better swimmer. Practicing speaking will make you a better speaker. Studying and practicing repetitively and diligently will get you your realtor license, your pilot license, etc.
The Dark Side of Repetition: How Unconscious Habits Hurt UsBut my friends, let’s talk about the dark side. The dark side of repetition. And you know what’s interesting about that is that from a lot of people’s perspective, the dark side is actually what they know better. And I’m not saying it’s because they live in the dark side of repetition, but it’s because that sort of has been their perception of it. Stop making that face. If you keep making that face, it’s going to stay that way.
Do you remember that? Did your parent ever say that to you? How many of you grind your teeth? It’s also called bxism. That’s a repetitive thing that people do with their teeth where they just clench down or they grind them side to side and it has tremendous negative impact on your health. Ergonomics is based partially on people repeatedly doing something that’s bad for their body. You can sit in a bad chair for a little while and not a lot’s going to happen. But if you spend hours and hours in a chair that’s slightly tilted or lifts your legs off the floor and puts a lot of pressure on your arteries and so forth, it can have really devastating health effects just just from sitting.
You can eat good food and even in smaller portions, but if you eat it fast, it can also affect your health. Eating it fast once isn’t going to do a lot, but every time you eat, if you eat fast, it’s going to affect you. You will find or probably have found that you have aches and pains that are actually caused by you. And they’re caused by you in a way that is just repetitious. It’s, for example, I had an issue with my ankle for a while. I didn’t know where it was coming from. It it really hurts and I couldn’t remember doing anything to it. I couldn’t, you know, I would I would go work out. I’ i’d run and all that stuff. I wasn’t doing it incorrectly. Something was going on. And I found that when I would work at my desk sometimes, I would sort of let my ankle flop over to the right. So, I’m putting all this tremendous pressure on it just because that sort of felt, and you can see the quotes, felt comfortable. But what I was doing is hyperextending some things and really causing some damage. So I just had to become aware of that.
I mean, it’s the same thing with even crossing your legs, squishing up your your hand and arms at night and tucking them in so that you’re constantly woken up with tingles and things because you’re sort of squishing up like a dead spider. This extends to the way you speak, the negative self-t talk, the way that you interact with others, preconceived notions that you continue to repeat, and the list goes on and on. I mean, how many times in your life have you had this thought? Oh my god, I did it again.
How to Predict Your Triggers and Break the LoopIf you’ve ever had that, it can be really frustrating because it’s something you do repeatedly that you probably can’t even predict. And that seguays us into the next section, which is, okay, we’re aware of this, Mark. Now, what do we do about it? Well, predicting your habits or just embracing something you do and saying, wait a second. I think I’m probably going to do that again. I’m about to eat. I should probably somehow figure out how I cannot eat fast. I’m hungry. I shouldn’t suddenly impulsively say I want three times as much food because right now I’m really hungry. That sounds really good.
I’m sitting in my chair. Do I have the right chair? And if I do, am I sitting in some weird way that I think is comfortable or compensates when I’m stressed?
I’m working on something intensely. What am I doing with my jaw and my teeth right now?
I keep squinting my eyes. Do I just need different glasses or am I sitting too close to my screen? I seem to have a headache every day at the same time. What is it that I’m doing?
Having a little bit of forethought can help dramatically.
And I guess that’s one of the pluses of this repetition. It’s going to repeat. So, at least it’s sort of on a predictable schedule. And as I talk about in my micro seminar, do it to a fault. Things that you do can be attached not just to time, but to actions and feelings. So you might just do something when you’re feeling a certain way. It can even be when you have joy. You might do something around the same time or you might do something around the same activity.
The whole concept of triggers essentially is described in what I just said. And in fact, there’s a section of the book because it talks about triggers that they’re your monsters and unicorns that sort of raise their hand and say, “Hey, I’m here. Just so you know, I’m going to be doing this thing.” So, give some thought to your repetition in your life. It is one of the most powerful things that you can use from a from a 30,000 ft view. Repetition in general is an amazing thing and it can do amazing good and amazing harm.
So let’s try to limit the harm. Let’s nip that stuff in the bud and let’s try to use it for good.
OutroIf this made sense to you, then check out my over 300 other episodes that talk about interesting things like this. If you know someone who you think would benefit from this quick 10-minute podcast, feel free to forward it to them as well. And thank you as always for listening. And feel free to provide any feedback. Take care.
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Tell me the problem in three words. Well, hey there. Welcome back.
The “Favorite Three” Listening GameToday I want to talk to you about something that was a communication tool and kind of a game. And it all centers around the number three. When my kids were younger, I used to play a game with them in the car. And the game was Favorite Three. And it was such a natural hit that we would use it at parties.. And it really is kind of a not only a cool icebreaker, but it’s sort of a demonstrator of how well people listen. It’s a game you can play with your staff and in meetings, too. If you have a staff meeting and you’re waiting, you can play Favorite Three. It kind of sharpens your mind a little bit in the process, too.
So, here’s how this works. Favorite three basically means you pick your three favorite things. Someone asks you your favorite three things. I mean you can say what’s your favorite dog breed? What’s your favorite Italian food? And what is your favorite state? You go around the room and people answer. They don’t say well my favorite state is… No. In the order that they were asked they need to answer. Usually, there’s a long pause while people’s gears are turning. Seriously, try this. So, the person asking the question names the person who needs to answer and they start and go around in a circle. Many times people actually forget and they’ll say, “Well, wait, what was the second one?” It’s literally three things that you have to remember, but for some reason, for some people, it’s actually quite hard to keep track. So in the example that I just said, the next person would say hopefully husky pizza Colorado and then it would go to the next person and so forth. And those people are devoid of context. They just know the answers of the person in front of them. all the amazing things that we do in life, all the things that we can work through, reading entire novels and keeping track of screenplays and and all the complexities of your job, you may actually have difficulty with that.
So, play it at your next event and tell me how it goes.
Using Three Words for Conflict ResolutionSo, here’s the other thing centering around the number three. This helps in conflict resolution. And again, this is something that I used with my kids when there’s a conflict or when they had a conflict and there was a lot of back and forth. As you can imagine, there’s a lot of two people talking over each other and screaming and emotions and things like that. I would pick one to start and I would say, “Tell me the problem in three words.”
That was it.
And then the other person would go and tell me the problem in three words. And it’s really easy to figure out which person is stuck in their emotions and which person is just trying to convey a point. And it’s all because of the three words that they choose. And this is something you can do in your relationship. I mean, if you’ve been married 20 years, you can still do this and say, you know, tell me in three words.
Now, people don’t like to have their communication filtered, adjusted, or controlled. So, it may be difficult for some personality types, especially in the heat of the moment, if you tell them, “No, you’re not allowed to communicate to me in sentences. You need to tell me that in three words.” So, use carefully and wisely.
But even in your job, if you need to do conflict resolution, this may be really eye opening and you think, “Mark, they’re just going to take three verbs.” No, they’re really not. You’ll be shocked at which words they choose, especially the first time. And when they sort of get the gist of it, they’ll choose better words. They’ll say, “Ah, okay, I need to clarify.” M. And it’s that focus on the cerebral act of clarifying which allows for the emotions to leak out to go away because the focus is on communicating now instead of you know sarcasm or taking a shot at the other person and so forth. You don’t have the room for it. You literally have three words to use and don’t waste them. People aren’t going to use he is idiot. they’re going to choose other things. Okay?
A Real-World HR Example: Manager vs. CreativeAnd again, you may be thinking, “Well, this is kind of rudimentary, Mark.” No, it really is a different way to get your brains to communicate. Let me give you an example. Imagine you have a manager and someone who’s uh creative underneath them, someone who’s producing something and there’s there’s a conflict and there’s always a conflict between them and you don’t understand because they both for the most part are are fairly stellar in in their work and the work ethic, but you have them in your office because you’re the HR person and you get the creative to tell you what the problem is and the creative starts to go on and on and on about stuff and personalities and you go, “No, no, no, give me the three words.”
And the creative thinks for a second and says work, frustration, recognition.
Doesn’t that tell you a lot? Doesn’t that tell you a lot in just three words? The person is frustrated because their work isn’t recognized. They They’re not asking for a raise necessarily. They’re not even saying anything negative about their manager, but they’re frustrated because they work really hard.
And so let’s say in this hypothetical situation, the manager goes, “Wow.” Because the manager probably didn’t even realize that, but he now has to answer himself and he thinks for a moment and he says, “And uh hours um uh documentation deadline.”
And so when he may be asked to expand on that, it’s that the person under him isn’t really documenting their work. So it’s kind of hard to recognize what’s gone in on the back end. And perhaps that person also isn’t great about tracking their hours, which again makes it frustrating for the manager to say, “Well, I I don’t know how much time or effort you spent on this. I I don’t I don’t know.”
Now, as an aside, this is usually a disconnection between the departments, departments like, you know, like sales and the people who actually accomplish the things the salespeople are selling or managers and creatives and all that stuff. Sometimes there’s a disconnection that really shouldn’t be there because they should have a better grounded understanding of what’s involved to create the product, whether it’s a a service or whether it’s a a tangible item. So that’s an aside. But do you see how forcing a minimum of words can make a huge difference in a conversation?
How Word Scarcity Forces ClarityAnd I am sure that in the annals of HR and and and employee relations, there are tons of things like this. But I’m just telling you from a personal standpoint, I have used this and it’s been really amazing. In fact, I’ve used it on myself as I do with many things that I have tried to get myself to be concise about using just three words and three is really a cool number. It’s more than two and you know what? It’s less than four. So, right then out of the gate, it’s it’s a good number.
So, my challenge for you would be to first of all see if you can facilitate conversation like this in a conflict. And again, if you if there are any bruises involved, I I I’m giving you a warning that if someone has really high emotions, this may not be the best thing to use at first. But it also may be good as a tool for you in a case where you are just sort of feeling kind of strung out and and frustrated and you don’t know where your head is on certain things. Now, you could use my UPS method and see the episode on UPS, but with this in mind, you can actually just use the three words to force yourself to just say, “Okay, I need to express this in three words.”
And it’s pretty cool because typically one of the words is going to reflect a feeling, one is going to be an action, one might be a state of being, but you’re not going to get three words that basically mean the same because they’re so precious. And you’re going to choose you or they are going to choose words that really convey a lot of meaning or power because again scarcity creates this sort of thing. And you know when it comes to words and language and talking there’s not a lot of scarcity there.
I myself force scarcity in this podcast. And that’s why we only have a minute left because I won’t let myself go over 10 for the most part. So, play the two games of three and let me know what the outcome is. I’d love to know the situation. Was it personal? Was it with your kids? Was it HR related? Was it business related? Did it actually help you to express yourself even in marketing materials in which you have a marketing material and you’re like, you know, there’s paragraphs here. This is too much. And I I want to inject this. There’s a very specific rule about presentations, PowerPoint, and so forth that people regularly break, and that is keep the text to a minimum, but people typically have paragraphs and and whole books up on the screen where just three words would make a big difference.
OutroSo, please try this out and let me know. And as always, I appreciate you listening. Take care.
If your resolutions failed this is why, and this is how you can have success in 2026.
The New Year’s Resolution Check-InIt’s February 1st. How did you do on your New Year’s resolutions? I know. I know. Here we go. But it’s not something I’m ever going to stop talking about. and we’ve had at least one, if not two or more episodes on New Year’s resolutions and how I feel about them. So, let’s just jump into it, shall we? If you’re a longtime listener, you know that I try to compress a lot of conversation. And I say conversation because I feel like you get to say something and think something. I compress a lot of that into 10 minutes. And one of the ways I do that is by using pause. And I think it’s an amazing tool to be able to use. So, I say something and then I ask you to pause and then you have infinite amount of time to think about or work through what I just said and then you restart it again. So, we’re going to do this a lot this time and it’s going to be based on this sound.
If you recognize that sound, it’s the sound you get when you check off an item in check mark. So, how did you do on your New Year’s resolutions so far considering that the entire month of January has passed?
If your answer was not great, then why do you think that is? Give that some thought.
So, do you think it was because you didn’t try hard enough or because of something else? Well, let me tell you this. If you decided to stop doing a thing, like I’m not going to be late anymore or doing a thing a lot more, then you’re only considering the action itself.
The Limits of Free Will and WillpowerAnd the action is always motivated by seeking pleasure or avoiding pain. And now you’re going to say, “But Mark, we’re not just some tiny binary combination of fervently seeking pleasure and running away from pain.” Well, that’s not what Freud found. That’s not what I found. And that’s not what the monsters and unicorns told me. But Mark, we have free will, don’t we? Um, yeah, kind of. Kind of, sort of. Um, but it depends on your definition because our free will is modified by those constantly running programs. If you’re late all the time, there’s a reason behind the action. And that’s literally what the word because means, the reason for the action, which is why I called the book BeCAUSE!. And you can say, well, Mark, I can just do it. I just have to do it. So then you’re describing using your strength of will. And strength of will is very powerful. Well, it’s sort of powerful by itself. What happens if you say, “Look, I have this thing that really annoys me. Um, I’m I’m not going to do that anymore. Period.” and you go, I’m exerting my free will right now and my strength of will. Well, what your strength of will is going to then do is it’s going to panic and be going, “Okay, we’re doing this, but man, this is tiring and oh my god, I can’t do this constantly. There’s got to be some reason why. What? There’s got to be some reason to allow me to do this. There’s got to be some motivation.” And then the monsters and unicorns kick in. The seeking pleasure and the avoiding pain.
That’s how you get it done. That’s it in a nutshell. That’s how these things happen. So if you say, “I don’t want to be late anymore. You can try to use your strength of will, but your strength of will will search around for something or someone to help it.” And both the monsters and the unicorns, the seeking pleasure, the avoiding pains, can help together. You can actually have multiple unicorns and multiple monsters holding hands together to get it done. And in fact, most of those insurmountable things that you have done in your life that you look back on and you go, “How? Oh my god, how did I even do that?” They were because you were holding hands with monsters and unicorns at the time.
Identifying the Motivation Behind Your SuccessesSo then, let’s think about this with the next pause.
If you were able to adhere to a New Year’s resolution this year and it has gone successfully and continues to do so, and now that you’ve done the 30-day mark, you’re pretty sure this is set in stone, think about the why of it. What was the reason behind that action?
Okay, if you’re one of the lucky ones who actually did make a difference in your life, even if it’s a tiny one, you think, well, this was kind of trivial, but you know, I’m really glad I don’t do that. I’m really glad I decided not to always finish my plate even if I’m not hungry. I’m really glad that I eat slower or I’m more sensible or that I show up on time or what have you. You have just identified the monster andor unicorn that helped you. So, here’s a crazy thought. What if you could identify the monster and the unicorn before you know what action it’s modifying?
Finding Your Recurring Monsters and UnicornsBecause you will find with your monsters and unicorns, and again, seeking pleasure, avoiding pain for those who don’t like the mental image, but I love the mental image. Thank you very much. You’ll find that a certain unicorn keeps showing up. A certain monster keeps showing up. And they’re responsible for multiple things in your life. They’re responsible for multiple good things that you’re proud of. They’re responsible for multiple bad things that you’re not so thrilled with. Yeah. I tend to such and such. Right. Let’s do this. What What feeling or thing tends to make you look at the ground and go, “Yeah, I tend to da da da. It’s something I deal with.
Okay, let’s do the opposite. What thing do you do that you say, “Well, yeah, I really like such and such.” And it seems to affect things.
If you’ll notice, I was sort of vague with both of those things because again, monsters and unicorns can modify behavior in such a way as to make you do something that you are proud of or make you do something you’re not so proud of because neither is good, neither is bad. They are just programmatic features of the way our psyche works. You can get a lot of absolute joy in helping children or helping people learn or giving. You can get that same absolute joy in having a lot more ice cream than you should. Or deciding that dinner was delicious. I’m going to keep eating cuz oh my god, is this great and fun. Or it’s so much more fun to not work than to work. And again, the same is true for monsters. It can give you an absolutely terrible feeling to feel that you’re not being a good friend. But it can also give you an absolute terrible feeling to feel that you don’t want to work anymore. I don’t want to work anymore because working makes me feel like this. And that’s the same way it makes you feel when you’re a bad friend. What? Right? Because they’re neutral.
Clarity Through Identifying Your DriversI can’t stress enough, even though you may disagree, I can’t stress enough that these driving forces need to be identified in your life. And once they are identified, a lot of things will give you tremendous clarity. And I can tell you with my coaching system that I built, and it’s not just a system, but it’s a system the the I’m meaning a system as a way of doing things, but a system as a programatical thing I made online. So anyway, I’ve actually modified that system that has worked really well to include the concept of monsters and unicorns seeking pleasure and avoiding pain to make it a lot easier to help me to identify the paths and the ways for people to succeed.
You can do the same for yourself without involving me. If you want to involve me, that would be awesome. But you don’t have to involve me. You can do it yourself if you identify the monsters and the unicorns. And again, if you’ve had some failure with New Year’s resolutions and you’ve and you’ve said, “I made that New Year’s resolution this year again,” then you know that you’re targeting a behavior and not targeting the things that power the behavior. And power is really an uh apppropo word. All the energy to do a thing comes from that. Pleasure and pain generate energy. They can both generate the same amount of energy but in different ways and with different feels to it.
What Will You Do Differently?So one last pause for us. So my question is now that we’ve discussed this and now that you’ve thought through your New Year’s resolutions and maybe you did indeed come up with one that really you hit a wall on knowing about the monsters and the unicorns, what will you do different to attack this issue?
Well, all righty then. I think we had a really good conversation this time. I really do. So, thank you as always for listening. Take a look at BeCAUSE! it’s a quick read and it makes a lot of sense. And um keep listening and if you think this was worth sharing, please do so. I would really appreciate that. And happy February.
The Discomfort of the Sales FunnelHave I said how funnels feel icky to me? Well, hey there. Welcome back. Do you like funnels? I don’t mean like for refilling your oil or delicious funnel cakes. I mean, well, let’s let’s talk about this. So, as many of you know, there’s a concept called the sales funnel. It’s a process where you get someone into a process and kind of help them along the way to purchase your product. Now, you don’t see this that often with physical products. There’s a whole different way of dealing with that, but you do see it for services, especially certain kinds of services. And sure enough, if it’s a service that kind of gives you pause, it’s probably one that has a funnel associated with it. Funnels don’t feel good, no matter how well they’re built. And if you’re like me, you know right away when you’re in one. Are you in one now? Are you thinking that right now that by listening to my podcast, you’re in my funnel? Because if you’re listening to the podcast, doesn’t it mean that you’re starting to kind of buy into how uh I approach things, which means you might actually buy one of my books and then you might actually hire me to speak or to coach you. So, Mark, isn’t this a funnel? Well, not intentionally. I mean, there’s nothing making you move forward. Nothing in this podcast builds momentum. There is a bumper at the end right when you normally turn it off that says, “Hey, if you like this, you know, you can buy my books or do this or do that or whatever, but it’s not really a funnel. My books tell you a little bit about the other stuff that I do, but mostly they just say, “Hey, here’s the other stuff I do.” And uh if you want to rate this, that’d be great. I don’t go out of my way when it comes to coaching people to shove them into a funnel either to get them to pay, to get them to buy. I want them to make an informed decision. So, does that make me definitely not an expert on funnels? It definitely makes me someone who doesn’t construct them very well because I’m too focused on the product.
Funnels vs. Professional ProcessesAttorneys don’t really need a sales funnel because they have sort of a a process in place. You go talk to \ the receptionist or their secretary and then make a plan to have a consult and then go from there. There are engagement letters and so forth. The same is true for real estate. If if you’re looking at a home, then typically the site you’ve looked at the home on is already tracking you, your IP address, everything. It’s very detailed and it’s kind of cool and it’ll keep reaching out to you and touching you and saying, “Hey, uh, you know, you looked at this 3 days ago, blah blah blah.” So, that’s a a funnel.
A Personal Encounter with a Pushy FunnelHaving said all of that, let me tell you about the experience I just had which is prompted me to do this for you. As you know, if you’re an avid listener that some of these recordings are 10 minutes long about things like this that we can learn together with and some of these recordings are about an hour long and there are people that I find super interesting that I hope you find as interesting. Sometimes I have to pursue someone for a while and it’s just because they’re very popular. They’re public figures. They’re busy. they have a certain kind of schedule or, you know, they may need a little bit more vetting of me to finally get back to me. But all in all, it it works pretty well. And again, as I said in the CEO mindset, people of the kind of mindset that I typically ask on the show where people will say, “Okay, let’s do it.” And then 2 days later, we’re doing it. In addition to having people on my show, I typically appear on other podcasts and shows. So, every so often I’m approached and I have a service uh that I use and every so often I get an email that says, “Hey, would you like to be on the show?” and and so on so forth. And different people have different processes. Some people are like me where they are the booker as well as the person conducting the interview. So, other some people have some buffers in between. Well, I recently agreed to one of these fact-finding 15-minute meetings only to find that the meeting was actually 30 minutes and only 15 minutes was spent on me and the rest of the time was trying to shove me into this person’s funnel in which this person sort of sold something that they believed I would benefit from. and it only cost $10,000. Now, for me, they would do $9,000. It was obvious to me from the moment the first question was asked, I knew that question had nothing to do with my appearance on the show and had everything to do with this funnel. Have I said how funnels feel icky to me? because I’m naively under the belief that you can actually have a customer interaction in which you sort of vet them while they’re vetting you and you’re not shoving them into a funnel. Because again, I think a funnel is something different than a process. A process is just saying, “Hey, you know, I kind of I kind of want to talk to you. You seem to be interested.” And you could argue and say, “Well, Mark, that is a funnel.” But a funnel by its physical shape kind of shows you how you get to the point where you’re falling. You’re you’re you’re you’re trapped. You’re you’re being plunged faster and faster until the end of it.
The Financial Pressure CookerAnd that’s how I felt for a number of minutes. At the very tip of this funnel, where I was swirling at nearly the speed of light, I was then told that I could pay for this using credit cards and that I should put the total on a credit card to give to them. And then I should put that total from that credit card onto another credit card and keep rolling it around. And that way I could, and I quote, avoid the interest. Oh, now correct me if I’m wrong, if you disagree with me, but if you’re telling someone how to pay for something and you’re coming up with very clever ways to do it, you’re not really focusing on the process or the solution. Now, of course, if you have a payment plan in place, if it’s something that you can do via subscription, if you have various products, and everyone does. Everyone from real estate to banking and so forth, typically have some sort of product or financial product. People who sell higher ticket items typically partner with merchant accounts. The very basic level is that you accept credit cards and then it gets better from there. you actually accept bank transfers and you actually accept different kinds of payment methods like Apple Pay and so on and so forth. Even in banking, there are products or different kinds of savings accounts.
But if you’re wrangling someone to sort of go into a gray area financially, you know, sometimes very not that often, I I sort of wish I did the video portion of this because you’d see the look on my face. It was just incredible.
Integrity Over TacticsSo, I think this is a really spicy lesson for for myself and and for other people. If you do have something like a service that is sold using what you call a funnel or your boss calls a funnel or your company calls a funnel, then I think it’s the most mindful thing to do to consider how your customer sees it. Does your customer see the funnel or is it invisible? I’m sure there are people who are sales experts who talk about that all the time where they say if you can’t see the selling then you’re doing it right. I don’t know how to make you a million dollars overnight. I do know how to show you how to have integrity and to have a good product. I can tell you that human beings want to be treated as human beings. And I can tell you that you, someone who’s listening to this podcast, is probably someone who knows all of that right now. It’s probably how you conduct yourselves. You are probably someone who really does operate with integrity that you will probably even pass up what some would consider to be an easy sale because you know in the long run it’s probably not a good fit for your client and might actually cause some hardship. So I want to say if you’re that kind of person and my bet is on the fact that you definitely are that kind of person and kudos to you. Kudos to you for having integrity and trying to just have the best product or service or both and not the best funnel and thanks for allowing me to share that with you. I appreciate you
Thought-Provoking Questions About Your Sales Funnel1. Does your sales process feel like a helping hand or a trap door? Think about the customer journey. Is it a series of informed decisions they make willingly, or does it feel like they are being pushed faster and faster toward a transaction they might not be ready for? 2. Is your funnel “visible” to the customer? Can your potential client feel the mechanics of the sale happening to them? If they can sense that your questions are designed solely to qualify them for a sale rather than to understand their needs, the integrity of the interaction is compromised. 3. Are you prioritizing the product or the payment method? If a significant portion of your sales conversation is spent explaining clever or gray-area financial gymnastics to afford your service, have you lost focus on the value of the solution itself? 4. Would you pass up an easy sale for the sake of integrity? If your funnel works too well and captures people who aren’t actually a good fit, do you have the integrity to let them go, or does the system demand you close the deal regardless of the long-term hardship it might cause the client? 5. Would you think a simple to-do list that allows you to throw things into the future for follow up would help you feel less pressured to keep nagging people? If so, check out checkmark.
Transcript of episode:Well, hey there. Welcome back.
Why We Remember Firsts But Miss the LastsThere’s a lot of talk about the first time you do something. You remember your first time at something. But the reverse isn’t exactly true because it takes a bit of time to realize it truly was the last time because in some cases there’s a chance you might do it again. But thinking back on the last time can be rather jarring, emotionally draining, but sometimes can make you smile.
Sometimes it can make you sad. There was a last time that you rode your bike as a 12-year-old. You put in the garage or or just put it down against the fence or what have you and that was it. You never rode it again. There was the last time you played with your Legos and then they got packed up and that was it. And yes, I know there are tons of adults now that do Lego stuff, so maybe not the best example. There was a last time that you did an art project as a kid. A last time that you wrote in a old paper journal with your favorite pen. A last time that you had a certain treat that your grandmother used to make. There was a last time you slept alone or a last time you slept with a partner. A last time you heard the laughter of your children when they were little. Even the last time you flipped a burger before you hung up your hat and went on to bigger and better things.
Thinking about first times is easy because you can only have first time at something once. Your first kiss, your first love, your first time trying something. When you’re a beginner learning something, it’s your first time setting foot in a new area or even a new piece of software. If you do it again, you know it’s not your first time because you’ve already done it. But the last time is a little more difficult to record because as I said, you you don’t think about it at the time because at the time you think you’re going to do it again at some point because you’re used to doing it over and over again. But it truly becomes the last time until you look back on it 10, 15, 20, 50 years later.
The Sudden Finality of Loss: Reflections on Recent GoodbyesWhat made me really think of this is in the last couple days, two people I knew have passed away. And for both of them, I thought I was going to be able to speak to them again. I didn’t realize the last time I talked to them was literally the last time.
One of them was Scott Adams, someone uh that I had interviewed. And though I knew of his declining health, I was hopeful that we were going to talk again and sort of catch up on things. The other was a longtime client of mine, someone I’d got to know. I’d got to know both he and his wife, and I very much appreciated seeing them interact in front of me as I was interacting with them for business purposes. I always got a kick out of him and them and it was almost sitcom-esque in the way the environment felt with always being a happy ending in which I was waiting for the studio audience to start clapping and laughing. The sense of loss that we feel at a funeral is not just missing the person, but it’s the realization that you cannot interact again. that everything was a last time.
Any and every interaction you’ve ever had with that person is the last final time you’ve had it.
Living in a Culture of “Do-Overs” and RebootsThat finality is something that we don’t experience that often in life. In fact, one could say a lot of our current culture, especially powered by social media, is one that really doesn’t allow for finality because there’s always a doover. You can always go back and rewatch something. There’s always a revival, a reboot, and what have you.
Sometimes we don’t truly appreciate the finality in which life moves. It’s something to respect, to expect, and to I guess appreciate on a level. And it makes me wonder just what aspects of life we are ignoring the finality of. What parts of life are we moving in? Business, personal relationships, what have you, in which there’s some finality. there’s a last time that we aren’t really appreciating. If you’re in a relationship that doesn’t seem like it’s going to end, do you think about the last time, the last embrace, the last brushing by someone as you walk through the kitchen? If you have a client, do you think about the last project, the project you’re on right now? Is this it? Is this the last project I’m ever going to do for them? The last representation in court, the last design, the last article.
Finding the Balance Between Morbidity and GratitudeDoes this sense of finality make us morbid? Well, perhaps that’s what causes us to avoid indulging ourselves in it too often. We have an awareness of it, but we don’t want to live it daytoday. We don’t want to live in fear and in aversion to this thing just abruptly ending it. It’s not a way to live.
But the other book end that we’re squeezed between is the one in which we completely ignore the possibility of finality. If you go through life thinking everything is futile, that what’s the point? it’s just going to end anyway. You create for yourself a relatively cold and miserable existence. But if you live on the opposite side of the spectrum in which you believe that everything is infinite and you can take things for granted, then you’re not truly embracing the importance and the magnitude of mortality. I think in my humble opinion that living somewhere in the middle is probably best that we are aware of the last times that happen but that we also embrace the present moment.
A Personal Moment of Outsider PerspectiveI’ll tell you something odd. A long time ago, when my kids were little and I was married, in the middle of winter, I took out the garbage. And before I actually came back in the house, I stood outside in front of the window. They didn’t know I was watching. And with the very cold wind blowing, I looked inside of the house to them happily playing together and thought about what it was like to be an outsider, what it was like to be cut off from that.
I did that on purpose because I wanted to see how that felt and I wanted to make sure I appreciated that it wasn’t my current position. I I never told them that I did that. In fact, this is the first time I’ve ever spoken about it in 10 plus years. And now my kids are grown up and moved out and I am now divorced. But at least at that time, it really drove the point home of what I had. And I appreciated that I did that. And I still appreciated that I did this regardless of the outcome.
Preparing for the End to Appreciate the NowSo even if it’s as simple as the last time you use your kurig or a favorite frying pan to a conversation with a dear loved one, the last time can really have meaning in your life. And if you stop to think about it before it’s the last time, it can not only make you appreciate things, but can prepare you for the actual last time.
Who knows when the last time will be that you hear my voice on this podcast. I’d like to think it’s not this time. And I truly hope you keep listening. So, thank you. If it is your last time, I appreciate you. And if I’m going to see you again, I appreciate you as well.
Take care of yourself. Thank you.
You do less, but you get more.Well, hey there. Welcome back. Do you have any limitations? Oh, yes, of course you do. Let’s talk about them. And I think your first reaction is, “Well, here we go. We’re going to explore how I’m not good enough at something or how I don’t even do a thing.” Nope, we’re not doing that at all. In fact, we are going to look at why limitations are so important and how they actually make a product, a business, and a person better. What is this? Real life? Yes, I’m here to tell you yes, it is.
The Danger of Trying to be Good at Everything in 2026I read a book a while back called The Myth of Excellence. And one of the things it says in the book, and I’m paraphrasing, is the best way to sort of destroy your business and go out of business is to try to be good at everything. Years ago, I worked at a firm that had that same motto. And they tried to be good at everything and tell all of their clients that they could do anything and everything that their clients were asking. And they couldn’t. In their quest to be good at everything, they were essentially good at nothing.
The Success of the 10-Minute Podcast ConstraintWhen I started this podcast—and we are approaching 300 episodes in 2026—when I started it, the very first episode, I set a rule for myself. I set a limitation and the limitation was I would keep the episode if it was just me to about 10 minutes. I have adhered to that and every so often I go over to maybe 11 or 12 minutes and then I apologize profusely. That limitation has helped me to have a better show. It has helped me to have a show that’s better because it forces me to be more concise, but it also makes my show very different.
When people find out that my show is only 10 minutes long, they’re shocked. And they’re shocked in a very pleasant way. They’re like, “Oh, I can digest that. Oh, I’ll just go empty the dishwasher and listen to your show.” “Oh, okay. Wow, that’s it.” I’ve had multiple people come to me and say, “Oh, yeah. I listen to like seven of your episodes.” Wow. Like so that’s really a cool thing that limitation has been very advantageous.
Defining Strategic vs. Self-Improvement LimitationsAt the time of year that this podcast episode is coming out is we’re we’re we’re ending the year and it’s when everyone is making New Year’s resolutions and saying they’re going to be better and this and that. They’re probably looking at limitations as something they’re going to overcome. And yes, there are certain things that you want to improve. You want to be better at weight loss. You want to be better at at consistency at this that the other thing. Yes. So, you’re sort of overcoming your scale and you’re saying, “I want this to be a seven when it’s only a three right now.” That’s fine.
What I’m talking about are limitations that are typically self-imposed for a reason. If you’re running a business and you set limitations, you will find that very comforting. You will create a sort of comfort zone for you, your skills, your people, and yourself. You can do that for yourself as well where you have a limitation in something that you do whether it’s well when people ask for rides or they ask for favors I have a limitation of such and such and it can help you to maintain consistency and integrity and you’re kind of shaking your head right now going wait I never really looked at it that way it’s a positive thing yes it’s an absolute positive thing.
Maintaining Professional Integrity with Time LimitsGetting back to my use of it when I interview people and I am exceeding exceedingly grateful for the chances I’ve had so far with interviewing people. When I interview people, I always start it by telling them when I first approach them, I’m only going to use an hour of your valuable time, no more. I promise. And I’m surprised at how many of those people view that as they they act like this is a new thing. Like no one has ever approached them for an interview and said, “Here’s our time limit.”
And there are obvious reasons for that, right? If you are running a show and you get somebody that you think is going to be really good, you want to squeeze every single delicious minute out of them that you can. So, you are actually doing yourself a disservice in their shortsighted view of it of saying, “Hey, I I told the guy it was only an hour, but he was willing to go longer. Darn it. Why did I do that?” Well, if he is willing to go longer, then you can go longer. And I had a guest that easily did an hour and a half and wanted to actually do more where I actually had to push back and say, “You know what? Why don’t you come back?” So again, a limitation simply related to the podcast and timing.
And I want to stress again that these limitations, unlike self-improvement limitations per se, are self-imposed limitations that have to do with something that you think is a good thing. Like for example, this is not, oh, I’m just going to limit myself to have only one and a half cakes. No, I’m not talking about like limiting your eating and things like that. Those are just that’s a different concept. This concept is there’s a thing that I do or enjoy or or could do, but I don’t.
The Business Advantage of Scarcity and Brand RecognitionGetting back to the business again, if you’re a creator and let’s say you create 3D printed objects, you may limit yourself to things that are not so fragile or things that are small or things that are really easy to ship. Can you create and print the larger things? Absolutely. Are those high ticket items? Absolutely. Are those things that people request? Sure. But you may just say, “No, I limit myself and I don’t do those. Maybe if I do a a in-person fair somewhere, I may print those and bring those with me. But when it comes to my online store, I limit myself to only doing the little tiny things.”
Could Chick-fil-A be open on a Sunday? Yes, but they limit themselves and they’re not open on a Sunday. Not being open on a Sunday costs them an estimated 1 billion with a B dollars of revenue, but they actually gain more than that because it gives them more brand recognition. It increases scarcity because people think, “Oh, I want, oh, it’s closed. Oh, I better go there on Tuesday then.” So, it’s a net gain for them limiting themselves of actually not allowing their customers to buy their products on one day every single week. Hobby Lobby is the same way and they both create a certain image in the mind of many consumers, an image that they cannot create without creating that limitation.
Setting Social Boundaries to Protect Your Time and EnergyIf they say, “Oh yeah, we have morals and ethics and this and we want our people to be taken care of.” Sure, any business can say that. But a business that actually forces itself to be closed on a specific day can say that you too can create that perception. And I don’t mean just a perception like it’s false. I mean a perception in other people of your behavioral patterns by enforcing a limitation.
You can present yourself as someone who’s very friendly to your friends and say, “Oh yeah, I’ll help out anytime. Just call me.” Okay, but a lot of people say that. But if you say, “If you want me to help you, let me know.” but you’re going to give me some lead time or I can’t help you. It shows them that you’re serious. It shows them that you actually are committing to helping them, but they are going to also have to come step up to you and say, “Hey, you know, I didn’t just think of this out of nowhere. I actually need help and I’m going to do some planning.” You know, do emergencies happen? Of course. But I’m saying by pushing back and forcing a limitation on your kindness in a way it can help people to say, “Oh, he’s actually serious about that.”
Conclusion: Why Doing Less Allows You to Get MoreBanks, restaurants, retail, etc., etc. The list goes on. There probably isn’t a business out there that doesn’t have a limitation that they self-imposed. There isn’t a business out there that some of the people in a round table, CEO, CFO, what have you, see people, marketing, what have you, sat down and said “well you know we could do this right?” and the answer was yes but we’re not going to and we’re not going to because it is a limitation that we are imposing and there’s usually push back of yes but we’ll see this increase in revenue yes but it’s just not part of our brand or it’s just moving forward not something we really want to do.
Imposing limitations on yourself, your business, etc. can be extremely valuable. It can be something that reduces your stress, reduces your time, energy, and resources. Again, it’s one of those things I try to introduce in these podcasts where you do less, but you get more. And it shouldn’t work that way, but it does.
So, what in your life is something that you intentionally or unintentionally have realized you’re setting a limitation on? And if you’re a business owner, this may be something that is a 50-page document, your operating agreement. Or if you’re a person running a human being, yourself or your children, it may be something that you’ve just come to realize is something that you do. So, what do you do? What what do you not do and why? It’s something worth looking into.
And again, if you’re using the CheckMark™ app, then this podcast will automatically have its own little worksheet built in that you can click and copy to your clipboard and then kind of go through the homework of this. And it’s not homework per se, but it’s something that is a really cool thing that allows you to kind of go through review of this episode. And I I don’t really know of any other podcasts out there that that try to give you a lot of good information in 10 minutes and that allow you to use a fun little app to go through it and say, “Oh yeah, yep. I did this. I did this.” And it’s much better at retaining and it’s kind of a fun interactive thing. And that, my friends, is my 10 minutes. Thank you.
PS – See Top 10 things you can do NOW to be successful in 2026 for things you can do now for success. As a bonus you can snag the CheckMark™ ap for free for your phone and desktop that will help you to track, motivate yourself, and make being successful in 2026 just downright fun.
Getting unstuckBefore you can move forward, you have to get unstuck a bit. Part of being stuck is worrying. Some people are really really good at it. Oh I’m sorry I’m raising my hand. Check out the how can I stop worrying episode.
Sometimes life can get you really stuck. Circumstances can be such that you really just wanna give up. I feel you. And mental health is a delicate subject. If you’ve ever thought of truly giving up, check out depression and throwing away the container.
You may be stuck because you think everything you’re doing is failing or you lament all of your failures as 100% your responsibility. If that’s the case, then the reverse is also true. You are also 100% responsible for your successes. Perhaps it’s time to start taking responsibility for those. That’s such an odd sentence isn’t it? If it feels weird to say that out loud then you’ll benefit from the episode taking responsibility for the good in your life.
Sometimes being stuck isn’t necessarily running into a wall, but rather being at a place with lack of direction. And that can manifest as feeling like you don’t have the energy or desire to do something or you literally don’t know what to do. I created a simple and very effective way to find your way back and in the process get something as a gift to yourself. If you’ve ever lost your way, check out the episode called UPS, my secret for avoiding depression being more productive.
GrowingIf you want to grow in 2026 you may have to learn. You may find that there are things you know quite well in fact, so well you take it for granted. And in doing so that can make it both a challenge to learn and a challenge to teach. If you adopt a beginner mindset in which you are completely open to learning, it makes it a very enjoyable experience to learn new skills and it’ll make you an excellent teacher. Check out the beginner mindset makes you a better teacher.
On a related note—a lot of people equate success with productivity. After all if you’re being productive, it means you feel good about what you’re doing and you’re producing something that at the bare minimum makes you happy and is aligned with you and hopefully it’s also profitable. It may surprise you that this is one of the times in your life in which selfishness is a really good thing. If you tailor your productivity selfishly to what really makes you happy you’ll end up with a really good product and maybe surprised at how many other people enjoy the benefits of this specificity. Check out why selfish productivity may be the best productivity.
We tend to present our success as milestones, but we forget we built those milestones layer by layer. If your goal is to do a certain thing, but you ignore the steps to get there you’re making it much more difficult for yourself than it should be. Everything we do in life is layer by layer. It’s iterative. You can learn a great lesson about this by listening to live your life iteratively
Gaining control & Managing your energyPart of moving forward in 2026 is probably gaining some control. If you don’t have any control over your environment or yourself, nothing is going to happen. Every so often I ask myself a question that drives me crazy until I answer it… and that driving myself crazy usually ends up with me manifesting an entire book after much research and experimentation. This time it manifested itself in the form of an app that runs on both your phone and your browser. Check out what I figured out in the episode I think I found the perfect question.
We are bombarded with social media and we tend to compare our successes to others. How can we not when everything from LinkedIn to Instagram shows us just how happy and successful everyone else is. But the energy you put in to showing off is energy you’re not putting into improving. Check out the silence of success and after it, you may not be putting more effort into being successful, but your effort will be more effectively applied to what’s best for you.
All work and no play as they say. I actually started this podcast because I needed to learn what balance was in life. It was a comment from a psychologist I was visiting with my very young kids because of the turmoil of what was happening in the household related to the divorce. I wanted to make sure they were OK. “But what are you doing for you,” she asked. That comment truly sent me on the path to find out what life was made of and how to have balance. If you go into 2026 thinking you are going to work yourself to death and make something happen, you need to consider feeding more to your brain and your soul than just work. The problem is that people who tend to be high achievers don’t wanna just stare at a wall or trash TV to relax they need to be equally engaged. If you’re one of these special people then check out engagement fiction for your type a brain.
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There’s such a stigma that we can’t even talk about it.
Well, hey there. Welcome back.
The Stigma of Private WorryWhat are you worried about? No, really. What are you worried about? Maybe you say nothing. Maybe you say, “Oh, the usual, you know, the things everyone worries about.” We deal with life and concerns and we take objective measures to reach goals in public. But then in private we worry and sometimes the worry doesn’t match our outward demeanor does it? Worry has a stigma to it just like suicide does. And I talked about this in my episode called throwing away the container. There’s such a stigma that we can’t even talk about it. We don’t even allow ourselves to talk about it. We wave it off as a few moments of weakness or we just think everyone feels the same way about this that or the other thing, but we don’t really address it for the most part. Now, you may feel that you have a worry about a certain thing and then you decide you’re going to take action. And when you do that, you actually feel a lot better. But it doesn’t happen often, does it? The stigma and guilt prevents you from really exploring it. And if you’ve noticed through a number of episodes and even my books, I tend to push really hard in the direction of, well, no, let’s just do that. Let’s feel that. Let’s let’s see what that’s like. Let’s not hide. Let’s not shove things into the dark recesses and not deal with them. Because that’s how they get their power. That’s how they fester and get stronger because we push them into a corner and we don’t deal with them.
Saying It Out Loud: The Power of the “Third Voice”It’s typical for someone to feel bad and embarrassed if they say out loud to someone, I am worried about this because it almost feels so unnatural to just say it that way. And if you’ve read three voices, it means you’re saying it in your third voice. We like to say it in our second voice all the time, which is our inner dialogue and monologue. Because like many other things, fears, paranoia, and so forth, they sound silly when you say them out loud. Well, then why wouldn’t you say them out loud then? If it sounds silly and sort of dispels it. Here’s the contrast.
This does not apply if we’re worried for someone else. If we think to ourselves, “Oh, I’m worried about Susan. And Susan being someone you work with or Susan being your daughter or your cousin or your sister. Now you’re concerned. Oh, that’s so much better. Well, I’m just concerned for her.” Well, it’s sort of silly for you to be worried about that. But I’m sure she’ll be fine. Yeah, I’m just worried about her. Aw, it’s really nice that you feel that way. It’s really nice to have all that empathy towards someone who isn’t you. Do you see how odd that is?
If you’re worried about Susan, you may just have coffee with her and sit down and say, you know, how have you been? What’s going on with that? It’s you won’t even say I am worried about you because you know that’s a full paw. You’ll say, “So, what’s going on with Rick?” or “What’s going on with that thing that you were dealing with? How’s that going?” And then you’ll assess what you need to do, your empathy and your your advice and so forth based on that. If you’re born with male psychological genetics, you will think, “I’m hearing a problem. I want to fix that.” If you’re born with female psychological genetics, you will think, “I’m hearing that someone is hurting and suffering. I want to help them. I want to listen and make sure that they feel heard.
But neither of these things is applied to yourself.
And again, you may hear this and think, “Oh, okay. I get it that some people worry, but I don’t do this. This is not me.” And you know, if you’re true, if you’re accurate, then cool. Then good for you. I’m actually thrilled. If this is something that doesn’t apply to you, that you don’t find yourself in a in a corner or in a a self-perpetuating loop or something that rules your brain anytime it has free time, then you’re doing pretty well.
Bringing Worry Into the LightBut a lot of people aren’t. A lot of people experience this. And as with so many things, it’s something that we can deal with. It’s not something that’s part of the human experience per se. I mean, worry and concern and all that stuff and fear, yes, it’s all part of that human experience, but only to a degree. We can deal with the stuff that is, as I said, the loop or things that are shoved into the corner. We can bring them into the light. And again, how do we do that? As always, we raise awareness of it, which we’ve just done.
So, here’s some thoughts on dealing with worry. And again, if you’re using the app, all these things will be in the project library, and you can just click on it, and boom, you’ll have these on your little clipboard.
Cuz I like when you’re lazy. Sometimes I’m lazy, too. What if you just said out loud all of your worries? Like I’m a big proponent of waking up and saying I’m grateful for and then you list the things you’re grateful for. I do that in the morning. I stumble around half asleep and my feet hit the ground and I’m immediately saying I’m grateful. Your feet hit the ground, Mark. Don’t you have carpet? Sorry. My feet hit the carpet.
I’m grateful. I love myself editing. Don’t you?
The “Worry List” ExerciseBut what if you just wrote down I’m not saying first thing in the morning, don’t do that. I’m saying once you’re awake or whatever time of the day that you have a lot of cognitive ability and you’re and you’re clear-minded, what if you sat down and you made a list of everything you’re worried about? Not projects, not goals, not stuff you want to take care of, not even stuff you want to think about, but stuff you’re worried about.
And isn’t it odd that those things may not be the same list? Isn’t it weird that you go, “Well, wait a second. The stuff I’m worried about is stuff I don’t want to deal with. The stuff I’m worried about isn’t even related to me. Like, I worry sometimes about this or that or the other thing.
But what if you brought it into the light? What if you wrote it down?
What if you made this list, looked at it, and then went back to it, and then noted how realistic each one of those was?
What if you went back and you wrote a why next to it, like, why am I worried about this?
Tracing the Origins of Our FearsAnd what if we took a page from my book BeCAUSE! and we tried to trace it back to where it actually comes from. If you grow up poor, you can have a worry about having enough money. Even though you have enough money, even though you have more than enough money, even though you have everything in place to keep you safe and comfortable and prosperous, you may still worry about money because in your childhood, that’s all you did. Do you not think that bringing that to the light could dispel that? that the monster that’s pushing you away from the pain of being poor, the pain of not having enough isn’t really needed because everything’s okay. Now, granted, maybe things aren’t okay. Maybe you are in a a downturn. Maybe you see a pattern and you really are kind of hard on your luck right now. And I’m sorry if you are. And so, the monster’s warranted and he’s doing his job to to protect you. But this can apply to so many things. And again, it gets back to the book Because where you pull it backwards and you say, “Well, what’s propelling me to feel this way. It’s it’s a self-reflection and can be a selfrevelation. I mean, the coolest thing from this could be you lit you literally listen to this silly 10-minute episode, then you write a bunch of stuff down and you go, “Oh my god, I’m not worried about that anymore.”
The Goal: Just One Less WorryWhat if this one episode took away just one of your worries? just one no matter how silly it is because the silliness of a worry does not dictate its intensity. It does not dictate its effect on you. You can worry constantly about the silliest of things that have no business being in reality and it will hurt you and it will make you suffer. And as you know, one of my themes is I don’t want people to suffer. If there’s something I can do with my voice or my actions or something I create for them that can help them to not suffer, that is part of my mission with this podcast.
So, think about that. Even if you don’t write stuff down, even if you don’t use my my productivity app and you click on the little thing and you get the nice little list that goes along with this episode, just leave this episode thinking about that. Feel free to listen to it again, but I hope you leave with one less worry.
OutroAnd as always, thank you for listening. Take care.
This episode is available in the Task Projects page of CheckMark™!
Well, hey there. Welcome back.
Redefining Friction: Physics vs. ProcessWhat does friction mean to you? For most of my life, friction has just simply described a physics concept in which something rubs against something else in some way, causing a slowdown and causing heat. But now, and now is variable depending on what sector of work you’re in. Friction describes the same thing, but it’s metaphorically for processes. And you know, I’m all about systems and processes.
Intentional Friction in App DesignHere’s an example. In the new app I created that allows you to get stuff done. When you add to-do items, you can actually swipe them forward into the future. So, if you swipe it to the right, it appears on tomorrow. There’s also an arrow that you can hit to go to the next day and the next day and the next day. So, if you want to place something, let’s say a week ahead of time, you actually have to hit that button seven times. Friction. And people could say, “Well, Mark, what if I want to push something 25 days into the future? I have to hit that button 25 times.” Correct. It’s friction by design. I want it to feel like you are putting it off all that time because if I didn’t do that, you could just type in a date or use a selector to grab a date and go there. It’s gone for a month and a half. Well, if you’re pushing something that far into the future, it should really be a calendar item. But if you’re pushing something into the future, it should feel like you’re pushing it into the future.
In building this app, I learned a lot about intentional friction. I learned a lot about removing it, which is what I always try to do in any process I create. But I also learned about where it’s actually appropriate.
My Typewriter: Friction to Prevent FailureI have a vintage Remington number 12 typewriter. I actually wrote my first story on it. And no, I’m not that old because it was created in the 20s and 30s. Every key is connected to a rather slender, thin piece of metal that has a little hammer at the end that matches the key that you hit. When you hit the key, it swings upward and hits the ink tape and creates the image onto the piece of paper. Now, on a piano, the keys do something similar. They have hammers that hit strings. On a piano, though, all those keys and hammers are parallel. You can hit as many keys as you want and they’ll all hit at the same time and not interact with each other. Not so for the typewriter. If you hit two keys at once, they will try to meet each other at the very top and they can get entangled.
There’s an old tale about the design of the keyboard, which is the modern one we use today, being designed so that you would type slower. It actually was a designed to intentionally create a lot of friction and slowing you down. Well, so the truth is it’s not exactly like that. Yes, it does slow you down, but the reason being is they tried to separate certain keys so that you wouldn’t easily hit two of the keys that would smash into each other. Again, intentional friction.
Identifying Unintentional vs. Intentional FrictionOne of the most exciting things for me is that when I’m introduced to a process, a system, whether it’s a person and how they conduct their life and try to get things done or an actual business and their systems in place is when I find unintentional friction. I find something in place that slows something down. They go down an avenue. They go instead of going ABC, they go A X Z B and then they come back to C and and we’re able to remove that and say no ABC. See, no more friction.
But you have to respect the friction that’s in place because some of it’s intentional. Now, some of it works that it’s worked itself into it to be intentional. And you can look at a process and think, well, that’s inefficient. We’ll just do this. But if you remove the intentional friction, you can find that the system will actually break.
Why Some Processes Need to Be Slow: Divorce & MarriageLet’s use another fun example. Oh, let’s say divorce. If someone wants to file for divorce, they don’t make a phone call. And then the people on the other end say, “Hey, thanks for calling. Why don’t you guys just pop down? We’ll take care of that.” The friction that’s in place typically is that you fill out a bunch of paperwork and then they place something on the calendar and they sort of hope that you don’t show up for it because if you don’t it gets removed from the calendar and the divorce isn’t even happening. That’s intentional friction to make it harder for people to just say, “Yeah, I don’t want to do this thing anymore that I said I would do forever.”
I’m not in any way, shape, or form disparaging people who have gone through a divorce, but that is the system in place, and it does make some sense. And the same, of course, is true for marriage, for getting married. Now, granted, you can do drive-through marriages in Vegas and so forth, but that gets to something that I talked about in my podcast episode called become ceremonious. And when you have a ceremony attached to something, it slows it down and it makes it more important. It creates more friction. And again, your mind might be saying, “Well, that’s not a bad thing.” No, friction is not a bad thing. It’s a neutral thing. Just like the monsters and unicorns you may have learned about recently. As human beings, we have speeds. We slow down. We speed up. And again, there’s a podcast episode on the the speed of your life. And many times we talk about that. We say slow down, you know, take time to smell the roses and all that stuff, you know, apply some friction. Apply some friction, slow down and do that.
Applying Friction to Relationships and WorkOne final example is the sword and the sunflower. It has a lot of friction in it. It It is a slow read. It’s a slow read because if you pay attention, you get a whole bunch of payoffs. When I wrote it, did I say, “Oh, I’m going to put some friction in here.” No, that was just the way it was written. Let’s talk about you. You may have some business processes in place or a way the reason or the way that you cook the way that you do. Or when you approach relationships with someone, you may introduce intentional friction to slow down the beginning of the relationship. So maybe you can savor it and enjoy it and make sure it’s the right thing for you to do. This may be applied directly also to new hires at your company where there’s a certain amount of friction to make sure they’re the right person for the job or even when introducing a new task, a skill, responsibility to someone in your workplace. There’s some friction involved in that. And you may be thinking right now, wait a second, there’s no friction at all. People are kind of like floundering. Maybe this is why people are floundering. We just sort of let them go with that. we don’t push back a little bit or apply friction. And you’ll find the paradox of like slowing something down in that way or applying friction can actually make it a better thing. And that’s one of the eye opening things of really discovering the friction in your life is when you discover the things that are slowing you down or in place intentionally. This intentional friction I mentioned and how what a wonderful thing it is.
Taking Action: Evaluating Friction in Your LifeSo, as always, we raise your awareness about something and then we say, well, what are we going to do about it? And I would say the what are we going to do about it part is you should look at your life and look for intentional and unintentional friction. the way that you deal with your kids, the way that you prepare prepare meals, the way that you deal with your spouse or loved ones or friends, the the way that things are done in your workplace, the stuff you have control over, and the stuff you don’t have control over. And you may find that you are intentionally going around friction that you feel unnecessary in your workplace. No, I don’t fill that out. No, we just sort of skip that form. It would behoove you and give you a much more enjoyable life to remove the unintentional friction and respect the friction that’s in place. You may even find that, hey, there’s a place in my life where I need to put more friction. Now, if that sounds crazy, you could say, well, it’s way too easy for me to run to the refrigerator and grab that stuff that makes me not so thin. So, if there was friction between you and the refrigerator, friction between you and accessing that, then it would be harder for you to overeat or go off your diet.
Actionable Homework with CheckMark™If you’re using CheckMark™, my productivity app, you’ll find this episode listed under the episodes list on the dashboard. And here’s something really cool. You know, I mention homework in these episodes a lot where you pause it or what have you. I really hope that people think about them later and so forth, but I can’t exactly expect people to like whip out a notepad or what have you. Now, you don’t have to. If you go to the project library screen, you’ll find the this episode and all you have to do is click on it and hit start project and all the homework or things you need to think about from this episode will automatically be applied to your clipboard. Boom. Instant actionable episode notes. pretty cool stuff.
So, thank you for listening as always and take care of yourself and I will see you again.
This had been entered into the CheckMark projects list!
The beginner mindset makes you a better teacher—and it’s fun too!Well, hey there. Welcome back… to everyone who is an old pro at this podcast and those who are just beginners because at some point you are a beginner and we tend to forget that don’t we? In fact, there’s a phenomenon I would like to raise your awareness on and then do our usual discussion of.
The Expert’s Curse: Forgetting the Beginner’s MindsetSo, let’s think about this. There are skills and methods and things that you have immersed yourself in, things you’ve gotten better in, things that you have been doing for quite some time, things you take for granted. And one of the interesting things that happens when you are really good at something or you’ve amassed a certain level of skill in something or you may have put together some disperate skills and abilities and created a brand new thing and because of that you forget what it was like to be a beginner. To me, you get so far ahead in your skill, you just completely become out of touch what it even feels like to not be good at it, to be nervous about it, to wonder what you’re doing wrong, to wonder if you’re doing anything right, to even search to find answers to how to be better at it, or to look at someone who’s really good at it and think, “I could never be like that.” If you are someone who’s really good at something, and I know you’re really good at more than one thing,
you may have become out of touch with what it’s like to actually reach the level you’re at, to be at the very beginning stage.
The Excitement of Starting From ScratchHere’s the interesting thing. Being a beginner in something can be really kind of well, exciting. If you’ve played video games or really any games, including cards or board games, you know what it’s like to sort of reset and start from scratch. Now, board games and card games may be a little bit less intense of an analogy because everyone kind of starts at a at an even playing field, but if you’ve amassed a lot of something, whether it’s wealth or knowledge or skills or experience, it can be sort of exciting to have that voluntarily, let’s underline that, taken away from you. or if you voluntarily decide not to take advantage of it. But see, if you still have the knowledge that you have the skill or the wealth or what have you, it’s not exactly the same thing. Truly feeling like you don’t have something and then needing to go forward with it is the feeling I’m talking about. It’s the beginner feeling. And it’s that beginner feeling that someone who’s excelling in something gets disconnected from.
Why Experts Often Make Bad TeachersSo here’s what happens with that from the position of the let’s say the learner. Let’s say you are a beginner and you’d like to learn something from the master. Well the master can be excellent at what they do but they can be completely out of touch with how to relay that because they may process things very very quickly. And you’re probably thinking about this in in your own world of of whatever it is that you’re really good at. Something that takes you a minute to do that would take them an hour or maybe they’d never be able to do it because they simply haven’t learned that particular method that you know. Uh, hey Mark, write a fivepage article on this subject. Oh, okay. You can’t use chat. No, I’m not going to use anything. I’ll just sit down. Can Can you leave me alone for just a few minutes? I mean, someone else would say, “Well, wait, what’s the subject again? And why do I like this? And what’s the outcome? And and can I research this? And I don’t know what all sounds the same, and oh my god, I can’t get started. I don’t know what the first sentence should even be. Is how does this even work?” Like, those are all questions that are instantly answered in someone’s mind if they’ve used to doing that, including writing books, including creating a podcast episode. I’ve actually worked with a few people recently about starting a podcast and had some interesting discussions with them about what to talk about.
Also, the the length of it uh what format should they be visual? Should they just be audio like me since I have a face for radio? Thank you very much. But we are learning and adaptable to a fault kinds of beings. It’s especially notable at the two ends of the spectrum. Uh the the hands-on trades and the cerebral pursuits like being a professor, a teacher, etc. In the hands-on trades, you have the old guy who’s been doing this forever that somehow can just get through something. He does something with his hands and there there you go. Might even seem like he doesn’t measure a lot and yet it’s always perfect. In the other end of the spectrum, there’s the professor that seems to know the answer to everything. You can’t trip them up. You can’t confuse them. They just happen to know. But in both cases, statistically speaking,
they make really bad teachers.
The True Skill of Teaching: Becoming the BeginnerAnd you can say, “Wait, Mark, you just said a teacher could make a really bad teacher.” Well, yes, because people who are professors sometimes aren’t really teachers. To me, teaching is a separate skill unto itself. And part of that teaching is putting yourself in the mindset of the beginner
because you can’t just be aloof as a professor and say, well, you know, read this and read this and you come back to me when you understand that or be the the old hands-on guy with grimy giant fingers that says, oh, you got to work at that. You’ll figure it out.
Neither of those things are helpful for the person who is in the beginner mindset.
And how do you cross that gap? Well, you as the teacher become the beginner. This is all probably sounding very zen to you. And it sounds zen to me. You know, the the teacher must become the learner and stuff like that, but it’s very true. I spend the majority of a podcast episode like this being the beginner. I want to see it through the eyes of you and say, “Okay, well, if I’m listening to this, I don’t know any of the stuff I know. I what would I what would I want to know and and in what order? And how quickly would I need to ramp up?” And that’s part of my my goal of saying, “Okay, I want to raise your awareness and then talk about what’s next.” So the raising of your awareness means I sort of drop my awareness because if I didn’t do that, I would just say, “Hey, you know, there’s this thing that’s happening here. Here it’s called this. Let’s talk about it. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.” But if you don’t know what it is, you don’t know how to even look for it. And so that’s the raising awareness part of these 10-minute episodes.
From Fear to Excitement: Embracing “Level One”So the the bullet list would be you are an expert in something or extremely good at it to the point where you may have forgotten what it’s like to not even know that to be at square one. And and just thinking about square one might not be exciting to you as it might be to someone like me. It might actually be kind of scary. And it’s that being at square one that can scare people in many ways. If they’re starting out in a relationship, if they’re retiring, you I have a number of episodes on that. They’re starting a brand new job, they’re starting in an entirely different field. But the scary fear of not knowing something and once again being a beginner can quickly turn to sort of excitement in which you start learning and you start going up the levels and you’re like, “Oh yeah, that’s how this feels. It feels really good to learn things cuz now I look back and now I’m sort of a level three on this and now I learned this stuff and oh my god, this part was driving me nuts. I read it in a book over and over and over again.” And then I talked to another person who does this for a living and they and they told me something that I that that allowed me to make the connection. Oh, well that makes sense.
How to Be a Better Teacher (and a Better Learner)So from the perspective of the teacher. So if you’re put in the position and hopefully you are because everyone should be teaching something to someone. If you’re in the perspective of teaching someone, whether you’re onboarding someone new at your company, you have a friend, you’re helping, it’s your kids, you’re mentoring, what have you,
understand that you need to be in the mindset of the beginner, it will make you a far better teacher. If you are the beginner in something, and hopefully everyone continues to be a beginner in something because that’s a very exciting life to lead. Try to embrace the excitement of being the newbie. Don’t put yourself down and say, “Yeah, I’m new at this. This is dumb.” But understand that if you’re working with others and they’re in a position to help you a little bit, you don’t need to put yourself down. You could just simply say, “I am new at this and I’m willing to learn.” It’s a very powerful mindset to be in. Sometimes we put ourselves in this position quietly alone in a vacuum. You learn something from YouTube videos. You research something. You get selftaught. As someone who’s a self-taught individual in a number of ways, I spent a lot of time learning something in the dark, if you will, without a lot of human interaction. I learned things and just kept learning it myself. And there are times when you’re learning something new where you you tend to beat yourself up like, “Oh my god, why can’t you do this? Why is this so hard for you to learn?” Well, sometimes it is. So combining the understanding the beginner mindset with be being both a teacher and a learner can be very fulfilling in your life. It can make you a better teacher. It can make you a better learner…and everyone wins.
So if you like learning then feel free to check out some more of my episodes. And as always thank you very much for listening.
It sounds like I’m talking about the surface dwellers and we’re all the people who live underground. Well, hey there. Welcome back.
The Discomfort of Partial KnowledgeYou may have figured out by now that I like to know things and I like to learn things. And I’ve probably figured out by now that you’re the same. You also like to know things and you like to learn things. And I’m honored that this is one of your sources for information. While this isn’t necessarily an encyclopedia, it is a source for you to have thoughts and maybe challenges to the way that you think. It may introduce something that you weren’t aware of and then may challenge you to do something with that knowledge. In my book, Because, I talk about the causes of preferences and desires like this. I I figured out the cause of why I need to do this. Well, let’s talk about what this is. What this is is I don’t like to not know something.
I know it’s a double negative. I also don’t like to partially know something. In fact, I think I my my distaste for partially knowing something is stronger than my desire to know something. And if you want to put that in terms of my book, it means the monster is stronger for me knowing more than just a little bit than the unicorn for me desiring to know something. If you’re the same way, you may find yourself going down rabbit holes all the time. You may find yourself dwelling on something that that other people just pass by.
You may even get accused of overthinking, fixating, and dwelling. And you are doing none of those things. Because if one person says it’s a combustion engine, and you go, “Well, what do you mean combustion? What what’s combusting? Is something blowing up? What does that mean? How did that work? How do the things blowing up make something turn? When did that when did we invent this? Where did this come from? What other versions of that are there available?” You just want to know because a combustion engine isn’t enough. You feel like you just opened up a folder in your brain, but now it’s empty. And that doesn’t feel good. At least that’s the way it works for me. And if it works that way for you, that explains why you have a lot of very full folders in your brain.
Segmenting Your Desire for Deep DivesNow, there are people who segment this, people who have learned to segment this. In fact, I encounter people like this all the time. They segment it into the thing that they do for a living. Sometimes it’s a job, sometimes it’s a career, sometimes it’s a calling. And there’s a whole podcast on that.
I find people like that very interesting. And maybe you’re one of them. And I apologize. I don’t mean to be offensive in when I say I’m fascinated, but also I can’t relate. When someone in their free time, off time, lifetime stays on the surface of everything, but then for their job they take pretty deep dives into things.
I wonder why they don’t take deep dives into other things. And you could say, “Well, Mark, because we don’t have the time for it.” And I would counter as I always do. No, you mean you don’t have the energy, which is fine because we’re still on the same page and in agreement as to why you don’t do that. You just don’t have the energy. You’re busy doing other stuff.
“Surface Dwellers” vs. Hidden HobbiesBut I find that if you have the capability and the desire to take these deep dives into knowledge in the way that I’m describing in which you say it’s not enough to know something on the surface or it’s not enough, God forbid, to use a buzzword. I want to know more about this. I want to know the background. I want to know what I’m saying when I say that buzzword. If you have that within you, it’s probably going to come out some other place. And I’ve encountered this in people that I think are just okay, they’re fully into their job or their career. And then it comes time for them to be on their off hours. You’re going to find that they have some hobby that they really, really know a lot about. And it doesn’t matter what the hobby is. It doesn’t matter what the flight of fancy or the excursion is that they’re that they’re doing that. It’s going to be something that they’re like, “Yeah, no, I know a lot about this. I get really deeply into this. I It It could be something like, you know, it could be something incredibly innocuous and yet they know the best pieces and parts to order online for this thing that they like or do or the place that they go or even this little sporty sport that they like to do, even hiking, what have you. They’re seriously seriously into it in a way that just will floor you. And I applaud that because it speaks to me.
And as I’m talking about this, I assume your brain is thinking, well, what do I do this with? Am I just a a work person that gets heavily involved things? Maybe I’m not a work person that gets heavily involved in things. Maybe I’ve been on the service a lot. Or maybe you’re thinking of a person that you know that you either work with or know personally that tends to be a surface person.
The Conversational Wall of a “Surface Person”And you will find that conversations end very quickly with surface people.
It sounds like I’m talking about the surface dwellers and where all the people who live underground. I guess maybe in a way we are.
You’ll find that as soon as conversations get even slightly deep, they will make a comment and in a way it’s sort of a defensive comment. And I have a famous interaction with someone I know that anytime I would get remotely deep on something remotely, they would say, “Well, I don’t know about that.” And I would think, “Well, right, that’s what we’re fixing.” And no, I wouldn’t go into scholar mode. I wouldn’t get up on my soap box, and granted, those are things that are really easy for me to do. It would just be literally to say something more than a buzz word, and they would say, “I don’t know about that.” and that would be the end of the conversation because they didn’t want to know about that.
So, you will indeed find that these people won’t let you go that far. It’s kind of like it’s kind of like an elevator chat with someone. They know that the doors are going to open shortly, so they’re not going to get into anything deep. And that’s where the whole elevator pitch comes from, in which you can make your pitch within a certain amount of time, a very, very short amount of time.
Intellectual Stamina in the Age of AI HallucinationsSo, now that we’ve defined it as we usually do, let’s let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about let’s talk about you. Is this something you do? Do you tend to just stay on the surface of things because that’s good enough, or do you tend to fall down rabbit holes?
Are the things that you’re interested in the things that you go deeper on, or do you just go deeper on everything that allows you to? And with the LLMs that are out there with Google, with this advanced connection to knowledge that we now possess, it’s easy to do that. Now, it’s easy to start it, but even with LLMs and so forth, there’s a lot of hallucination going on. And if you don’t know what hallucination is, it’s when you talk to something like Jack GPT or the others and they tell you something with supreme confidence and you say, “No, wait, no, no, you made that up. You made that up. I know you made that up.”
And when there’s the chance of them hallucinating and making things up, it puts a lot more burden on your shoulders and requires a lot more energy to pursue knowledge. So, what do you think? Does this have to do with intellectual stamina? And that sounds fancy and highbrow, but is that what this has to do with? Does it have to do with your your mind’s ability to keep going on something for you to not be so tired? Does it have to do with a desire to learn? Does it have to do with a discomfort like me with only knowing a little bit about something?
To be clear, I am not faulting anyone who decides to just be surface dwelling on most things. That’s fine. Different personalities, different strokes, different folks, all that stuff. I would guess that you’re probably not one of those people. Are they Are they listening? Are they in the room? Oh, they’re not in the room with us. Okay. Yeah, I’m not a big fan of those people. Sorry. I just I’m not. And I know you’re probably not one of them because you don’t listen to podcasts, especially this one, if you just go, “Oh, yeah. I just want a little know a little surface.” Now, someone might say, and I don’t know who, “Well, Mark, this is only like a 10-minute thing. Just how deep can you get?” Well, okay, this podcast is only 10 minutes, but I do get deep, and I have references, and I refer books that are deeper, and I refer to other podcast episodes. So sometimes we’ll talk about something that will then connect up and link up with two, three, four, even five episodes. And we do have a panel, a dashboard if you will, of almost 300 episodes to draw from. So yeah, 10 minutes may seem like a surface, but it’s not.
The Big Question: Are Your Deep Dives Only for Your Job?So what do you do now? Think about the stuff that you might be surface on. Think about the stuff that you go deep on. and think about why is it just jobreated stuff? Have you given yourself a license to go deep on stuff that’s only jobreated that only makes you money?
I think that’s the big question with this.
Well, as always, thanks for listening and take care of yourself.
(Music Outro) be happy. How to get there? Glad that you asked me. I think it’s different for everyone. Some of us need work, others need fun. Some of us need purpose to overcome. But try to do what you love when it’s said and done. Cuz there’s so many differences in each of us. Trust your gut. It can show you what you want. Living life every day, late at night, not okay. All I want and I pray. All I need are some better days.
Here are the questions I asked in this episode:
“Well, what do you mean combustion?”
“Am I just a a work person that gets heavily involved things?”
“Do you tend to just stay on the surface of things because that’s good enough, or do you tend to fall down rabbit holes?”
“Are the things that you’re interested in the things that you go deeper on, or do you just go deeper on everything that allows you to?”
“Does this have to do with intellectual stamina?”
“is that what this has to do with?”
“Does it have to do with your your mind’s ability to keep going on something for you to not be so tired?”
“Does it have to do with a desire to learn?”
“Does it have to do with a discomfort like me with only knowing a little bit about something?”
“Just how deep can you get?”
“So what do you do now?”
“is it just jobreated stuff?”
“Have you given yourself a license to go deep on stuff that’s only jobreated that only makes you money?”
I want to announce that my new book, my 10th, is out. It’s called because the fundamental psychological building blocks that enable you to or prevent you from accomplishing anything, everything, and nothing. Check it out on Amazon. It’s only $9.99.
TranscriptI think I found the perfect question.
Well, hey there. Welcome back.
The Perfect QuestionI think I found the perfect question. No, really. I found a question I can ask almost anyone. It will elicit a genuine, honest, thoughtful response. It’s a useful subject. It’s something that they think about regardless of what they do for a living. And it’s something that most people struggle with because they know they haven’t quite gotten it right. And I’m included in that. And the question is, what do you use for a to-do list?
You’re thinking about that now and feel free to pause it and then continue. But the answer typically is well I use a number of things. You know sometimes there’s some frustration there where someone says well this is what works best for me so far and I know it’s not the best. They’ll use a combination of a calendar post-it notes notes emails to themselves. Uh maybe they use an old style paper planner. Maybe they try to go without one and it adds even more stress to them. They put things into a document, but there’s typically not this universal perfect answer. And again, I am one of those people.
Designing the Ideal To-Do List: A WishlistSo, I thought long and hard and I thought, you know what? I I I miss having a Franklin planner from a long time ago in which I could write down my to-do items and then I could transfer them to the next day, the ones that I didn’t fill out, and they’d be there waiting for me the next day. Plus, I’d sleep better. So, then I got thinking about what my ideal to-do list would be. Like, if I got my wishes, what would I do? Well, I’d want something that was small enough to carry with me at all times. And I already carry my phone with me at all times. So, maybe it should be something my phone can do. I’d want to be able to just make a simple list with really no limits. When I check off an item, it leaves it in the past so that the next day, the stuff I didn’t check are automatically there waiting for me. I would probably want to be able to color code things because you can pick out differences in things with colors far faster than you can in any other way.
I wouldn’t want to prioritize things because I’m already prioritizing things. I don’t want to do master project planning with a to-do list. That’s a whole separate set of software tools and so forth. And as I talk about in my book, because prioritization is something you’re already doing anyway in your head. And even if you put something at number one and you agree with it, you’re still going to scan the list and go, “Well, which one of these is kind of fun and feels good to do and it’s kind of easy? I’ll do that one right now.” So th that’s basically it for my core desire features.
From Core Features to a Fantastical WishlistSo then I got thinking about, well, what would an ideal to-do list do? Well, besides it automatically carrying stuff forward to the next day, what if I could look back at a previous day and go, oh wait, what did I accomplish yesterday? And it unlike the written planner, it wouldn’t have the stuff I didn’t do. It only would have the stuff I did do. What if there was something that I was staring at and I thought to myself, you know what? I got to take care of that tomorrow. I would love to just send it into the future to tomorrow. Speaking of tomorrow, what if it was Wednesday and you thought, you know what, I got to do this thing on Saturday. What if you could go to Saturday and then you could put a task on there and then when Saturday showed up, that task would be there waiting for me. Oh, that’s right. I got to take care of that today. That’s cool. I haven’t thought about that for the last 3 days. But wow, that was cool. What if it knew how long I had been doing at least one thing per day? In other words, every day that I check something off, it kind of maintained a streak like like XNAT chat did. Find that kind of motivating. I’d find that I’d find at least a way to check off one thing per day that way and it would make me kind of look at the list every day. Okay, this sounds crazy, but since I’m color coding stuff, what if I could look somewhere and I could see a pie chart of the colors? Like I’d be like, “Oh, this I seem to do a lot more purple. I didn’t realize I was doing so much yellow.” You know, and let’s say yellow is chores. And you go, “Yeah, that’s Saturday. That’s when I do all my mostly a lot of chores and things.” And what if there was even like a bar graph for the last 30 days that would show the breakdown of everything and see how my productivity was and and so forth. Okay, since we’re talking about motivations, what if you had oh, I don’t know, like a trophy case. And let’s say once you hit 50 tasks, you’d get like a little shiny trophy that would be, you know, animated or something. I don’t know, right? And when you hit 100 and imagine doing something and using it long enough to do that. But a paper planner can’t do that. You’re not going to go back and count up stuff. That’s silly.
Integrating a Personal BrandAnd if I’m getting my wish list, what if what if someone writes experimental psychology books like Because and three voices and so forth that helps you to get stuff done and their mission in life is actually to help you understand yourself and get stuff done. Wouldn’t it be cool if there was an area where those books were listed as well in some way? And what if that same person had 250 plus episodes of a podcast? Wouldn’t it be kind of cool to sort of have those in that same area?
This is just getting crazy and fantastical.
I Selfishly Built This AppSo about 26 days ago or probably previous to that, I put on my coding hat again and I decided to selfishly make exactly what I just described. I wanted the core features and then I wanted to add the really cool stuff. And I didn’t in any way, shape or form want to detract from having a very simple, easy to use experience.
So, I built my very own to-do app. And I built it selfishly for myself so that I could use it.
Because it’s not an app, but rather a website. It’s available on my phone. It loads instantly. Okay, there’s no installation. You don’t have to worry about the the app store or anything like that. You don’t have to put in any of your information, use a credit card, any of that stuff because it’s a site. It’s also visible on my desktop, which is super cool because I can look at that everpresent task list on my desktop and it’s sometimes easier to type something on there than it is to type something on your phone. If I get rid of a task on my desktop, it’s no longer on my phone and vice versa.
A Tour of the Finished App and Its FeaturesAnd yes indeed, I can go back in time and see how many tasks I’ve done every single day. I can color code with five different colors and change them at any time. I can swipe to the right on a task and it’ll immediately send it one day into the future, which is super helpful and super easy. I can move a few days into the future and put a task there and it’ll just lie there quietly, silently waiting for me. I can click on a dashboard which will show me my trophies for 50 tasks, 100 tasks, etc.
It does indeed check out my streak and maintain a streak and it shows it in the form of a little flame with a number on the main screen as as well as that screen because it’s very motivating to go, I don’t want to lose my streak. I better check off one of these things. And that can be the difference between doing something or feeling very guilty about saying, “Oh, I should have done that yesterday.” It does indeed have a bookshelf of all the books that I’ve written. They’re cute little tiny covers. And if you click the cover, you can say, “Hey, I read this.” Or you can go see it on Amazon. It has a section that shows 250 plus episodes of my podcast that you can click on. It’ll take you immediately to the podcast. You can click on the iTunes link. It’ll take you right to iTunes. It’s searchable, so you can start to type some of the words in the title and it’ll keep narrowing it down for you in real time. And it includes two bonus buttons. One of them is Mark’s favorites in which you can click the button and you can see the ones that I curated as the ones that are kind of my favorite episodes because people keep asking me that question. Well, which ones are your favorite episodes? There’s also a button for interviews because sometimes people just want to go, “Oh, I want to hear the interviews.” Which who who have you interviewed? You click that button, it immediately lists all the interviews. And sometimes I have interviews that are favorites, too. There’s also an expanded achievements area. And these are achievements that I don’t really define. They’re kind of fun things. They’re kind of Easter eggs built into it so that when you do things, it tracks it and says, “Oh, that was a that was a cool thing. you’ve you’ve unlocked this.
An Exclusive Offer for (serious) Podcast Listeners (48-Hour Window)It didn’t take me long into me designing and creating this selfishly where I thought, you know, I think other people would like this. So, I expanded the way that I was designing it so that other people could indeed use it. So, back to that conversation, when I would have conversations with people and ask them, “What do you use for your to-do list?” I would then share same frustrations. I would tell them what I selfishly built, which would inevitably lead to them saying, “Well, I want some of that. How do I get that?” And so, I built a little entry page that allows me to use a QR code on my phone. People can scan that and boom, they get a form with exactly three fields. It’s their first name, it’s their last name, and it’s the particular code I give them that allows them to instantly create their own instance of it, which they can then save on their phone screen so that they have a little app icon that instantly works. And it also works on their desktop. No login, no payment exchanging hands, no credit card on file, not even an email address, and it doesn’t even cost anything.
So, because you listen to my podcast, because you’re the kind of person who does want to get things done, because you seem to like my stuff, I’m going to make this available for people who are listening to this particular episode.
I’m going to have a link in the article that accompanies this. When you go to the link, you need only type your first name, your last name, and then the code that I will provide you in this episode because it’s for people who listen to my stuff because I value people who like to get things done. And it doesn’t mean it doesn’t mean necessarily you’re a giant mover and shaker. It just means you’re actually able to make decisions. And we talked about this a couple episodes ago about how the CEO mindset in my opinion is something people don’t talk about which is the ability to say yes or no very quickly and not waste their time and other people’s time. And I mentioned about how people who are well-known people, people who are famous people, you know, and so forth sometimes say yes to me and when they do they say it quickly. In fact, the last episode is with Joseph Malazi, who is the executive producer, and he said yes very quickly. He probably would have said no very quickly as well because he likes to make decisions just like other people in that position. And so, I appreciate and respect that to the point where if you’re one of these people and you want to benefit from a list like this, then I’m happy to share it with you. The code will only accept a limited amount of people by design.
The same design which is preventing me from posting this out to the internet to a billion people. I don’t want a billion random people using this. (CODE REVEALED IN PODCAST)
And you have your own to-do app designed by me to my selfish specifications.
Because this invite is not to be shared out into the wild and it is specifically for people who actually do like to take action, which are the people that would benefit the most from this. This link will expire in about 48 hours after this podcast is published. (see QR Code below)
Final ThoughtsThe app has feedback built into it. So if you do use this and you have some kudos or you have something you want to pass on, feel free to use that. I spent a huge amount of time making the help very extensive on it so that you can learn quite a bit from that.
So if you do use it, enjoy it. I’m excited that it might help you with your productivity and might help you enjoy getting stuff done in your life. If it’s not for you or you you’ve decided not to pursue this, that’s fine, too. But maybe I at least got you thinking about what makes your ideal to-do list and why. And it might just help you in the way that you use whatever it is you’re currently using. I also want to apologize cuz I did go about 3 minutes over my self-imposed 10-minute limit, but I had a lot of stuff to tell you on this and I’m very excited about it.
So, as always, take care of yourself. You’re important. and I’ll see you later.
(Music Outro)
Well, I just want to be happy to get there. Glad that you as work, others need fun. Some of us need purpose to overcome, but try to do what you love when it’s said and done. Cuz there’s so many differences in each of us. Trust your gut. It can show you what you want. Living life every day, late at night, not okay. All I want.
I want to announce that my new book, my 10th, is out. It’s called BeCAUSE!: The Fundamental Psychological Building Blocks That Enable You to or Prevent You from Accomplishing Anything, Everything, and Nothing. Check it out on Amazon. It’s only $9.99.
To get the todo ap, scan this with your phone and use the code provided in the episode. The code expires in about 48 hours.
A fanAs a longtime fan of Stargate SG1 and Stargate Universe I’d come to really appreciate so many elements of the storytelling that were done—the continuity, the characters, the character interaction, the dialogue, the growth, the well-done sets, the subtle and non-jarring humor, and more. As someone who writes, I enjoyed on a whole different level.
So you can imagine that I had both the pleasure and honor of sitting down with Joseph Mallozzi, the Executive Producer and writer for Stargate SG1, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate Universe, and Dark Matter in which he is the Show Runner (he literally runs the show).
Our chatWe covered everything from character development, to his thoughts on music, the untimely cancellation of Dark Matter on season three (a show I’d only recently discovered and thoroughly enjoyed), his journey as a writer, what it means to have a writing partner, the challenges of writing a movie script versus writing for an episodic series, the difference between science fiction and fantasy and why he is very much not a fan of the latter,
He was a very kind and energetic guest, and I just keep getting lucky with having people like him on my show.
It was not only informative and fascinating, but some moments were actually touching (e.g. discussing cancellation of Dark Matter and it’s affect on both him and the cast and crew. He clearly is not only passionate about is creative work, but cares about the cast and crew). I truly appreciated his openness, willingness to share and vulnerability when needed.
There are one million topics I would have loved to cover with him things like AI in both the real world and how it affects writing and it’s use by certain authors as well as its implementation in sci-fi, his loves outside of writing, and who this Sharky person is.
Hopefully he will return for another episode and even better, I can take him up on his offer to have dinner.
I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did.
My Patreon will have some video excerpts from the discussion.
Note that this transcript may have errors due to sounds and interpretation variations. I have edited it to add some of the headings as well as links to things mentioned, but editing for accuracy and grammar is not fruitful in a normal conversation. Hopefully you gave this a listen!
Oct 3, 2025
Joseph Mallozzi chat with Mark Bradford – Transcript00:09:59
Mark Bradford: I’m here with Joseph Mallozzi. Hi, Joe!
Joseph Mallozzi: Hey Mark, how are you doing?
Mark Bradford: I am just lovely. I’m so happy to have you. I’m absolutely thrilled to have a chat. So, as I ask everyone that I have on the show, tell us who you are and what you do.
Joseph Mallozzi: Sure. I am Joseph Mallozzi. I’m a writer, uh, producer, and showrunner with, uh, a little over 400 hours of produced television to my credit. Uh, notable productions includes the Stargate franchise SG1 Atlantis Universe, as well as my own show, Dark Matter.
Mark Bradford: Awesome.
Joseph Mallozzi: That’s the 2015 shipbased show, not the more recent Apple series. That is also a sci-fi show with the exact same name and title font.
Mark Bradford: Very awesome.
Mark Bradford: Uh, as someone who enjoyed SG1 and just finished Dark Matter, uh, I I applaud your work very very much so.
Joseph Mallozzi: Thank you.
Mark Bradford: And and a lot of people probably may have heard the term showrunner.
Joseph Mallozzi: Sure.
Mark Bradford: And again, you’ve probably been asked this a lot, but uh the difference between a showrunner and producer
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Well, producer could actually mean a lot of things. producer can range from a vanity credit like maybe you suggested someone pursue the rights to a book and then they ended up you know securing the rights or they name you a producer or you know you bring money to the table you know you that could make you a producer or you could be a hands-on producer someone who’s involved in production either you know dealing with budget or the creative process uh in my case I was an executive producer and a showrunner. Now, showrunner entails pretty much what you know what it implies, the fact that you run the show. So, as a showrunner, I am the de facto cap.
Being a showrunner
Joseph Mallozzi: I say capoi cap. My my my job is to kind of oversee production, everything from uh casting uh and construction, the building of sets to costumes and final edits.
Mark Bradford: Wow. Wow. That’s impressive. Uh, I think the best way to put it is the the person who runs the show because, oddly enough, the term showrunner doesn’t sound like it’s on the level of a producer, but it’s sort of above what a producer is.
Joseph Mallozzi: Well, showrunners are usually executive producers of a show and you know we go through the various distinctions of producer. Everything from associate producer to co-producer to producer to supervising producer, co-executive producers and ultimately executive producers. Again, they can all mean very different things. Uh, but for the most part, a showrunner is usually also an executive producer. The show’s executive producer.
Mark Bradford: And so you were also were you the executive producer of um start uh SG1
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. So, my writing partner and I, Paul Mullie, joined during the show’s fourth season as co-producers and ultimately worked our way up.
Writing partners
Joseph Mallozzi: Um, again co-producers, just kind of an entry level credit and then we became producers and we began to oversee our own produce our own episodes, meaning we would write the scripts and then we would uh oversee prep. So prep week usually takes place before the beginning of production and prep week is comprised of all the department heads getting together going through the script uh and then attending the various meetings. You go to the costume meetings and you tell the costume uh people what you need for every scene in in the script. You go to the props meeting and you decide what props you want to see and you go to the art department meeting and you discuss this various sets that need to be built. Uh and so you know you you become essentially a supervising producer and then a step up from that is co-executive producer and then finally when you get executive producer that’s when you know you’ve hit the big time. That’s the uh the ultimate uh credit amongst producer credits.
Mark Bradford: That’s right. So, and as the executive producer, you’re still writing.
Creative Producers
Mark Bradford: You’re besides all that other stuff.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: So, you were above high above and in the trenches at the same time.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Yes. Again, executive producer can mean a lot of things, but most of the executive producers on Stargate were uh writers as well, writer producers. So Brad Wright, uh, Robert Cooper, Brad Wright was a co-creator of SG1, Atlantis and Universe, uh, Rob Cooper was a co-creator of Atlantis in Universe, and Paul and I were exec producers. Ultimately, Carl Binder, Martin Garrow, all worked their way up to the exec producer uh, role, but at the end of the day, they were creative producers. We all wrote, we all we all spun stories, we all gave notes on each other’s scripts, each other’s episodes. Um, so very hands-on.
Mark Bradford: So you mentioned uh Paul as the as your writing partner. What what did that really mean to you to have a writing partner? Because I think for different people it means different things.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. And for us it did mean different things.
00:15:11
Joseph Mallozzi: We no longer write together, but uh when we did in the very beginning, I mean, we take a lot of the pressure off. Uh, so when we initially started as a writing team on on SG1, we would actually sit in the same room and write together, I mean bounce dialogue off each other and and run the scripts back scenes back and forth. And then as we got kind of busier, we started to pitch the script back and forth between us where, you know, I would write maybe the first three pages, send it to him, and he would rewrite it and
Mark Bradford: Oh,
Joseph Mallozzi: write the next, you know, three pages after that. And we would, you know, go back and forth. Uh because we started to get kind of busy with other aspects of production. Uh, and then ultimately got to the point where we’d be working on our own se separate scripts and I would write a first draft or he would write a first draft and we’d swap and do re revisions on each other’s drafts to the point where in the end we were essentially writing uh as individuals.
Mark Bradford: independent.
Joseph Mallozzi: Um so even though we were writing partners I mean very much so in the beginning uh we did less uh as creative uh partners as as creative script writers co coowwriters as the show uh evolved just because our roles evolved in the show we got busier and it just didn’t make sense to um you know write the way we used to write just in the room together and pitching ideas back and forth.
Mark Bradford: Right. Did did you did you miss that at all when things when you had so much more on your shoulders?
Joseph Mallozzi: Uh, not really because it was kind of new and exciting exploring things like editing and and like I said the various aspects of overseeing production. You getting to have the final say on things like casting and costumes was uh was was a treat. So I mean um you know I always love to write and I’ve always been a very prolific writer. So I don’t feel like we wrote any less at the end of the I think we always average about seven scripts per per season out of out of 20 or so.
Dark Matter
Mark Bradford: Okay.
Joseph Mallozzi: Um, but it, you know, it was rewarding in many other ways, I would say.
Mark Bradford: Very, very cool. So, you also mentioned um Dark Matter, which I I can say I I definitely loved that. And I just have to say that it it was such a neat hearkening back. It it reminded me of like role playing days many years ago. There’s role playing games like like uh Space Opera and Travelers and things where like you’re out in your ship alone and you can do what you want that it’s an empty big universe.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: And I I got that feeling out of nowhere when I was watching the show and it was just such a cool thing. You explore you explore amnesia and personalities and and a whole bunch of things to the point where I almost thought of the show as like gray matter versus dark matter. And I know that’s a silly pun, but it it was such a it was such a cool thing to see.
Joseph Mallozzi: Mhm.
Mark Bradford: And so that was that was your project then. And I noticed that you also just recently found that these are books that you wrote. And that’s where this is from
Joseph Mallozzi: No. Well, um I’d written Dark M I’d written the pilot to Dark Matter uh while I was working on Stargate and the the idea was to you know kind of springboard once once once SU Stargate ended we would springboard onto our own show Dark Matter. Uh the only problem was that Star kept on getting picked up year after year after year. Then we did Atlantis, then we did Universe. And one of the great things about that is that it allowed me to sit with this idea for so long that I ended up mapping out a five-year plan for the series. I mapped out all the arcs for all the characters and all their backstories. Uh, and what that allowed me to do when the time came, not only to write the scripts fairly quickly because I knew what I wanted to see and what I wanted to do, but allowed me to drop in clues like seed clues throughout the early goingings in the episode uh in the early episodes that would pay off sometimes uh episodes sometimes seasons later.
Joseph Mallozzi: And as as a uh as a viewer, I find those type of like that kind of storytelling just very satisfying in that instead of the writers kind of making it up as they go along, you re realize they have a plan and they’ve taken care to construct, you know, a a a an interesting uh narrative with with uh setups and payoffs. One of the things I also wanted to do is dark matter. There were so many mysteries in Dark Matter that we set up in very early going and I didn’t want to do kind of like what what Lost did where they set up these mysteries and most of them never get paid off uh in the end. So I would kind of pay off these mysteries as we went along but set up other mysteries and and and kept these other mysteries alive. Um and so that was kind of a lot of fun. Again, a lot that had to do with the fact that I sat on that that idea for so long that I was able to really flesh everything out in my mind.
Joseph Mallozzi: And then when it came down came time to take the the script out. Like I said, I had the script. I had the idea for the show. Um, but I decided to do it kind of another way.
Mark Bradford: Mhm.
Joseph Mallozzi: I decided to essentially establish it as an IP first as IP being intellectual property because I got my start in development. And one of the things I learned very early on in development is that everyone loves an established property in IP because then they can say, look, there’s already an audience for this. This makes sense. Uh so I reached out to Darkhorse and I pitched out um a gentleman by the name of Keith Goldberg my idea for Dark Matter. The idea being that you know we would launch as a comic book and then we would use a comic book to sell the TV show. And he loved the idea and they didn’t want to commit to more than four issues. So those first four issues were the first two episodes of what would be the series.
The comic book
Joseph Mallozzi: Uh, and so, you know, we launched the comic book and they collected the first four issues in a trade paperback and then Jay Firestone of Prodigy Pictures went out and pitched the show and uh, he would leave the comic book behind and it was such a great visual aid to allow executives to kind of envision what the show would look like, what the show would be about. And based on that, we ended up selling uh, the series. And so I already had kind of a pilot script already in my back pocket and and you know this show was green lit and we were ready to go.
Mark Bradford: Yeah, it seems I mean it it explains how grounded it feels. It feels it feels like it’s been around forever when I watched it. It didn’t feel like what are they going to make up next time, which would be the opposite end of the spectrum, kind of like what you’re saying. and the whole payoff thing. I I am thrilled by someone who’s as someone who enjoys writing and um also reading and seeing really good stories like they stand out.
Dramatic satisfaction
Mark Bradford: There there’s such a difference between stories that create clues and don’t insult the viewer. They don’t insult the reader.
Joseph Mallozzi: Nothing.
Mark Bradford: And that’s something that I tried really hard with what I wrote and that I didn’t want to insult the reader and I wanted the payoffs to be there. that the longer and the more you paid attention, the more you’d be excited about. It’s almost like a sense of productivity. It’s just such an interesting feeling to get that
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes, a sense of dramatic satisfaction and it’s it’s hard to walk that fine line. So, as a writer, you know, you you want to make it a challenge for the viewer or the reader, but you don’t want to but you on the other hand, you want to make make it too too difficult to get there. And and this is one of the critiques I would always get back from my fellow writers when I worked on Stargate is the fact that, you know, I I always gave the audience too much credit. I I I needed to explain more and I was always loathed to explain and, you know, offer too much exposition.
The cancellation of Dark Matter
Mark Bradford: Come on.
Joseph Mallozzi: That that was always kind of, you know, the bane of of my existence as a writer. And that’s why I so love Dark Matter. you know, it it at the beginning had it pros and cons because these characters wake up with no memories of who they are or how they got on board. So, you can’t explain anything. There’s gonna be, you know, there’s no, you know, telling their story or or or them uh, you know, through flashbacks them telling their stories. They’re on the ride at the same time as a viewer. And while that’s a good thing, on the other hand, like the early critiques I got from the show was the fact that, oh, these characters feel like stock uh like two-dimensional archetypes.
Mark Bradford: All right.
Joseph Mallozzi: And I agree, they necessarily are because they have no backstory. So, for instance, character of three, everybody’s like, “Oh, he’s just like Jane and Firefly, kind of the the the, you know, the lung type gunslinger.” And initially, he is. And everybody hated the character.
Joseph Mallozzi: I remember when when the episode uh when the when the pilot first came out and I remember talking to Anthony Leky who played three and and he laughed because he had read the first nine scripts so he knew where we were going and sure enough by the end of the you know the show’s third three seasonason run sadly cut short. uh he and the android were the two fan favorites because you go on that journey with the character and you you think they’re one thing and then as a story progresses they become someone else and that’s that that’s you know whether it be like the big you know kind of chestnut sci-fi concepts or just these characters always kind of liked undermining audience expectations if you can a surprise an audience and b make them laugh that’s another big thing about about dark matter and I learned quickly in in Stargate just uh humor goes such a long way towards allowing audiences to connect with characters. So I wanted all the characters to be kind of funny in different ways, subtle, sometimes more overt.
Joseph Mallozzi: Um and and sure sure enough that that that’s you know I I I think that’s what uh that’s why the show was as popular as it ultimately was. the fact that the character, you know, viewers are really able to connect with these characters.
Mark Bradford: I think that’s yeah, that’s ultimately what you want to do. And I guess I’m like everyone else because those are my two favorites as well. And uh Android was was easier uh to because there was that obvious arc there of of that you the way that worked.
Joseph Mallozzi: Great. Yes.
Mark Bradford: But but he was someone who definitely seemed not two-dimensional, but he was so he had so many barriers up about not wanting to believe or experience things. He just wanted to be him. But then you found this super tender side of him and and and that he was such a genuine person. He almost became like the everyman. So that that was your connection as the viewer uh to like as if you were there.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Found family
Mark Bradford: Like that’s how it almost felt.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Yeah. And and obviously I I always liked um kind ensemble shows. So SG1 and and Alas, you know, very much ensemble shows. And that’s another thing you can kind of be you’re able to explore characters through their relationships with other characters. One of my favorite relationships was this this relationship three had this gruff, you know, gunslinger had with the kid five who kind of this precocious and there’s that wonderful scene where, you know, he’s off to sort of join
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: his, you know, his former family and uh and he has to take out a loan and basically she charges him, you know, compounding interest and you can tell sort of like there’s that kind of banter and fun between the big brother little sister relationship. But, you know, even though she’s kind of taking advantage of him. Yeah. You know, you can see that, you know, they they really care about each other. And at the end of the day, that’s one of the most important things I think all great sci-fi does, you know, does very well.
Joseph Mallozzi: There’s a kind of found family concept, whether it’s the crew of the Enterprise or, you know, team SG1 or the Rosa crew.
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: They’re they’re all kind of these disperate individuals thrown together by circumstance who come together and kind of, you know, form a bonds and and and become kind of this found family us against the universe or the galaxy in
Mark Bradford: Right.
Joseph Mallozzi: this case.
Mark Bradford: It’s sort of that whole family you chose kind of concept and that it it feels it and you choose it in front of the viewer so they get to see that.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes, exactly.
Mark Bradford: And then when you’re talking about how people relate and their characters grow, it’s really cool and it look it’s really good writing when you see a character change but only around certain people. So like six and he became very protective of shoot um five.
Joseph Mallozzi: Five.
Mark Bradford: Thank you.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: um you know how he how he became protective and his personality would sort of change. If three was in the room, he’d be a little more manly with with him and so forth.
Virtual episodes…?
Joseph Mallozzi: Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: Yeah. But you could see that and that was such a such a cool thing and and I I felt like she was definitely the glue that held everything together as well.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: I think I think that was probably one of her jobs and she she did it really well. It was just it’s such a it was really cool. And so I watched the last episode and I went no Wow.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes, I know. Well, I can send you like I I I wrote up some uh we were actually in the writer room for season 4 when we heard that we’d been cancelled. Um, so I ended up uh writing up these uh what I call the virtual episodes. So the first three episodes of season 4 what we have planned. So basically it it it it you know respon you know answers that cliffhanger.
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: Um I I can I can give you a link.
Mark Bradford: And they’re in what directory that I can get to?
Cancellation
Mark Bradford: Where?
Joseph Mallozzi: It’s on my blog but I I always post it online.
Mark Bradford: Oh, I was kidding.
Joseph Mallozzi: I’ll post it online. Then someone was actually very nice on YouTube. They ended up I ended up posting photos to go along with with the like the breakdown of the episodes like a C by scene breakdown and they put it to video.
Mark Bradford: Wow.
Joseph Mallozzi: So, it’s kind of fun. I’ll send that your way so you can have some uh closure.
Mark Bradford: Okay. Thank you.
Joseph Mallozzi: But I was kind of bitter. I will admit admit I was bitter with uh not just a cancellation. The fact that as I said I I had approached the show was kind of a five season arc. Uh each episode dealing with a different theme beginning, middle and end. I mean, the first episode, the end of the first episode, you find out they’re cutthroats and criminals. And and the first season ends with them, appropriately enough, being arrested and being carted off to prison.
Joseph Mallozzi: And then season two was kind of this redemption arc where where they’re going to sort of try and be, you know, better people and and it blows up literally in their face with with the destruction of the EOS 7 space station. Then season three was um you know one of them goes dark side and and you know four becomes a big bad it’s a battle against against him and season four was going to be the alien invasion and season five was going to be the android revolution and uh just the way the the whole um uh cancellation went down just left a bad taste in my mouth.
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: Um, I mean I I I understand this is the business and uh um you know I mean this is reality. No, you know shows guaranteed uh you know a five you know a five-year order. Uh having said that I would argue that um if you are asking audiences to invest of themselves in a series, you should offer them the opportunity for closure. And so when we found out we had been um we we had been cancelled, we reached out to Sci-Fi and requested like can we just have a a movie so we can just wrap things up and they didn’t even dain to respond to the email.
Joseph Mallozzi: Uh and that set me off. So I was um pretty uh pretty peeved and again just the way it it went down.
Mark Bradford: Wow.
Joseph Mallozzi: As I said I I um I have about 400 hours of produced television to my credit 350 of it in science fiction. almost all of it for the sci-fi channel. Uh, in fact, at the time, I don’t think anyone produced more TV for Sci-Fi for that network than than I did.
Mark Bradford: Come on.
Joseph Mallozzi: And instead of reaching out to me to tell me, hey, we’re going to be have to cancel the show and have a discussion with me, they just just contacted the president of the produ our production the production company who had to relay the information to me. Um, said they did not respond to our request for the movie. And then after cancelling us, they ended up giving Killjoys, which was our lead in kind of we it was always Killjoys and and Dark Matter, our Sci-Fi Friday uh kind of sister show. They gave Killjoy this two season order.
Joseph Mallozzi: So everybody was coming into my office saying, “Oh, so they they essentially gave our, you know, clearly I felt as though they um intentionally or not sent a message.” And so once that happened uh kind of the gloves were off and I was uh pretty uh uh pretty vocal about my displeasure, shall we say.
Mark Bradford: Well, that that says a lot. I mean, that says a lot for your passion for the thing that you created that a lot of people, you know, bless their hearts, won’t really understand the involvement, the emotional, intellectual involvement in creating something. And that’s that’s a whole subject that I’m fascinated with is like where that even comes from. Like it’s one of the only things in life where we don’t really we can’t explain the origin of like real creativity. Like, and I see you shaking your head. It’s like the same thing. It’s like you can create something yourself and go, “Wait, how how did I manifest that because it’ll impress, you’ll impress yourself.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. Yes. And and a great example is that you know I was working on on an episode called ripple effect for staring at SG1 and usually when we sit in the room we come up with ideas.
Ripple Effect
Joseph Mallozzi: The the episode ripple effect involved um various SG1 teams from alternate realities coming to our reality and then us I think teaming up with a team from like the black universe. We call them the black universe because they were the black uniforms who were after I think I don’t know what they were I I forget what they were after but but we had we had beaten out the episode meaning you know uh the writers sit in a room and and basically break down the episode scene by scene and there’s a a twist at the end where our team has to turn the tables on you know black uh Stargate SG1 and we couldn’t figure out how to do it and then I went off and wrote the outline and I didn’t know how to do it. Then I I sat down and wrote the script. I’m like, I don’t know if I’m going to know how, you know, when the time comes, is it going to come to me and magically somehow it came to me and I found the solution. It’s like um uh the time loop episode in Dark Matter.
Creative manifestation from nothing
Joseph Mallozzi: We tried to break that episode in the room for like days and we couldn’t do it. And then I just sat down one day and pretty much the entire episode came to me. I just wrote it without an outline just in kind of in a white heat and it all fell together and it turned out to be the fan favorite and I don’t know where it came from. I don’t you know I there there are times when I’ve actually sat down and tried to write and I’ve gone days unable to write and then sometimes when I do write I’m never happy with with what I have and then there are other times when like you said it’s like magic.
Mark Bradford: Yeah. Yeah. And if if if you’ll allow me because I don’t want this to be about me at all, but if you’ll allow me on that.
Joseph Mallozzi: No, but please Yeah.
Mark Bradford: So, I um I wrote a bunch of books and they were all actually non-fiction, experimental psychology stuff. And then one day, my mind was unusually clear and it’s never clear because I’m always thinking about something.
The cemetary
Mark Bradford: There’s a um a cemetery by my house. I took a walk in the cemetery completely. And all of a sudden, I heard voices, not like crazy dead people voices, but like the conversation between the two main characters at the end of a movie.
Joseph Mallozzi: Mhm.
Mark Bradford: And I was like, “Okay, tell me more.” Like I like played out the dialogue, and I’m sure you understand completely what that is.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: And then I just started to write a poem in my head, like a sing songy kind of medieval poem d. And I thought, I can’t I got to go home. So I went home. I wrote this long piece of paper. And I looked at my god, that’s an outline for a book. And I ended up writing this fantasy, this epic coming of age heroes journey set a thousand years in this dystopian future thing. I’m like, what is this? And I wrote the whole thing and it just came out of somewhere like out of nowhere.
Mark Bradford: And then I ended up writing the sequel. And then I wrote the prequel because everyone was wondering what happened in those thousand years. And it was amazing. It was just and I and and I have no explanation for it and I never will.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: It was just the most amazing wonderful thing.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. And and you know, like I said, I I wish that I could find an explanation for exactly that because if it if if I could find an explanation, I feel as though I I would I would be much more successful. But the fact is, you never know when it’s going to hit you. And you know, sometime usually like when you’re doing something completely different, like you said, you were taking a walk. For me, it used to be when when I I would drive or when I was in the shower or when my ex used to talk to me over dinner, that’s when all the ideas would come and I would
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: run dialogue in my head.
Mark Bradford: Yeah. It’s almost like it it’s almost like you have to be occupied in a way, but you don’t need to give it your all of your attention. And then your your brain wanders and it feels free, like you gave it a license to do whatever the heck it wants, and it goes, “Oh, I can do that now.”
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: Um, and and I was so terrified when I started on the sequel to it because I ended the book midway.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: It was almost like the whole Star Wars thing where Star Wars is a self-contained movie but it’s part of a trilogy.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: It was the same the way that it ended up. But I was terrified to start the SEC sequel because I thought, well, this won’t work again, Mark. You’re not You can’t just sit here and continue.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah, excellent.
Mark Bradford: And and by the second chapter, I was right back in. And I felt even more comfortable because I was so the the first book was more of like you’re in a fog.
Mark Bradford: And that’s why I love Dark Matter so much because the the the viewer and the characters are in the same kind of what the heck is going on. And that’s how that book is is that it you know and again it rewards people for paying attention and not going please hold my hand too much.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: And so it was it was that way. And then the second one was more of an exploration now that you know what you’re what the universe looks like. And then and so it was is such a cool thing and I’m glad to be able to to relay that to you because it was amazing an amazing experience.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. Exactly the same way for me. Exactly the same way.
Mark Bradford: Wow.
Joseph Mallozzi: I think with a lot of writers as well.
Mark Bradford: Well, and and I also wanted to say thank you for being vulnerable about your experience with with with dark matter. Not everyone would talk about that, you know, about how you were sort of bitter and angry and how that made you feel because I would imagine most people who are humans would feel that way.
Mark Bradford: People who are dedicated and invested in in their in in their story. So, I appreciate you sharing that. That’s that’s some pretty cool stuff.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. No, I I like you said, I I’m also tend to be very protective of my cast and crew. Um, and I I felt just the way it all went down, it was very disrespectful across the board.
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: So, yeah.
Mark Bradford: Right. Because because you’re also a family in that way, I guess, right? Like you’re Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: Oh, yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: And you’re and you’re you’re sort of the caretaker in a way because you’re what’s you’re again the glue.
Joseph Mallozzi: Mhm.
Mark Bradford: You’re the five. Was it five?
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I’m the five
Mark Bradford: You’re the five in the story. So that should be a good phrase. I’m going to say it and people like what are you talking about? So, um the speaking of like the um the family and the actors and things like that, it’s it’s probably very Is it different depending on the project and how you connect with them, communicate with them, um dialogue, stuff like that?
The open door showrunner
Mark Bradford: Does it is there different
Joseph Mallozzi: it. You know what it really depends on the actors. So, uh, as a showrunner, you know, I always told them I have a very open door policy. if anybody anyone could come up to my office and talk to me if they had any issues or wanted to talk things through. And each actor had a different approach. Now, we would have cast readroughs uh usually like a week before we went to camera. Uh and the reason most productions do that is is to uh ensure that all the cast has actually read the script. one, but two to uh hopefully uh push them to uh come, you know, if they have any concerns or issues with the script to come to us early so we can change it, you know, before we you get too heavily into prep uh rather than waiting for the last minute.
Mark Bradford: Mhm.
Joseph Mallozzi: And so it depended on the actor. So Roger Cross, who played six, wonderful guy, uh every time he’s in Toronto, we get together for dinner.
Joseph Mallozzi: uh he after every um read through would come and sit in my office and be like, “Hey, can I say this? Can I say this? Why do we do this? We do this.” And that was great. Uh the opposite end of the spectrum was Anthony Lenkkey who played three uh who was a gunslinger and Anthony who I keep in touch with all the time as well. In fact, we were we just spoke I think last week. um he would basically come to set and he didn’t want to have big changes but he would always like to like try something new like instead of doing this as scripted how about we do this and I used to tell him do what’s in the script and then do a take where you do what you want to do I was g give him the creative freedom to do that and then uh Zoe Palmer who I’m supposed to get together with lunch with uh maybe the end of this this month who played our Android she would just text me she She would review the script.
Joseph Mallozzi: She’d be like, “Hey, and I have my questions.” And then finally, five, Jodell, um, Jodell Furland. She never had questions, never made any changes to her lines of dialogue, and always delivered the lines exactly as I had imagined them uh, when I wrote the script. And, and you know, for better or worse, actors will always deliver a line differently, but she was always dead on. Exactly. like I would I would imagine it or as you know just I guess she really embraced her character and in her mind her character was very much the vision I had in my mind of of this character this
Mark Bradford: So what do you attribute that to her ability to to do that? Like what? What I’m familiar with?
Joseph Mallozzi: this and I mean you know I this character was was inspired you watch Cowboy Bebop the the anime okay well the character of Radical Edward who’s this kid who’s kind of a kooky, you know, she’s very much, you
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: know, patterned after after Radical Edward, but a lot of like the these anime characters, kind of the kooky kid characters.
Joseph Mallozzi: And Jodell herself is a huge anime fan. So, I think she got what I was trying to, you know, what I wanted from this character. So, she very much got that. And also, I mean, in terms of Jodell, um, you know, I worked with her very early on in her career. I want to say very early on, but that’s not true. She was actually, I think, 13 at the time. She’d actually been in in working in the business since she was actually being three. She always played like kind of a creepy kid in horror movies, but she played Princess Harmony in an episode of Stargate Atlantis. And I remember being on set with her and her mom, Valerie. Uh, and she just amazed me because she played this precocious uh, spoiled brat princess character, but Jodell knew all of her lines and she knew all of uh, Joe Flanigan and David Hullet’s lines. So, if they ever like stumbled over a line, she would prompt them. So, she knew everything and she was brilliant.
Joseph Mallozzi: And so, in my mind, it was 13-year-old Jodell Furland when I was writing the character. And then when it came time to cast, I thought, why don’t I get Jo, you know, the character we can play her a little bit older, um, you know, I’ll reach out to Jodell to audition. She did and she nailed it and she was fantastic. Um, you know, and it just kind of made Jodell was like 19 at the time. It’s very tough to cast a child actor on any show just because they’re kind of labor laws and they only have they can they can only spend a certain amount of time on set because they have to pursue their their uh you know their high school classes. I mean if you can find like a high school dropout wonderful then you’re set. But it’s very rare that that happens. So you know better to cast like you know 18 and over.
Mark Bradford: That’s funny. Yeah. So, that makes sense that sort of you that she nailed lines that sort of you envisioned her saying to begin with that were almost patterned after her in a way.
Movies vs. TV
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: Okay. That’s I I have to say too that like she’s probably played one of the only hackers that are believable. Like hackers hackers in movies are just, you know, it’s sit in front of the keyboard and type a lot kind of thing, but they don’t really sell what they’re doing, but she could kind of sell it and just
Joseph Mallozzi: Oh, really? Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: just just such a neat dynamic with that. So very very cool.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: you mentioned um um uh screenplays and things too in a way that writing for TV and writing for movies. Um h have you and pardon me if I if I missed that you’ve that you’ve produced a number of movies but have you written for movies and TV?
Joseph Mallozzi: I have written features but nothing produced.
Mark Bradford: Okay.
Joseph Mallozzi: um ju just getting a film produced is just such a long shot. And to be honest with you, as a writer, um you know, you sell a script and then the director takes over and and film is really a director’s game.
00:43:25
Joseph Mallozzi: You know, you always see that directed by or a a Spike Lee film or a so and so film.
Mark Bradford: right?
Joseph Mallozzi: the writer um you know sort of the writer union um allows them to be on set to visit set but they’re not really treated very well and often they’re rewritten and uh but but TV is really the writer’s realm because as a writer you can work your way up to the showrunner position and become the boss something that you you that rarely ever happens in film Mhm.
Mark Bradford: Okay. I I I had a um I I had to try to see what it was like to write a screenplay. So, I decided to use my book to So, I had to rewrite my book again and it hurt my brain because there are things that you do on a screenplay that you don’t do in a book and vice
Joseph Mallozzi: Mhm. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: versa.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: like having like hearing someone’s thoughts in a book is is pretty normal.
Joseph Mallozzi: Mhm.
Mark Bradford: Uh but you know that’s a lot of exposition in a movie and like no one like I think of Dune the original Dune and how there was a lot of lot of you could hear the thoughts of people
00:44:24
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: and so for some reason that worked because it was an interesting movie but there’s so much that you don’t describe in some ways and so much you do describe in some ways and that I also learned that you
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: don’t tell people where they’re pointing their cameras. You don’t do any of that stuff in there.
Joseph Mallozzi: No. No. That that is all up to the director. It’s funny because very early on in my career as as most first time writers, you think, oh, you know, you know, high angle shot, then we go on to go to the bird’s eye and then the two shot. And I mean you can learn all that and it’s very interesting but you don’t want any camera angles on your uh you know in your script.
Mark Bradford: Yeah. In your in your script. Yeah. So, and in a book though, you have such you can completely control the attention of a person and what they’re experiencing, what they’re imagining.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: You can even you could even use um metaphors and and um you know comparisons to to get them to see something in a way that you can’t really do visually in in a movie.
00:45:14
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: So it’s a very interesting medium for that sort of thing. Yeah. Very cool. Do you um when it comes to creating and so the so you mentioned the writer’s room before just to just to kind of put a picture in people’s people’s minds when you’re working on a project let’s say if someone’s working as a writer are they typically one of many writers in a room is that kind of
Joseph Mallozzi: Uh if they’re if they they’re hired to be on a production, uh then yeah, they’re in writer room. So that’s what Paul and I did and all the other writers did on on Stargate is at the end of every season, we would we would gather and throw out ideas for the for the next season. And best idea wins and you just sit in the room for several days and you you spin or you beat out the story. You just put it up on the whiteboard and you break it down. It was five acts.
The cliffhanger
Joseph Mallozzi: You know, each act ends with that dun dun scene or moment that sends you off into the commercial, but is so compelling that, you know, you want to stick around and and see how things are resolved. And though each act is made up of four to five scenes each, and then you would, you know, break down each scene, what happens in each scene? Um, and then once you would have this out, this essentially a beat sheet, you would go off and flesh it out into a full outline. And then you’d hand it off to the writers and they would provide notes and you would rewrite it and hand it off back to them. They would have more notes and then you would head off to write your first draft.
Mark Bradford: Wow. Wow. That’s pretty set design and everything else you said you you’re involved in. Um, and I have to make one comment not to not to dwell on on on dark matter, but sometimes I thought, how big are these sets?
Joseph Mallozzi: Mhm.
Mark Bradford: Like like when they’re running through hallways, and I know there’s a lot of camera tricks you can do and you stop people and you around and stuff, but very very impressive sets on that show.
00:47:01
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: very like it made me think of like the next gen but even far far more impressive the Raza
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Yeah. Ian Brock was our production designer and he was absolutely brilliant. I love the look. The interior of the uh of the uh Laza looks more kind of Nostromo than than Enterprise and darker and a little bit of steam here and there. Yeah, we had we that one quarter that we just redressed and and so we were able to, you know, and kind of reposition the walls all moved and so we could just kind of transform the the halls into
Mark Bradford: Oh,
Joseph Mallozzi: different looks with different lighting as well and different kind of wall um you know textures. And it’s the same thing we did in Stargate. I remember Stargate the Detilus. We did this long I think it was like a two-minute walk and talk with uh uh Colonel Caldwell and I I forget who else. And and it was just they were actually going around in a circle, but the the way you know when they would pass through a section of the of the hallway, you know, the the the the crew would come in and and readjust so that by the time they came around it would it looked like a completely different hallway.
00:48:14
Mark Bradford: Oh, real time.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. So it it was it looked like like endless endless hallways on that bedless, but it was really just kind of that circular hallway that really only went one, you know, went around and around very it’s absolutely very important.
Mark Bradford: Wow. Wow. So, how how important is is music to you when it comes to the your creative projects?
Joseph Mallozzi: But I’m a guy who uh finds a lot of the time just music I find music is intrusive.
Mark Bradford: Oh, Mhm.
Joseph Mallozzi: Um, and I think a little goes a long way for me. Uh, Ben Pinkerton was Benjamin Pinkerton was our, you know, did the music, all the original music for Dark Matter, and I love what he did. Uh, Joe Goldsmith was a genius on on on Stargate and I love what he did. Um, but I just find a, you know, a lot of the shows I watch, the music is just so um, it it it just commands my attention when I want to sort of listen to the dialogue, you know, it it sometimes it it, you know, music is there to kind of at times sort of tell you how to feel, right?
00:49:22
Mark Bradford: kind of Yeah, it Yeah, I think I think Yeah, for me it’s kind of like the audio version of
Joseph Mallozzi: You know, uh, you know, or to kind of enhance the dialogue. Um, but a lot of times just so overt and in your face that it it just I find it distracting. So for me a little goes a long way.
Mark Bradford: too much handholding, like right like it’s like you said it’s telling you how to feel and it’s what it’s supposed to do and and I think I think Marvel movies are are a bit that way where they where
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: they tell you okay this is the good part and this is the you know you know and their and their handling of humor sometimes too and I know they get a lot of flack for that too that when
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: it comes to the humor sort of like breaking someone out of a out of a position that they’re in I think I think those are elements that they have in common with music so I’m a huge fan of
00:50:11
Joseph Mallozzi: Mhm.
Mark Bradford: of that kind music to begin with. Like I’ll I’ll kind of clamp onto something from a show and just like put it on my workout tape and I’ll just love it for like a week.
Joseph Mallozzi: Right.
Mark Bradford: And Dark Matter is one of those like they I found I found uh I found a YouTube video that just was basically the end credits of it. And I just that’s just such a fun kind of and and it’s and it’s interesting too because you actually teach yourself psychologically how to feel when you feel the end credit.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: It’s like like there’s that sigh and that expectation of oh my god what am I what’s going to happen in the next episode sort of thing.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: How do you, Speaking of that, um, how do you feel about like binge watching?
Joseph Mallozzi: Uh I Um, I have no problem with it.
Mark Bradford: Not you personally, but when people binge watch your stuff.
00:50:56
Joseph Mallozzi: I mean, you know, I often said, you know, people have sort of go back and forth in terms of serialized versus, um, uh, episodic. And for me as a creator, I love the episodic format because it allows you to, as I said, sort of set up and pay off along the way.
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: Um, you know, you know, one of the big arguments if they go back and forth is, you know, a lot of fans are upset because you don’t really see these 20 plus uh season sci-fi shows anymore. They’re either like 10 or 13 or six or eight. And you know, I tell them for me as as a writer, uh, if I was working on someone else’s show, if I was hired to be in someone else’s room, I would rather do like a 20 plus episode season because, you know, just more scripts to go around. As a creator of a series or writer, I think 10 to 13 is perfect for season. is just creatively that is like a you know a great kind of target to hit in terms of being able to tell a story over the course of a of a full season.
00:52:01
Joseph Mallozzi: As a viewer I like the six to eight episode uh format in that I don’t want to have to invest you know an inordinate amount of time on a show uh you know to to to get like a season under my belt.
Mark Bradford: Wow. So, so both Stargate and um Dark Matter I sort of found after the fact. I think Stargate was in its fourth season when I actually discovered it. Uh and it was such a bizarre thing for me because up until then I had never binge watched anything and I found it and it was such an amazing thing. I think it had just switched from sci-fi to another network.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: And that’s and that’s right when you came aboard with season 4, right?
Joseph Mallozzi: Sixth season SG1 um move to sci-fi. Yeah. Season four. So yeah, we Paul and I joined in the show’s fourth season and and the producers told us, well, we’ll do five more. We’ll do we’ll do one more season.
00:52:50
Joseph Mallozzi: season five and that’s what shows usually do and then we’ll be done and go our separate ways and then we heard oh you know uh sci-fi is going to pick us up for sixth season. were like great. And of course that was going to be the final, you know, final uh season and the show surpassed our expectations and we ended up getting picked up and then we get picked up for season 8 and then we get picked up for season 9. Then we got picked up for season 10 and you know and what I’m saying that every time, you know, we got picked up.
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: I always assumed this would this is the last season we’re going to do until the 10th season when I convinced myself we were going to come back for season 11 and then we did not.
Mark Bradford: You didn’t.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. Although we almost did. Uh, you know, I did I have mentioned before that Apple had actually reached out. This is, you know, when they were first establishing iTunes and they had reached out about the possibility of saving SG1 and doing a final 11th season.
00:53:42
Mark Bradford: Wow.
Joseph Mallozzi: Uh, and then Sci-Fi uh exercised a clause in their contract that prohibited uh MGM from pursuing other um uh uh homes. So we almost could have had another decision if not for sci-fi’s general spitefulness. So this is a sort of another uh you know mark against them, a black mark against them.
Mark Bradford: Yeah. Wow. Wow. All right. Very, very interesting. Very interesting stuff behind the scenes. So, because I picked it up after the fact, I went back and just started watching. It was like discovering something that you love and there’s four seasons already of it.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: like that was unheard of.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: So, I went out and I bought the DVDs at the time. The same thing with Dark Matter where I discovered that and I I saw your name on it.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: I saw I I saw um I I watched a little bit of it and and I thought, “Wait a second. I don’t know what’s going to happen.” Perfect.
Movie trailers and giving it all away
Mark Bradford: Like, I’m like, “Please don’t let me run into anything, you know, because it seems like every um uh uh trailer for a movie now tells you the entire movie.”
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: Like in the olden days they’d tell you little bits bits of it, but now half the movies you don’t need to see.
Joseph Mallozzi: Mhm. Yes. Yes, it’s it’s it’s very annoying. I hate being so far ahead, you know, of the characters on screen. It was just driving me nuts. And and they used to sci-fi used to do that on SG1 all the time. We did an episode called The Curse where in in like the final, you know, you know, third act third act, you find out that Sarah Gardner, uh, you know, this this woman from Daniel Jackson’s past is really Osiris, a a god. and uh they reveal it in in in the uh promo and it’s kind of the same way when we we um the character of Carson Beckett was killed on Atlantis.
Mark Bradford: Right.
Joseph Mallozzi: Uh we brought him back and and it was the final reveal at the end of this two-parter, the kid two-parter where they break into a jail cell and they you know they’re shocked and it’s him and he’s like, “What took you so long?”
00:55:44
Joseph Mallozzi: And uh and that’s like the final scene of that that episode. And then they’re doing the promo for the episode and they were like, “You won’t believe the last five minutes.” And then they show it and I’m like, “Of course they’re going to of course they’re going to believe the last five minutes. You showed it to them, you know?” Yeah.
Mark Bradford: because you just showed it to them. Yeah. You won’t believe what we’re about to show you right now.
Joseph Mallozzi: I I just again I don’t want to go off on on sci-fi, but they used to do stuff like that. They just drive me crazy and and and you know their marketing department like I always felt like we never get they would never really market our show enough. It was the same with Dark Matter because we were an acquisition and uh and they would be like hey you know um we’d be like are you going to market the show at all? And they’re like yeah I mean is there something you could like tell us that could get the marketing like our marketing team excited?
00:56:32
Joseph Mallozzi: I’m like you know you know what could get your marketing team excited? Pay them. Tell them they’re actually working for a paycheck and if they don’t want to do marketing, you know, friendly fire them. That should excite them.
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: I mean, I can’t believe like they had to be excited. They have to be excited about something, you know, in order to properly market it.
Mark Bradford: Wow. Dang it.
Joseph Mallozzi: Market doesn’t really excite me.
Mark Bradford: Yeah. You think you think like step one learn about products, step two, get excited, step three, market, step four, profit. You know, that whole thing like, wow.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Yes. Yes.
Mark Bradford: Yeah. You know, it’s interesting. I think the average viewer has no clue that those are separate entities. Like, I remember years ago thinking that, why did they tell me that? Why did they show me that? And I thought, well, it’s not a they, it’s a it’s a it’s segment.
00:57:16
Mark Bradford: It’s the PE. It makes writers angry.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: It makes creators angry sometimes when when the marketers do that.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: And I remember reading something, I think it might have been on X, about someone involved in Marvel who was very upset by his story being revealed because of the trailer.
Joseph Mallozzi: Mhm. Mhm.
Mark Bradford: And he’s like, I told them not to put that in the trailer and it just gave away the whole thing.
Joseph Mallozzi: Mhm. Yeah, they won’t listen to you. The marketing department just like in movies. It’s it’s terrible in movies. They just, you know, want to get they think that that this will get, you know, seats in theaters or eyeballs on screen if you tell them as much as possible.
Mark Bradford: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s interesting too now about how how many ways people view things. They you know the actual theatrical release and the and the um you know re-releases and stuff like that and and series and then box sets and all that stuff.
Horror and sci-fi
Mark Bradford: So it’s it’s it’s interesting seeing how people consume things now and how that affects the way that they they market them.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: But so you’ve would you say you’ve always written sci-fi.
Joseph Mallozzi: I would say, you know, I grew up reading comic books and then my mother diverted me to sci-fi, actual novels. And so I grew up Yeah.
Mark Bradford: Oh wow.
Joseph Mallozzi: Uh, I’ve always I was always a fan of horror and sci-fi. I mean, a big fan of like the old Twilight Zones uh uh show and so, you know, I would write short stories uh when I was in high school, very much in the sci-fi realm. Uh, but most of my career, I like 350 of those 400 hours in my credits are are sci-fi. But having said that, um, I don’t watch a lot of sci-fi. I I enjoy watching horror. For instance, every October I do I try to do like a horror movie a day countdown through the 31 days of uh of uh uh you know of October and I’m three horror movies in so far.
Mark Bradford: What?
Joseph Mallozzi: Um and uh but I love the crime genre. I’m also like almost like I’m about 225 books into my 2025 uh crime fiction uh uh release. Uh, but I don’t watch and I say 225 seems very impressive, but like a quarter of them I do not finish just because after a while I’m like I just I cannot um it’s just not very good. But I appreciate the books that are not very good much more the books that are mediocre because books that are not very good, you know, they’re not very good very very early on and you set them aside. The ones that are mediocre, you’re always wondering, is this going to pay off somehow or is is this going to turn around?
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: And more often than not, it doesn’t.
Mark Bradford: Right.
Joseph Mallozzi: You have to read the entire book to to come to that conclusion.
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: I’m also about 800 uh shows into this uh international crime binge I’ve been doing for like over like several years where I watched like every crime show um you know from from you know foreign language and and obviously from the US and u in the UK.
01:00:07
Joseph Mallozzi: So, if you need any recommendations for an Argentinian prison show, a uh a great Indian procedural, or a uh or a Dutch mob series, I’m your guy.
Mark Bradford: Oh yeah, I was just saying that. Wow. Wow. Okay, so Kohlshak the Nightstalker.
Joseph Mallozzi: Oh, yeah. Classic. Yeah. The best of both worlds.
Mark Bradford: Yeah. Yeah. That that really that just has such an aura to it.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: I don’t know. I don’t know why, but it just has it just it’s funny how some older television just has such a creep factor that you almost can’t attain now.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: It just it can just do even though like the special effects are horrible, but like it just has a creep factor.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Yes, there’s this there’s something about the 70s 70s horror in general that that has kind of that kit quality, that kind of luredness that is just deeply unsettling that, you know, I agree.
Mark Bradford: Lord, yes.
Joseph Mallozzi: It’s just, you know, not the same.
Music
Mark Bradford: Yeah. and you can’t really attain it now because it just seems too overproduced or too clear like it’s too clear and it’s just it there’s not enough left of the imagination.
Joseph Mallozzi: No. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Yes.
Mark Bradford: So, I’m I’m really thrilled that you are on that page that you love to like give the payoff to your audience and you love to not overly handhold and things like that and your your um your outlook on
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Mhm.
Mark Bradford: music is fascinating actually that you it makes complete sense about how it’s intrusive. So, that it surprises me and doesn’t surprise me. So, I think that’s that’s a really cool thing.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. I mean, no, I I think it’s it’s it it’s absolutely it, you know, it really helps a lot. Like I said, Joe Goldsmith was brilliant on on Stargate. Um, but I mean, Stargate, I think, is a good example where we didn’t over, you know, overuse or, you know, oversaturate the episodes with music.
Mark Bradford: It’s a beautiful, right?
01:01:43
Joseph Mallozzi: A little went a long way.
Mark Bradford: And I and I think like especially what is it? Um I is there a um I think each character sort of has their own theme and there’s a Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. Yes.
Mark Bradford: And and when you hear the notes Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. Composers will do that. They’ll give each character their own theme, and it’s very subtle.
Mark Bradford: And you you once you get it, you get it. It’s just another one of those subtle things that once you get it, you’re like, “Oh, I get it now.”
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: And a Jack and Isn’t there like a Jack and Carter theme, too?
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: And that like what?
Joseph Mallozzi: I think so. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: That hits you really hard when that plays because that almost never plays.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Yeah. It’s kind of subliminal, but Yeah.
Mark Bradford: It’s It’s really It’s really hard. Yeah, that is uh really really good stuff.
Favorite episode – a silly question
Mark Bradford: Um, do you have an episode, let’s say, and this is just such a silly thing to ask you. Do you have an episode of SG1 that is kind of your favorite that you’ve Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: Well, the one I mentioned, ripple effect, was a favorite of mine. uh just because I you know I it’s it was I’m a big fan of um just general sci-fi concepts and I love the alternate universe concept that you kind of turned it on its head instead of us visiting the alternate universe which is what most shows do the alternate universes come to us in like you know myriad ways and again in terms of like a very satisfying um you know I love the fact that I was able to sort of figure out that plot point that it just kind of came to me whenever look back at that episode. It’s just as a writer very satisfying. And also, I mean, I I just kind of love the idea of the road not taking. This is something that alternate universes allow you to do.
01:03:07
Joseph Mallozzi: And so, that episode kind of allowed us to explore um certain aspects of the show that you would thought like story lines we had left for dead.
Mark Bradford: Right.
Joseph Mallozzi: Like literally like the Janet Frasier character came came back, the Mart character came back, you know, just and kind of like a a reward for longtime fans as well.
Mark Bradford: Yeah. Yeah. That’s and that’s what you can do. That’s what people look are excited about like alternate universe stuff where they do get to see how someone lived. And there was the the episode about the mirror. Um, yeah, to see where like they actually did get together and how sad that was.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. The quantum mirror. Yes. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: Uh, and because she still lost him.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: Oh my god. You know, to say to kind of give the audience what they want and then take it away and it’s just a because that whole the whole tension, the whole romantic tension is not an easy thing to do between
01:03:45
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. No. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: characters because you it’s like two magnets and you get them too close together and you’re like, “Okay, I ruined it.”
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. Yes.
Mark Bradford: Wow.
Joseph Mallozzi: Exactly.
Mark Bradford: and and I and I want to we’re coming up on an hour and I promised you I wouldn’t take more than an hour of your valuable time.
Joseph Mallozzi: That’s fine.
Mark Bradford: So So please uh don’t let me go any further if if you don’t have the time for it.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: But um I do I had a question about was it I think production of um oh that’s okay now I know it is this is a this is going to be an interesting question.
Joseph Mallozzi: No, please.
Mark Bradford: So the difference between science fiction and fantasy, simple question, right?
Joseph Mallozzi: Um, yeah. I mean, it’s it’s funny. I’ve uh over on X, I’m fairly active on X as this is how we got in touch.
Mark Bradford: You are.
Joseph Mallozzi: And I always tell like if you’re a first-time writer or you’re like a fan, get on get on X. I find X a as as a platform with all the respect to the other platforms just the easiest one
01:04:40
Mark Bradford: You absolutely are.
Joseph Mallozzi: to be able to contact creators and and and you know just interact with them and and you know comment on their posts and some are more uh willing to you know interact than others and and it’s just sort of a great way to sort of you know um you know interact with like with some of your favorite uh creators. Um but uh you know one of the things I’ve been doing is I’ I’ve been doing this uh spaceships. So, so basically classic spaceships and having you know uh fans vote on them and and I know I saw this kind of interesting discussion uh Moya was was up there from Farscape and I love Farcape and it’s interesting
Mark Bradford: Yeah. Yep.
Joseph Mallozzi: one of the one of the commenters was you know said something to the effect of you know I love Farscape but it’s not science fiction it’s really more fantasy and the way they broke it down in terms of sort of like you know the the things they explored and how they explored them he made a very good point to me it’s sci-fi but in his mind it’s fantasy fantasy uh for me I mean fantasy uh is is essentially without rules if you will and and I’ll kind of explain it and and I think science fiction at least has the grounding of theoretical science whereas fantasy is magic for the most part and nothing drives me
“I hate magic”
Joseph Mallozzi: like crazier than magic. I hate magic as a an element in any story because more often than not there are no rules to magic you know so I mean I I’m watching Lord of the Rings a great movie uh and it’s like why why doesn’t Gandalf teleport them out of the cave when they get into danger it’s like well Gandalf doesn’t know that spell oh well how fortuitous for the writer that you know he doesn’t know that spell so I I just I don’t I don’t know I I I find magic um unless there’s a very clear framework. It just I I find it a cheat and and it’s it offers opportunities for contrivances and and conveniences and storytelling. And that’s just something that I I personally find dramatically unsatisfying.
Mark Bradford: So very interesting that you say that because that that’s sort of how I felt too in that and then I kind of learned that there’s sort of hard magic and soft magic if you will and that the the
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: soft magic is that anything can happen because I’m the I’m the author and yeah, it doesn’t work that way or it’s never going to and the hard magic is more of you establish rules of that sort of thing.
01:07:17
Joseph Mallozzi: Mhm. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: I’m I would be more of a fan of like the hard magic thing where like no, you said this is the way it works so it’s not going to work that way.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: Don’t don’t change the rule now.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t care anymore.
Joseph Mallozzi: I need the rules. I need the rules.
Mark Bradford: Yeah. Right.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: I I need I need the rules and that’s why Right.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: Sci sci-fi is that way. In fact, that’s all people are doing and sci-fi is explaining. Well, the reason that this is because the plasma shield works this way and so on and so forth.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: So that does make sense because it feels it feels right. But um I feel like there’s still this blurry line with um sci-fi and and and fantasy at least where you know and it’s the whole you know any any sufficiently advanced civilization and and and so forth.
01:07:57
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: I get that. So there is a little bit of that. It’s just like with the um the Knox you know that was that was you don’t know you know and then you see the giant city and so forth.
Joseph Mallozzi: Mhm. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: So, you know, is it still magical or is it not?
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: Is it just super, you know, and typically we take sci science fiction and we assign it to objects? Like even like, okay, well, why are you able to do that?
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: Well, nanites, you can’t see them, but there’s nanites, you know, as opposed to I am I am superpowered.
Joseph Mallozzi: Right. Yes. Yes.
Mark Bradford: Even like, you know, Captain America had this super soldier serum, but that’s still science, but you could just say I took a potion of strength or whatever, you know, right?
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. Yes. Yes. Exactly. As long as there’s that scientific theoretical underping opinion, I will allow it.
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
01:08:37
Mark Bradford: One of the Yeah, one of the things that I think uh is kind of annoying even past that is the the author didn’t think past a few years like oh there’s this magic and and people float around with
Joseph Mallozzi: I give it a lot of, you know,
Mark Bradford: this thing. Well, if they can do that then you just ruin the economy. Like so if if they’ve had this for hundred years there’d be no animals anymore or whatever. Like they’ll introduce a thing and you’ll be and you’ll think there’s no sustainability, there’s no longevity with that. nothing would be like the way that you’re talking about it at all. So, that’s the part that really removes me out of a story. But, uh, I don’t read a huge amount of fantasy and while I was writing, I didn’t do that sort of thing. But, I you amaze me in that you seem to absorb and and and and gravitate towards so much fiction at the same time. And you talk about it on on X. You’re very active on X at the same time.
01:09:25
Joseph Mallozzi: Mhm.
Mark Bradford: You’re starting polls, the things with the ships and things like that. Um, I I think you shouldn’t sell yourself short because most people aren’t like you in your position.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: Most people on X um larger accounts usually cut and paste things and then they let people fight about it.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: But like you you actually interact with your audience and I mean I I mean it says so much about you that you it’s a big it’s a big kudo to you to to do that.
Joseph Mallozzi: Right. Oh, thank you.
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: But I got I have something in my eyes, so I’m not sure what’s going.
Mark Bradford: Oh yeah. No, I I I really got to
Joseph Mallozzi: But but yeah, I uh No, I appreciate uh I appreciate the fandom, you know, and you know, one of the things I always say about fandom is that, you know, it’s they’re amazing because they’re very passionate uh about what you produce. Um but it’s a double-edged sword, right?
01:10:11
Joseph Mallozzi: So on the one hand, if they love what you produce, uh you know, they’ll get behind you 100% and it just feels great. But if you cross them, you kill off a character or what what have you, they will cut you.
Mark Bradford: They will cut you literally.
Joseph Mallozzi: That double-edged sword, you know, they uh you know, they have very long memories.
Mark Bradford: Yeah. Wow. That’s that’s that’s true. Yeah. That that’s sort of a Yeah, you’re up on that high high place and can be praised or knocked over, I suppose, and roll down the other side.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: So, I’m glad I really got to you there.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: It really hit you emotionally.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. I’m I’m tearing up. I think uh at first I thought it was because uh I had something spicy or got sunscreen in my eye, but I think it’s actually your words are uh yeah, very emotional.
Mark Bradford: Oh, that’s Oh, well that’s very kind.
Joseph Mallozzi: Makes me very emotional.
Mark Bradford: That sounds completely sincere, too.
01:10:55
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: I really appreciate that. Well, well, very cool. Um, so I want uh Is there an upcoming project that you’d like to talk about at all?
Joseph Mallozzi: you know in this business as feast or famine. I was very lucky to work 12 years uh on Stargate and then well actually it was 17 years 12 seasons and then almost immediately followed that with Dark Matter for three years.
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: Uh and then I did another project which was a kind of a friends project. Uh and then since then I’ve just kind of been writing and going out and pitching. Uh, I’m not really interested in going uh and working on someone else’s show unless it’s like a friend of mine gets a show or unless let’s say Amazon calls me up and is like, “Hey, we’re we’re rebooting Stargate. We would love to have you come into the room and, you know, unless that happens, uh, I think I’d rather just keep, you know, kind of slugging away and trying to get my own project off the ground.” And
01:11:48
Joseph Mallozzi: and so I’m out with actually uh uh two three projects actually and and uh all three of them are actually in the crime realm. So uh you know again but but very much like what I do in sci-fi uh kind of quirky characters colorful characters the kind of undercurrent of humor. Um but uh again I mean who knows what uh what the future holds. Maybe something will land or you know maybe five years from now when we do this again I’ll you know I’ll tell tell you I you know I’ll be working on another string of uh projects I have in development
Mark Bradford: Well, I’m very encouraged that you’ve already agreed to appear again, but I’m disheartened that I have to wait five years.
Joseph Mallozzi: yes well maybe you don’t have to wait five years this has gone well so you know we could we could certainly do this again sooner than later no it’s it’s my pleasure Yes.
Mark Bradford: Oh, good. I’m glad. I appreciate that because I’d love to because you have so much to talk about. It’s so it’s so fun and I’d love to but I don’t want to take up too much of your valuable time.
01:12:41
Mark Bradford: So, I think it’s it’s so I would I would encourage anyone uh listening to this that uh to to definitely seek you out on on X and and give you a follow and uh and you’ll see that you’re very much interacting with people and you just it’s fun because you’re engaging people to ask their questions to to get to get answers to them and then you respond to their answers sometimes.
Joseph Mallozzi: Mhm.
Mark Bradford: I mean, that’s that’s crazy.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. I like to be honest with you, I was amazed. I I I’m I’ve I’ve gone through I think seven rounds of these four ship uh questionnaires and one round had Andromeda Ascendant, the ship from the series Andromeda, a show that I never watched that is totally off the radar as far as I’m concerned. And that ship overwhelmingly beat out some some pretty heavy hitters and and that really surprised me. So, I mean, I love doing these to find out sort of like, you know, where this where the sci-fi fandom is at.
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
01:13:34
Mark Bradford: Yeah. I think I’ve I saw two episodes of Andromeda. Actually, I made it through sort of like what’s really the the genesis of it and I was like, “Okay, now this is how it’s going to be.”
Joseph Mallozzi: Mhm.
Mark Bradford: So, that was I did like the ship.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: The ship is very pretty. So, I did like the ship.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: So, cool. Uh, any any other shout outs or anything you’d like to to mention to people since they’re we’re listening.
Joseph Mallozzi: Uh, no. Just come find me @BaronDestructo on X. I also have a blog, josephalasi.com, where I blog. I’ve been blogging every day. uh since 2007, back in my Stargate days. So, usually when I’m in production, most of my blog will have to do with whatever show I’m in production on. I’m I I’m kind of the antithesis of a lot of producers and that a lot of producers like Star Start Trek, God forbid you release anything about the show prior to uh you know, when it airs, whereas I’m the opposite.
01:14:27
Joseph Mallozzi: I unless it’s a spoiler, I love to get like get the fans excited about stuff. So I I I posted ship designs and and you know uh uh sketches and you know behind the the scenes uh stuff uh for all my productions. So when I’m in productions or gearing up for production and post that’s what I usually blog about. When I’m not I will blog about everything from for inance the horror movies I’m watching now to the crime books I’m reading to uh you know uh videos of my of my pugle sharks.
Mark Bradford: to food.
Joseph Mallozzi: Uh so uh you know anything goes.
Mark Bradford: Yeah. I’ve even seen posts about food where you ask about soups and pizzas and things like that.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: I’m a I’m a foodie as well.
Mark Bradford: That’s what’s very very very impressive. So again, I want to I want to keep my word. So, it’s been about an hour. So, I’m thrilled that you were able to make it and thank you.
Thank you and dinner
Mark Bradford: Thank you for the the the the cander. Uh I appreciate that very much, too.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for having me. This was a lot of fun. Where are you, by the way, Mark?
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: Where are you situated?
Mark Bradford: Oh, I’m in uh Wisconsin.
Joseph Mallozzi: Wisconsin.
Mark Bradford: Yeah.
Joseph Mallozzi: Excellent. Should I ever find my way in Wisconsin? We have to do dinner.
Mark Bradford: Please, please, let’s do dinner.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: I would love to do that.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.
Mark Bradford: Yeah. And you’re on the East Coast?
Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. I am I’m in Toronto.
Mark Bradford: Toronto.
Joseph Mallozzi: Toronto, Canada.
Mark Bradford: Oh, very nice.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: Very nicely done.
Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: Okay. I would love that. Let’s Let’s do that, please.
Joseph Mallozzi: Excellent.
Mark Bradford: All right.
Joseph Mallozzi: Good luck to your Packers.
Mark Bradford: Well, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
01:15:43
Mark Bradford: Thank you again for for joining us and take care of yourself.
Joseph Mallozzi: Nice work. Bye.
Mark Bradford: Thanks. Perfect. Thank you so much.
Joseph Mallozzi: Excellent.
Have you ever noticed that when there’s something you really, really love and really speaks to you that when you look at the backstory for it, the person that created it said that they “selfishly” just made it for them?
Here’s why selfishness, like the comfort zone, gets a bad rap it doesn’t really deserve
Transcript.Selfishness, like the comfort zone, takes a lot of crap.
Well, hey there. Welcome back.
The Surprising Power of Creative SelfishnessHave you ever enjoyed the work of someone else and thought, “Man, this this really speaks to me. I I love it’s like perfect for me. It’s it’s really well done.” Or you think, “I I couldn’t like this more.” And that can range from anything like a a creative work or movie or or a book or even the way somebody took care of your plans. Have you ever noticed that more often than not when you follow up on this stuff, you hear someone say the phrase, “Well, I kind of selfishly did it for me the way that I would like to have it done.”
A Side Quest: Building a To-Do List App for MyselfSo, let me go off on a side quest and continue. So, I had been thinking about the to-do list, and I have a lot of holy grail quests myself, and one of them is the to-do list. It’s one of those things that not sure if you can ever attain the perfect to-do list. It’s something everyone needs. It’s something everyone uses in one way or another, whether it’s on a piece of paper or planner or digitally or in their brain. I missed the days of having a Franklin planner in which you would have this little book and you’d have your to-do lists among other things and then at the end of the night the ones that you didn’t check off you would flip the page and you’d transfer those to the next day and then you would actually sleep through the night. Having recently created my behavioral mapping software that I can use in really cool ways that’s currently patent pending, I had the confidence to sort of do something else. So, I thought, I’m going to make a to-do list. So, I did. I made a little app for to-do list that looks great on my phone and and my desktop. I thought selfishly, what do I want to do since I’m the only person that’s going to use this? I want to do color coding. I want it that when I check something off, it automatically doesn’t go to the next day. I want everything to go to the next day that I don’t check off to be super easy and super frictionless to use. No real login and blah blah blah. So, anyway, I did all that. I ended up showing it to a couple people and a few of them were really interested in using it. So I built it in such a way that multiple people can use it. Every time I described it, I said I selfishly made this for me. Selfish, selfish, selfish. I kept saying that because it was with me and only me in mind. Now is it extremely usable for other people? Yes. But it was made for me selfishly. And once again, it felt like one of those projects or things that someone does that people say, “Wow, that’s really great.” and it’s because it was done selfishly. Do you think that’s counterintuitive?
Applying ‘Good’ Selfishness to Your ProfessionSo, getting back off of our side quest, if you’re in corporate America, you may not have a lot of opportunity to do something selfishly. If you’re a probate attorney, you’re not going to be doing it with a lot of flare. If you’re laying down asphalt, there’s probably a specific way you need to do that. And plumbers going to plum. However, if you’re a probate attorney doing probate for your grandmother, you might spend a bit more time on something or you might throw out a rule and say, “I know that’s best practice, but not in this case.” If you’re a plumber, you may allow x amount of time because of a price to do something in someone’s bathroom. But if it’s your bathroom and your wife is going to be using this, you may spend an inordinate amount of time to make sure it’s absolutely right. You will selfishly do it. And not because you’re afraid your wife’s going to yell at you, because you could say, “I’ll just patch this up. It’s just it’s just family. It’s just my wife.” But because you enjoy the validation that you get for being good at your job and the validation you get for showing your loved ones that you are so good at this sort of thing and you take pride in it.
Why Selfishness and the Comfort Zone Get a Bad RapSelfishness like the comfort zone takes a lot of crap. There’s a lot of bad PR about both of those things that’s kind of undeserved. I understand what people say about comfort zones and obviously if someone is just simply selfish, yes, that’s probably a bad thing. But there are elements to both and you can check out the episode on comfort zones if you want to learn more. Feel free to pause now or listen to it after this. There are some really good things to learn on not avoiding something that has some really positive aspects. And this kind of selfishness is is one of them. I would ask you if there’s something in your life that you do that you avoid being selfish in the way that you do it. In other words, you don’t do it to absolute perfection or the way that if you’re doing it for yourself, you would do it and you get paid for that.
Ask yourself what the reason is that you don’t do that. And like my examples, you may say, well, look, it’s just not it’s not profitable in any way for me to spend 3 hours on doing something that I can typically get away with doing in 1 hour. And if it’s something you love, you would sort of do that anyway. And you’ll counter and say, “Well, yeah, Mark, I can’t go to the grocery store and say, I did something selfishly and I didn’t get paid for it. Can I have some bananas?” And they’ll say, “Well, of course, no. Please leave.” But there is sort of you’re sort of trapped between the book end of I really do enjoy doing this and gee, I really like eating. Right? And obviously there’s some variance in there. Obvious you get to a point with certain things where it’s all just a lot of gravy. And do you want more gravy or less gravy or or how much time and effort and time, energy, and perhaps resources you want to put into something to get it done the way that you like doing that.
The Artisan Approach: How Artists Embrace Selfish CreationWe see people who do something for a while and they really start to adopt this attitude. The attitude of well I’ve kind of learned the way that I really like to do things and people really like the way I like to do things. Now a perfect example of people who are pretty much untouchable in this and can adopt that attitude from day one are people who are artists and when I mean artists I mean what people think of as an artist. Somebody who’s who paints, right? Someone who works in that medium. They they just they do what they do and that’s their style. Period. End of discussion. No, I’m not going to paint differently because you’re my sponsor. We don’t ever question that. We know that’s just the way this person paints. When it comes to books, movies, other creative endeavors, jobs, and so forth, well, we sort of become a bit more skeptical on that. We’re a bit more critical on that. But it is where words like artisan come from, right? We know it’s somebody who took their time. They did it the old timey way, and it’s going to be done well. and we’ll probably have to pay a lot more for it. Like the places you go for your craft beer and your $35 hamburger, your 3ml metal container of ketchup.
Using “Good” Selfishness as a Creative GuideIt’s an interesting guide, isn’t it? If you allow this selfishness to guide your productivity and your creativity, it may take you in a very interesting direction. It may start to be selfiltering. You may say, “Well, the things I really want to do the way that I want to do them are not particularly profitable. So, I have to find a different way to do it or I have to get people to pay a lot more for this.” You may end up actually forking in the road. It’s really none of my business. And having your standard way of doing things and then you have your selfish way of doing things and you may throw on a label like premium or elite or or you only do that for a handful of clients or or whatever, right? But you may actually have two different ways to do something. That’s not a bad thing. That’s an explorative fun thing that you can do with your skills and should. It can be the same way for you moving up the ranks in what you do. You’ll get better and better at something. You’ll become more meticulous and you’ll be in a position to do something the way you want it to be, which may be commanding an entire team or legion of people to do things the way you’d like them to do.
The Magic of Shared Selfishness: Connecting with Your AudienceSo many mission statements talk like this, but in practice, it doesn’t really work that way. But it can for you and it depends on what your perspective is and it depends on you really taking stuff like this to heart. Maybe all the stuff that you selfishly do is stuff that is not part of your career calling or job. It might just be the way you cook for your family. It might be the way you vacuum. Or it may be the way that you write books and get raging undying fans because you do it for you. And that same selfishness is what they are experiencing. And that’s really when the magic happens is that someone feels the same selfishness you do for doing something. They enjoy it as if they are you. Think about that. Think about how powerful it is for them to feel the way you feel. When you’re like, I’m just doing this the way I look. I’m doing it the way I want to. I don’t care what other people want. I don’t care if this is the right or wrong way. It’s just my way of doing things. I can tell you I feel that way about my fiction and how I write dialogue, the way that I produce podcast episodes and write the articles for it and a bunch of other things.
The invisible barrier you must cross to switch modes and why it fools you into thinking it would take too much effort to complete a task.
TranscriptRevisiting Multitasking and the Energy of Switching TasksDo you multitask? Wait, we we already covered this. In a previous episode, we talked about how energy is really the glue that holds together various multitasking tasks that when you switch between one and the other, there’s a certain amount of energy you have to expend. And the studies recently done add a lot of credence to it and that you’re really not getting more done. You’re in fact getting less done and not as well. So, anyone who’s multitaskked probably found this and and multitasking is one of those holy grails that I look for in my talk and podcast about something called do it to a fault, which is one of my fun acronyms and I love me some acronyms. I explain how people can connect two things together and get a couple things done at the same time. Now, that’s not multitasking per se because it’s really using two different brain systems. Having a conversation on the phone while you’re emptying the dishwasher is not necessarily multitasking because they’re two different modes of operation. Doing your taxes while you’re driving, well, yeah, that’s not a good idea. If you haven’t listened to that one, go listen to it. It’s it’s a good episode. Having said that, I want to talk about something related but different.
The Invisible Energy Barrier of Changing ModesSo, have you ever had something that you need to do and you realize you haven’t been doing it or you forgot about it and then when you remember it, you have a little bit of a a dread or a sigh. But if you examine how much energy it takes to do the thing, it doesn’t really take all that much energy. So, it’s almost confusing as to, well, why don’t I just do that? What you’re feeling is the invisible barrier of energy that’s preventing you from switching into that mode. And that’s kind of what we talk about in in multitasking is that there’s this energy you have to expend to switch and kind of clear your mind and say, “Okay, now I’m a chef. Okay, now I’m a mom. Okay, now I’m a corporate individual like a CFO and I have to speak a certain way and so on and so forth.” And we talked about that a bit in an episode about switching modes. So check that out as well. But getting back to this invisible energy barrier and and that’s what it is. You think about a task and you think, “Oh, well that’s not that.” And then you just kind of feel it. You feel that you don’t want to do that cuz it’s different. You’re in a different mode. And it’s not that it’s a bad thing. It’s not that you don’t even necessarily not want to do it, but our brains like to trick us and we think, “Oh, I’m only not doing that because my wife this is going to happen or this happens with my kids or I’m just so drained from this.” And and you’re not. You’re not drained from the thing because this might even be something that in a way might be rewarding, but you have to switch modes. And you can feel that energy of switching modes and it might be disorienting for you.
Why Switching Between Work and Personal Modes is DrainingIf you’re at work in a corporate environment and you’re in a conference room and your boss says, “Hey Janelle, be funny. Be as funny as you can possibly be right now.” And it’s a it’s a very somber, serious, financially oriented environment. As much as it sounds fun and empowering to just sort of be funny and be silly, it feels disorienting because you normally aren’t in this situation. And it feels like you’d have to push yourself into being funny. And guess what happens once you push yourself into being funny or being in this different emotional mode. You would then have to push yourself back out.
Something that might be a little closer to home is if somebody you’re working with is going through something. They’re going through a divorce or something horrible happens to them or or or somebody they care about and they kind of pull you into their world and you’re like, “Oh, that’s right. Tomorrow Denise is going to tell me about her her ex-husband or what she’s going through and it’s just so draining and I just want to focus on my spreadsheet stuff.” Now, just to clarify, you might very much look forward to going and grabbing some wine with Denise after work next Thursday to talk about all this nonsense. You’re you’re going to get into it. It’s going to get really juicy, but not in the middle of work because besides it being inappropriate, it’s also something that causes you to switch modes. Hit the wall of energy going in and hit the wall of energy going out.
The Exhausting Effect of Juggling Multiple Life RolesIs this starting to clarify why some things are difficult for you to get accomplished to check off your to-do list? It could explain a lot if you are bouncing around between a lot of different things. And when I say a lot of different things, I mean maybe switching between being a single parent or an entrepreneur and somebody who wants to be creative and somebody who wants to get stuff done around the house and somebody who wants to be romantic for their partner and so forth. All of those are different modes. Each one of them has a barrier of energy that you have to cross over.
You’ve probably also noticed that the more willing you are to do a thing, so in other words, it’s something you really want to do. And in terms of my latest book, it’s a it’s a unicorn that’s pulling you to this pleasure. The more you want to do it, the easier it is to do it if you know it’s going to be a while before you go back. So, in other words, if there was something fun you wanted to do and you were going to kind of sneak it in like across your lunch hour, it would be hard because you’re going in and going out again. But if you said, “I’m taking a half day,” you’d say, “Oh, yes, take me. Finally, I can go and do that thing I want to do that I’ve really been looking forward to.” And the thing might be gardening. The thing might be cleaning up a closet, but it just might be weighing on you. And like again, it requires you to put your head down and to get into it. And those should all be key phrases for you. Putting your head down, getting into it, letting yourself go, being in a certain frame of mind. All those things mean the same thing. They mean that you are driving and adjusting your intellectual, emotional, and physical energy to perform this task to the best of your ability.
The High Cost of “Phoning It In” While Mode SwitchingThat brings up another subject to the best of your ability because you can push back and say, “Mark, I can switch things like this. I’m not like some crazily committed person to something as opposed to a committed person who’s crazy.” You say, “Look, it’s it’s you’re making a big deal out of it.” Yeah, I’m making a big deal out of it. If you like to do things shoddily, if you like to do things kind of phoned it in and say, “Well, that’s good enough.” Well, sure. Then you could switch all day long sucking up your energy where you’re still kind of half in one world while you’re half in this other world and you just kind of get it done. You could be inattentive. You can be that way for your parenting. You can be that way for your taxes. You could be that way for your relationships. You can be that way for your career. Yes, you can be fairly inattentive, but do you want to be? I don’t think so. Especially if you’re listening to this. I think you’re really someone who likes to hear new ideas, likes to better themselves, likes to think about what’s the best way to do something, and likes to think about behind the scenes, especially when it comes to getting things done and the fun of experimental psychology, which is really kind of cool.
A Strategy for Overcoming the Energy BarrierSo, what did we learn then? Well, as always, I try to raise your awareness and then I try to give you some homework or something that maybe you could do that that would help. And the awareness is that there is this invisible barrier between us switching modes. And the bigger the difference in the modes, the larger the amount of energy. We learned that if you want to go off halfcocked and or just not be so committed or just phone it in, then yes, you can kind of cross that barrier back and forth, but you’re not really doing a good job on either one of the things you switch into or all of the things you switch into. If you keep switching into 20 different modes all day long, that’s you’re just going to be burned out and you’re not going to feel good about anything you’ve accomplished.
So what we can do moving forward is be aware of this energy and then decide how we want to commit to that. And one of the tricks is that if there’s a mode that you know like let’s say gardening mode or whatever, right? And you’ve been wanting to do that but you just have to be in that that mood. You’ll find that once you get into the mode, it’s a lot easier to stay there. So if you have two or three tasks that are of the same mode, you’ll find that well I was already dirty outside, so I just went ahead and took all that stuff over but to the dump. Oh, okay. That’s shocking that we would do two things that are nearly identical in energy without having to cross a barrier. So you’re going to learn, you’re going to find and learn that that is going to happen as well. So welcome that. You know, maybe leave more time than you think you need to accomplish this thing because once you’re in that mode, you might want to stay in it for a while. And in general, it just becomes a more fulfilling thing. In general, it becomes very fulfilling if you decide that Saturday is your day for such and such. And you can leave your mode early and say, “Oh my god, it’s I was done by 11. I mean, the rest of the day, I just did other stuff I wanted to do.” But just keep that in mind when you’re accomplishing things. And as always, thank you for listening.
Outro and Book AnnouncementI appreciate you. If you want to talk more about this kind of thing and you want to engage me, feel free to click on my Calendly link or write me an email. And as always, take care.
I want to announce that my new book, my 10th, is out. It’s called BeCAUSE! the fundamental psychological building blocks that enable you to or prevent you from accomplishing anything, everything, and nothing. Check it out on Amazon. It’s only $9.99.
What’s your learning style?Do you know what your learning style is? Did you know you have one? For a long time I have known about the diferent ways humans learn. People not only have aptitudes (someone is good with mechanical stuff, or math, etc.) but also differ in the way they learn. Same resulting information, different ways of it to enter your head.
I truly wish we would explore this in the schools because it would make all the difference in the world for kids and people trying to learn. What I have come to recognize any time I am teaching (conversations, consulting, teaching, coaching, workshops) is that I can detect the style just by watching the person as they learn. Here are the styles I’ve come across and what I notice.
The stylesAudio – people who learn this way learn mostly by hearing the information. They are watching you, sure, but they focus mostly on what you are saying. These people may make facial gestures as they listen. They might seem to be staring at you. They really prefer audiobooks instead of regular print books. They might seem to be ignoring what you are putting on your white board. They are waiting for you to tell them something.
Visual – You hear this a lot – “Im a visual learner.” Obviously this means they are watching very carefully and pay most of their attention to what they see. So, your diagrams and text on the board is devoured. They will talk with their hands typically. I’m Sicilian so I do this anyway. Some teachers seem to think that everyone is one of these kind of learners.
Conceptual – The conceptual learner is really inwardly focused on what he/she is processing. I know when I am talking to one of this tribe because they tilt their heads and usually look up at the upper right. I know because I’m a member of this tribe. It’s sometimes disorienting for others as it looks like I might not be listening, or that i m doubting what they are saying. In a way they are right—I am testing the concept they are relaying with what I know, and creating it in my head to see. Conceptual Lerners tend to “take things to heart” immediately. They learn faster and harder, but will be quick to lose interest if they are not engaged.
This list is from experience, anectotal evidence, and a bit of research. Your results may vary, but knowing this can be very useful and not only help you communicate better but prevent misunderstandings between different learners.
Like the love langauges, people aren’t just one of these and can be a mix.
This podcast, unlike most, comes with an article typically. The article is written in an authoritative manner to make the reading and absorbing of the concepts easy. The recording is me speaking in a more conversational tone.
Maybe when I get more patrons I’ll start creating videos as well. They I’ll have all of y’all covered.
Q: Which kind of learner are you?
Q: Have you ever run into difficulty learning because it was presented one way and that way was not a style you favored?
TranscriptWhat is Apathy? The Answer Might Surprise YouWell, hey there. Welcome back. What’s this episode about? Who cares?
So, many years ago, I was with a few of my friends and one of my friends said, “What’s apathy?” And my other friend said, “Who cares?” And it took a little while to realize that he was actually answering the question.
Visualizing Motivation: The Psychology of “BeCAUSE!“As you may or may not know, I’ve written patent-pending software now that actually can help me to do behavioral mapping. It’s an offshoot of my latest book called Because. And I’m finding there are many, many offshoots of the whole concept of Because, which is based on Freud’s pleasure principle: seek pleasure, avoid pain. The software has allowed me to visualize all of these interesting concepts that might be kind of hard to visualize. And in doing so, it’s allowed me to see things that even I didn’t see while writing the book.
Why You Never Finish Your To-Do ListLet’s talk about your to-do list to make this a little clearer. You can create a to-do list and then you can assign priorities. You can create a to-do list and then you can convince yourself that the one you really want to do is the one you should do. I talk about this in one of the chapters. You’ve probably made many to-do lists. Some of them grand, some of them small.
But like most people, you don’t have a sort of a grand overarching to-do list. Like your life list, if you will. You can get complicated. And on that life list, you can have, “I’m going to climb a mountain.” “Here’s my bucket list.” “Here’s me finding love.” Here is, “Oh, that’s right. I have to get groceries. I have to cut the grass.” Like, all these things are to-dos, and some of them are of a grander scale or not.
If you think about your own list, there might be something that you keep putting on there, but you never do it. And so if we apply monsters and unicorns and we mapped it out, we could probably see that maybe there’s something painful about it, that there’s just too much pain that this thing generates and you feel like there’s no return on investment. Or there’s just not enough pleasure generated, or there’s not enough pain being generated if you don’t do it.
The Unfinished Novel: A Case Study in Laziness vs. ApathyLet’s take an example. Let’s say you have an awesome life doing what you do. You have your full-time job. You’re invested. You have a career and all that stuff. And one day you’re thinking, “You know what, I wouldn’t mind writing a novel, a fiction.”
So, you put that on your little to-do list and you think about it sometimes. And once in a great while, you write a few words here and there. And finally, after seeing it on your list and looking back on the fact that you’ve been writing this novel for almost a year now and have almost nothing to show for it—you know, you never really made an outline, you don’t really have much in the way of the characters or any research or anything like that.
You look at it and you might realize, if you had access to the kinds of things we talk about here on the podcast all the time, “Oh, I’m afraid of failure. That’s so strong I’m never going to finish this novel.” Or, “I’m afraid I can’t write realistic dialogue.” Or, “I’m afraid it’s going to take too much time away from me,” and so forth. And we’re defining monsters and monsters and monsters.
But let’s say instead of that, when you do your self-examination, you’re like, “Well, I guess I could work on it. I don’t know. I just don’t care.”
Now, that’s apathy.
If you just don’t care, it means there aren’t any monsters and unicorns at all. There’s nothing that says, “Ooh, this will be pleasurable.” “Ooh, my friends will think better of me when I do this.” Or, “Ooh, this I’ll feel good because I’ll have accomplished something.” Or, “Oh, I’m afraid of embarrassment if I don’t finish it,” and blah, blah, blah. You won’t have any of that because you just simply don’t care.
Introducing Selective Indifference: The Apathy You Should HaveYou can be a fairly dynamic individual interested in a multitude of things, whether it’s improving skills or hobbies or creativity or what have you. And you can have things that you simply don’t care about. You can’t like everything. You can’t care about everything.
I don’t want to jump out of a plane. It’s not because I don’t care. It’s because I have a monster that says, “That’s going to hurt when you hit the ground.” And any unicorn that might be there that says how cool it would be to do that is really tiny compared to the giant monster that says, “The sudden stop is really bad. Don’t do that.” So, I’m not doing that.
I’m also not, for the most part, going to go to an opera. And there’s really no monster-unicorn waiting for me there that says, you know, “Don’t go, it’s going to sound terrible,” or, “You should go because it’ll improve your culture.” I just… I don’t care. And I know this is going to shock you, but I kind of feel that way about sports. I don’t keep up on sports and things. So, I don’t care how certain teams do or anything like that. And I know that’s shocking and I’m sorry and I apologize, but I’m kind of the same way with that, too. It frees up a lot of time, I’ll tell you that.
So, I’m apathetic towards going to the opera. I’m apathetic towards sports for the most part. But if I place something on my list and I look back and I eventually realize I’m apathetic towards that, I have to think about that. And you should too. You should also be thinking about the things in your life that you have apathy towards.
Are You Lazy or Just Selectively Indifferent?And by defining these things and defining what apathy is, as opposed to what it could be—which is laziness, or at least something you could define as laziness and say, “You know what, I don’t want to do that right now. I’d rather eat some chips. I’d rather go do that fun thing. I’d rather do that thing that makes me feel more productive.” Maybe it’s not even fun at all. “I’m going to put in an extra hour of work,” or, “I’m going to go help my friend move instead of doing that thing because of your value system.” Your monsters and unicorns tell you that’s the thing you want to do.
So that’s about prioritization and, again, seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, but not being indifferent or being selectively indifferent. When I say I’m not particularly interested in sports, I’m selectively indifferent to it. It’s just not something that turns me on. For the most part, I can be dragged to it. It’s fine. Not something I seek out. Like a million other things in life that we don’t seek out. We just don’t seek it out.
A Simple Test for Self-DiscoveryI’m trying to drive home the point of how important it is to sort of look inwardly and say, “Am I being lazy or am I being apathetic?” So before we go any further on anything, that sounds like really good homework to have. Are there things in your life that you’re thinking, “I thought I was going to do this by now. I thought I was going to do this,” or, “Why am I struggling so much to get this off the ground, change careers, what have you?”
There’s probably a bunch of things in your life that you’d either like to do or can’t do, and it might be disappointing you.
And here’s the thing. If it’s something that you’re not doing and you should be doing and you really want to do it, but you have some monsters and unicorns in the way, well then that’s something we can get through. And if you read Because, you’re a lot smarter on how to get through that. But if it turns out to be selective indifference, chosen apathy, well, that’s a win. Because now you can stop beating yourself up. You can stop giving yourself a hard time because you’re not doing that thing. “Well, I just don’t… I’m not… I don’t care.”
Does that make sense?
The Danger Zone: When Apathy Becomes a ProblemBut having said all that, I have to raise one other little flag. If you find that you have apathy, whether it’s selective or not, towards a lot of things, and you have for more, and then more, and then more… well, that’s going to be a problem. And that is a problem for a lot of people. They end up having a lot of that selective apathy towards a lot of things, and there really is, unfortunately, no limit as to how much apathy you can have. And it’s very sad.
I don’t want anyone to have to experience that. I want people to live vibrant lives. I want people to have both the pleasure and the pain because that’s what makes us human. It’s what makes failing still feel better than nothing, because you’re feeling something as opposed to feeling absolutely nothing.
And there are things that can put us in this state. There are protective things. There are things that our psyche does to put us in a state of apathy sometimes. But again, that’s not really apathy, is it? It’s avoidance based on the pleasure principle. It’s based on the monster and the unicorn.
Feeling Stuck? Why It’s Okay to StumbleSo, if you have something that you think you’ve been wanting to do, but you’re not… If you’re, as they say in the industry, “stuck”—I hate that; check out a number of my podcasts on that. Reach out to me. Maybe we can even work together, because I want to see you pursue that thing.
And it’s okay if you stumble because even the stumbling can show the direction that you’ve been going, and you should be proud of yourself.
So take care of you, and remember that you matter.
Are You Truly Available? The Critical Difference Between Time and EnergyI’m going to ask you a simple question: Are you available right now? Of course, you’re listening to this, so your immediate answer is “yes.” But are you?
For years, I’ve talked about the constant negotiation between our time, energy, and resources. Today, I want to zero in on a nuance that seems small at first but has massive implications for our work, our relationships, and our own well-being. It’s the difference between being merely present and being truly available.
More Than a Calendar Invite: Availability at WorkThink about a typical corporate scenario. You ask Mike and Sarah from HR if they are available for a 3:30 meeting, and they agree. They show up. They are physically in the conference room or logged into the video call. They have made their time available. But is their energy available?
You know what I’m talking about. You see the vacant nods, the lack of retention. On a video call, you see the tell-tale white glow on their face from another screen or the reflection of scrolling text in their glasses. They are physically present, but their energy—their focus, their mental capacity—is somewhere else entirely. Maybe Sarah has a problem at home, and her mind is there. In that case, no matter what her calendar says, she’s not really available for your meeting. The time is there, but the energy isn’t.
This becomes even more obvious when you’re a speaker or a teacher. You can have a room full of people who showed up for your 10 a.m. workshop. Their time is committed. But you see them fidgeting, looking at their phones, their minds clearly elsewhere. Their energy is being siphoned off, and as a result, they aren’t available to receive what you’re trying to give them.
Divided Attention: The Availability Gap in Our Personal LivesThis concept doesn’t just live at the office. It follows us home. You and your spouse might set aside two hours to sit in the same room and “spend time together.” You are technically available, right? But if you’re staring at your phone or have your laptop open, and every question they ask is met with a distracted, “Huh? What?” then you aren’t available for them. You’re available for your screen. Your energy is flowing toward your device, not your partner.
This is why an activity like playing a video game together can feel so connecting. You are both intensely available for the game, which means your energy is focused on the same goal. You are, in fact, available for each other.
The Most Important Question: Are You Available for Yourself?This brings us to the most crucial relationship of all: the one you have with yourself. How often are you truly available for you?
This isn’t some esoteric concept. It’s profoundly practical. You might think, “I have free will. I’m always available for myself because I choose what to do.” But that’s not how life really works. How often have you committed to a task at work, but your brain is already on vacation? Or you come home from the office, but you haven’t mentally clocked out?
That drive home used to be a forced decompression period. For many who work from home, that buffer is gone. It takes a microsecond to walk from the “office” to the kitchen, but your mind is still at work. You are home, but you are not yet available for your family or for yourself.
Life is full of things we don’t plan for—a spill, an emergency call, an accident. That lack of availability is often the root cause of problems. A driver fiddling with their phone isn’t available to pay attention to the road, and the result can be a crash. At home, not listening to your spouse may not cause a physical accident, but it creates a relational one over time.
How to Create True AvailabilitySo, how do we fix this? It starts with awareness and is followed by self-control.
Being available for yourself means taking a breath and asking: What do I want to do right now? What do I need to do? What would make me happy?
In my new book, BeCAUSE!, I talk about the “monsters” (things we do to avoid pain) and “unicorns” (things we do to seek pleasure) that constantly pull our energy in different directions. When we live in a purely reactive state—bouncing between avoiding the boss’s anger and chasing the thrill of completing a project—we leave no space for ourselves. We become robots, always on, with no room to look up and ask, “Wait, what’s going on in my life? What do I really want?”
To become truly available, you must first create that space. You have to be willing to put your head up and check in with yourself. You must become available for you first. Only then can you genuinely offer your energy and availability to everything and everyone else in your life.
Thank you for being available for this message—not just with your time, but with your energy. The people who get the most out of this are the ones who truly engage. If you make yourself available for ideas like this, I’m sure you also make yourself available for yourself. And I hope you continue to do so.
TranscriptWell, hey there. Welcome back. Hey, are you available for this podcast? Well, of course you are. You’re listening to it, right? Or are you?
Let’s talk about this whole concept. I’ve talked about time, energy, and resources so much. You can pretty much recite that. What I’m about to talk about is one of those things that when we look at it in its native situation, it may seem that I’m just being overly nuanced, but when we transfer it to a different situation, it becomes blatantly obvious. And I love that.
If you work in corporate America and you have to pull someone from another team or department or what have you and you’re like, “Hey, are you available at 3:30 for just a half hour meeting?” and they say, “Sure.” And so then they show up in the conference room or even, god forbid, on some sort of video call, they’re available, right? Well, their time is available, but is there energy?
And this is the nuanced part because you may say, “Well, yeah, I I met with Mike and Sarah from HR and they were available from 3:30 to 4 and we talked about whatever it is we talked about.” But if you find that there wasn’t a lot of retention or there was just a lot of nodding, or if it’s a video call, as you may be very well unfortunately aware of, if their face lights up with, suddenly lights up with white or changes or you can see things in their glasses, then you know they might not really be available. And you know what I’m talking about. Their energy is going somewhere else or it’s focused somewhere else. Or they may actually be in a meeting with you, but because Sarah has an issue going on at home, her mind may be elsewhere. And if her mind is elsewhere, her energy is elsewhere.
Let’s make it even less nuanced. If you’re teaching a class of 10 individuals, say a seminar or you’re giving a a talk or or what have you, say it’s a 1-hour, a 1-hour situation, whether it’s a workshop or a class or something, everyone who shows up at 10:00 a.m. for the 10 to 11 class is available, right? They they’re spending their time with you. Do you see how I paused there when the nor next word was going to show up? If people are fidgeting or looking at something else or they have their phones out, well, they may actually not be all that available for you. And it can be very frustrating as a speaker or a teacher that your students aren’t actually available for you. They’re physically there. They’re spending their time with you, but their energy is somewhere else or their energy is being siphoned off by something else, or they can’t seem to focus their energy on you. Obviously, if this same issue is affecting the actual teacher, then it can be very clear to the students that this person, they’re just not all that interesting to listen to. They’re just, “I I don’t get what she’s saying.” You would say, “I I I I’m trying, but you know, she’s not all that available because she’s focused on something else.”
This concept doesn’t just apply to your work life. And as you know with time, energy and resources and most of, most if not all of the concepts we talk about, it applies to you as the whole. And part of the whole is your non-work life. So if you’re available for your spouse, you know, you’re sitting in the same room for 2 hours, that’s being available, right? But if you’re staring at your phone or the time that you want to spend together watching a movie or talking or even sort of having that quiet we’re-just-existing-together time is always with you with your laptop open, and every time he or she asks you a question you go, “huh? huh? what?” and you have to switch gears from what you’re actually doing, then you’re not really available for them. You’re available for whatever it is that you’re doing. If you guys are playing a video game together or something, then you’re usually intensely available for the game, which means in fact you’re available for each other.
This availability affects everyone in your life, including someone who’s always with you. You. How often are you available for yourself? Oh my god. Is this like some weirdly esoteric concept or does that make immediate sense to you? Well, you may ask, “Well, how can I not be available for myself? I I have free will and I decide I’m going to work on work or play or this or that. Whatever it is I’m doing, I’m available for.”
Yeah, but that’s not how life works. You may commit to being available for work, but you’re just not there. Your your your brain is somewhere else. Especially people who go on vacation, you know what it’s like a couple days before vacation, they were already there mentally, right? Or someone who has trouble at home or someone who brings their work home with them. They don’t decompress from work. And I talked about this many years ago when we went through the lockdowns and all that fun stuff on how the disadvantage of someone who works at home is that it takes them a microsecond to work from their home office into the kitchen and to the rest of their house as opposed to someone who has a drive home. And the drive home is usually the decompression procedure. So, if you don’t get the decompression or you don’t participate in it or you don’t actively do it, you may come home and you’re still at work. You’re still there. You’re still on.
But back to you again. You may think, “Well, I’m always available for myself because I choose to do this, that, or the other thing.” Except we don’t choose to do this, that, or the other thing. How much of our lives realistically in a normal life is really you doing exactly what you want to do at every single moment? I would submit to you that even the most planned out, even the most prestigious life that you could live would still include things that you hadn’t really planned on doing. I mean, sometimes you spill something. Sometimes you get an emergency call from your kids or your spouse or what have you. Some there’s an accident, whatever it is, at some moment you may not be doing exactly what you want to do. In fact, it’s that lack of availability that is the cause of a lot of accidents. People weren’t there. They weren’t available to pay attention and drive. They’re fiddling with their radio or they are messing with their phone or they’re texting while they’re driving or they’re focused on something else and then boom, they’re in an accident. You don’t get into an accident, per se, at home because you weren’t listening to your husband, but it does eventually get noticeable when you always have to say, “Huh, huh? Yeah, yeah, that sounds great,” every single time there’s a conversation.
And let’s go back to ourselves. Being available for yourself means you truly take a breath and say, “What is it that I want to do right now? What is it that I should do? What is it that I need to do? What would make me happy?”
And we can talk all about the monsters and the unicorns if you’re familiar with my book Because which just came out. Thank you. And that how they pull you in different directions all the time. The pleasure of completing a project or the pain of thinking about being late or how you have to deal with your boss can very much make you not available for your spouse and yourself. You may decide to do something fun and your brain is somewhere else.
There are ways to get yourself to be more available for yourself, but it comes down to having a certain level of awareness and self-control. And I guess that’s probably what most of these podcast episodes boil down to. The awareness first and then the control of working with what we just became aware of. There’s a chapter in Because that I use magnets as an analogy of the pushing back towards the monsters and unicorns in your life and that if you push them too far, you’re just sort of floundering and existing. And if you let them slam together, there is none of this between space in which we can kind of take a breather because all we’re doing is reacting between seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. And we’re just like a robot. It’s we’re always on. We’re always doing that stuff. And there’s never any space to grow or to put our heads up and go, “Wait, what’s going on in my life? What is this? What do I really want?” And you have to do that first before you even say, “Okay, I’m just going to be available for myself.” You have to kind of put your head up and go, “What what am I doing here?” And you have to be available for you first and then available for everything else in your life.
So, first of all, thank you for being available for this episode. And if you truly are available for these episodes, meaning you are committing energy to it, and you can commit all the brain power energy you want while you’re cutting the grass or emptying the dishwasher. It’s two different brain systems. And I covered that in another episode. But in doing so, you will get the very most out of these episodes. And I can tell because the people who communicate with me, the people who have the comments, the people who actually reach out to me, or even people that I happen to know that said, “Hey, I caught your last episode.” Those are people that made themselves available for the podcast. And if they make themselves available for the podcast, I’m pretty sure they make themselves available for themselves.
I hope you do, too. I hope you enjoyed this. And as always, you’re important, and I appreciate you. Thank you.
The CEO Mindset: Why a Fast Decision Beats a Slow PromiseIn the world of productivity and time management, we’re often told to optimize our calendars and to-do lists. But what if the single most effective habit of top performers isn’t about complex systems, but about one simple principle? A fast “no” is always better than a time-wasting “yes.” This core idea reveals the true CEO mindset—a way of thinking focused on decisive action that has nothing to do with your job title and everything to do with reducing stress and reclaiming your time.
The Surprising Trait of High-AchieversYou might think that world-renowned authors, tech luminaries, and presidential candidates are the hardest people to schedule. The reality is often the exact opposite. The common thread among these high-achievers is their ability to make a decision—and make it fast.
When presented with an opportunity, they don’t leave it lingering in their inbox. They respond with a definitive “yes” or a respectful “no,” often within days. This isn’t because they have more free time; it’s because they have mastered their time by eliminating indecision. People who are hard to pin down are often drowning in a sea of non-committal “maybes,” a cycle that creates more work and anxiety for everyone involved.
How Procrastination Creates Hidden StressEvery task you put off—every email you promise to “get back to”—occupies valuable mental real estate. This constant loop of unfinished business is a major source of hidden stress. It’s like having too many apps open on your phone; eventually, everything slows down.
Conversely, taking immediate action, whether it’s tackling a task or simply scheduling a firm time to do it, frees up that mental space. The goal isn’t necessarily to do everything at once, but to decide its fate immediately. By converting a vague “I’ll do that later” into a concrete calendar event, you give your future self a clear command and your present self the gift of peace.
Your Action Plan: From Indecision to ControlAdopting this leadership mindset is straightforward. The next time a request or task comes your way, you have two powerful choices:
- Act or Schedule Immediately: If you intend to do it, either do it right then or pull out your calendar and assign it a non-negotiable time slot. This is the essence of effective scheduling.
- Give a Fast, Honest “No”: If you don’t have the time, energy, or desire to do something, say so. A quick and polite “no” is a sign of respect for your own time and the other person’s. It closes the loop and prevents the stress of a lingering, unfulfilled promise.
By becoming a decisive person, you’ll find that the stress leading up to a decision was always the worst part. You’ll accomplish more, feel better about the commitments you make, and finally gain control over your most valuable resource: your time.
Transcript:A fast no is much better than a time-wasting yes.
Well, hey there. Welcome back. It was a good decision for you to come back. See what I’m doing there? Now that we’ve passed 300 episodes, I want to give you a little behind-the-scenes look, which I think applies to everyday life. I want to apologize in advance that I’m about to use a word I hate using, and that is mindset, but it actually applies here. I want to talk about the CEO mindset, the leader mindset, the decision-maker mindset, and it has nothing to do with your position. It has to do with your, well, mindset.
So what does this have to do with my experience? I have interviews on this show periodically. I put a lot of effort into selecting and approaching people that I think are very interesting, dynamic, and can present something to my audience that’s unique and from a perspective that you won’t see anywhere else. I’ve been fortunate to have discussions with world-class musicians, presidential candidates, brilliant minds, famous authors, and technical luminaries. In addition to that, I have people that you may have never heard of, but I think they have a story to tell.
While all that’s going on, I am typically turning down people who are applying to be on the show because I need to act as a filter for you.
What World-Class Leaders and Top Performers Have in CommonDo you know the one thing that the luminaries and world-renowned people have in common? I know that sounds so clickbaity. “The one thing these people have in common… you’d never guess.”
It’s their ability to make a freaking decision. That’s it.
That’s the one thing I think they all have in common. They have an ability to make a decision and they have integrity backing that up. The statistics are the opposite of what you would think. The people with the CEO mindset are the people that just get it done. We get it done because they can make a decision, stick with a decision, and be honest about the decision. And sometimes that decision is no.
When the decision is yes, they act upon it and they have control over their schedule. I will tell you it’s almost always days. Yes, days between contact, acceptance, and recording. That sounds insane, right? You would think the high-level CEOs are the people that are the hardest to nail down.
The Hidden Stress of Procrastination vs. The Freedom of ActionI have found that the people that are hard to nail down are the people who simply aren’t being honest with you, or they’re so bad at controlling their schedule that they just react to whatever is making the most noise. That’s a terrible way to live. Putting things off creates more work for you.
I did an episode about how doing things quickly when they come to you actually frees up a certain memory space, which feels like less stress. You can get to the point where you have these little mini-panic attacks and go, “Oh my god, I forgot… oh wait, no, I didn’t. I did it immediately.” I’m so used to thinking, “I’ll take care of that later,” that when I handle it right away, I later think I’ve forgotten it.
Think back to school when you were given a month for a project. Most people wait until the last few days because they become motivated by pressure. Well, imagine if you do it immediately. On the 28th day, when everyone else is panicking, you might panic too, thinking you forgot, but then you realize, “No, I did it on the first day.”
I understand you don’t always have the time slot in your day to do something. You might be running around like a chicken with your head cut off. But there’s a solve for that, too. You can schedule it. You see the difference? We have control over our future selves. We can schedule it. That’s the whole point of a calendar.
Real-World Examples of Decisive Scheduling in ActionDon’t believe me? Fine. I’ll name names.
- John McAfee: Wrote operating systems for NASA, was worth over $100 million, ran for president twice, and invented the first antivirus. When I connected with him, it was days until we scheduled his appearance, and days after that, he made the appearance.
- Scott Adams: Creator of the Dilbert cartoons, author of a stack of bestsellers, and a master of persuasion. Again, it was days until we scheduled his appearance and days after that he was on the show.
- Manuel Rendon: Holder of nine patents and CEO of the only company capable of producing truly dissolvable plastics. Again, days after contact, days until the appearance.
- Jamyang Loden: An actual monastic monk in a country 7,000 miles and 11 hours different from me. This was probably one of the fastest connections and recordings I’ve ever had. I reached out to him, and he agreed the same day. The entire transaction took less than a week.
Now, you might say, “What if someone’s busy?” Then you schedule for when you do have time. If you’re out of the country for two weeks, you schedule it for when you come back. People schedule things months, and sometimes years, in advance. Anyone who’s had a formal wedding knows you have to book a hall a year-plus in advance.
The High Cost of a “Time-Wasting Yes”In all 300 shows, there have only been two instances of people who did the opposite. And I knew the second they agreed that they weren’t going to be on the show. And again, as I’ve said, a fast no is much better than a time-wasting yes.
These, of course, will remain anonymous. One person was the very voice of a certain appliance that you probably have. The other was someone who told me to contact them in a month. To the very day and almost hour, I contacted them and got absolutely no response. A simple “no” would have been great and would have saved a little bit of my time and theirs.
Do things happen? Of course. But in your life, you will find that the things you have made decisive decisions about are the things that cost you the least stress. The pain is in the stress leading up to the decision, not the decision itself.
Embrace Decisiveness for a Life with Less StressNo one completes a marathon because they put it off. While some songs and books may take forever to write, it’s typically the ones you dive into and make a decision on that get done.
When you become decisive and realize that time is not a big sandbox you throw stuff into, but rather a road in front of you that you place objects onto, you’ll have so much less stress. You’ll feel better about what you do, and you’ll even feel better when you say no.
I hope that was helpful. Thank you again for listening and don’t forget that I appreciate you. Take care.
(Outro Music/Lyrics)
How to get there? I think it’s different for everyone. Some of us need work, others need fun. Some of us need purpose to overcome. But try to do what you love when it’s said and done. Cuz there’s so many differences in each of us. Trust your gut. It can show you what you want.
New Book Announcement: BeCAUSE!
I want to announce that my new book, my 10th, is out. It’s called Because Cause: The Fundamental Psychological Building Blocks That Enable You to or Prevent You from Accomplishing Anything, Everything, and Nothing. Check it out on Amazon. It’s only $9.99.
I find it quite illuminating to speak with people from all over the world. The power of our technology and interconnected world is that it allows me to have conversations I could never have.
I had the pleasure of chatting with Jamyang in this week’s podcast.
Jamyang LodenJamyang Loden is a monk from Bhutan, the “country of gross national happiness,” (you’ll hear more about this later) currently residing at Ludakaru monastery in Bumang, central Bhutan. He has been living a monastic life since he was seven years old and is studying Buddhist philosophies.
Even monks have YouTube channelsJamyang created a youtube channel (see link) to showcase Bhutan to the outside world from their own perspective.
Daily Life of a MonkJamyang Loden details his daily routine as a monk, starting at 4:30 a.m. If you’ve ever wondered what that actually looks like, you’ll find out in detail.
English ProficiencyEnglish is a second language in Bhutan, and younger generations born after 2000 are particularly fluent. That makes it rather easy for me to have a chat like this and I am always appreciative that English is still the lingua franca.
Bhutan’s Geographical Location and Unique QualitiesBhutan’s location is situated between China to the north and India to the south.
There are some unique facts about Bhutan, including its history of never being conquered and its status as a carbon-negative country. The country’s constitution mandates maintaining at least 60% forest coverage, contributing to its green landscape and small population of just over 700,000.
Bhutan’s Approach to Infrastructure and NatureBhutan is nearly 100% powered by hydropower. To me, Bhutanese architecture is harmonizing with nature, with buildings appearing integrated into the landscape and resembling sculptures. The drawings of the new international airport in Gelephu, which incorporates natural elements like trees indoors and features a modular design.
Gelephu Mindfulness CityGelephu Mindfulness City is a unique, large-scale project initiated by the king, designed to promote mindful living amidst nature. Uunlike cities with skyscrapers, Gelephu will integrate natural elements, allowing wildlife like elephants to roam within the city, providing tourists with a tranquil and immersive experience. It is an amazing project that you might hear more about on this channel…
Meditation PracticesI asked Jamyang for advice on meditation for those who find it difficult to stop thinking—not that this is ever an issue for me. :). Hear what he said. It might surprise you.
Check out his channel, FB and instagram, and tell him Alchemy for Life sent you!
Jamyang’s contact info:
https://www.youtube.com/@jamyangloden4935
facebook.com/share/14r3F1ipSD
https://www.instagram.com/monk_key_diary
Transcript:Mark Bradford: Well hey there, welcome back. I’m here with Jamyang Loden. So, as I ask everyone, uh, tell everyone who you are and what you do.
Jamyang Loden: Okay, first of all, thank you Mark for giving me this opportunity to share about my country to your audiences uh especially Americans if I’m not mistaken.
Jamyang Loden: So um once again thank you very much. My name is Jamyong Loden and I am from Bhutan the country of cross national happiness. So uh currently I am a monk at Ludakaru monastery in Bumang that is uh central part of Bhutan. So uh yeah I’m learning Buddhist philosophies and it has been uh 7 years since I took monastic life and yeah that is a brief introduction of me
Mark Bradford: Well, that’s very good. I’m so, as I said before, I’m so happy to be able to speak with you. I love that the technology allows us to communicate in this way and and see each other. And speaking of that, uh you have definitely embraced technology because you have your own YouTube channel.
Jamyang Loden: Yes. Yes. A very small growing YouTube channel I should say. Um the shall I continue?
Mark Bradford: Oh, sure. I was just going to ask you uh if you would mind telling people about your channel. What is the uh purpose or mission of your channel?
Jamyang Loden: Okay. Thank you very much for this question. One second. Um uh the main reason or purpose that I created this YouTube channel is because uh I wanted to show my country to you know outside Bhutan because there are so many vloggers or YouTubers who are talking about our country within Bhutan and there are so many YouTubers outside Bhutan you know great YouTubers who comes to our country and show Bhutan to outside world. Then I thought you know why not I show my country to outside. It is it would be better that if I represent my country on my way own way and show to other you know other people that would be very uh you know meaningful. That is one reason and the another reason is uh as a monk you know uh we have so many less people coming out and speaking and sharing about their life and uh if I share about my spiritual journey then it would uh make others other people to learn what is spirituality that would give you know some insights of of uh what what is the life of a monk you you know as a monk.
Jamyang Loden: So that is one reason that is another reason why I created this YouTube channel and uh there are other factors uh which I am not able to remember now but then uh these are the two reasons you know main reasons why I created this YouTube and yeah and I think uh I would say I’m blessed to have you know uh that I got attention from outsiders as as I you know there’s one uh there’s a saying you when you want something everything conspires in helping achieve that. That is uh what I felt you know uh exactly as I wanted. Uh I got opportunity to talk about my country in one of the biggest YouTube channels you know uh about construction. They gave me platform and that has really helped me to pull the subscribers from you know western countries subscribe to my channel and now I think uh it is working well.
Mark Bradford: Oh,
Jamyang Loden: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: absolutely. And so I will let you know too that when this is published, I will make sure that there is a link, a very clear link to people being able to see your YouTube channel and being able
Jamyang Loden: Okay.
Mark Bradford: to find you and and so forth because I know people out there really want to learn. You know,
Jamyang Loden: Mhm.
Mark Bradford: YouTube is a wonderful way to to learn. It’s overwhelming. There’s so much that’s there. And
Jamyang Loden: Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: uh and people who listen to this podcast also want to learn. They want to know new things, maybe things that would be difficult to find otherwise. And the greatest thing about it is being able to hear directly from the person who’s experiencing it. You know, we can read about it all we want, but to be able to have the luxury of speaking to you directly is really, really cool. And you were mentioning uh being in the monastery and being a monk. I’m sure everyone would be very fascinated to hear sort of your description of that because I think everyone has a concept in their mind of what it is and I’m sure it varies depending on where you are in the world and so forth.
Mark Bradford: Would you mind sharing a little bit about what it is to be a monk and what your day-to-day activity looks like?
Jamyang Loden: Okay. Um, I’ll just uh begin with uh uh how I begin my day. So, uh my early bell rings at uh 4:30 a.m. standard time that is uh plus 6 GMT. So um my you know when there’s a ring uh in early hours 4:30 a.m. then all the monks will have to get up and get ready by 4:45. They’ll be they’ll have to sit in their room. So and you know they’ll have to uh read some some will memorize the shloka of of prayers and uh some will do some sort of recitation some will go with their prayer whatever it may be they’ll have to get ready by 4:45. So uh from 4 4:30 to 6 a.m. it will be morning study and from 6 to 7 a.m. it will be morning breakfast. So 7 to 9 will be first class morning class. Every monk will be attending their first class for 2 hours from 7 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. and after that uh there will be tea break for 30 minutes.
Jamyang Loden: It will be from 9:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. From 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. it will be second class. So from 11:30 to 1:00 p.m. it will be you know 1:30 p.m. Okay. Two hours will be for the lunch break. So in that lunch break we have ample of time. So some monks they’ll learn you know to blow trumpets to blow there are different Tibetan sort of musicals that are being used in performing rituals. So monks will learn that and some will go for learning handwriting is very important and uh yeah some will learn learn uh other sorts of uh ritual performing uh ideas. So that’s how we spend and from 1:30 to 3pm it will be revision class for the students who are below fifth standard. So but for for those who need not have to attend re revision class will have to sit in their room and do you know self-study from 3:30 to 4:30 it is English class for those students who do not know English. So they’ll have to attend the English class.
Jamyang Loden: Uh and uh for those who know English, they’ll have to do selfie study as usual. From 4:30 to 6:00 p.m. it will be evening I mean uh yeah 4:30 to 6 will be debate session. I don’t know whether you have seen how David and monks debate. So they they’ll be attending a devot session in which the what we have studied in the morning class and what are the doubts that you come while you know studying this will be solved during the David session. So monks they will debate and uh yeah many things happens in the debate session from 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. be even I mean inner time 1 hour from 7 7 to 8 exactly what we’re doing. So during this hour monks will be attending evening prayer. Okay. For 30 minutes 7 to 7:30 will be evening prayer and uh 1 hour will be you know we have leisure time. So you can do whatever you want to do till 8 8:30 from 8:30 to 10 p.m. will be night study.
Jamyang Loden: So from you know 10 10 p.m. to 4:30 a.m. will be your sleep time. So that’s yeah that’s my uh routine and it goes all the way from Monday till Friday. Yeah uh Monday till Friday but uh there little bit changes during Sunday and Saturday. So Saturday you have uh class till lunch you know I mean till morning so afternoon you’re free you can go anywhere you have time to you know uh go and I mean uh to the different places and during that time I take that opportunity to go to seed places and shoot a video
Mark Bradford: Mhm.
Jamyang Loden: okay that’s how I maintain my YouTube channel so otherwise I I’m packed I cannot uh you know overtake my schedule. So uh during that time weekend afternoon sometimes if if the place if the places are nearby then I take that opportunity during the afternoon hours otherwise uh if I have to travel longer distance then I take uh I go during the Sunday and uh editing time I’ll have to manage somehow. Yeah that’s how I do.
Mark Bradford: Right. That’s very impressive. Well, thank you. That is an awful lot to unpack for people. I’m sure they will listen to this twice just to get that schedule. That’s a that’s a lot and it really says a lot about you that you take your precious free time and then you once again commit that to helping people by creating the video. And like you said, as you know, when you create videos, it’s not just shooting the video. There’s a lot of time involved in editing them. And you’re your videos look very professional. They’re very polished. They’re very professional. You have titles. Uh everything looks very good. You have multiple camera
Jamyang Loden: Thank you.
Mark Bradford: angles.
Jamyang Loden: Thank you so
Mark Bradford: Yes.
Jamyang Loden: much.
Mark Bradford: Yeah. Very very well. It’s a very well done uh video series. So, I I encourage everyone to uh take a peek at it. It’s it’s really fun. Beautiful eye candy for people to see and a lot of learning.
Mark Bradford: And it’s fascinating that uh you specifically have an English class and that’s something I was going to ask you about which is very fortunate for me that you speak English because uh that helps us to communicate and the
Jamyang Loden: Okay.
Mark Bradford: national language of Bhutan is not English. It is um dona. Okay. I wanted to make sure I
Jamyang Loden: Yes.
Mark Bradford: said that right, Dunca. So that’s your your native language, but everyone at the monastery learns English.
Jamyang Loden: Yes. Um
Mark Bradford: Did you find it a hard language to pick up?
Jamyang Loden: for me you know um it’s not that I learned English in my monastery. Okay. Um I did my bachelor’s in uh bachelor’s in business ad administration from one of the business colleges in our
Mark Bradford: Oh.
Jamyang Loden: country.
Mark Bradford: Oh.
Jamyang Loden: Yeah, that’s how I picked up English. Otherwise, it would be very difficult for for me to speak English and just attending one hour in a in a day would be very difficult to pick up English.
Mark Bradford: Mhm.
Jamyang Loden: But I have the experience of attending you know English medium school for 17 years. Um yeah that’s why that’s how I speak English otherwise I have you know my background is a human resource management and uh yeah that’s how how I speak English.
Mark Bradford: Huh.
Jamyang Loden: But for the monks who are attending English, you know, they know basic how to write and uh they know how to speak also. Yeah, that’s how
Mark Bradford: And and since you are technologically connected and Bhutan is a has a very high level of technology connection. I looked I looked up what you know internet connectivity is for the average citizen. Uh it’s it’s uh they’re very well connected and just the connection that you and I have literally is is a very good quality connection. So, so your internet there is really good, which means also having access to other YouTube channels, English channels, and I’ve spoken with other people who are non-native speakers who tend to learn quite a bit also from just watching YouTube channels that are spoken in English.
Mark Bradford: Did did that was that a part at all in this for you?
Jamyang Loden: You mean uh did I learn English through that?
Mark Bradford: Yeah, there are some people who literally learned English just by watching those videos. I know
Jamyang Loden: Okay.
Mark Bradford: you said
Jamyang Loden: Okay.
Mark Bradford: you you you
Jamyang Loden: Okay.
Mark Bradford: had it in school, but I’m just curious if that helped at all.
Jamyang Loden: Definitely it really helped me. uh you see uh there are you know dark side of technology but if you know how to utilize then technologies are really awesome you know you you have control so technology doesn’t affect you but if you know how to control that then you have the right to you know steer the wheel wherever you want so um yes it really helped me but uh more than that I think uh my school has helped me to speak English and especially my college days because we did a lot of presentation in English. So English is our second language for the Buddhist English is second language by the way.
Jamyang Loden: So I think all the goodness uh speaks English very well and especially those generation who are born after 2000 they are far better than us. they you know their fluency in English it’s just uh chip up so for us our fluency might be really uh not that good but then uh the usage of word and all those uh I think uh we okay with that
Mark Bradford: No, I I think I do I think you do quite well and I think it’s amazing when you have a second language that you speak so well and that you say the population speaks so well as well. Uh, and in the be in the very, if I can switch gears, in the beginning, um, I I didn’t really set the set the table, if you will, for people to understand where you are. So, so Bhutan is, uh, bordering China. It, uh, correct? It’s a, it’s a country. If you wanted to describe sort of where it’s situated for people,
Jamyang Loden: Um okay. Um uh I’ll have to be specific because earlier I in that video I said Bhutan is between the two giant countries China and India.
Jamyang Loden: Then many of the people were not really happy because they said it’s between Tibet and India. So uh I’ll have to recolor that. And uh also for those people who who are listening to this podcast and if if you watched that you know the the B1M channel then uh yes in Bhutan is between the two mostly populated countries in the world you know uh China in the north and India in the south. I think this this would be the perfect way of explaining my country. Uh just mentioning the border it would be quite know um controversial.
Mark Bradford: It sounds
Jamyang Loden: Uh
Mark Bradford: like it
Jamyang Loden: so
Mark Bradford: sounds like it was
Jamyang Loden: yeah so Bhutan yeah it is located between the two mostly populated countries in the world. So uh between these two giant country people often say it just it looks like a sandwich. So uh yeah Bhutan is located in between these two giant countries and there are so many interesting facts about my country. For instance, Bhutan is one of the one of the few countries in the whole world which is which has never been conquered by any countries so far.
Jamyang Loden: So it remained independent throughout the history and uh Bhutan is also one of the few countries to to be nominated as the car carbon negative country you know not only carbon free but carbon negative country.
Mark Bradford: Right.
Jamyang Loden: So, so in our country’s constitution, it is mandatory that country must maintain at least 60% of forest coverage. That’s why uh our country is looks really green and uh by the way our country’s country has so I mean less population we are uh more than 700,000 people only which makes which makes our country very you know uh small in population and even if I have to target my audience within the Bhutan then partly you know we have maybe 100 or 200,000 people who are having YouTube channel and uh all of them are not going to subscribe to my channel. So uh I think uh I’ve targeted in a in a right way my in a sense I’m not targeting to you know to get views and then sub number of subscribers. What I’m doing is uh conveying the message rightful message to the right audience.
Jamyang Loden: So uh anyways yeah Buhan is uh yeah that was uh about Bhutan and uh our king uh you know they have ruled for more than 100 years and still ruling and our king you know uh is like a god. So people often worship king as as as a leader who should be looked upon you know what other people look up to him as this u work. So we really appreciate and uh love you know his leadership. So yeah
Mark Bradford: Well,
Jamyang Loden: and uh
Mark Bradford: it’s
Jamyang Loden: yeah
Mark Bradford: very very impressive things. There are other things too just like your almost all of your power comes from hydropower. It’s it’s water power which is
Jamyang Loden: okay. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: really really impressive which also explains the carbon carbon negativity because you’re not really putting smoke into the air or anything. You’re and you’re not cutting trees down for that. you’re using the water which is also a bit of a problem too because you have to deal with flooding sometimes uh right I mean that that is a worry because of where you’re located but uh you uh in doing some reading I found that you uh your country didn’t take the standard route which would be to create cement canals and all that other stuff you you have uh fields with patties in them that almost act like
Mark Bradford: a a buffer so the plants themselves can absorb the water that comes down sometimes that you have to deal with. And I think that’s excellent. And it when people listen to this and see your channel and even look up your country, they’re going to find that it’s a wonderful mixture of trees and green and buildings. The buildings always look like they’re in harmony with the trees. It looks like the trees sometimes are winning. It it’s a and and the the the way that the buildings are built is really fascinating, too. There are lots of triangles and angles and they’re just absolutely they look like beautiful sculptures as well and they’re just so fascinating to look at. And you have an an international airport. I’m not sure if it was it’s finished. Uh it
Jamyang Loden: Um I don’t know It’s yet to begin in GMC, but we do have one in parro that that is uh uh small compared to the upcoming international airport in Galipur mindfulness city.
Mark Bradford: Okay. and and and so even that airport looks very much like the outside is inside because there’s trees
Jamyang Loden: Yes.
Mark Bradford: on the inside and and and it’s and the new uh the new airport is actually going to be modular in which sections can be moved and built and so forth. And you just mentioned and thank you for saying it out loud because I wasn’t sure how to say it. Gelifu is is that how
Jamyang Loden: Yes.
Mark Bradford: you say that? Okay. And
Jamyang Loden: Yes.
Mark Bradford: that
Jamyang Loden: Yes.
Mark Bradford: is the new mindfulness city. Uh would you mind introducing what that is?
Jamyang Loden: Um I think uh I might not be the right person to talk about this but then uh
Mark Bradford: That’s okay.
Jamyang Loden: uh as a common citizen you know um I think I do have voices. So unifu mindfulness city it is uh one of the unique cities that will come in come not only in in our country but uh in the whole world. So that project is one of the biggest project happening in our country. So uh his majesty the king has given you know a profound thought for this project.
Jamyang Loden: He wanted his people to you know enjoy you know uh the the the beauty that we have already in our country. So therefore his majesty has I mean uh even addressed in his national day speech that gainful mindfulness city is going to be the unique project in which you know there will be no skyscraper. It is not going to be like any other cities that we have seen suffered. It is going to be so unique and I don’t know how it is going to be but then we have so much hope you know so uh it is like mindfulness city you see uh so many people around the world they just tour to for instance if they go to Dubai we have so many skyscrapers Dubai is known for that so uh they just go there do some shopping and then enjoy the enjoy the vacation there But when it comes to Kalifu mindfully city, people will come here to you know stay mindfully with the nature around you know surrounded by nature. Elephants will be walking the corridor and there will be you know animals in that city and the the tourist who are going to come to Galifu they will enjoy the you know the the the beauty of uh sin the moment they woke up from their you know from the bed because those hotels I don’t know whether it should be hotel or not but then uh that what I I have understood so it will be surrounded by
Jamyang Loden: the the crops you know petty fields and that’s how we coming up with this project and uh it is going to be you know a very uh fascinating project.
Mark Bradford: It
Jamyang Loden: So
Mark Bradford: is
Jamyang Loden: uh
Mark Bradford: fascinating.
Jamyang Loden: first yeah the first thing is to do with the international airport because u people have people will have to come here and work for that uh the country is planning to go with the you know uh airport that’s why the airport uh I mean the the the airport construction has already begun. So uh yeah I don’t know much to say about that.
Mark Bradford: I I think you did an excellent job. That that’s good. That’s a very good understanding from the ground level because, you know, we can read it we can read about this from a publicity standpoint, but it’s much more fun to hear it from you who actually live there and you get to see it with your own eyes. So, and from what I’ve read, it’s fascinating, too, in which bridges are built not to be bridges, but they’re actually buildings that so you actually enter a building to cross a bridge, and it’s not unusual to see an elephant walk by and things like that.
Mark Bradford: So, that’s just a such a fascinating vision to have to just be able to think about that. And you mentioned the skyscrapers. So, in the city that I saw, I’m talking to you from uh Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and we have a small downtown compared to other cities. Uh it’s not as large as Chicago and so forth, but we do have some fairly large buildings and things. We have a little downtown area sometimes. And I used to work on uh above the 30th floor for for some time downtown. And sometimes I think about how cut off that is from the rest of the world to be that high up and also what that does to the skyline. And in Bhutan you never build above. Is it six stories? I think it’s something like that.
Jamyang Loden: Yes.
Mark Bradford: Right.
Jamyang Loden: Tallest building is the sixth story and
Mark Bradford: And
Jamyang Loden: we
Mark Bradford: it’s
Jamyang Loden: have countable count of buildings.
Mark Bradford: Yeah, it makes such a difference to see that. And I think I absolutely love that.
Mark Bradford: I love the concept of never building above that because it doesn’t poke up at the sky. Plus, I and I could be wrong on this. I know that uh firet trucks, their ladders only reach I think the seventh floor. So, it makes sense to sort of stop there, but uh I I think it it it’s prettier. And your buildings are made with with wood and they just they’re just so gorgeous. They don’t contrast. And you talked about Dubai. Dubai is sort of a city built in defiance of nature. Like you can
Jamyang Loden: Yes.
Mark Bradford: it looks like it’s fighting nature the entire time. It sticks out as if somebody cut and paste it there. But um but your country looks like everything is just living in harmony that things are built uh with respect for nature and it shows in the way the buildings are placed, the way the buildings are shaped. And your buildings still look like buildings though. They look they look like works of art actually, but they still look like man-made.
Mark Bradford: So I I appreciate that you create things that look like man, but you’re not trying to copy nature, per se. So you’re saying, look, this is what we create, but we can still work in harmony with what nature
Jamyang Loden: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: creates. And including the way that you allow paths to go through, animals crossing and so forth. And it’s I I truly hope that it’s a concept that can take off and be replicated all over the world, including the United States, where we can build cities like that, where we can be in harmony with nature, but still create our own unique look.
Jamyang Loden: Yes.
Mark Bradford: So, I think it’s I think it’s wonderful and I think Dubai is um with all due respect to Dubai, it’s sort of almost like the opposite of what you’re creating where it’s a stark contrast to nature where yours is just a a connection to nature. So, I think that’s that’s really really wonderful. I will definitely be following the construction and uh and watching very eagerly and excitedly to see how the construction proceeds.
Mark Bradford: I’ll certainly be checking out your channel and I hope other people do to to watch that construction. Um, so I have an interesting question for you that you you may have an interesting answer to and a lot of people uh participate in meditation and people
Jamyang Loden: Okay.
Mark Bradford: take yoga. I have a good friend who is a yoga teacher and I’ve learned a lot about yoga and meditation and and breathing and so forth and
Jamyang Loden: Okay. Mhm.
Mark Bradford: uh meditation for some people is very difficult because the last thing people can do is just not think. They can do all sorts of things but not thinking and I’m one of those people that not thinking does not come very naturally to me. I’m always thinking and and creating and so forth. So, do you have any advice or on people who are wanting to meditate more?
Jamyang Loden: um I don’t know whether it has to be advised or not but then uh I don’t have uh much experience of meditation but then uh as a student you know as someone who learns this kind of techniques uh theoretically uh I have something to share but I won’t say this as an advice because advice are given by those who have experience of doing meditation.
Jamyang Loden: So u so sorry um you know there there are two types of meditation shamata meditation and vibatna meditation. So most of the most of the people go with yamata meditation. I don’t know whether
Mark Bradford: Can you say
Jamyang Loden: is
Mark Bradford: that
Jamyang Loden: it
Mark Bradford: again? I’m not sure I’m hearing you. What kind of meditation?
Jamyang Loden: vibasna meditation and shamata meditation.
Mark Bradford: Oh, okay.
Jamyang Loden: So uh okay. So uh uh so uh you know when they do meditation just sitting and uh concentration you know giving the concentration you you know you you keep your concentration on on that particular object. For instance, for the monks, if they comfortable, they keep statue in front of them and then do you know a meditation in which uh they try to focus on one con one thing. Maybe some people focus on the breath. Some just uh listen to the music and uh they they try to bring concentration to that particular object for few minutes maybe 2 minutes maybe 3 minutes for the beginners 1 2 minutes is enough.
Jamyang Loden: So that’s how they how they do this uh samad meditation and uh in case of vibasa meditation it is advanced. So uh in in this meditation they do not focus on concentration they go with the flow of life. Yeah. So uh by the way you know you cannot easily learn this kind of meditation. Of course for for just to keep yourself calm and peace it is okay. But then for us as as a as a you know a scholar I I don’t know whether I should be called a scholar called as a scholar or not but then someone who learns you know philosophy philosophy in in a very advanced way for us uh if we want to go with this kind of meditation then we we must have a teacher who who guides us with his own experience. So it is going to be a very advanced but but for the people nowadays people are using that meditation to you know calm calm themselves to to make themselves feel peace in this uh you know uh redress life because uh life is you know nowadays we have so many um issues with the mental depression yeah so for those also I think it really works that’s why they they do this kind of marriage meditation and uh last time I had an opportunity to you know uh talk with few tourists from India.
Jamyang Loden: So they were asking me to share about the the this kind of basic meditation ideas and I I did you know explain to them this the the same method that I’m talking to you to them and uh I think they were really happy.
Mark Bradford: That’s wonderful. And and so what you’re saying is that there’s the uh meditation that’s more of a go with the flow versus just trying to stoically have no thoughts in your mind. It’s more of a just letting go. Would that
Jamyang Loden: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: be a because I’ve I’ve found that it’s almost counterintuitive instead of because the more you fight the more you fight the thoughts the harder they’re going to keep fighting back to be there. But when you
Jamyang Loden: Yes.
Mark Bradford: just sort of accept it and let it go and some some someone uh likened it to a catch and release almost like catching a fish and just letting it go. Oh, I caught another fish. I’ll just let that one go. I caught another one.
Mark Bradford: And and finally, you’re in the flow where the thoughts aren’t that important anymore.
Jamyang Loden: Just wait a minute. So sorry. Okay. Okay. Continue. So sorry.
Mark Bradford: Oh, that’s okay. No, no problem at all. I can I can I can snip that. So, so yes, the I think the catch and release seems to make be a good analogy for that where you just have these thoughts and you say, “Well, that’s nice.” The thoughts are
Jamyang Loden: Yeah,
Mark Bradford: part
Jamyang Loden: I
Mark Bradford: of
Jamyang Loden: guess.
Mark Bradford: being me and you let them go and the less you fight it, the less you have to fight it. But it that doesn’t make a lot of sense to people because they think
Jamyang Loden: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: they can exert their will and push it forward. But that’s the opposite of what they should do. But I’m just saying with my personal experience, that’s what I found. And it’s nice to hear that you suggest that as well.
Jamyang Loden: Yes. Yes. Um although you know if if the people really really want to pick up then they can go with 1 minute or 2 minutes for the beginners so they can go with the shamata meditation in which they’ll have to sit in a very comfortable position you know and then concentrate their focus on one particular thing. So that could be music, it could be uh an object in front of you. So you can comfortably look at that object and bring your concentration that to that object. Of course it thousands and millions of thoughts will you know
Mark Bradford: Mhm.
Jamyang Loden: come but then you’ll have to bring your concentration to that particular object that is shamata way of meditation. So after one to one to two minutes you can go to another that is vipasa meditation. So in v personal meditation as I already mentioned you can just uh let the mind to you know go with the flow of life wherever it takes you just follow that okay if if your if if if you if your mind takes you to Chicago then you go there Mexico go there you know even if if it takes you to that New York City’s um there’s there’s a tower you know so
Mark Bradford: Mhm.
Jamyang Loden: Yeah, you can go there but you just follow that and uh you know just go with your with the flow of your mind you know you just looking behind your mind that is uh your personal meditation.
Mark Bradford: And and
Jamyang Loden: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: I found in what you’re describing that your mind typically has something to say. And listening is is is is really the best thing to do. It’s it’s when we fight it that we have the conflict, we have the stress, we have the confusion. But when our mind tells us something, even if it seems like something we don’t want to hear or if it’s something counter to what we normally believe, I think it’s most important to listen to at least hear it out. It’s almost like a a small child that’s pulling on you and saying, “Dad, dad, dad, dad, dad.” And you can’t ignore your child and just say, “Okay, yes, and then see what it has to say.” And I think at least that’s what happens to me both with dreaming, lucid dreaming and meditation is that when there are these thoughts, I become very fascinated with why on earth I would have that.
Mark Bradford: And a lot of that leads to creativity. And creativity for me is this amazing thing that we can’t really define because it’s really making something from nothing. And
Jamyang Loden: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: it’s one of the true things in life that that is is something that we create out of nothing and it’s absolutely amazing.
Jamyang Loden: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: So, so speaking of creating, you get so much joy from everything that you’ve been talking about and I know you get joy from your videos and things. Do you have uh an additional hobby? Is there something else that you sort of do that you would consider a hobby or something that that’s fun that you haven’t mentioned?
Jamyang Loden: Um
Mark Bradford: And you can say no, but I’m just curious in case you
Jamyang Loden: no
Mark Bradford: have
Jamyang Loden: no
Mark Bradford: something like that.
Jamyang Loden: I’m just thinking you know uh ear I used to you know before joining monastic life I I really love you know singing but Then uh after joining monastery monastery you know uh I just forgot everything and uh yeah I I read I read uh I won’t say a lot of book but then I read some of the western philosophies too.
Jamyang Loden: For instance uh recently I bought um Nexus by Noah Yohari
Mark Bradford: Okay.
Jamyang Loden: and uh I forgot uh what’s that book? It’s a personality development book. One of the famous book I just forgot. Uh I I have in that my in my shelf but uh I’m not getting time to read those books. But I am you know taking time whenever I get old you know video always I cannot always stick with video. So sometimes I reach if I have time uh and uh yeah budget philosophies I cannot neglect that that is part of my life.
Mark Bradford: Mhm.
Jamyang Loden: So yeah, trading is one of the hobby
Mark Bradford: Okay.
Jamyang Loden: and
Mark Bradford: Well,
Jamyang Loden: uh
Mark Bradford: that’s that’s
Jamyang Loden: yeah
Mark Bradford: good to know. That’s very good to know
Jamyang Loden: what?
Mark Bradford: that you like reading. And um so what you’re saying is we’re going to see a second channel in which we see you singing and performing.
Jamyang Loden: Um not really
Mark Bradford: No, I’m
Jamyang Loden: because
Mark Bradford: kidding.
Jamyang Loden: uh uh there are certain you know venous rules which forbids or prohibits monks from singing. So
Mark Bradford: Oh. Oh, okay.
Jamyang Loden: yeah,
Mark Bradford: Okay. And and so you said when you joined monastic life, at what age did you join?
Jamyang Loden: I was 27 years old.
Mark Bradford: Oh, okay. Is that is that the standard? Is that is there a certain age that that happens or can it
Jamyang Loden: No,
Mark Bradford: be any age?
Jamyang Loden: there’s no standard to join monood. So mine was uh it was my own decision but for some you know for younger kids younger you know monks uh it it is not their decision it is their parents’ decision. So at such a young age their parents want their child to get enrolled in monastery because uh as a you know Buddhist and as a Buddhist if uh there’s at least one member from your family who is who is in in the monastery then it has some benefits for instance we do so many rituals and even during the funeral when whenever there’s someone who dies from a family then if if there’s someone to you know look after from the ministry then that’s always a plus point because they know what to do during the such event.
Jamyang Loden: So uh yeah that’s why people are always prefer to have at least one people from your family to join monistry but in my case it’s a different case you know I took on my own nobody forced me so that’s why I was uh not really old but then old compared to the monks uh that are around me. Yeah, that
Mark Bradford: That’s that’s quite a decision at 7 years old. That’s very impressive that you would choose that. Wow. But as you said, it’s it’s a common thing because most families have one at least one person, you said that would that would have joined monastic life.
Jamyang Loden: yeah. Yeah.
Mark Bradford: Okay. Well, very very amazing. you have an amazing schedule and you have uh fascinating thoughts on things and I think your country is also fascinating and I would love to visit I would love to see and and visit it as well but I can live through your videos and and other things for now and see what it’s like and speaking to you directly is fascinating.
Mark Bradford: Is there anything that you would like to know while we’re while we’re speaking if I flipped it around? Is there anything you would like to know about about my environment or the United States or or what have you?
Jamyang Loden: Yes. Yes. Uh you know I was when I received your text I was little bit curious because uh I had to search know after going to your link I I had to search about you and even found that you even uh achieved something. I mean that that was award-winning author. So I’m really you know I’m really happy to you know get uh notice from such kind of uh people. So I’m really happy. So just share me about your life. No. Uh
Mark Bradford: Oh, wow.
Jamyang Loden: yeah.
Mark Bradford: Wow.
Jamyang Loden: Yeah. Your
Mark Bradford: That’s
Jamyang Loden: life
Mark Bradford: not
Jamyang Loden: as as an as a writer. By the way I I did have a blog earlier. I used to write you know I used to share in my Facebook wherever I I go I used to share in my blog and uh now I’m not really uh into that it has been around 8 years since I studied blogging and uh now currently I have shifted to blogging because uh
Mark Bradford: Sure.
Jamyang Loden: people often you know uh are interested visually rather than reading you know we have I think the world has lost so many readers because of the videography So I’m really want I really wanted to know your uh you know your way of life as a writer as as a podcaster whatever you could say but then uh little bit about you
Mark Bradford: and and I don’t want to take too much of your time because this is really about you. But but thank you for asking that. So writing for me has been very fascinating. It’s it’s something I only started later in life. It’s uh I started writing non-fiction in which I was talking about. I was examining everything everything that had happened to me in life. I was examining. I went through a divorce. So then I had to start dating again.
Jamyang Loden: Okay.
Mark Bradford: examining how all humans connect to each other. And then I thought I found that it was based on one thing.
Mark Bradford: So I started a series called the status game and I wrote that and then I wrote a book on spirituality, religion or lack thereof because it was my examination of what I was seeing. And then I wrote and then I actually because of something a psychologist talked to me about and my my children. I had taken them to psychologist to make sure everything was going okay with them through this divorce. And that she had said that I was doing everything I could for them and that they were very well adjusted. But then she said, “What are you doing for you?” And that’s when I I didn’t have an answer. And then I thought, “Wow.” and she said if uh if you don’t take care of you there won’t be anything left for them and that’s when I really understood balance and so that’s what actually started me writing about balance uh that life is made of time energy and resources and that I started writing that but then one day I was in a cemetery taking a walk which is close to my house and and I don’t know how that how that works in your country but here people treat cemeteries almost like parks I mean, I actually have two loved ones in the cemetery near my house, but
Jamyang Loden: Thank
Mark Bradford: I take a walk in it regularly. I find it very peaceful. And
Jamyang Loden: Okay.
Mark Bradford: I actually heard what I thought were a conversation of voices in my head. Sort of
Jamyang Loden: Mhm.
Mark Bradford: like I was remembering a movie, but it wasn’t a movie I’d never heard. And that actually caused me to run home and write a poem. And that poem
Jamyang Loden: Okay.
Mark Bradford: became
Jamyang Loden: Uh
Mark Bradford: a book. It became my um my series. And you you mentioned the award. That’s the book I actually won an award for is my fiction. It’s uh and so it ended up being an epic trilogy and I I had never written a 400-page book before. And so
Jamyang Loden: Okay.
Mark Bradford: that’s where that came from. And as you know it almost like meditation, you go to a place and you go to this place where all this creativity flows out of you and you don’t mess with it. you leave you let it be and you you know you you give it you give it the energy it requires and you give it the focus it requires but you don’t mess with it you don’t question it you just you let it do what it needs to do and you let your mind do what it needs to so so that’s how writing became for me and then I and I actually switched back to non-fiction and I
Mark Bradford: switched back to fiction and then I
Jamyang Loden: Okay.
Mark Bradford: actually coached a few individuals on writing books that came to me for coaching and writing books to help them And and so that’s sort of how writing the podcast started at the same time that the writing started. Uh it was my quest to figure out balance. I wanted to see how do you really have balance in the modern world. And that’s where
Jamyang Loden: Nothing.
Mark Bradford: the the podcast and podcast leads me to wonderful people like you. And so, not only do I write these 10-minute episodes, but I do these hour-long chats with people who have a a perspective and a thought process that we don’t just see when we go to the grocery store. It’s something that is far away or something very interesting. And that’s why it’s so wonderful to connect with you and why I thought it would
Jamyang Loden: Nothing.
Mark Bradford: be really wonderful to connect with you on that. So, that’s my that’s my writing and and podcast journey in a nutshell.
Mark Bradford: So, without me taking too much time away from you, which is really why we’re here,
Jamyang Loden: Okay. Um, can I say something?
Mark Bradford: of course.
Jamyang Loden: You see, um, as a child, you know, I used to listen to podcast. Okay. So this is my first time you know me literally speaking in your podcast and I think it is a dream come true really you know really you know when when you were speaking I just thinking you know it just took back and uh I think as a child I used to listen to radio because back then we didn’t have internet facilities we didn’t have smartphone and uh the only friend I had was radio you know my mom bought one radio so I had to sit near the radio and then listen to every songs every you know people calling so we have a trend of people calling to the radio and then dedicating their you know messages so I used to you know dream one day you know I’ll be in that position and then do this kind of things and uh I think it is a really dreamed come true so I’m really Happy to be part of your podcast.
Mark Bradford: Well, I’m honored that you feel that way. That that means a lot to me and I I’m honored and I just I enjoy having people like you on, people who have fascinating stories to tell and can and can honestly and humbly share their lives. I think it means a lot to people and it allows people through technology to connect in a way they never could have. I mean, I would have never been able to speak to you if it wasn’t for technology. To be able to learn about your life personally is just such a wonderful uh fulfilling thing for me. So, I I appreciate you being on the show as well. And if you have any other shoutouts you’d like to give about your channel or to people, feel free. Uh otherwise I will make sure that I have the links on my article that I will write that you can uh that will link to your YouTube channel and anything else you have.
Jamyang Loden: Um just uh you know I want to first First of all thank my root guru for always blessing.
Jamyang Loden: It is his profound blessing that has kept me going you know further in life. So that is uh my uh you know prayer. So and also to those people who will be coming to my channel through your podcast make sure that you comment that you have come from the alchemy of life. Is it alchemy of life?
Mark Bradford: Alchemy for life.
Jamyang Loden: Okay. Alchemy for life. So make sure that you comment you have come from alchemy for life. That would you know make me to connect more and understand that yes such people have come from this channel and uh yeah
Mark Bradford: Yes, that’s that’s that’s great advice. And I feel the opposite is also true that if people come to listen to you here that that they should let me know that they came from your channel as well. So I think that’s that’s so we can see how people are pollinating, if you will. So that’s wonderful. Well,
Jamyang Loden: Nothing.
Mark Bradford: I promised you I would take an hour or less of your time.
Mark Bradford: I very much honor your time, especially hearing your schedule and that you fit this in so nicely. and I really appreciate you fitting it in so quickly and nicely for me around everything else that you’re crafting in your life. So, thank you again for being here and I’m sure we’ll speak again and it’ll be uh we can learn more about you and more about the city and and everything else. So thank you again.
Jamyang Loden: Yeah, definitely. So thank you so much once again for reaching me and I really felt you know honored to be part of your podcast and uh this podcast uh is not an ordinary podcast because that kind of podcast are educating people. They not entertaining you know just for the purpose of entertaining. that is educating educating people to listen and you know upgrade their life to update their life you know getting knowledge from such podcast so I’m really happy that I became a part of your journey part of your podcast so yeah uh we will be will be in touch and uh we we’ll be you know sharing our knowledge to each other.
Mark Bradford: Thank
Jamyang Loden: Yeah.
Mark Bradford: you. And yeah, and I hope it’s not the I hope it’s not the only time we talk. So, thank you. Thank you very much. It’s an equal honor for me you. So, thank you.
Jamyang Loden: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I have last question. Do you have any plan to come Bhutan?
Mark Bradford: You know, that that crossed my mind that it crossed my mind. It would be fascinating. I’m not a I’m not a big fan of very long airplane rides, but
Jamyang Loden: Okay.
Mark Bradford: but uh but it sounds like a very fascinating, unique place to go. It it it seems like it’s worth the trip. I mean, the people seem nice, clearly very friendly, kind people. Uh knowing that everyone speaks English is a huge help. uh
Jamyang Loden: Okay.
Mark Bradford: it would be interesting to be one of the first users of the airport. So uh I would I just I think it would be a very wonderful thing to take in. So uh plans not on paper but I it crossed my mind.
Jamyang Loden: Okay. Anyways sir if you have any plan just let me know but
Mark Bradford: Oh, I
Jamyang Loden: uh
Mark Bradford: willthe
Jamyang Loden: it seems you you don’t have plan for now but then anything can happen you know so
Mark Bradford: if if I do if I do go, I would certainly seek you out. I would certainly let you know ahead of time so that I could say hello and and have tea with you or something like that. I think that would be wonderful.
Jamyang Loden: okay
Mark Bradford: Cool.
We deal with decisions every day. Many of the episodes deal with the decision process on both a grand and low level. Three Voices deals with how we communicate these decisions, work through them, talk to both ourselves and others about them. Going with your gut—the universal advice–is telling you to listen to your first voice.
Understanding the “Why” Behind Your ChoicesSometimes we say yes, and sometimes we say no. BeCAUSE! explores the why behind those decisions, why some feel really good, and why others might feel really bad. Sometimes the wrong decision feels good and sometimes the right one feels bad.
Why the Right Decision Can Feel BadBut how can the right one feel bad? It’s for the same reason that having your third piece of cake can feel good. If you’ve read BeCAUSE! then you know that we are seeking pleasure and avoiding pain on a complex granular level. We want the cake because the first two felt pretty good, ya know what I mean? But that doesn’t make it the right decision. Diets sometimes feel bad. Avoiding a food we love feels bad, avoiding a food we consider a reward feels worse, and avoiding a food we deem to be the only reward we get in our very stressful, controlled life feels horrible. But it’s the right thing to do.
We get this mostly when it comes to ‘guilty pleasures’ or things that we consider to be things we do purely for pleasure—playing games, watching TV and movies, binge watching our favorite series, escaping deep into a book, desserts, hobbies, etc. But we are far less cognizant of this when it comes to seemingly neutral decisions—or even decisions that aren’t even needed.
High-Stakes Decisions: When “No” is the Right Move in BusinessTake for example the dilemma of the solopreneur. Every dollar counts and each new client and gig is a win, right? Keep building, keep growing, keep increasing your reach and client base. More and more work. More and more clients. But what happens when a new gig isn’t a fit? What happens when a new client isn’t a fit? Should you do it anyway?
Take creatives like people who produce music, or art. If a company wants them to create a jingle for alcohol, but their music is about the opposite (or the band leader is sober now going on five years) what then?
Take the manager that has to interview a number of people, but is told that one individual is good for the company but there are two others that clearly have better skills, a personality more in line with the mission, and a better track record. What then?
What if your small company is presented with an opportunity to rescue a company from a crumbling infrastructure and you could be the hero? On paper it looks like a great opportunity if they just purchase all the equipment you propose and allow you the control needed to make it work for them (with ongoing involvement). But what if your first voice, your gut, your intuition tells you this won’t be the way it plays out, that in fact it will be a struggle to have them on board with what will really work. Then what?
The Power and Difficulty of a Single WordOne word. One difficult one. One word that can cause you to have stress and regret and soul-searching.
Business vs. Relationships: An Instinctive DifferenceWhat is interesting is that I have to spell it out and make a case by case example of this in business, but if we were to apply this to relationships you would instantly get it. You’d know that someone isn’t a match, or that you’ve had red-flags experience and would make the very personal decision to end a relationship, or not even pursue one that fit the parameters. And you might even be offended that I am trying to tell you the kind of people you should pursue a relationship with.
In business we operate—seemingly—on simple rules of profit, margin, growth strategies, and all those other exciting terms we see ad nauseam on LinkedIn. But we don’t talk much about the clients you don’t pursue. But we should.
Navigating the Internal Conflict of Saying NoSaying no can be difficult. It can activate all sorts of Monsters and Unicorns that manipulate you into seeking the pleasure of making someone happy, being the hero, gaining more profit, gaining more status, having a perfect record. It will activate the monsters that push you away from the pain of seeing your bottom line continue to shrink, or the self-esteem drain of thinking a better person could do it, or the fear of missing out on an opportunity, or the pain of having your reputation be affected by a lack of skill.
So one must take the time and energy to activate the Monsters and Unicorns that seek the pleasure of being honest with yourself, or knowing that you choose the right thing over the obvious thing, or avoiding the pain of the hidden time bomb of being blamed for the failure of a system that is about to fall apart.
A Personal Story: The Long-Term Reward of My First “No”I remember my first no, years ago, when I had a meeting with a potential client. I met with them, saw their environment, spoke to the president. After a short while they let me know that they weren’t going to pursue me. I thanked them for their time and months later saw an article that applied to them. I thought it would be helpful for her to take a peek and I happily sent it to her. Weeks later she was so impressed by this that she mentioned that, and wanted to have me come in for a second, deeper look. This time I was dealing with a marketing person, and the deeper look revealed items that were completely unknown, a pricing structure that was non-existent, and an elevator ride in which I was told to make sure that I “showed up on time.” In two decades (at the time) of client interaction I had never missed a meeting, an appointment nor had I ever taken a sick day.
All those pieces came together into a resounding, but polite no, which was met with a “Oh so you think you probably can’t handle this.”
Two weeks after this I experienced something unique. Passing an exit sign on the freeway (which mentioned this business) gave me a terrible sinking feeling of my new client. Except that they weren’t. It was a three second roller coaster of opposing feelings—the dread and shock to the realization and relief. My no had paid off.
Applying Past Lessons to a Present DecisionI find myself in a similar situation right now and am reminded of my first no. Back then I wasn’t aware of the Monsters and Unicorns and their purposes and placement.
But I see them now and I appreciate what they are doing and ultimately I will decide.
And I’ve decided the right answer is no.
Do you have a difficult “no” you’re trying to figure out? Let me know and I can help you identify the Monsters & Unicorns involved.
The Enduring Metaphor of Angels and DevilsThe metaphorical representation of a devil and an angel on a person’s shoulders dates back to the 16th century1. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, this concept was prominently featured in plays and allegorical art. By the early 1900s, it had found its way into cartoons as a visual shorthand to depict the internal struggle between virtues and vices. The angel serves to keep one on the “straight and narrow,” while the devil tempts one toward vices and earthly pleasures.
A New Metaphor: The Monster and the UnicornDid you hear what the devil is trying to get you to do? He was pulling you towards pleasures. Which does he sound like? The unicorn.
Confusing, no?
Well, no, not at all when you realize that the angel and devil metaphors are not the same as the “monster” and “unicorn.” This distinction can be a source of confusion for some who mistakenly believe them to be interchangeable.
In literature, the roles are clearly defined: the angel encourages you to do what is right and good, which is often the more challenging path. Conversely, the devil tempts you to take the easy, lazy, vindictive, or even mean-spirited route. The angel represents good, while the devil embodies bad.
However, neither the monster nor the unicorn is inherently good or bad; they are neutral. They function as psychological building blocks, each with a singular purpose driven by a cause. The unicorn pulls you toward pleasure and actively seeks it with you. Its goal is for you to experience pleasure, and it tugs at you when it finds it. The monster, on the other hand, wants to protect you from any and all pain.
As we know, “no pain, no gain.” Some necessary life experiences involve pain, and not all pleasurable things should be pursued.
The Overlap Between Angels, Devils, Monsters, and UnicornsIn some instances, the devil’s work aligns with the unicorn’s, as he encourages the pursuit of earthly pleasures and vices. The angel’s role can mirror the monster’s by trying to keep you on a path that minimizes future sadness and regret, preventing actions you might later look back on with remorse.
However, the devil can also perform the monster’s function by convincing you to avoid something simply because it is difficult. The angel, at times, does the work of the unicorn by pushing you toward a higher, happier, and kinder purpose, which naturally feels good.
Under the Hood: The Building Blocks of MoralityIn literature and even in your own imagination, if you have perceived morality as a struggle between a devil and an angel, you will find that both are composed of multiple monsters and unicorns.
Your morality is constructed by these monsters and unicorns working in concert with a purpose. The way you pair and combine them creates powerful forces within your psyche. If you build your angel with a host of strong monsters and unicorns, your devil will be comparatively weak, and the reverse is also true.
While we often view the angel and devil as distinct entities with their own personalities, the monster and the unicorn are single-purpose building blocks. Each monster and each unicorn has a singular, specific purpose. The same monster that prevents you from doing something harmful in one relationship could also be the one that holds you back from doing something beneficial in another. Not only are they interchangeable, but their highly specific purposes can cause problems if misapplied.
Therefore, we can conceive of the angel and the devil as a higher form of thinking, positioned above the monster and the unicorn, as they are composed of them.
From Freud’s Pleasure Principle to Personal MoralityAt a foundational level is Freud’s pleasure principle, a simple binary. This binary, when combined with causes, gives rise to the monsters and unicorns. Combinations of these monsters and unicorns then form your morality, which you can express as the devil and the angel on your shoulders. This entire construct ultimately shapes your personality and who you are.
Those who are religious or spiritual may feel that their monsters and unicorns come pre-packaged within their belief system. Others may feel they have acquired their monsters and unicorns along life’s journey and are simply the result of managing them.
Whether you believe you are guided by an angel and tempted by a devil, or if you feel closer to the pure binary that Freud described, monsters and unicorns are still part of the equation. Pre-packaged angels and devils from religious texts still contain monsters and unicorns that provide the “why” behind the drive to do good and avoid evil.
If you feel you have a devil on your shoulder that whispers “chocolate” too often, he is merely repeating the words of the unicorn inside him.
The more you break down the origin and the “why” of the devil and the angel, the more you will truly understand the source of your motivations. My subjective belief is that it is far better to communicate directly with your monsters and unicorns than to blindly accept that everything the angel says is good and everything the devil says is bad.
- Marlowe, Christopher. Doctor Faustus. Written c. 1592. In the play, Faustus is visited by a Good Angel and Evil Angel who offer opposing moral advice—representing internal conflict akin to the modern angel/devil trope ↩︎
A primer on the book BeCAUSE!For those that have yet to read my new book because. Here’s a quick primer.
One day, I asked myself a question. If you could have anything you wanted, wouldn’t you? We already know how to do most things and if we don’t, we can Google them or talk to others about it. We want to lose weight, be a better person, learn a new skill, get a new job, pursue a meaningful career, be a better parent, become more resilient, and the list goes on.
But we don’t do that. Sometimes we struggle and sometimes we don’t.
There are things that in spite of us doing everything right we can’t seem to do. On the flipside there are things that we accomplish easily and our friends get very frustrated with us and simply say that “we just have a knack for it.”
ResearchMy research led to two very important things:
Sigmund Freud’s pleasure principle.
Intense research on what all top performers have in common
But this wasn’t enough. Neither one of those things answered the real question they just stopped.
So I took it further and that is what created the book BeCAUSE!.
Survival mode tell-tale signsIn this short episode, we give a recap of the book and talk about what it means to wake up to a monster.
Transcript:Waking Up to a MonsterHello, and welcome back. I have something interesting for you today—a new concept for those who haven’t read my new book, and some bonus material for those who have. I will try to be brief, and I appreciate you not laughing at me for saying that.
If you could have anything you wanted, wouldn’t you take it? We all have goals. We want to lose some weight, be healthier, make more money, or change careers. We’d like to be more patient with our kids or finally finish that project we’ve been dragging our feet on.
So, why don’t we do these things? What’s stopping us?
Is it a lack of desire? No, we seem to genuinely want these outcomes. Is it a lack of knowledge? Most people have the knowledge they need, or they can easily Google it. The answer, I found, lies deeper.
ResearchMy research led me to two interesting places. First was Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychology. His flagship theory was the “pleasure principle,” in which he believed that we are all driven by two simple forces: seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. While foundational, this doesn’t fully explain why we fail to do things that we know will bring us pleasure.
So then I looked at top performers. I read books and studies, and they all pointed to one thing: repetition. But again, that didn’t make sense on its own. How do they maintain that repetition? How can normal people use that information?
That’s when I realized what was missing—the forces behind the scenes. What was shoving you into success? What was preventing you from failing? And what was preventing you from succeeding?
In our psyche, these forces are what I call Monsters and Unicorns. This is the concept at the heart of my new book, BeCAUSE!
The decisions we make and the actions we take are often the result of an entire audience of Monsters and Unicorns working with or against each other. The most important things in your life are dictated by the powerful ones you’ve put in place. The book is a short, good read, and it comes with worksheets to help you dive deeper and identify these forces in your own life.
Now that we’re on the same page, let’s get to something new and powerful.
When I write my experimental psychology books, I sometimes get this intense feeling that the book is just the beginning—a foundation we can build on. I liken it to discovering addition and then realizing subtraction, multiplication, and a whole world of mathematics can be built from that one core idea. Our brains are constantly testing the underpinnings of our reality, which is why when I talk about these concepts, I don’t get “you’re crazy” looks; I see the gears spinning in people’s heads as they absorb it.
This happened with BeCAUSE!. Even though the book was just published, two new ideas have already emerged from its foundation.
For those who have read the book, this will give you a new lens to look through. For those who haven’t, I implore you to read it. When you review your life, you might find something that will either encourage you or make you pause and think. Here it is:
If you discover that the majority of what you’re doing right now is because of a Monster—in other words, your primary motivation is avoiding pain—you are probably living in survival mode.
You wake up every morning and think, “Oh my god, I’m going to run out of money.” Or, “I hope this health thing gets better.” Or, “My marriage is falling apart.” Or, “I’m alone and I need to find someone.” Just one of these things can mean you wake up to a Monster every day. The Monster says, “I’ve got you. We need to do whatever it takes to not feel hopeless, poor, alone, or unhealthy.”
You can even have a great life with plenty of stability and still be in survival mode. If you have a horrible boss, you might wake up at 4 a.m. rewriting an email seven times, terrified of the conflict that might come your way. You aren’t seeking the pleasure of a job well done; you are desperately trying to avoid the pain of being attacked. A bad boss, much like a bad spouse, can have a huge impact on your life. That’s not what we’re meant to be experiencing.
People go into survival mode for all sorts of reasons—a breakup, a health issue, losing a job, a financial setback. It can even happen when it’s not about you. If you have a loved one going through something terrible, their struggle can put you in survival mode, too.
However, what if you woke up every morning to a giant Unicorn standing over your bed, saying, “Guess what we get to do today again?” Isn’t that a lot more desirable?
Monsters and Unicorns are neutral parts of your psyche. Waking up to a Unicorn—being pulled toward pleasure—is what we want to do. And seeking pleasure isn’t just about candy or naughty stuff; it includes our highest values. Being a good person, having integrity, and doing things for others are all ways of seeking a profound sense of pleasure.
So, for the purposes of this conversation, it would behoove you to think about whether you primarily wake up to a Monster or a Unicorn. As you’ll see in the book, they are in every single thing we do—our quirks, our personalities, our avoidance of trauma. We can’t get rid of them, but we can learn to manipulate, place, remove, and counter them.
It’s an interesting thing to give some time to: consider whether you’re waking up to a Unicorn or a Monster. Period.
I did tell you there were two new things from the book, but perhaps that’ll be the next episode. Stay tuned. Thank you for reading and thank you for being you. I appreciate you and I value you.
I’ve done two podcast episodes on large language models. I recently spun up and installed a large language model locally on my computer and built a project around it. I’m an avid user of echoes from Amazon. I have had Grammarly kick in to spellcheck for me. I tell my phone to add an appointment to my schedule all the time.
And I have a dire warning for you.
MIT studyA recent MIT study proved something that I have been thinking for quite some time. Using.EEG (brain scans.) to provide data, the study showed that those who relied on ChatGPT for ideas and help with papers tended to not even to remember most of what they wrote. A lot of them didn’t even properly remember the titles. The bottom line was that they’re deeper learning wasn’t being engaged and when it wasn’t being engaged, it meant they weren’t using it. And it was getting weaker.
AI, the firming paradox and the end of the world
What science fiction and many people tell us is that AI will become sentient, judge mankind, find them wanting and wipe them out. And that will be it for us. But I believe it will happen in a very different way and is already happening.
But we can stop it.
Consider what I am suggesting, reflect on your own use, and read the MIT study for yourself.
Just don’t use an LLM to summarize it for you.
Helpful episodesEvery year I create a list of the top, most useful and helpful episodes of the previous year. This year because there has been a lot of interaction on current episodes. I’ve decided to do a midyear pause and reflect if you will.
Here are the top episodes in 2025 so farManuel Rendon of Timeplast and 4d programmable matterMeet Manuel Rendon, certified polymer science inventor and CEO of Timeplast, Inc. My first interview episode of 2025. Manuel joins the ranks of Scott Adams, the late John McAfee and others. 4d matter In the world of plastics, everything pretty much repels water. But what if you could create a plastic that truly dissolves in water …
Teacher, Teach Thyself Q&A and the answer (That’s so meta) Have you ever helped a friend who has a question or a conundrum, and the answer was so obvious to you that you easily spelled it out for them? You felt pretty smart. You noticed at some point that when you’ve had issues you turn to others for …
What I learned writing a screenplay (and how it might help you tell your own story) Telling a story in an unfamiliar medium with constraints you’re not accustomed to is a common theme in business. You may be the best story teller in your circle/medium/genre but if you need to tell your story outside of that it can be a challenge, …
The Anatomy of Ghosting We all know what it is. We have all done it. We’ve all had it done to us. Let’s talk about when it’s appropriate when it’s not, and why it can be so frustrating.
Non-Local Consciousness Let’s talk about non-local consciousness, who you’re really talking to when you’re on the phone, what happens to me and possibly you when something is put on the back burner.
Hypnosis and speaking to your manager. Speaking to the manager I want to speak to the manager. Rather, I want to speak to your manager. What do you think of when I say that? Do you think of the structure of your current employer? Do you make a joke that it’s your cat? Is there a spouse joke in there for you?
Good or Evil? A philosophical question for you. Don’t forget you can pause the episode to consider the question(s) as you move forward. How would you answer? Alchemy for Life™ podcast explores themes of experimental psychology, relationships, cognitive science, human behavior, mental models, consciousness, and psychological insights. We uncover hidden truths and ways to improve your life and get .
Which one is your favorite and why? Was it one I missed?
If you’re in the Milwaukee area, you can grab tickets to see my talk, Q&A and book signing on June 24!
There are still tickets available. Click the image use the QR code or click here to grab a ticket for yourself.
If you know someone who would get a kick out of this, feel free to forward it to them.
I look forward to seeing you there!
PS you can win free coaching too.
Speaking to the managerI want to speak to the manager. Rather, I want to speak to your manager.
What do you think of when I say that? Do you think of the structure of your current employer? Do you make a joke that it’s your cat? Is there a spouse joke in there for you? Or are you immediately defensive?
There’s a reason you may be defensive, and rightly so.
Hypnosis, logging in as administrator, and reaching the managerHave you ever been hypnotized? Have you ever had administrative access to a computer? Have you ever asked to speak to someone’s manager or been witness to someone else doing that?
Let’s talk about how all of these things are related, why it’s normal to be defensive, talking to someone else’s manager, and talking to your own manager.
Alchemy for Life™ podcast explores themes of experimental psychology, relationships, cognitive science, human behavior, mental models, consciousness, and psychological insights. We uncover hidden truths and ways to improve your life and get things done, or reduce stress and relax.
The latest book is BeCAUSE!The fundamental psychological building blocks that enable you to, or prevent you from, accomplishing anything, everything, and nothing.
TranscriptCan I Speak to Your Manager?“I want to speak to the manager.”
Or rather, I want to speak to your manager. Can I do that?
When I ask that question, your mind might immediately go to the structure of your business. Some might joke that their manager is their spouse, or even their cat. But if you’ve been a listener of this podcast, you know where I’m really going with this. I want to know who, or what, is directing your actions.
So, let’s be honest: Who is your manager?
Defining Your Inner ManagerFirst, let’s define what a manager is. It’s someone responsible for controlling, administering, and directing a part of a company. If it’s your manager, it’s someone responsible for your actions. This is where the trope of “I want to speak to the manager” comes from; you know you can only go so far with the person at the front counter because they don’t have the power to go against a certain rule. You need to talk to the person who can make an exception.
Now, let’s apply that metaphor to you. Think of your brain and the way you manage your life as an organization. You have your ground crew—your instincts and daily impulses. And then you have your higher brain functions—your core values, your logic, the part of you that says, “This is who I am. This is where the buck stops.”
That is your manager.
The Power and Risk of “Admin Access”There’s a reason people don’t just walk up to you and say, “Hey, I want to talk to the manager immediately.” We have established mannerisms and relationships that grant us that level of access. When someone says, “Let’s be real,” “Let’s be honest,” or “Can I be candid with you?” those are all ways of phrasing, “I want to speak to the manager.”
Asking to talk to someone’s manager in this metaphorical way is like asking for administrative access to who they are. It’s similar to hypnosis. My quick assessment, after years of experience, is that if you are able to hypnotize someone, it’s like logging in as the administrator to their system. You are granted direct access to their core programming.
This is why we typically don’t have access to each other’s managers. Granting this access is a profound act of vulnerability, which is why it’s so important in our most trusted relationships. When you have vulnerability in a relationship—personal or business—that’s when you make real progress. Considering that 50% of marriages end in divorce, there’s probably not a lot of “talking to managers” going on before people make that lifelong commitment.
How to Speak to Your Own ManagerBut what about speaking to your own manager? You might think that’s instant, but as I cover in my books Three Voices and BeCAUSE!, there are a lot of layers between your surface-level self and your core.
When you want to talk to your own manager, you’ll do things like look in the mirror or have a heart-to-heart with yourself. Typically, you’ll use your third voice—your speaking voice. You’ll talk out loud and say, “Come on, I’m better than this,” or “Why am I doing this?” You’re trying to access your higher administrative functions.
Getting that access is the challenge, but it’s also where the magic happens. You can buy all the books you want, but you’re not going to affect real change if you don’t have that vulnerability with yourself and say, “Look, I’m actually going to talk to my manager on this.”
My best and most interesting reviews on anything I do—books, coaching, or this podcast—are from people whose manager decided to talk back to me. Somehow, I reached their manager, and their manager came back and said, “You know what? Here’s what I think. And thank you.”
So on that note, thank you. And if you’ve gotten this far, thank you for letting me speak to your manager.
A philosophical question for you.
Don’t forget you can pause the episode to consider the question(s) as you move forward.
How would you answer?
Alchemy for Life™ podcast explores themes of experimental psychology, relationships, cognitive science, human behavior, mental models, consciousness, and psychological insights. We uncover hidden truths and ways to improve your life and get things done, or reduce stress and relax.
The latest book is BeAUSE!The fundamental psychological building blocks that enable you to, or prevent you from, accomplishing anything, everything, and nothing.
Let’s talk about non-local consciousness, who you’re really talking to when you’re on the phone, what happens to me and possibly you when something is put on the back burner, and wish a Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers in the United States, Brazil, Germany, India, China and Japan.
Alchemy for Life podcast explores themes of experimental psychology, relationships, cognitive science, human behavior, mental models, consciousness, and psychological insights. We uncover hidden truths and ways to improve your life and get things done, or reduce stress and relax.
Transcript: as some people would say, on the back burner.
Well, hey there.
Welcome back.
The concept of non-local consciousness is really fascinating.
When you talk to someone on the phone, you’re not really talking to someone on the phone.
You’re not talking to them.
See, I I could go through and I’d probably be thrilled because I’m odd like that through each and every layer of what’s actually happening when you use your voice to then vibrate the membrane of the microphone which then translates that into electrical signals and blah blah blah blah.
But all that stuff that’s happening to then produce the same effect in the other person’s phone and they’re not talking to you either.
And you can say, “Well, well, no, Mark.
I mean, I can hear I can hear them in the background.
It’s going on live.
Well, but you’re not talking to them when you’re not there talking to them.
And you could say, well, all long distance communication, all communication that’s not in person works that way, right?
I mean, you could be texting someone, you can be, you know, you can be FaceTiming someone, you can be doing all those things and you’re not really talking to them.
You’re talking to them, but you’re not talking to them, right?
you’re talking kind of to the the the projection of them.
The two of you are talking to a projection of each other.
What if that’s also what’s happening when you’re talking to someone in person?
See, that’s the concept of non-local consciousness.
Oh boy, here we go.
Right.
Okay.
So, let’s put that on hold for a second.
Have you ever had an issue or problem or something you wanted to solve and you thought, well, I’m just going to sleep on it.
Or you thought, okay, I I got to stop thinking about this, but I’m still thinking about this.
So, that’s a concept that I think about and utilize a lot.
A lot of people who may not be in the creative space, and you know, we’ve had that argument before where I say pretty much everything’s in the creative space, but people who think they’re not in the creative space and do a job that seems very direct and linear, they may think they sit down and they focus on ideas and concepts and problem solving and then they solve the problem.
And sometimes it’s not that moment, but sometimes it takes days or whatever to work on the finished product.
But when they’re not thinking about it, they’re not thinking about it.
At least that’s what they think.
There have been a number of projects, rather large ones or small problems that seem unsolvable that I have put, as some people would say, on the back burner.
I say, “Okay, I’m going to shift this to the back of my head for lack of a better feeling.
It feels like I moved it to the back of my head.” And then I go on with my life, but I can kind of feel that it’s still there.
Have you ever rightclicked and copied something with your mouse and then your hand and your mouse feel kind of heavier or sluggish until you paste it?
No.
Am I the only one?
It’s that same kind of concept where you have something going on on the back burner.
And for me, I’ve told people I think in the past a few times that my brain is fizzing.
And it that sounds really odd, but it feels like it’s working on something and you just leave it alone.
Let it work because you’re going to just mess it up and get your hands in there.
So you say, “Look, I’ve defined the problem.
I put it in the back of my brain and it’s going to work on it.” Obviously, if you’re trapped somewhere and you need to get out, you don’t you don’t use that method.
But when you’re working on larger conceptual things where you think, “Okay, there’s going to be an answer.
there’s got to be a way to do this and oh, I need to think outside of the, you know, the box.
Well, this is the kind of thinking that actually is really helpful and it’s it’s allowed me to do some pretty large things, I would think, conceptually and intellectually.
And no, that I didn’t mean it to sound that way, but you know what I mean.
I tell you all this because I think it’s an interesting thing to consider, especially if you feel that you’ve done it.
if you’ve done the mental equivalent of a a cut and paste and you’re in the cut part or the copy part.
But I also tell it to you because that’s sort of how consciousness has been on my mind.
It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time and it’s something that I don’t talk about and it’s something that is sort of on the back burner for me.
And when I kind of came across the concept of non-local consciousness, I went, “Wait a second, this is kind of in line with what I’ve been thinking.
I’ve been trying to define who I am.
And when I say that, I mean that it could be who you are, who anyone is basically as a a a conscious sensient person.
And this is deep stuff and it can be for people.
You know, there are memes out there that says that, you know, the brain is the only organ that named itself.
And and I disagree with that.
I don’t think that’s what happened.
There are countless science fiction shows and stories in which people transfer the consciousness of one person to another.
They just basically copy the contents of the brain to another person.
But for those of us who may believe there’s more to us than just data, it’s missing something.
There are those that are even fans of Star Trek and their transporter that feel that the transporter just can’t do what it says it does when it beams somebody to a planet because there’s more to a person than what a machine like that could transmit.
And creepily, there are people that say that it’s sort of a a suicide machine because for it to work properly, it has to destroy you and then recreate you somewhere else.
So every time you use it, you’re dying.
That’s another thing to think about.
We can compare our brain to a computer and say that okay, you know, it’s there’s a computational device there, but there’s also long and short-term memory just like in a computer.
There’s short-term memory of the actual memory and the RAM and there’s long-term memory as far as the hard drive is concerned and so forth.
A lot of what we use computers for these days, however, aren’t on the computer.
Most of what people do is in their browser.
I mean, there there’s things people specifically may do.
They may have a locally installed spreadsheet or or document creation software or 3D modeling software locally installed, but in a lot of those cases, it doesn’t even live on the computer.
People who use Microsoft 365, people who use the Google Suite, they’re all using tools that don’t live on the computer, that live somewhere else.
If you’re using Gmail, you’re not using mail that’s living on your computer.
And email in and of itself is a thing that typically doesn’t live where you live.
It’s a window into where it actually lives up there in the cloud.
So even when people make the really non-equivalent connection or comparison between a person’s brain consciousness to a computer, they’re then leaking right back into where they belong, which is that not everything is there.
So if the brain is the hardware and you and I are kind of the data and the program that make up our experiences and our personality, what about the stuff that doesn’t live here?
What about the inspiration and creativity that seem to come out of nowhere?
And I had a very personal direct experience with that when I wrote the sword and the sunflower.
And I won’t bore you with that story for the 15th time.
If you’re a person who has a belief system, then you are already in a mode in which you believe there is more to life than what we are seeing.
If science has taught me one lesson and I had to pick one lesson, it’s that we know very little.
We know very little.
And the more that we learn, the more we realize we don’t know.
And that’s something that’s usually attributed to Einstein.
But then everything seems to be attributed to Einstein.
So you may have to look that one up.
So my question to you today is where do you live?
Is it here or is there a non-local consciousness that we’re dealing with?
Because when you talk to your friend on the phone or you’re one of the thousands of users of chat GPT, you’re not there with your friend and you’re not talking to Chat GPT that lives in your phone.
You’re both talking to something that lives somewhere else.
And what if that’s all we’re ever doing?
because we all are non-local in our consciousness.
Thank you.
Have a lovely day.
And by the way, happy Mother’s Day to everyone living in the United States, Brazil, Germany, India, China, and Japan.
Those are all the countries that celebrate it on the second Sunday of May.
There are many other countries that celebrate it, but it’s on a different date.
And if you’re in Russia, I think you have to wait all the way until November.
So take care of yourself wherever you are.
Not okay.
All I want and I pray all I need are some better days.
I want to announce that my new book, my 10th, is out.
It’s called because the fundamental psychological building blocks that enable you to or prevent you from accomplishing anything, everything, and nothing.
Check it out on Amazon.
It’s only $9.99.
Getting energy and giving energyOne of the things I’ve said from the very beginning is that a thing can give one person energy and take energy from another. in other words, one person’s activity that energizes them could also really be draining for another.
But that giving of energy is also taking energy. Nobody engages in meaningful receiving of energy without also giving energy.
SimultaneousAnd this energy going both ways at the same time can be confusing, especially if you think that your energy is like a glass of water you spill out. It’s not.
What gives you purpose? What gives you meaning?You will find that the things in your life that give you meaning are the things that can potentially exhaust you, because of the energy transfer. For some people, it’s misleading because we are not taught that exhaustion is a good thing. For others it can be addicting to the point that someone is drained beyond healthy levels in this pursuit (common for some people in healthcare—nurses, therapists, even some coaches).
Episodes referenced:
- Job Career or Calling
- Is Positivity Just Oblivious Contentment?
Books:
- Three Voices
- BeCAUSE! (out soon!)
The normal format for this show is to introduce you to something and raise your perception. Then we discuss it and you typically leave with homework.
This time you are giving me homework. Let’s talk about the importance of feedback and how each and every one of us has a struggle. What’s yours?
We all know what it is.
We have all done it.
We’ve all had it done to us.
Let’s talk about when it’s appropriate when it’s not, and why it can be so frustrating.
Transcript:The Anatomy of GhostingWe all know what ghosting is, and we’re aware that it’s now a verb. But let’s define it so we’re on the same page.
Ghosting is when someone stops communicating, typically through asynchronous means like texting or emailing. It’s not an active, face-to-face conversation; it’s a “ping-pong” style of communication where you do something and then wait for the person to respond. Ghosting can be temporary or permanent. Most of the time, it’s frustrating and inappropriate, but sometimes, it’s the right call.
When Ghosting is AppropriateLet’s get the “appropriate” uses out of the way first. Ghosting can be a necessary act of self-preservation when things get out of hand. If a conversation becomes heated or unprofessional, or if a client goes off the rails, people will choose to ghost. If you’re in a toxic relationship where the only end is parting ways, that’s a time for ghosting. A specific example is a relationship with someone with Borderline Personality Disorder, where any engagement—positive or negative—is what the person craves. The only way to subvert that is to have no engagement at all.
When it comes to online dating, people tend to get burned, so they ghost. If you realize you’re not a match with someone or they exhibit signs that make you uncomfortable, ghosting is often the safest option. I can guarantee that you will get burned for trying to take the high road and explain exactly why you don’t think you’re a match.
The Frustration of Being GhostedNow, let’s talk about what we typically experience with ghosting: the frustration, the head-scratching, the feeling of helplessness. It never feels good to be shut down; it feels far better to be disagreed with. We need to be validated, if not for our opinion, at least for our perspective.
The crux of most ghosting is that people simply don’t want to deal with a line of questioning or a demand on their Time, Energy, and Resources. People with a disconnecting or disassociating personality tend to ghost when things get tough, overwhelming, or when they feel someone is demanding their time. They stop the communication, but the person on the other side still has the question and the need.
You’ll often see this pattern: you text pleasantries with a friend, and they respond right away. But when you ask, “Hey, are we still on for Tuesday?”… crickets. Then, 48 hours later, they might say, “Oh, I was really overwhelmed, I’m just seeing this.” If this happens a lot, that person is exhibiting a communication style of disconnection. They don’t want to commit, so they let it lie until it’s too late.
What To Do If You’re the Ghoster or the GhostedIf you are the Ghoster: First, bravo for the self-reflection. If you have good connections with people—friendships, business relationships, romantic connections—it typically works out better when you’re honest. I know I mentioned being burned, and that’s still true, but things generally go better if you’re direct.
Simply say, “Look, I’m not going to do that, not because I don’t have the time, but because I don’t have the energy for it.” If they don’t understand, you can explain that you need to show up with the right energy, and sometimes an event or interaction doesn’t align with that. It’s okay to prefer a certain kind of interaction. For some people, quality time is a love language, so your absence can be more hurtful than you imagine. If you’re honest, they can use logic to understand and will likely stop asking for things that aren’t right for you.
If you are the Ghosted: Sometimes it helps to reframe your request to make it easier for them to answer. You can say, “Look, all I’m asking for is X. Can we do X by this date, or is it a big deal? If it is, just let me know and I won’t ask again.” A good connection can usually stand that kind of honesty.
However, if someone does this repeatedly, you may have to re-evaluate the relationship. Ghosting is a great indicator of the service level you’re going to get, the quality of a client you’re going to have, or the quality of a connection you’ll have with a person. Use it for what it is and recognize it for what it is.
Time is moneyYou’ve heard that phrase and it is often accompanied by someone clapping, tapping their foot, or some other show of impatience.
Chop chop, time is money.
In our world of Time, Energy and Resources as separate entities, they are saying time is resources, aren’t they?
But it’s actually more accurate to same time is energy.
Let’s discuss, and see if you agree. This just might help you plan your time in a way that makes more sense.
👂If you would like to delve deeper, consider a quick 15 minute call with me. You can tell me what you are up against, and I can tell you about how the coaching system can help, and how I can help you.
Fair & SquareHere are the rules of the square and triangle universe.
- Squares sell things to and help that are both squares and triangles.
- Most triangles gear their products and services for only triangles.
- Most squares buy from squares and triangles.
- Most triangles will buy from both squares and triangles but will choose a triangle over a square, especially if the triangle says their product is exclusively for triangles.
- Triangles have a number of large companies that use them to market their product to other triangles, using social coercion, exclusivity, personal connections and even guilt.
- Squares do not have these kind of large corporate connections, and although there are some activities that the squares tend to enjoy they always welcome the triangles.
There are other rules but these are the most obvious.
Listen to the podcast and tell me what you would do as a square. I’m looking for an answer…
So what would you do?
Are you a Square or a Triangle?
A while back we talked about the importance of a catalog and your awareness of that. By revisiting that we are demonstrating (in a rather meta way) the importance of revisiting it. And let’s add how that affects your facets too.
CatalogA catalog covers anything and everything you do. This then gets distilled down into your nice brochure and your website. That gets distilled down further into your line card. Even further, this turns into your tagline and then your business card.
Revisiting and refreshing if you truly review your catalog, you may find that there are things listed on one of the things mentioned above that you simply do not do anymore. Your role may have grown (business owner to consultant, direct participant to manager, etc) or your role may get honed and change over time. You may even have a greatly expanded catalog—and that’s definitely something to make your clients aware of.
This is why I created the All Podcast Episodes page on the AFL site.
FacetsWe all have facets and what we think we do for a living. Those facets may be within our job description or genre. But some of us may also have facets on the opposite side of our lovely gemstone, and when you do, It can be a bit confusing when it comes time to market yourself.
Let’s talk about refreshing your catalog, and what to do about your facets and your message.
PS – Thank you to all the pre-readers of BeCAUSE!
I like to apply analogical reasoning, You can call it conceptual metaphors. And if both of those are confusing, how about applying the concept of one domain to another. Still confused?
For example, we talked about liminal spaces which don’t look or sound right. But you can then take that into the emotional domain and talk about things like a bride on the night before her wedding, or how it feels to be in a doctor’s office waiting room.
Physical InjuryWhen you receive a physical injury, you:
- Assess what caused it
- Give TLC to that area.
- Build it back up and then some to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Emotional InjuryWe do the same for emotional injuries. We figure out what caused it, why it hurt so badly, and then we build it up by toughening up our metaphorical skin, or addressing the thing that causes it to hurt.
Intellectual InjuryBut what about intellectual injury? Is that even a thing.
Well it is now, and let’s talk about it, and why it might be the most important one.
You are living in an era that is coming to an end.
There was a time when all pictures were in black-and-white because that was the technology we had. Most people were fit, and men typically wore suits even at baseball games.
Then pictures, had color, but it was of a not true to life color with a look that was overly warm with lots of reds and browns.
Then we had more color accurate images and what was in the picture changed a bit.
Then we moved into the realm of digital high resolution images, and we started to see things like mass produced electric cars, drones, e-bikes, and two wheeled hoverboards
We are leaving that era.
We are moving into an era in which—like the pictures of old—we will be able to tell when the picture was taken just by what is not in the images.
Let’s talk about that and do a bit of time traveling… to the year 2025.
I have a new book coming out. it’s my 10th, and it’s based on my take on the pleasure principle and what I believe is a layer just above it.
It’s what allows us to accomplish things that others do not.
It’s what prevents us from doing things that we think we should be able to.
It’s that nagging, (usually invisible thing) that we keep running into.
It’s what allows top performers to be top performers.
It’s what will get you out of your slump.
You’ll be shocked at what I’ve discovered and developed.
If you want to apply to be a Beta Reader and read the book before everyone else in exchange for your feedback and honest review, go to my patreon.
(and how it might help you tell your own story)
Telling a story in an unfamiliar medium with constraints you’re not accustomed to is a common theme in business. You may be the best story teller in your circle/medium/genre but if you need to tell your story outside of that it can be a challenge, a learning experience, overwhelming or all three.
Here’s my experience in writing the screenplay for The Sword and the Sunflower and how it might help you tell your story in an unfamiliar medium.
Book vs. screenplayA book is a self-contained personal connection between you and the reader. It allows you to intimately tell a story, brain-to-brain. There’s nothing in the way other than rules of style, fonts, the reader’s imagination, your ability to tell a story, etc.
Little things like that. But overall it’s a straightforward medium for those that enjoy exploring it.
You as the author have the ability to focus on whatever you deem important, with no constraints. If a brief moment in time that lasts only a few seconds is vital to understanding a character then you can spend pages upon pages dissecting, explaining, and experiencing.
The length of your novel is not predetermined. Yes, there is an accepted minimum for word/page count and a realistic maximum due to physical limitations for a book, but if it’s too short it becomes a novella or a short story. If it’s too long it becomes a duet, a trilogy, or a series.
Your style is yours—that is, while adhering to the elements of style, grammar, etc. My approach to dialogue is fairly unique and is a direct product of my reverence for it. But the reader can switch from your unique style to another author’s style. They may enjoy a story but really like the writing style. The opposite can also be true.
The Sword and the Sunflower – a quick recapAfter writing for nonfictions I took a walk in a cemetery and had an unusually clear mind. There was not going to be a ‘next book’ but just a break from the writing. Then I heard the voices. not the voices of the dead, but the voices of a conversation between two people. I played it out and was really inspired. I hoped to see “that movie” one day but realized there was no such movie. The I realized I had to write it myself. I ran home, and wrote a poem, and this poem because the outline of the book. The Sword and the Sunflower is actually a duet (two books) with a third as a prequel explaining what happened in 1,000 years.
The screenplayOne of the most common comments I’ve received for The Sword and the Sunflower is that “this should be a movie.” I’d like to think it’s because of the vivid descriptions, the attention to realistic dialog, and the emotionally impactful settings. Maybe people just want that medium instead.
A medium I’m unfamiliar with.
So I decided to see what it would take to write the screenplay for at least the first book. This is where I experienced the confusion, the learning curve, the overwhelming sense of not getting it right, and slammed hard up against the very real constraints that a screenplay has over a manuscript.
Unlike a bookUnlike a book, there is a very real limit on how many pages a screenplay can be. Unlike a book, you are not free to just describe anything and everything you want to describe to insure that your audience gets it. Unlike a book, you don’t get to narrate to your audience (yes there are movies with narration but most are not done well and can take away from the story). In a book, the description of the character is controlled by you, but more so by the imagination of the audience. I’ve been told many times by readers who should play Stojan or Anastazja and the actors they choose look or behave nothing like them. But that was their imagination and experience.
Unlike a book, you are not talking to your audience at all, but instead to someone else. They in turn will speak to your audience on your behalf and introduce their own style, perceptions, strengths and weaknesses.
In a fiction book I can point your attention to a certain thing, place, scene or person’s face. If I try to do that in a screenplay it becomes something else—a spec script. And directors aren’t keen on you telling them what to do (unless you’re a screenwriter hired by them, and in many cases they do their own screenplays).
So you write a screenplay, in the only acceptable font, with the only acceptable line spacing, with the only acceptable tags and formatting and stay within the page limit, and leave a lot up to the imagination of the director, you trust that they will see your vision.
The lesson I learnedIf that last line sounds a little familiar it’s because that’s what we have to do sometimes with our plans and our vision—we hand it off to someone and trust that it will be handled the way we would handle it. This is one of the biggest pitfalls of both creatives and solopreneurs—being able to let go of something enough to allow others to handle it. it applies to marketing, sales, distribution and more.
Let’s talk about this in the podcast, and afterwards we can chat more on Patreon.
If you’d like to get your own copy of The Sword and the Sunflower it’s available as an kindle, ebook, paperback, hardcover and audiobook. You can read reviews on Amazon as well as on the reviews page of MarkBradford.org
As far as the movie, you’ll have to wait and see…
Q&A and the answer(That’s so meta)
Have you ever helped a friend who has a question or a conundrum, and the answer was so obvious to you that you easily spelled it out for them? You felt pretty smart. You noticed at some point that when you’ve had issues you turn to others for answers and you realize thatr you also could have come up with the solution? You have a “Well duh, I know that” moment. You think “Why can’t I do that for me?”
That’s what this episode is about.
Highlights:
Question vs. Answer Mode – People think more clearly when answering for others because they’re emotionally detached.
But why are they emotionally detached?
Limbic System – When the problem is personal (even if it’s a decision) it triggers emotions—fear, uncertainty, doubt, etc. which makes the process more difficult
Frontal Cortex Role – Your frontal Cortex is what handles logic and reason—without the aforementioned.
Mindfulness – I don’t know what you think of when you hear ‘mindfulness’ but for me it’s nothing absolutely definable. However, being mindful of your current conundrum can shift the processing from the limbic to your frontal cortex. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can also help with this.
Being ‘professional’ – Professions like surgeons, pilots, and investors train people to use logic under stress.
Let’s talk about this concept so you get to know your hardware, and perhaps better understand its use.
And we’ll talk about how being coached allows you to automatically benifit from the best of this concept—if done correctly.
Join us on Patreon to talk about this!
Citations:
Bechara A, Tranel D, Damasio H. Characterization of the decision-making deficit of patients with ventromedial prefrontal cortex lesions. Brain. 2000 Nov;123 ( Pt 11):2189-202. doi: 10.1093/brain/123.11.2189. Erratum in: Brain. 2009 Jul;132(Pt 7):1993. PMID: 11050020.
Rosenbloom, M. H., Schmahmann, J. D., & Price, B. H. (2012). The Functional Neuroanatomy of Decision-Making. The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, 24(3), 266–277. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.neuropsych.11060139
A tale of disconnected happiness or Benign Violation Theory.Allow me to tell you a tale of disconnected happiness. Perhaps you can relate?
Helpful related (or referenced) episodes:
- The holy Grail of positivity bias
- Throwing away the container
- Benign Violation Theory
Have something to say? Come talk about it on Patreon.
ModesWhat mode are you in right now? You may intuitively know exactly what I’m talking about.
Ever interrupt a conversation and the person changes their conversation style/demeanor? That’s an example of someone switching modes.
Are modes just putting a mask on, or being disingenuous? No, like so many things in experimental psychology, I look at it like a program, or a template being overlaid because it is appropriate and useful.
Like multitasking, switching modes can cause the expenditure of energy. It is more useful and more efficiant to stay in a mode for a longer period of time.
What does a mode look like? Think parent, manager, salesperson, CEO, husband, supportive friend, success-minded accomplice, etc. And engaging one of the modes in the wrong setting can be confusing, detrimental or even worse (drinking buddy mode at the CEO round table is not a good idea).
OverlapBut there is overlap, and the overlap is what we are even when a mode is applied. This may sound similar to finding your core directives, which is discussed in the my upcoming book. When you figure out your core you figure out quite a book.
Let’s raise your awareness of this concept, and give us something to think about.
Meet Manuel Rendon, certified polymer science inventor and CEO of Timeplast, Inc.
My first interview episode of 2025. Manuel joins the ranks of Scott Adams, the late John McAfee and others.
4d matterIn the world of plastics, everything pretty much repels water. But what if you could create a plastic that truly dissolves in water quickly, leaves no forever chemicals, and is programmable? Oh, and it’s already readily available to the public.
This is what Manuel and Timplast have created, and he has the patents and the materials to prove it.
Here are the seven patents for Manuel Rendón with links to their respective pages:
- US Patent 9181412: Composition for the degradation of plastic
- US Patent 10954354: Upcycling process for unsorted waste stream
- US Patent 11639424: Extrusion process of a manufacturing system for plastic
- US Patent 10967470: Degradable plastic composition
- US Patent 11390532: Method for manufacturing a plastic product with a reduced environmental impact
- US Patent 11634782: Process for recycling mixed plastic waste
- US Patent 11620641: Additive for reducing the environmental impact of plastic products
You can click on each link to view the full patent details.
They’ve created a substance that’s available for those, like me, who are 3d printing technology evangelists. By adjusting the thickness in various ways, you can ‘program’ the object to dissolve on a schedule that you determine.
Imagine water bottles that you toss into a lake, and they completely dissolve. What about a plant waterer that waters on a schedule? Biomedical products? Labels on food containers that degrade and warm of spoilage?
Sometimes when you print a 3d printed object (like my psych charms) it has features that the printer cannot create without the help of a support. Think of a scaffolding holding up an overhang, or the outstretched arms of a statue. You can print the supports in the same plastic, or with special support material (if you are lucky enough to have multiple printing heads. But you then still have to break it away carefully, and then sand out the edges.
But with Timeplast, you just submerse your model in water and only the supports dissolve. There is support material like this already, but it does not dissolve in the same way.
Note that Timeplast’s goal is mass production in traditional ways, but makes the time-mass available to small hobbyists in the form of
Timeplast also produces a device that essentially breaks down anything you put into it (except for mundane commercial plastics—with nothing but water. It is called the Pabyss™ (as in Plastic Abyss). I’m hoping Timeplast will take my suggestion and rename it the Molecular Disintegrator because I cannot imagine anyone (especially tech-savy nerd dudes) who wouldn’t want to say they own a Molecular Disintegrator™.
Join usJoin my fascinating discussion in which we cover everything from 3d printing to the Cardeshev scale, the saving humanity to contacting Elon Musk about joining forces to create a better world for us all.
If you are into 3d printing and didn’t know this was available, or are concerned about the environment and want to learn that there is a realistic, provable solution, or just want to hear my chat with a dual-brained inventor (who happens to be the CEO of a company creating IP that makes Nestle pay attention), give this a listen.
A note about the videoThe select clips from the video interview are available on Patreon (it’s free). You can go there to discuss. The audio (as usual) episode is available here, and wherever you listen to podcasts (iTunes, Spotify, etc.)
References:
How much real estate do you have in the 4th dimension?
Three voices Episode | Three Voices Book
Manuel’s video on contacting Elon Musk
Social media for Timeplast
https://www.facebook.com/TimePlastOfficial
https://www.instagram.com/timeplastusa
https://youtube.com/@timeplastinc
Transcript:The Future of Materials: A Conversation with Manuel Rendon of TimeplastMark Bradford: Hello there. I’m here today with Manuel Rendon of Timeplast. Hello, and welcome.
Manuel Rendon: Hi, hello. How are you?
Mark: I’m well, and I’m so glad you were able to join us. As I normally do, I ask my guests to tell us what they do.
Manuel: I’m the founder of Timeplast. I’m an environmental engineer, and I have a deep love for science, chemistry in particular. I’m an avid enthusiast for technology.
Mark: It’s fascinating when two technologies meet, like environmental science and plastics. You’ve created something amazing.
Manuel: Yes, it’s been a long journey. The idea that has been in the back of my mind for the longest time is, what will the future of humanity look like? I was blown away by the Kardashev scale, which is how physicists look for alien life in outer space—by searching for signs of Type One, Two, or Three civilizations. Right now, we are a Type Zero civilization, and plastic is one of the most important challenges we have. It’s an existential threat.
The Real Problem with PlasticManuel: People used to be more concerned about macroplastic pollution—straws in the nostrils of a turtle or plastic floating in the ocean. But the real problem is microplastic pollution. It accumulates in the tissue of living organisms, and with each generation, you have a higher concentration. Mothers are passing their microplastic levels to their babies in the womb. Since plastic repels water down to the molecular level, there’s nothing we can do about it. It becomes a question of, at what point will this become a real existential threat to our reproductive levels?
Mark: It’s interesting that you’ve taken such a global humanitarian issue and packaged it into something people can use today, like water-soluble supports for their 3D prints.
Manuel: The 4D printing filaments are a byproduct of our portfolio of materials. We developed from scratch a new type of material that’s 70% composed of water. It’s counterintuitive, but you can test it by putting it in a microwave. Conventional plastic does nothing, but Timeplast will boil and explode.
Humanity discovered materials that repel water, but that contradicts the grand chemistry of our planet and even our own bodies. The question is, how do you make a water-soluble material water-resistant at the same time? As Francis Bacon said, “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.”
From Raw Material to a 4D ProductManuel: We had this material, but it’s difficult to sell a raw material directly to consumers. I thought I needed to create a consumer-oriented product, which is why we have the 3D printing filaments. But since you can program the time it takes for these filaments to dissolve in the presence of water, you’re really talking about four-dimensional objects, which is the most interesting part.
Mark: That was one of the things that really jumped out at me. You’re saying this isn’t just a 3D object; you’ve programmed it to not exist under the right circumstances in two days, two months, or two years.
Manuel: Yes. We just came back from Formnext in Frankfurt, one of the largest 3D printing conventions in the world. Even for that advanced, scientific-oriented community, our filaments were counterintuitive. Nobody really knows what to do with the additional dimension of time.
That’s why I came up with a new 4D object myself, which I call Bluminight. The idea is to grow a tree in the middle of the Sahara desert without human intervention. You can design a “seed pod” where each channel dissolves at a specific time—two days, two weeks, and so on—allowing the seed to receive water and nutrients for years into the future. That’s just one of the many applications.
Mark: The programmability makes complete sense. If one layer dissolves in X minutes, then two layers dissolve in two times X minutes. You’re literally programming time into the object.
Manuel: Exactly. We’ve also started selling our materials as a support filament for 3D printing because people understand that better. The current support filament, PVA, is very brittle and hard to remove. Our material is an elastomer, so it’s flexible like TPU but water-soluble like PVA. You can put it in water for a few seconds and then pull the entire support structure away in a single go.
An Answer to a Question We Haven’t Figured Out YetMark: When I first saw this, I thought, “This is an answer to a question we haven’t quite figured out yet.” I see the biological applications, but I feel like there’s an even greater potential here, maybe in safety. For example, when people drive into water, sometimes they can’t get their seatbelts off. Imagine if the seatbelts just dissolved in that much water.
Manuel: That’s a great idea. A contest would be incredible; we’re definitely going to take notes on that. To help people understand, we talk about a dissolvable bikini. It’s silly, but it makes people realize that in the presence of water, a surface can disappear. But you don’t need an ocean. You can program a bottle of milk to turn red right before it’s about to expire by having an inner layer dissolve and release a pigment. You can have zero plastic waste pre-programmed into the object. When you tap into the evolutionary dynamics of our world, you get much more advanced technologies.
Mark: As an engineer and inventor, how do you manage your time, energy, and resources when it comes to creativity, managing the company, and coming up with new ideas?
Manuel: Growing a business is an incredibly difficult task. You’re up against big companies with incredible inertia, and you only have innovation on your side. That’s why most big technologies come from smaller companies. My passion is to help society become a Type One civilization. That fuels me. Otherwise, what are we doing here?
Mark: I’m very attracted to talking to people who I call “dual-brained,” who have both the logic and the creativity, and they kind of fight it out constantly. It’s amazing to have the creativity to say, “I can create something from nothing,” and then switch back to the logistics and logic to figure out how it will work.
Manuel: There’s a balance. When you come up with a functional chemical pathway that has never been solved before, you have two ways to go: you either publish it in a scientific magazine and aim for a Nobel Prize, or you take the path of a patent to create a business. There’s less prestige in the patent side, but you have an opportunity to create value.
One of our first patents was acquired by Nestlé. It was a great experience. I wanted to become a service company providing chemical solutions, but I noticed I had so many technologies that I said, “Why don’t I create a single material that could encapsulate everything we know?” That’s what Timeplast is.
My team often has to tell me to focus because I’m coming up with paints, glues, fishing lines… I am the visionary, more than the businessman.
Mark: It’s interesting that you were called a “serial inventor.” I don’t like that term. It’s been hijacked to mean a lack of commitment, but that’s not what it means. You can’t have a creative mind and not create things. They may seem dissimilar, but often they come from the same core.
Manuel: Absolutely. I have written down at least a thousand patent ideas. I also have an idea that’s bigger than anything we can accomplish by ourselves: the idea of a new city. I call it a “Singular City.” It combines gaming, science, 3D printing, and cryptocurrency to create communities on floating structures in international waters, something like the Homestead Act of 1862. I cannot fathom how a young, healthy human being will spend their entire life paying for a house and a vehicle. We have an incredible potential to change that. This is my idea to free humans from the economic burden that society has placed on them.
Mark: That’s really amazing. You reminded me of something Elon Musk said about his patents—that he wouldn’t pursue them because he wanted to give other companies the ability to stand up on their own.
Manuel: It’s definitely possible. And for that, I would like to ask for your help. I have a personal project that could benefit humanity tremendously if we all get together behind it. The only thing I need is to have a meeting with Elon Musk for this to take off. I am actively looking to have a meeting with him. If anybody listening has any point of contact, if you can help me out, I would really appreciate it.
Mark: I think you’re in a position for him to hear you because of your patents and what you’ve done. He typically listens to people with a track record. I will do everything I can and will certainly do a public reach out to see if I can get any support for that as well. It’s an honorable direction.
Manuel: Thank you so much, Mark. This has been very interesting. I’m sorry about my English; this spoken language is a bottleneck. I cannot stress how much better I sound in Spanish.
Mark: I so appreciate you speaking the language that I know. I will let you go and I really appreciate your time.
Manuel: No, thank you, Mark, and thank you everyone who’s been listening.
7/30/25 UPDATE
Timeplast’s Factory Tour 2025 and Pabyss firest activation.
Welcome to 2025. As with last year, we are selecting the most helpful and useful episodes of the previous year. Of course I feel that all of the episodes are useful and helpful. Each one has a use, a point, and a tangible takeaway. Each one is a unique perspective on something you’re familiar with or a bringing to your attention of something you may not even be aware of.
As they say, “It’s all good.”
But here are the top episodes from the thirty three to choose from 2024—and the selection was very difficult. To choose the “top” you have to leave some out.
Listen to this episode to hear a breakdown of each and why they were chosen.
- Live Your Life Iteratively
- A Strength Stretched too far Becomes a Weakness
- How Much Real Estate do You Own…in the 4th Dimension?
- Too much power to something via label
- Forced to be an Emergency Responder and Love Bombing
- Engagement Fiction for Your Type A Brain
- Feeling Safe & Relaxed – Parasympathetic Nervous System
- All of the Charms episodes – Anxiety, ADHD, OCD, Depression & Suicide, Systems Thinking*
Do you have a favorite episode from 2024 that didn’t appear here? Let us know.
*Did you know that Psych Charms/States of being episodes automatically appear on the charms page in addition top being listed on the episodes and ALL episodes page?
Resolutions—what works and what doesn’t and why.It’s really important that you don’t repeat the same things that didn’t work last time. You want to make this time to be different.
LevelsAs we mentioned in the Labels episode, we like to label things because it’s a shortcut. And that can make you dumber or smarter. It can also give too much power to the thing. And it’s that last point we’re discussing today—the power you give new years resolutions and the “beginning” of a new year. The new ‘start.’
[INSERT YEAR] is going to be different and I will [INSERT ACCOMPLISHMENT].
OK.
The difference.Resolutions are good for one-off actions. They are good for things you want to do or not do and declare.
Things like these:
- I’ll stop eating everything on my plate just because it’s there
- I will always switch the laundry to the dryer the same day I wash them
- I will always load the dishwasher
- I will always tell my kids/spouse I love them every day
- I will stop eating so fast
- I will always try to find at least one nice thing to say about everyone
- I’ll never let the gas tank go below 50%
- I will speak up when someone upsets me
- No more phone in bed
- I will read 30 pages a day
Etc. These are “one off” kind of things you just remember to do.
But even these are probably indicative of a higher issue, a system that is in place. The eating everything may be due to guilt you have about food which stems from something else and is causing other actions that are unfavorable. The not switching could be due to not focusing, or prioritization, or the dreading of the folding. The phone in bed may be a missing comfort due to lack thereof in your life (which could be a huge issue of self-care), or a lack of fun (again self-care), or a replacement activity (replacing what you should be doing) or a deflection of sleep which means a delay in bringing forth tomorrow.
Let’s talk about the difference, what works, what doesn’t, which are part of a system. And let’s help you make the ones that work.
And if you want more thorough, hands-on work to see what systems are in place that these resolutions reveal, reach out for a free no-obligation chat to see if the Alchemy for Life™ coaching system is a fit for you.
Supporting episodes:* If you use them you’ll get smarter (or dumber * Too much power to something via label * Dread * Selfishness Demystified * Self Love and Self Care Revisited
This is a separate article that goes with this podcast episode. it is not a transcript but rather an alternate summary of what the episode is about.
NOTE: Depression, and worse (the meaning of “throwing away the container”) is a delicate subject. The truth is that all mental health is a delicate subject, as is the psyche that we all possess and protect—voluntarily or otherwise. This is the fourth recording of this episode. Though I am no stranger to re-recording (I tend to re-record vs. edit to maintain the right flow) I’ve never had to re-record this many times. My challenge was balancing staying near my self-imposed 10-minute limit, sharing too much, treating the subject with the respect it deserves, and coming up with a meaningful, tangible take-away.
And that’s why I recorded it four times.
What is depressionDepression comes in many forms, and as with many states of being, there is a spectrum. We are talking about sadness all the way to the ultimate sacrifice. It is a sadness, a despair, and worse.
The reality of depressionThe reality is that there is a lot of confusion and frustration. There’s clinical depression—some of it caused by external forces. There is sadness, despair, and thoughts of throwing away the container (more on that later). These feelings, impulses, and desires can form a vicious circle of a downward spiral. See below.
My experience with depressionThis is one of the reasons I recorded this four times. How much is TMI, and how much is enough to help someone? I have experienced depression—due to situational circumstances. I have some times said, “I am too happy of a person to feel this sad.” I’m sure I’m not the only one that has a baseline happiness that is pretty high. But sometimes things get tough. Sometimes there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. When you have a pain that is so great you make the leap of logic and understand that these bad feelings—along with the good ones—are all kept in the same vessel, or container. So, logically speaking, if you get rid of the container, you get rid of the bad feelings and the unbearable pains.
The problem is that you get rid of the good stuff too, and the entire container.
Expressing your state of depression to others is beyond taboo for some people and is usually met with a quick solution as if they are helping you with a math problem. Most people aren’t willing to experience that level of empathy because sometimes there isn’t a solution. They are too content in their own bubble. So you suck it up and attempt to persevere.
And sometimes you just try to help others.
The reality is that just googling the S word throws a phone number into your face. But what if you just want to see what level of these thoughts is “normal?” The system is so concerned with preventing this that there is no middle ground.
I’ve said that it’s easier to get someone to talk you out of buying a boat than it is to talk to someone about the general concept of throwing away the container. And that’s all someone needs sometimes. So perhaps we should make this option just as available as the nuclear option.
Coping with DepressionWilling to throw out the container means you are willing to end it all to stop the pain. It’s logical—and you my not like that. But my counter-logic to that is equally absurd. If you’re willing to throw out the container for that reason, then why not do literally everything else to that end. Meaning, why not do a risk assessment, and do all the amazing things that risk throwing out the container?
Think about it—jumping out of planes, performing dangerous jobs, going on adventures, literally saving the lives of others—all could result in the same end. But you get to experience all of those things.
A sense of humor is one of the most powerful things you can have in your life. That, along with gratitude can really make a difference and not only break you from your downward spiral but can great the opposite.
The upward spiral. It’s so easy to go on a downward spiral—wow, they really hate me let’s think of the 27 other people who probably don’t like me, or wow, that was horrible, what other horrible, unfair things have happened. But what about the opposite? If you’ve heard the episode on the holy grail of positivity bias then you know what I am talking about.
It’s possible to create an upward spiral. Trust me. You’re that good.
The Depression CharmAs I said, this is coming full circle, because it was the symbol for suic*de that started me on the path. Since I disagree grammatically with what the symbol means, let alone the fact that I wanted to come up with original designs, let alone the fact that the people who created the original designs were rather litigious, I came up with my own design. This charm represents a sunset. But with all sunsets, it’s followed by a sunrise. In fact, if you take a picture of a sun and show it to someone, they will not be able to tell the difference between a sunrise and a sunset.
Thus the meaning of the charm. The symbol can tell you what you think is a downward spiral may actually be an upward spiral, that the dark time will be proceeded by a time of light.
Regardless of whether you grab a charm for yourself or others, just know that you are seen—especially in this middle-ground area. The holidays are a really tough time for more people than we realize. The tiniest act of validation can make all the difference in the world, and people in this state of being are not going to be broadcasting it to you. Or they did, a few times, and just gave up.
Don’t give up on them.
Resources:
The NIMH page on depression
The holy grail of positivity bias episode
Guess who has this one? 🙂
NOTE: As I’ve said before, these thirteen ‘states of being’ are not being looked at as an ‘ailment’ or a ‘disease’ or a disadvantage. Just as there are upsides to what some would consider a disability, there are downsides to what some would consider a superpower.
What is Systems Thinking?Systems thinking is taking a step back and discovering, recognizing, and working within a system. It allows you to see above what others might see, to see the complex patterns in place, and even see the machinery making it all happen.
The reality of being a Systems ThinkerThe reality of being a systems thinker is seeing the system in everything. Much like someone who has been intimately involved in a process, a sector, a business, an affiliation, you find difficulty in not seeing ‘behind the curtain.’
That can be a down side for some that find difficulty in turning the big picture off and enjoying the moment. The massive positive is in being able to accomplish things because you understand the system. You know that you can’t just jam something into a system and not understand that the thing as a whole is going to react.
My experience with Systems ThinkingSystems thinking is was enabled me to write my first book—The Status Game, once I entered the world of dating and dating sites. It helped me to discover what was in place and that allowed me to write the much-expanded sequel—The Status Game II (and the upcoming finale—The Status Game III: Beyond Status). This also allowed me to create both a dating site from scratch as well as a card game.
Thinking in systems allowed me to go on to create a coaching system. This involved two systems—one conceptually that showed that life is made of three things, and a programmatic system that handled working with clients to help them discover their own systems and make actual changes within that framework.
When I started writing fiction it allowed me to see the three aspects of writing fiction that—when focused on properly—meant you’d never have writer’s block (and subsequently helped me to create both a seminar and a book-coaching process for aspiring writers).
Coping with Systems ThinkingAs I said, when you have a behind-the-curtain 30,0000 foot view of things, you could potentially get lost in that view and be detached. Personally, I just find it fun and am more than happy to get lost in the moment. Being mindful in general and having gratitude can help you with that. Even being grateful that you can return to systems thinking if you want to jump out of the moment can paradoxically keep you in the moment.
The Systems Thinker CharmI designed this one to look like a gear because a gear can remind us of all the gears involved in a system. People have said we are but a cog in the machine, with the cog being a gear and the machine being the system.
Having this charm can remind you to focus on the system, in your business, your way of doing business, your way of connecting and helping. It can (as with the others) be a reminder that there is more than the system and that you may want to be in the moment a bit more.
Alternate uses of the symbol:
- Being a gearhead. You like cars, you work on cars
- You’re a machinist and you live the physicality of actual machines
- You enjoy getting your hands dirty fixing things
- Building systems—mechanical, programatic or otherwise—is your thing
As always, just know that you are seen.
Take care.
Social Media and YouIf you’re on social media, whether it’s the Boomers Gone Wild of Facebook, the Graphic (in many ways) Instagram, the Millennial-Controlled Tiktok or the ‘business-oriented’ Linkedin, you will see the kind of posts I’m about to talk about.
Drawing a line in the sand… in your faceSome people post things full of words—typically a graphic telling you in no uncertain terms a bit of advice. You will see these over and over again, and the more you read the more you’ll get the impression that they are not talking to you.
They are talking to themselves. It’s like they are looking in the mirror talking to themselves and you are forced to sit on the toilet seat next to them and watch—over and over again.
Two sides of the same coinIf you are someone who posts things like this, I am not trying to diminish your enthusiasm. If you have read The Status Game II (or will read my upcoming The Status Game III – Beyond Status) then you know that they most powerful emotion we can feel is validation. If you’ve listened to Stolen validation then you know what I am about to say.
Stolen validation(I encourage you to listen to that episode). If you tell everyone you’re going to lose weight, then you’ll get kudos and pats on the back and bask in the warm and fuzzy validation. And then… nothing. Why? Because you’ve already received your kudos, so why even do it.
You just stole the reward from your future self.
Your Journey vs. The End ResultsIt is far more satisfying to share the results of your journey—which can include the entire chronicled journey—rather than to attempt to chronicle the journey in real time. And I’d submit it’s far less risky. Because failing in private (and perhaps regrouping and trying a different attack) is less painful than failing in public—in real time.
Those that are doing it just do it. Those that aren’t constantly post about it.
So if you have a lot to say and want to impart wisdom, that’s one thing. But if you are shouting into the void when it’s actually your bathroom mirror please don’t make us sit on the toilet and watch you.
Listen to the episode for the full conversation. This article is a summation for you.
Exotic CarsWhen people purchase exotic cars, they are sometimes hit with something called deferred maintenance. As with many car buyers, they see the value of purchasing a car used. The positive of that is that they get a car they want at a dramatically reduced price. The downside is sometimes that they hadn’t considered there might be deferred maintenance.
Oops! There’s Deferred Maintenance With really expensive cars comes really expensive maintenance even down to just something as simple as oil changes and tire rotations can be shockingly expensive for those who have never owned an exotic car. And sometimes people own exotic cars, and realize they’ve spent the majority of their money on the car itself and don’t have a lot left over for the really expensive maintenance.
So they skip it. And when they do that, the maintenance is deferred to the next person, which of course is the person purchasing it.
All that time and they didn’t do it… 👀
GratitudeAs I’ve mentioned in other episodes, gratitude is one of those rare things in life that really access an antidote to a lot of negativity. It’s the last thing you would think would work and yet it does. When you have times of sadness or hopelessness or things aren’t going your way or you feel that life is unfair, the last thing you think you should do is just become grateful for what you do have. It seems like a copout, but it’s not. It’s exactly what acts as a remedy in those cases.
I rarely use this word because so many people do, but I find it to be quite powerful.
A tree falling…If a tree falls in the woods and there’s no one there to hear it does it still make a sound?
Well yeah that’s not how sound works.
If you feel gratitude for someone does it still count?
Of course it does. However, it has even more meaning if you share that gratitude with the person you have it for.
A license to be grateful
As I said in a number of episodes, you need to give yourself a license to write and be creative, instead of preventing yourself from doing so. The same applies to gratitude. We feel we have to wait for birthdays, Christmas Thanksgiving, or… worse.
We don’t. We shouldn’t.
I’m grateful for you—the person reading this or listening to my podcast. You spend your valuable time doing so. I’m grateful for those that give me feedback—whether its a review, or a comment, or a shoutout here or there.
I’m grateful for a lot of things that I could share with you here but instead, you probably want to think of what you’re grateful for.
Happy Thanksgiving to those that celebrate, wherever you are!
Cheers!
A new formulaHere’s an interesting concept for you, just when you thought you understood that life is made of three things: Time, Energy and Resources. But after ll, this is alchemy.
Time, Energy and ResourcesAlchemy for Life™ has always been about life being three things. And we spend those three things on five facets. it’s the basis for the podcast, the coaching system, and a way to map your life out by a method tht nothing else can.
It’s energy, not time
We’ve talked about how often I’ve encountered someone who thought they didn’t have time to do something when almost invariably they don’t have the energy.
But there’s more to it than that. Even if you have the time and the energy to do something, if you don’t make the space you’re going to find it difficult at best and impossible at worst.
That’s where the new formula comes in. If you’re trying to accomplish something, there are really two ways to give yourself a means to do so:
You can just carve out the time you think you need, or you can give yourself the space for it.
Let’s talk about that concept in this week’s podcast.
References
multitasking and the forgotten glue
What is Positivity?You may think that ‘positivity’ doesn’t belong with such states of being as OCD, Anxiety, ADHD and the others featured in this 13-part series, but I think it does because it is markedly different than the average person. Positivity isn’t just being nice. Positivity isn’t being positive blindly. It is a state of being in which your base level is high positivity. You tend to see the big picture and your scale is set properly (see below).
The Reality of PositivityThe reality is that this state isn’t just being cheery, but seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and not sweating the proverbial small stuff. People tend to be suspicious of people who are very positive. We think they are so nice to us because they must want something. They don’t. We think they aren’t listening or taking something to heart. They are.
My Experience with PositivityIt can get a bit daunting when you don’t know a lot of people who are also positive. When everyone else is down most of the time, and seem to always seek out the negatives you can feel a bit left out. Strangely enough, being the positive one can really make you feel like the odd duck when something doesn’t bother you as much as it bothers other people. When you speak up about it they tend to think you are taking the side of the opposition when in fact, you are simply expressing your perception of what’s happening on the whole.
People like commiseration and they will view your positivity sometimes as condescension, lack of empathy and lack of interest.
Sometimes with positivity, no good deed goes unpunished.
It of course is part of the human condition to have ups and downs—by design.
I have often said that without fail people who seem the happiest and kindest are the people who have gone through the most difficult of times. I have said that their scale is set properly and they actually know what zero feels like.
(listen to the story demonstrating this on this episode)
Coping with PositivityIt might sound odd to ‘cope’ with something good, but there are downsides to this. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, but the silent one gets nothing. So, being positive and not complaining, and not speaking up when something isn’t perfect can mean that you get less attention, less forgiveness and, understanding. Sometimes you have to remember to ‘let something get to you’ so that you have an equal and opposite reaction to things in your life—instead of sitting idly by and envying those that always speak up and are treated with more respect.
It’s a delicate balance.
The Positivity CharmI designed the icon for this one simply as an up arrow. Because the charms have a loop and actually have an up and down, this arrow always points up.
Alternative uses and meaning for this charm:
- A reminder to be more positive, if you struggle with negativity (especially because of our built-in negativity bias)
- A reminder that you have a lot going for you, or perhaps just one thing that always makes you smile when you think of it (or them)
- It can be your talisman for avoiding negativity
- The up arrow may remind you to look up to where you believe all the good emanates.
- It may be your spiritual reminder
- Perhaps this helps you to elevate your conversations.
You can always go to https://www.alchemyfor.life/balancecoaching/charms/ for the latest news on them and grab one, or two.
Remember: whatever your state of being, whether you grab a charm or not, you are seen. Join the community if you want to chat about this episode. It’s free.
This episode is part of a 13-part series on ‘states of being’ on the Alchemy for Life™ podcast hosted by Mark Bradford. Over 250 episodes are available on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube and anywhere podcasts are consumed.
Resources:
The podcast episode on the web
The podcast episode on iTunes
The post Is Positivity just oblivious contentment? first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Forced Emergency Responders and “Love Bombing.” Emergency Responders and the 2:00am call for a wooden spoon When we think of emergency responders, we think of paramedics and ambulances and firefighters and police.
If you make widgets, no one is going to call you at three in the morning to tell you they desperately need a new stapler or a wooden spoon or any number of things that aren’t considered an emergency item. That goes for services as well.
Other businesses and services may have a little bit of an emergency aspect to them, but for the most part are still handled proactively. Is this emergency aspect optimal? No. You should of course, be as proactive and not reactive as you can.
If you have a client that has been one for a while, and an emergency—perceived or otherwise—crops up, I’m fairly confident you would handle it as an emergency and help them as best you can.
Emergency Responders and being forced to be oneWhen you call the fire department in the tragic event you have a fire, you may not have ever dealt with them before, but they answer the call with maximum effort because it’s their job.
If someone contacts you with no previous experience or connection to you, has never paid you, and also doesn’t know you from Adam, and expects you to respond to an emergency without any kind of established relationship, they are making you an emergency responder
In an almost-perfect world, there’s a chance that you can ride up on your metaphorical, big white horse and come to their rescue and save the day and this is now the moment they have you produce all of their spoons, handle all of their technology needs, or be their sole provider of napkins for their catering business.
But do people who want to establish a relationship with you, who have the forethought of being proactive, and aren’t the type to patch together things with bandages typically introduce themselves by forcing you to be an emergency responder?
Let’s go with “probably not.”
Love BombingLove Bombing in a relationship is when one party absolutely showers the other with affection, gifts, promises and the like. I have often said that the amount of attention one gets in the very early stages of a relationship is inversely proportional to how much they’ll get for the rest. My anecdotal evidence has been discussed with four separate women who have told me the exact story of a man who did exactly that—showered them with affection, flowers, etc. and then soon after marriage became neglectful, jealous, and worse.
Instead, it’s the low, realistic, burn and build that makes for a solid relationship.
Love Bombing in Businessif you connect with someone who is going to hook you up with contract work or hire you as a consultant, refer you, or even hire you directly, and they not only paint a near perfect picture of your relationship and what you’re going to get out of it, but also continue to add bonus after bonus and all of the other things they can probably do for you—the proverbial carrots…
The same phrase applies.
If they want to connect with you—and they start selling past the sale, and start promising all those extra things they can bring to bear, with their metaphorical dozen roses…
The same phrase applies.
As a side note, if YOU are doing this—meaning you start making lots of promises about all the other things you can offer if they would just say yes—then you probably don’t really believe in your product.
Or worse, you are not telling the truth about it.
Because if you truly believe in your product, then that’s all you talk about.
ps – We of course weight each opportunity separately, whether it is a personal relationship or a business opportunity. But you have probably been through this and learned the hard way.
Wisdom is like that.
See The Status Game II and Beyond Status* for a detailed explanation on this in the chapter of the same name.
The post Forced to be an Emergency Responder and Love Bombing first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
What is OCD? Do I have OCD?OCD stands for obsessive-compulsive disorder. It shares a symptom with ADHD in which you can be caught in a repetitive loop because of anxiety and stimulus. But it is different than ADHD.
The reality of OCD The reality of OCD often involves constant, intrusive thoughts and the need to perform specific rituals to reduce anxiety. Day-to-day life can feel consumed by repetitive behaviors like checking, counting, or cleaning, making even simple tasks take much longer. This can lead to exhaustion, frustration, and difficulty focusing on other responsibilities.
If you have to make sure all of the stove top burners are off, and you have to do it from right to left, and you have to do it three times before leaving your house you can be a bit… delayed.
It is interesting to know that there is something very ritualistic about this behavior.
I tend to find a lot of value in both rituals and ceremonies, and you can learn more about that in the episode called become ceremonious. But become ceremonious is talking about giving more meaning to something and taking your time. On the other hand, OCD is creating a repetitious ceremony for other reasons.
My Experience with OCDAs always I’m giving my experience, from my perspective on a particular state of being and this is no different. I’m not giving perspective from a clinical evaluation, and I think most people are in that same place. Most joke that they have ADHD or OCD or Autism, and are pretty convinced that they experience Anxiety. Your mileage may vary.
Having said that, I never really thought I was OCD. The exception being this: I have two coffee warmers—one in my home office, and one where I have coffee and wake up in the living room in the first hour. When I leave the house, even if I’m convinced that I’ve turned them off, I’l go back in and check all the while mumbling under my breath that this is dumb.
But I do it because it takes 30 seconds to prevent a fire while I’m gone. Nothing really has to be in a particular order—I don’t care if the food on my plate touches, I don’t arrange my many mugs a certain way. My office is a bit messy at times. I do like to fold my towels a certain way but that’s because I learned how to make them look pretty (I was having house guests and thought that would make them feel more welcome) and it just sort of stuck. True, if I have cheese, sausage and crackers at the end there’s almost always a bit of cheese, sausage and crackers cuz I like to eat them in parallel because they complement each other. But that’s it.
I tell you this in case you can relate. I tell you because it’s really easy for people to fall into the trap of pointing a finger at a specific affliction, or state of being.
It’s OK to be quirky. It’s OK to have a personality. And it’s also OK if you have OCD.
Do you? Do you think you have OCD?
Coping with OCD, and yay acronyms!CBT and ERT are used quite a bit to help those with OCD. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is commonly used to treat depression and other issues. In Three Voices, there are a number of exercises that are essentially CBT in which we use our third voice to overcome what our second voice tells us.
ERT (Exposure and Response Therapy) is like CBT but it’s used to gradually expose someone to the thing that triggers their OCD. So in the case of someone who has to check the locks even though they know they are locked, the therapy may go so far as to suggest someone leave their house without locking their doors at all. Obviously one should take care with this particular use of it. But you can do many things like this to challenge your own OCD. Being gradual can be a good way to slowly overcome it without setting off a strong reaction. These strong reactions are also addressed in the new book BeCAUSE!.
OCD Psych CharmI’ll let you in on a secret—I originally wanted to make the symbol be of something very symmetrical, but then print it offset in such a way that would be annoying. But then that’s not a cool symbol. So after some thought, I came up with the universal symbol for power/on/off for electronic devices. My reasoning is that often OCD will cause people to check if something is on, if it is off, or turn things on/off in a particular order, or repetitively. So now you can have your own power button that you can push.
Possible Alternatives
- You may need to be reminded to not always be “on” (if you’re in sales, or have a public figure persona). Push it just before you get home to your family. Push it just before you talk to clients!
- Remind yourself to be on, put a smile on, and put your best foot forward
- You like technology. ’nuff said.
Remember: Whether you have your OCD charm or not, you are seen. Join the community if you want to chat about this episode. It’s free.
Resources:
NIMH page on OCD
The post What is OCD? Do I have OCD? The Reality of coping with OCD. first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Toddlers with chainsawsAre chainsaws bad? No. Should toddlers use them? No. We use chainsaws to perform a task, we don’t give them to toddlers because it is dangerous to do so and the toddlers don’t understand the balance of danger and functionality.
Airbags, insurance and fire extinguishers, oh my!Does your car have airbags? Do you own fire extinguishers? Do you have insurance? All of these things are in place because you had to think the negative thoughts of contingency plans in case something negative happened. Entire departments exist within businesses for just such a purpose.
Thinking and speaking negative thoughtsWe have to think and speak negative thoughts. As I said in the The Holy grail of Positivity Bias and Just Be Positive, thoughts are just thoughts, and being afraid to think certain thoughts does not help you get to your goal. You can talk about the negatives all you want as long as you’re not creating barriers for yourself that don’t exist.
if you have been through a system for years, and you explain to someone the ins and outs of it and why you’re making the choices you are not being negative, you are explaining how things work. Beating your head against the wall repeatedly because someone tells you that to not do so is being negative is not realistic.
Let’s talk about the incredible waste of energy of avoiding negative thoughts.
The post Don’t speak that into existence! first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
ADHD – Also known as Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.What is ADHD?Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. People with ADHD typically struggle with finding it difficult to focus. They are easily distracted in pursuit of stimulus. Sometimes the stimulus leads them to hyper-focus.
The reality of ADHD The reality for many people is that ADHD is a constant challenge for them to focus. You’ll see often online that people joke about their ADHD I myself have joked about somehow ‘harnessing it.’
If you have ADHD, you may be very frustrated with your seemingly paradoxical ability to hyper-focus on something one moment and then have no focus for the things you really want to do another moment. The hyper-focus is almost never the thing you’re trying to accomplish. But it does stimulate you.
My experience As I said, I would often joke about weaponizing my ADHD to get an awful lot of things done. It seemed to be the likely explanation for all of the disparate disconnected things I was not only completing rather thoroughly but also in record time. Case in point all of the books that I wrote in a short period along with podcast episodes such as this one in addition to the pilots license I earned a year ago.
But I don’t believe I have ADHD. Though I am able to hyper focus on something. It is not because of a have a Pavlovian quest for stimulus. Instead, I have just learned to understand how to focus and how to pursue something to completion. It’s a mental stamina that I’ve developed. In the podcast episode called in the zone. I talk about being in the zone.
Though being in the zone share some similarities with hyperfocus, it is rather different. Hyper focus of ADHD can be so intense and all encompassing that the person loses track of time. Being in the zone does speed up time, but you still have an awareness of time passage, and in fact it is this awareness that sometimes makes you feel like you are just playing around when you’re actually getting work done since you are enjoying it so darn much.
As I am writing this, I am sitting outside. And Across The Street they are cutting down a tree. The constant chainsaws is very annoying, but I’ve decided that I’m going to push through it. It would be an easy excuse to just either move inside or put this off to a later date.
How do you cope with ADHD?It is common, and almost a bit too common, that doctors will prescribe ADHD medicine. I had my own encounter indirectly when I mentioned to my doctor that when I took or used to take sinus medication it allowed me to focus without distraction. she said that one of the ingredients was also in ADHD medicine.
I’m often surprised to find that people who suffer from ADHD have an absolutely terrible diet riddled with bizarre modern chemicals. They tend to stare at the TV and spent very little time physically moving. I would surprise that people should really try doing some involved exercises. Even walking Can change your state of being as I talked about in the parasympathetic nervous system episode.
No, I am not dissuading you from taking meds if you need them, but I think it’s important to have a baseline of healthy eating healthy outlets and healthy exercise. I think putting those things in place may give some a little reprieve if not a dramatic change in what they call ADHD. But By all means consult the doctor.
ADHD Psych CharmThis charm uses the infinity symbol to represent the infinite thoughts that one can experience while focusing on none of them. It’s the infinity of possibilities that can be so overwhelming. Paralysis by analysis if you will.
As with the other charms I used a symbol that was not color-dependent so we can have some fun with color combination, as well as having the freedom to use and display it all we want (no infringement). And, as with the others, it can be used for something other than ADHD. Whatever it speaks to you is what it means
Possible alternatives* The infinity of possibilities * The infinity of the universe and all it has to offer reminding you that there’s so much more out there * If you are a believer in reincarnation, this may be for you * May have a very personal commitment that you have made forever and this could represent it for you * ADHD is represented by the infinity sumbol. As with the other charms
You can always go to https://www.alchemyfor.life/balancecoaching/charms/ for the latest news on them and grab one, or two.
Remember, regardless of whether you grab a charm, you are seen. There are a lot of people out there quietly suffering, and I don’t like that. I want you to know you are seen.
The post Psych Charm: ADHD first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Anxiety – The feeling of stress, the activation of a fight-or-flight mode.Anxiety for some can be a fairly dull but constant sensation of having to attend to a problem—a nagging feeling that you need to take care of something. This can be from the demands of your job, your responsibilities as a parent, a spouse, a parent or a combination of all of the above. For some, however, it can be an instant-on attack of intense feelings of fight or flight complete with rapid heart beat, and even sweats. It is the activation of the sympathetic nervous system over something you are aware of, or something you are not.
The reality of… AnxietyThe reality of anxiety is that everyone experiences it in some form. The problem is that sopme people get activated by things they are not even aware of (this is addressed in the upcoming book BeCAUSE!) and because of that, like many things, they can be going through a very intense experience alone. Some people get overwhelmed easily. Others are reminded of their past and how they failed at similar tasks (this is addressed in the book Three Voices).
My personal experience with AnxietyFor a very long time I was of the mind set that people who experienced it were just…well, stressed. Being self employed, going through a diovoce and raising two kids on my own 100% responsibility had it’s moments of stress. But I never really thought I experienced anxiety. I tried to keep ducks in a row, and sort of knew where all the stress was coming from. It was fairly predictable some days, some days not so much.
If anything I would experience what felt like a biological fight or flight, but no accompanying thoughts. This attack of panic would make me go hmm at best, and sometimes I’d check and say “Nope, all good.” Sort of like just having too much coffee—the effects are felt, but there was no fighting or fleeing. But my stress could be your anxiety.
How do you cope with Anxiety?As I mention in BeCAUSE!, there is an underlying foundation of directives that have helped you and hindered you. These directives can certainly cause you to avoid something like the plague or move towards things that make you happy. And if you don’t lknow what’s causing it, then it just “happens out of nowhere.”
The first step is getting to the root, and interestingly, the root can be a smell from your childhood, the tone of voice someone uses, or an unfortunate avoidance of something most people would not—because you never developed the resiliency to deal with it. Something as simple as reframing a thought can help. Things like yoga, meditation or the over-used buzzword of “mindfulness” can actually help. Breaking things down into smaller componets (which is a lot of what the AFL coaching is about) can allow things to be in digestable bites. You can listen to this episode on the book Three Voices and this one about how our Second Voices talk to us and others.
The Anxiety Psych CharmAnxiety is represented by a lightning bolt because it can appear suddenly and be very intense. As with all the Psych Charms the icon was something I developed to be universal, easy to understand and color-independent. It can also represent something other than Anxiety. Whatever it speaks to you is your relationship with it.
Alternate meanings:
- Remind you to live in the moment and not live so fast
- Take your time with eating (eating too fast is a leading cause for excess lbs and other issues)
- That inspiration can strike at any time
- You’re an electrician
- You’re a storm-chaser
You can always go to alchemyfor.life/charms for the latest news on them and grab one, or two.
Remember, regardless of whether you grab a charm, you are seen. There are a lot of people out there quietly suffering, and I don’t like that. I want you to know you are seen.
The post Psych Charm: Anxiety first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Gamification, Iconization and TangibilityThose are some crazy words. They’re fun and I like saying them. But what do they mean?
My historyI have always enjoyed looking at things as a system. It was only relatively recently that I realized that was what I was doing. it was so natural and innate that I didn’t give it much thought. Previous to giving it that name, i thought I was just gamifying things—but that’s a different thing.
Seeing things as a system is passively viewing what is in place to understand the interconnectivity between the moving parts. It is understanding the system in plce and how it works.
Gamifying is taking a system, a process, a procedure, and then making it a game. Many years ago I created two pen and paper role playing games, designed, molded an d produced three 12 sided dice to handle skills and combat.
Gamifying is typically taking something in real life (usually something you want to accomplish, or something that’s mundane) and making it fun. You can gamify anything from getting your kids interested in doing chores, to creativity, to motivating employees, to exercising and losing weight.
Making a “game” out of something does not mean you disrespect the underlying seriousness of what you are trying to accomplish. On the contrary, gamification can be used for some of the most serious things in life. It is a way to enlarge texture, to see things more clearly, and to give things a shape that otherwise would have none.
IconizationThis may not be a word, but it is now. iconization is my term for taking something and literally making a recognizable icon out of it. Sure, the icon for the messaging app is a speech bubble, the icon for file manager is a manilla folder, and the icon for TikTok is a musical note.
But what’s the ‘icon’ for autism?
You’re just talking about logos, MarkWell, the puzzle piece came to be a representation of autism, as the person who originated it said it was a “puzzling affliction.” But that doesn’t go over too well with a lot of those in the autism community.
But what about anxiety? Depression? Hypersensitivity? Not everything has a symbol or an agreed-upon symbol. And some of the symbols are over-complicated and rely on a specific color (or colors).
My cafe epiphanyI was at a cafe and noticed the girl behind the counter had a semicolon tattoo on her wrist. “Oh is that a writer thing? Are you a writer?”
She explained that it is the symbol for those who have been affected by suicide—whether personally or knowing someone who went through thoughts on the subject or who took the ultimate permanent solution. I was taken aback in my blissful ignorance.
It was a way fir her to be reminded, comforted, and was a talking point for those tshe interacted with.
But not everyone gets a tattoo. So I got to thinking… What if there was a way for you to carry a tiny reminder of something like that with you? What if you could be reminded and comforted? What if there was something that you could look at that told you it was ok to be different, that your sensitivity to sound might not be shared or understood by others and it would give you more stamina to be tolerant? What if it reminded you that with the downs eventually come the ups? That your ADHD gives you a million ideas but picking one might be a challenge, and that’s OK.
Enter Psych CharmsSo I created little colorful charms that you can put on your keychain. They range from Anxiety to ADHD to Dyslexia to just being a very positive person. And yes, I included the semicolon.
Some of these psychological states of being either don’t have an icon that goes with it, or has a symbol that is too complex or color-dependant or don’t have one at all.
So I invented a few. And I’ve created them in different colors, which is one of the advantages of not having a color-dependent symbol.
The Charms seriesI’m going to focus on one for each episode. I have touched on some of these states of being in the past, but this will be a series that you can follow along with.
I hope you enjoy the episodes, the charms, and truly feel that you are seen.
Because you are.
The post Gamification, Iconization and Tangibility. first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Are you creative? No matter what your job, career or calling is, no matter what hobbies you have or do not, you have creativity.
What if we treat it as a separate skill? What happens then?
You’ll be amazed.
Join our free community at patreon to talk about it.
The post Creativity as a skill first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
“I see systems”This is something I have said for a very long time. Once I learned that this was one of my core directives it all made sense. But what does that mean, and how can that help you?
Let’s talk about the systems in your life.
If you don’t see the system you could be suffering because of itWhat happened when you became aware of a system? Did it change your life? Did you change jobs? Let’s talk!
The post If you don’t see the system… first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
😎 NOTE: The members of the AFL Patreon Community heard this episode last week. They get them a week early. You can too. Join it for free!
What is ADHD actually?The term ADHD gets thrown around a lot. People use it for everything to describe an actual condition in which someone cannot concentrate, to being easily distracted, to having bouts of hyperfocus.
Do you tell people you have ADHD? Do you use it to explain why you got distracted? Do you yell “Squirrel” and then laugh?
Perception & ReasoningWe have data coming at us in every form that we have a sense—sights, sounds, smells. Even taste and touch. Then add emotion to that as well, and we have to sort through all of that to make sense of it. Our Second Voice and memories play a part in this as well. You encounter something that triggers a memory and now you are dealing with the new data as well as the old data of the memory that just popped up.
Its the sorting and making sense that can cause fatigue and a sense of being overwhelmed—and can even cause us to shut down.
Why do they get to do it?If you try to push back on this data—on the things and people providing this data, it’s likely you will be called “sensitive” or “over-sensitive.” You will be told to just suck it up and deal with it. After all, nobody else is complaining that the music is too loud, or that the cleaning solution smell is making them sick. Everyone else has to deal with the requests from people who want services like yours and just sort through it, right?
Well, no. Have you ever noticed that people who are highly specialized (and usually highly paid) don’t put up with that? Shark Tank (and its counterparts like Dragon’s Den) is notorious for the millionaires that want a quick pitch and they will speak up—arguably rather rudely—if you are speaking too slowly, or not relaying the correct information. They have no time for incorrect data or data being presented incorrectly.
If you see a doctor—especially a specialist—they will coral and sometimes coerce you into telling them the issue quickly. They too will cut you off and will not spend too long listening. After all they are important, and highly skilled, and next!
If you are in the service industry (meaning what you sell is a service—anything from painting to coaching to real estate to insurance to forms of consulting—then you probably spend an enormous amount of effort trying to get your prospects and clients to communicate to you in a way that makes it easy for your brain to sort through the data. You may even have a formula or a sheet.
For Alchemy for Life™ coaching I created the Balance Sheet which allows people to fill it out and separate their activities into five facets, which I then take to map things out. Without the sheet it would be a very long question and answer session corralling and herding the person and their thoughts into something cohesive.
Everyone eventually ends up with this kind of funnel, and I’m not even talking about the venerable ‘sales funnel.’
Perception & ReasoningYour perception is your ability to detect and find this data. Your reasoning is your ability to make sense of this. What we are talking about so far is your perception. How you manage this input of data can determine whether you become overwhelmed or no, whether you become distracted or not, and whether you are able to provide the proper information to your brain.
So don’t beat yourself up for having this extra data. Adjust accordingly and those that honor that will get it.
The post ADHD, Perception and Overwhelming Data – It’s Not Your Brain first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
It’s time. After all these episodes, books, coaching, and articles, it’s time to approach this differently and give us a better way to connect with each other.
We both deserve it.
The post It’s Time for Something Different first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
I guarantee you will have a great day if you do this. And you might get a huge laugh out of it as well. Believe it or not this episode touches on and doubt, more experimental, psychology, and the holy Grail of positivity bias. All because your friend wants you to help him move a piano.
Experimental PsychologyThis particular exercise involves elements of the placebo effect, and something called Cognitive Distortion (not cognitive dissonance).
The post Guaranteed Great Day if You do This… first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
A New GenreYou are now part of the birth of a new genre—engagement fiction. I know it’s new because I just made it up.
If you’re a type a personality*, then you probably enjoy your brain being fully engaged for your work. But when it comes time for play, you may not really be feeding your brain the same kind of engagement without the stress.
People like this are not really satisfied with standard pursuits all the time. Sure they enjoy a mindless movie or show now and then but there’s usually something missing. They can’t seem to feed their brain that fun engagement without the stress.
Well, I have a solution and it’s based off of a conversation I just had with someone who is reading
The Sword and the Sunflower.
Listen to the ten minute podcast. And let me know what you think!
- This also applies if you have ADHD, anxiety or are easily bored.
All books by Mark Bradford
Author Site
The post Engagement Fiction for Your Type A Brain first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
You’re probably selfish for a good reason. If not, your definition of selfishness is what’s stopping you from taking care of yourself properly. This is not about self-care and self-love. It’s about something entirely different.
The post Selfishness demystified first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
You might be giving too much power to something in your life, just because you gave it a LABEL.
See labels for more on labels in: If you use them you’ll get smarter (or dumber)
The post Too much power to something via label first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
How much real estate do you own?
A fascinating way to look at one of The Big Three….
The post How Much Real Estate do You Own…in the 4th Dimension? first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Phrases and mantrasWe all have phrases we can readily repeat. Some of us have important phrases that have made an impact on us. Some of us (like me) even have a mantra we live by.
The most impactful
Doing an inventory, I came up with three phrases that have had the most impact on me. There are others, but these seemed to be a good collection—and I thought it would be fun to put them all in one podcast.
Your phrasesLet me know if you have a phrase that’s helped you in life—protected you from harm, kept you on track, enlightened you, etc.
RatingIf you’re enjoying these free podcast episodes, gosh, I’d really appreciate a review… on whatever platform you’re listening on.
Please and thank you.
PS – Stay tuned for a beta reader offer next week!
The post Three Phrases to Improve the Quality of Your Life first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Have you ever been stood up?The origin of the term has many folksy definitions. I encourage you to look it up as many are sort of saucy, But we recognize this meaning someone did not show up as planned for a meeting, and usually includes them not reaching out or responding to queries.
We’ve all had this happen, right?
Switching Gears and the Element No One Talks About.If someone stood you up, that means their location in time didn’t match yours. But what is life made of? That’s right—Time, Energy, and Resources. When you go to a meeting you are not just occupying the same physical and temporal location, you are also bringing energy. You may have a lot of prep work, and research. You may have to become extroverted when you are introverted (a monumental task for some). And you may have to prepare emotionally, especially if what you do for a living is taxing (therapy, etc) or you are meeting with a difficult client, or you have an emotional meeting with friend or family.
That’s all energy.
And we can’t just flip a switch.
Check out multitasking and the glue that holds it together. That applies to energy too.
So when was the last time you were stood up, and how did you react?
The post Stood up – Switching Gears and the Element No One Talks About. first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
The right and the wrong way to approach a networking eventMost of my episodes are about experimental psychology, how to deal with and manage time, energy and resources, or a unique concept I’d like you to consider.
Sometimes the episode is a purely business-related show. This is one of them.
The excruciatingly hilariously wrong way to handle a networking event.
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AdviceWho doesn’t like giving advice? Who doesn’t like receiving it? Wait, put your hands down, that was rhetorical.
In all seriousness sometimes we need to ask for advice (we can’t all be in a bubble) and we are lucky that someone values our wisdom enough to ask us for our advice. I certainly am honored when that happens and it makes me feel validated (see The Status Game II). But advice is a tricky thing.
Teleporting vs. empathizing vs. your wayIf someone asks for advice you have three ways to answer:
- You can teleport into their life, AS YOU and then just react. All of your history, experiences and personality comes with you but you are stuck there for the rest of your life.
- You can just answer the issue as if you’ve been given a test (then move on with no ramifications)
- You can empathize with the person, understanding what it must be like to be them, having to deal with issues that may be foreign to you, having their flaws and strengths that are different than yours
Which way do you think is best?
Which way announces itself with four special words?
The post If I were you… first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
The olden days of voice onlyIn the olden days when people wanted to collaborate they would jump on a conference call vs. jumping on a video call. It was extremely common to have a number of calls during any given week, and the larger the business the more conference calls there were.
How many is too many?There is an upper limit to how many meetings you can constructively have, and it’s not equal to the free space on your calendar.
That’s because a few things are in play:
- You need time to do the things
- It’s not just about the time, it’s about the energy (i.e. you’re not just promising time)
Conf calls and multitaskingWhat do you do when you are on a video call? Are you more likely to multitask if you’re on a audio call than video? If you want to know my thoughts on multitasking then check out the episode called multitasking. You might be surprised.
My experience🤣 Does my experience in the corporate world of calendars and conference calls mirror your own experiences? Let me know!
The post Conf Calls, Promises and Who is Actually Talking first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Sometimes you get the chance to see something from two perspectives.
Sometimes both perspectives come from the same person.
Sometimes that person is you.
The fun partHere’s a quick 10-minute episode on how and why this happens, and how you can use it not only on yourself but to understand others (and maybe help them understand you!)
The post The Challenge of Perspective first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Remember the How Do You Have Time For This? episode? If not, check it out. I talked about how more than once I’ve been asked “How do you have time for that” when I chat about books, speaking, podcasts, projects, etc. And my answer to them is always “That’s the wrong question.” The question should be, “How do you have energy for that.”
Energy over timeYou will find fairly often that you actually have the time for it, but all the time in the world will not be enough if you simply don’t have the energy. Think being drained from work and staring at the TV instead of doing that cool thing.
WorkAlmost without exception, work (and you) is measured in an amount of work in a given amount of time. Even if you are salary, even if you work on long term projects, and even if you are a pure salesperson, you are measured that way.
If you disagree, tell me what would happen if your current output of work happened in twice the amount of time. Would you still be paid the same? Would you even have a job? Time is money ain’t just a catchy phrase.
Your formulaIf someone gives you a certain amount of time to do a thing, the first thing your brain does is assess the amount of energy it takes to do that. And that’s how you assess if you have been given enough time.
Then you react. Does it stress you? Or does it make you feel comfortable?
Let’s explore this.
The post Protecting Your Energy first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Parasympathetic Nervous SystemThe network of nerves that creates the system that’s known for the ‘rest and digest’ feelings is the parasympathetic nervous system. This system is what aids in digestion, slows your heart rate and give you general feelings of well being.
I want that. I want a lot of that. I bet you do too.
Sympathetic Nervous SystemThe opposite is the Sympathetic Nervous System—otherwise known as the fight or flight system. While this is responsible for kicking things into a higher gear, the aforementioned system kicks it into a lower one, while still taking digestion up a notch.
The Color GreenI have always felt (quite literally) the effects of being around green—particularly the green of nature—trees, grass, etc. I’m pretty sure you have as well. There’s more to it than just a simple preference. it has actually psychological effects on us. Guess which of the two systems it also activates?
Lets talk about our parent’s warning about swimming after eating, what you can do to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, and the fact that I say that word like ten times in the podcast and don’t even mess it up.
🙂
Transcript of episode:
Rest and digest. Doesn’t that sound nice?
Well, hey there, welcome back.
What I want to talk about today is not something that’s really linear, but more a number of things that are all connected, like we are, in our system, in our nervous system. Do you remember how we were always told to wait an hour before swimming because we’d cramp up and die and drown? Well, it turns out that’s not exactly true.
In fact, something very close to the opposite of that is true. So, let’s start there. So, a recent sports medicine meta-study found that walking after eating has some tremendous benefits.
It affects cholesterol, the efficiency of how you digest your food, feelings of relaxation. There’s less of a spike in sugar. And if you’ve ever read The 4-Hour Body, you know just how important spiking glucose, or rather, not spiking glucose, can change the way that your body even stores the food.
In addition to all of that, walking also stimulates your vagus nerve. It’s a rather long, large nerve in your body that connects to something called the parasympathetic nervous system, which I just love saying, by the way. Isn’t that a fun word?
The parasympathetic nervous system is also known as the rest and digest system. It’s the opposite of your fight and flight system, and that’s your sympathetic system. So the parasympathetic is basically the opposite.
It’s the, oh my God, we went through this really stressful time. Let’s kick in the parasympathetic so that we can rest and digest and calm down and feel nice. So, oddly enough, movement after eating, in fact, you have this little window that right after eating should be used to then start movement, and the movement can be as little as 10 minutes.
In fact, the sweet spot’s probably, from what I keep researching, probably about 20 minutes or so. So if you go for like a 20 minute walk after eating, you’re going to kick in your parasympathetic nervous system, and that’s going to do all those wonderful things I just talked about. So imagine that you can literally affect the way that you’re absorbing food and its effect on your body just by taking a little walk.
So I would highly, highly recommend doing that. I would venture a guess that most people weren’t even aware that there’s these various layers of systems, oh, there’s that word again, various layers of systems that we have on top of our nervous system. You think we just have a nervous system.
Oh, okay, I have a nervous system. I can feel stuff if you poke me, ow. But the nervous system manages a whole bunch of stuff and just, you know, anxiety and other feelings.
And imagine that you have this system that says, hey, we’re gonna rest and relax, it’s cool. And then you have this other system when like a bear is chasing you that says, okay, we’re going to get hyper now and run as fast as we possibly can and get the heck out of here. But the latter system sometimes gets kicked in.
And you know, you’ve felt it. Even people you know, you’ve probably even seen the fight or flight mechanism kick in even in a conversation. You’ve probably heard me say in the past that I’m a big fan of green and that I’ve recently found that it really is important to me.
I feel a physiological effect from green. And I don’t mean staring at a square of green. I mean looking at natural green grass, trees, things like that.
It just really has a wonderful effect on me. So of course, like everything else, I had to research that. I had to look into it.
Were there studies done? Did people research it? Does it affect everyone the same way?
Is looking at a tree on your monitor the same thing as being out in nature and so forth? If you’ve heard my podcast episode on how ancient people couldn’t see the color blue, or at least that was the belief, we delved a little bit into that about the rods and the cones and how we see green easier and better than any other color. We’re built to see green.
So if you throw aside all the psychological things that we have built into green, oh, go take a walk in nature, oh, nature’s beautiful, all that stuff. If you say, okay, but is there some sort of direct connection between our brain and green and seeing greenish things? It turns out, yes, there actually is.
So besides what you would imagine, like, oh, it’s just so nice to be out in nature, it’s actually nice to be out in nature. Because guess what else stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system? That’s right, the color green in that fashion.
So you get all those benefits, everything from the release of gastrin as a hormone that allows you to digest better, to, you know, the calming effect, to the better blood flow, all that stuff happens also when we see green in this particular fashion. And the fashion, I mean, is seeing rolling hills of beautiful grass and things like that. How cool is that?
So now we have two things that create the same effect that actually can be multiplied when you combine them together. So imagine taking a walk after eating, that the walk itself and the stimulating of muscles and blood flow and all that stuff, and like I said, the release of gastrin and the massaging of things going on in between that allows you to digest things easier and the more readily available enzymes and all that stuff that allows you to sort of digest the food properly, almost like we were designed to eat on the run. Maybe we were because we take a bite out of something and run before the other animals get us.
Who knows? But you combine that then with something else that kicks in parasympathetic nervous system. I still haven’t messed up that word.
And then you get an even, like a multiplier that even helps all that stuff manifest itself in your system to an even greater extent. And you know what’s interesting because now throwing all that scientific stuff aside for now and all the this works this way, vagus nerve and all that stuff, if you just think back with your emotional memory, you think back to a time when you were at a gathering, let’s say, it was a gathering where you didn’t really sit, right? You walked around, talked to people, like maybe a networking event, maybe some other kind of event, maybe it was a baseball game or something, and you had to chase the kids a lot, so you didn’t just sit.
I bet you can remember a time multiple times when you were eating and doing a lot of standing where you didn’t really feel like you were eating all that much. It just felt really natural to eat. Like, you might have even gone home and thought, man, I ate a lot, but like, I almost feel like I lost weight, or I feel really better about what I ate, even though I ate bad food.
And that’s because the movement and the activation of this parasympathetic nervous system, I just said it to test myself, is what helped all the food get digested. So, I tell you all this because I want you to feel good, I want you to feel better, and I want you to understand how life works. And if it’s a system, I want to see it, and I want to discover it, and I want to explain it to you.
So, what’s your takeaway? If at all possible, try to get up and move for at least five or 10 minutes, possibly 20, right after eating. It is especially important if you ate like a lot.
Like, you feel like, oh, that was really good, oh my God, why did I eat so much? Now, I feel bloated, now I feel terrible, and I’m just a big glump just sitting here. Get up and go for a walk.
If you can walk outside and you have green available, I’m looking at you, Phoenix, Arizona, then you can even sort of multiply the effects. If you can’t get out, like, literally marching in place, I did some research, literally marching in place, as long as you’re moving your legs and so forth, can create the same effect. And it may look silly to you, your husband may be like, why are you marching in the bathroom by yourself?
Oh, no reason, I’m fine. I’m all good. So go for a walk.
Go for a walk after eating, and just understand you have these two systems in place. One of them is to help you rest and digest. One of them is to help you fight or flight.
And there are things in your life that can activate both of them. And now I just gave you the two things that you know are going to activate the fun one, the fun one that makes you relaxed. And like a lot of things in life, it’s counterintuitive.
The one that makes you move is the one that makes you relaxed and digest. But the one that you wouldn’t activate by just sitting there and having chips on your stomach and eating out of a bag, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. So get out there and move.
Thank you so much for listening. I really, really appreciate you and your time. Take care.
Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed it, I’d appreciate a like, share, or subscribe.
Feel free to reach out and better days.
The post Feeling Safe & Relaxed – Parasympathetic Nervous System first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Stroke support GroupRecently, I sat in on a stroke support group. The group was for both the individuals who experienced strokes as well as their caretakers/family members. I had the blessing of the admin staff to do so. Was it uncomfortable? Yes did I feel out of place? Sort of. Did I learn something very powerful? Absolutely. I always do.
Comfort zoneWe all stay in our comfort zones because they are, well, comfortable. Sometimes that discomfort is really quite a rush because it tells you you are in new territory and about to learn something. And I did.
The lessonThe powerful lesson I learned wasn’t from someone who had one, two, or even three strokes. It was from a dear lady who had had seven. Along with her support dog, she brought an iPad. She was clever enough to type up the things she wanted to share with the group a staff member read her experiences and they were shared. But unfortunately, those were quickly used up and she had far more to contribute. So she began slowly typing but then she noticed the room of silence waiting for her to finish. As her frustration mounted, she decided she would speak.
When she did, she did methodically, with a lot of effort, and with very few words. She seemed to make each one count, but for her she didn’t feel she was conveying thoughts in the same way everyone else did, so she apologized. She did so by moving her hand to her chest, then her mouth, and then her eye while she said “Sorry, talk hard.”
She needn’t have apologized for you see, I could understand her perfectly and I’m sure everyone else could as well. Despite what she thought, she was doing great! In fact, the problem wan’t that she wasn’t using enough words, it’s that we use too many.
Saying much with so littleSo the next time you communicate with others—clients, your boss, your employees, potential clients, friends, and family and loved ones. Remember this lesson.
Phrases like:
“I’d love to help you.”
I’m glad you’re my client.”
“You’re important.”
“I’d like to get paid now“
“I need help.”
and
“I love you.”
Those phrases convey so much with just a few words.
I’m Mark Bradford, I’m glad you read this, and you’re important to me.
The post Too Many Words first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Knowing your strengthsDo you know your strengths some people do and some people don’t. If you do know your strengths, there is something about them. You may not realize and that’s the subject of this podcast.
Stretching too farSometimes when we approach a goal or a task, we look for a way to do it that makes sense. We learn new skills and get better at our approach.
Just keep doing it!
Push harder and harder!
That’s pretty straightforward, but sometimes we encounter things that seem very counterintuitive and this is one of them… it can be disorienting and frustrating to discover it.
What if you push too hard? What’s the downside?
Listen in for what this means, how to recognize it, and the good news of what happens when you do.
It’s one of the most powerful life lessons I’ve understood. And it all comes from a simple phrase.
A strength stretched too far becomes a weakness.
The post A Strength Stretched too far Becomes a Weakness first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
What is an iteration? An iteration is an updated version of something built upon its previous version. But, and iteration can also be another separate version.
Examples of iterationsWhen someone bakes a cake, they can create a cake that has chocolate filling, vanilla frosting, and multicolor sprinkles on the outside. They can assess that cake and then realize that it would be better with raspberry filling, so they go back and create another cake with those parameters. Even though they’ve created two separate cakes—the second cake is an iteration of the first.
When someone works on a video or a movie, they have the benefit of being able to iterate that work product. They can add, delete, and adjust sections of the movie. They can apply a filter to specific instances of scenes or people. However, its the same movie. In the end everyone only sees the final product.
Kinda like you?
How we iterateWe live life iteratively. We can’t create duplicates of ourselves, but we do build upon the foundation of the past. Like the movie producer, we are able to add delete and adjust aspects of ourselves.
Let’s talk about how we live life iteratively, and what that means for us, improving ourselves, our relationships, and even our client connections.
The post Live Your Life Iteratively first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Type A PersonalitiesThe phrase type a refers to a pattern of behavior and personality associated with high achievement, competitiveness, and impatience. Does this sound like you? Does this sound like most C-level employees? Does this sound like most entrepreneurs and creatives? If you’re listening to this podcast you most likely are.
Productivity and meaningYou probably derive a lot of meaning from your productivity. You push harder and harder. Many people immerse themselves in their career and blink and then suddenly it’s 20+ years later.
And they have to retire.
And that word is terrifying. Why? Because you found meaning in what you’ve done and now you’re not allowed to do it anymore. And it has become your identity. It’s who you are.
Terrifying.
But there is hope and direction. You can still feel the meaning. You may actually find more meaning in this new direction.
Check out Job, Career or Calling for more insights into how this all works. And let’s chat for 10 minutes.
- Productivity and obligations are just that – obligations.
- If what you do for a living (productivity) also fits in one or more columns (learning, fun, health, etc) then it becomes more meaningful. It’s no longer a job or even career. It’s much more.
- Your career can become your identity, and when you lose the ability to perform that job (retirement) it can feel like you are losing your identity.
- You’ll find that the most meaningful things in your life fit in more than one column of the balance sheet
- You can not only take a turn, but bloom into a bigger flower for the thing that brings you not only meaning, but joy (and get paid for it).
The post Type A Retirement – the frightening truth first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
White SpaceThe first known use of ‘White Space’ was back in 1946, and it means the area of a page without writing or pictures. It’s the part between the words, the part that allows us to pause and consider. it allows us to compartmentalize one set of thoughts from another.
Social Media and the looooooong postHave you ever noticed posts on social media sometimes people post a few words, hit a couple hard returns, then say a few more until the post is about a foot tall? They do this to manipulate the way you read it. Each line becomes (presumably) an impactful statement. Guess what they are force-feeding you? That’s right, white space. So instead of a meaningful paragraph separated by some whitespace, you get white space on
every
single
line.
Why saying nothing is as important as saying somethingIt takes stamina to consume any form of communication whether you are reading a book, listening to an audiobook, a conversation, or watching a speaker. Pauses matter. In fact, sometimes they matter just as much as the words they separate.
Attention spans and the desire to complete sentencesBut there is a danger, especially when communicating in person, or in a conversation. If you have ever had thoughtful pauses in a conversation, more often than not, that will be interpreted as confusion, hesitation, lack of confidence, or uncertainty. Those who perceive this will then interrupt you and/or try to complete what they think you want to say. It’s also an open invitation for those that do not feel like they are heard, or have an unbalanced desire to add to the conversation.
Fiction, dialogue and ADHDFun fact – when I first started writing (even before I wrote my trilogy years later) I was so fascinated with dialogue that it intimidated me and inspired me to examine it very deeply. When I finally wrote my trilogy (after three nonfictions that did not contain dialogue) I developed a very specific way of writing it. I allowed it to stand on its own. I did not violate any rules of style but did develop a fairly unique way to present it.
The interesting thing is it became second nature and I didn’t think much of it… until a review specifically mentioned it. The review said the book was an easy read. It wasn’t in my humble opinion. it’s a deep slow burn with lots of layers. When I read further I found the review specifically mentioned the layout, and the reviewer explained that he had ADHD and this 400-page book was one of the few he enjoyed reading—because of the white space.
Listen to this episode—it’s got ample white space, and hopefully it gives you something to ponder as to not only how you communicate, but how you stay true to your thoughts.
The post Why white space is vital to communication first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
CoachSo what is a coach? And what is a life coach? “Life Coach” never really generated positive professional images in my mind, even though I’m considered to be one. It appeared out of nowhere and came with baggage. At least to me.
But now it seems that everyone is a coach, and each one has a different flavor. Even those that focus on a very specific task are coaches.
WordsYou know I like me them words. We are bombarded with industry buzzwords (see this episode). The right word can make all the difference in the world for a reader or a potential client.
I want to give some food for thought to both coaches and the people that hire them. Let’s talk about Mentors, Guides, Instructors, Teachers…. and Coaches.
- What’s the difference?
- Does using the term “coach” enhance or diminish the perception of potential clients?
- Is your coach a coach, or more of an instructor? Or a teacher? Or…?
- Does the term “Certified instructor” or “Certified coach” carry more weight in your mind?
- Does “Financial Coach” or “Financial Advisor” sound more professional to you?
Let’s talk about it in this open-ended episode.
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Three words There are a number of words that can cause an emotional reaction. I won’t use the word ‘trigger’ because that’s overused.
We’re not going to go over all of those words, but we’re going to do three of them: fault, responsibility, and ownership—and we’re going to explore the positives of those words. There’s a positive version of fault?!
A new bookIn an upcoming book one of the chapters explores the fact that we are told time and time again to take responsibility for things, and to accept a fault, and in (almost) every case, it is a negative thing. However, you’re never told to take responsibility for something positive in your life—a trait, a really good aspect of your personality. No one would ever say that, and yet it needs to be said.
Fault and responsibilitySometimes something isn’t your fault, but it is your responsibility. That phrase generates an odd response, doesn’t it? Let’s explore what we mean by this, and hopefully you’ll actually feel pretty good at the end of this short podcast.
Cheers!
The post Taking responsibility for the good in your life. first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
PassionEveryone talks about passion. For a long time, you were told to follow your passion. I talked about passion in Job, Career or Calling a few years ago. Obviously passions are good as they give us that energy we need, but there are a lot of things we are not told about them.
Multiple passionsBut what if you have more than one passion?
And what if you have more than one like?
And what if you have passions that are (seemingly) completely disconnected?
That can all be confusing, and daunting.
Symptoms are to passions what ailments are to… Just examining your passion(s) is like examining your systems when you are sick. Getting to the root of it is where your answers lie. And what do you think you can do with this information? The answer is something amazing.
PausingBy the way… this is one of the episodes in which I ask that you pause. It greatly benefits your absorption of this concept, and allows you to personalize it and take it to heart. So when we get to the part where you pause, please do so.
Let’s do it!
News from the futureAlso, this podcast episode is drawing from an upcoming book, so you’re getting a sneak peek. if you’re intrigued, stay tuned for the release this year.
The post Find your core directives and something amazing happens first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Google GeminiGemini is Google’s version of ChatGPT. It’s a large language model (LLM) that thinks and responds naturally. You can have conversations, ask for advice, ask it to play a part, and even ask it to generate images.
That’s where my journey began.
I asked it to generate a few images. This led to a discussion about Bias.
BiasYou see, Gemini’s handlers have you covered on bias, because they decided to remove all of it. The problem? They have their own bias.
Let’s talk about just how dangerous that is, and how it affects you, and why “removing all bias” is a lofty, impossible, and potentially harmful goal.
Check out AI, Language Models and Puppies for a background on AI (this time ChatGPT).
Here is the entire raw conversation. You can scroll past the images to when we discuss bias. For those familiar with AI image generation, Gemini’s generation is rather 1st generation, and for images ready for prime time, I use Midjourney.
Note – the original reason the word “blonde” came up is that, on a whim, I wanted to see if it could generate an image of the protagonist in Upside Down.
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Down daysIt’s normal for people to have down days, to have times in which they become less than motivated. it’s also normal to find yourself without purpose here and there. Sure, you have a purpose—you have good old Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to keep you going. Are ya hungry? In pain? Do you need to make money? Do you need a hug today (the answer is always yes).
But there are moments in which we lack a bit of motivation. Even people who are explicitly, painfully, blindly aware of motivation, productivity, the way things work, still have those moments.
Yes, I’m talking about me. Mark Bradford, at your service.
And I’m not talking about just “hanging out” or “putzing” or having fun. Those are all healthy, good things. I’m talking about those moments of being a little lost, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually1.
What are the two biggest reasons for depression?Stressful life events and trauma especially when combined with isolation and lack of support can create an atmosphere of depression.
UPSSo when I find myself in those moments (whether they are a few seconds or it looks like it’s gonna be a long haul) I turn to the thing I created to save me, to pull me out of those down times—U.P.S.
Again with the acronyms? Oh yeah. LIfe is made of three things, there are five facets to life, there’s the Do it to a F.A.U.L.T. method of getting things done, and now U.P.S.
Listen to this quick episode to see if it applies to you.
- Don’t read too much into that. This is not a discussion on being spiritually lost, or empty inside. That’s an entirely different discussion. I use the word “spiritually” because having a purpose can feel very much like you are in tune with the universe, thus “spiritual.” ↩︎
The post UPS – My secret for avoiding depression, being more productive first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Did I catch you in time?Every year I tell you not to make resolutions—not because I don’t want you to set goals, but because resolutions (at least the style of setting goals) traditionally have a fantastic failure rate.
So, before you make them (or if you’ve made them, before you try to execute them) listen to this, and it may be what actually allows you to make it happen. In fact, I’m sure of it.
Three types of resolutions, a different kind of goal, and Did you know there are three? There are. Let’s talk about it.
A new bookI have a new book scheduled for 2024 that goes into depth on some of the things I touch on here (including anti-goals). If you’re following me in some way (amazon, this mailing list, etc) you won’t miss it. I’m rather excited about it.
PS – I’ve been getting over a head cold, so my apologies if my voice isn’t pristine, but I really wanted to catch you before you created that repeating cycle of resolution–>fail–>beat yourself up and feel bad–>give up.
The post BEFORE you make resolutions listen to this first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
AI & ChatGPT*A language model uses a special kind of learning to conduct a ‘probability distribution’ over words used to predict the most likely next word in a sentence based on the previous entry. Language models learn from text and can be used for producing original responses (both short and very long), predicting the next word in a text, speech recognition, optical character recognition and handwriting recognition.
That description is mostly meaningless to the average person. When the average person uses it they announce a different description –“Oh, it’s a chatbot! This one is smart.”
Alarmed, alerted, aware, frightened, concerned—the visceral responseWe have a visceral response when hearing AI, and movies exploit this response. Let’s talk about AI, our response to it, puppies and a very specific imperfection that has me concerned.
*Note that I am not picking on CHATGPT, but have had the most experience with it. This episode really applies to any iteration of a language learning model—past and future.
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There are a lot of lists out there for how to obtain happiness, productivity, etc. As you know Alchemy for Life™ is exactly about that too. So, I’d like to not only share some of these principals, but tell you about my real world experience with them as well as what you will encounter by utilizing them. In other words, what the reality is of these things.
Ikigai – the intersection of all things goodThe first is a big one, called Ikigai (pronounced EE-KEY-GUY). I stumbled on this a few years ago. It is the intersection of What you love, what the world needs, what you’re good at and what you can be paid for. Check out the VENN diagram when you listen to the podcast. People talk about this a lot, but don’t really discuss where you start. I think that is one of the most important things to focus on when considering this outlook. Listen for the full discussion.
What makes you feel fulfilled at work?People often wonder what makes them feel fulfilled. If I ask you how you measure success it is probably an intersection of many things on this chart.
The post Japanese principles – helping you to fall in love with your job first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
“There’s no wrong way to do it…”
Have you ever been given that advice? Did it make sense to you? Did it set you at ease? No, me neither. Let me tell you why that is the worst advice you can give someone who is trying to improve their craft, and why you NEVER hear it from anyone who is accomplished at what they do.
Let’s talk about creatives, getting better at what you do, and the absurdity of running over people every time you get in your car.
The post There’s no wrong way… first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Do you have a catalog? if you call yourself a creative, then it is important to catalog your work. In that, I mean to take a step back and see the various foundations you’ve built. It’s a good idea anyway to take a step back, as many creators have to ask Does This Suck? (See […]
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Attitude is everything That’s one of those phrases we have heard to death and to the point that it’s lost any real meaning, hasn’t it? If you’re like me you might even cringe at it and just wave it off as mind-over-matter kind of nonsense—even if it has made a difference in your life. I […]
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Triangulation Triangulation is the process by which you use more than one location to find the location of something. I point gets distance, two points gets position on the ground, three points gets altitude. That’s exactly how GPS works—the more satellites the better the accuracy. Imagine Limiting Belief You hear this all the time in […]
The post Triangulating Limiting Beliefs first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Start with awarenessAs with every episode we start with an awareness. In this case it’s an awareness of the fact that we are always gathering knowledge.
ThermostatsMy thermostat tells me the humidity if I walk over to it, but even though I can ask and manipulate the temperature, I can’t ask about the humidity. So it has the knowledge, but it can’t impart it.
You’re a human, not a thermostatLet’s talk about your knowledge, and your intentions with it.
TeachingTeaching is a skill unto itself. You can be a world class neurosurgeon, but be horrible about imparting that knowledge to others.
A crime?I think it’s a crime if you gather knowledge and don’t impart it—even to yourself. So if you do one thing, think about the knowledge you are gathering, and if you impart it in some way.
Enjoy the podcast!
The post Thermostats, teaching and experience first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Great storms announce themselves with a single breeze, and a single random spark can ignite the fires of rebellion.
Bishop of Aquila – Ladyhawke (1985)
A great quote from one of my all-time favorite movies. You may even say it was an influence on The Sword and the Sunflower.
But that statement really makes you think about a major event, and how it “announces” itself. That tiny spark is a foundation. That foundation, that moment, it can be the beginning of a great thing—good or bad.
- That moment you know someone was cheating on you
- That time you figured out what made you happy
- That second you realized you were going to spend the rest of your life with someone
- That moment when you saw your child truly excel at something and thought “this is his thing.”
- That time when you made the connection between you and your best friend to be
- That moment when you figured out one of life’s mysteries
Let’s talk about when that’s happened in your life, my personal experience with it, and how you can embrace it for the good of your journey.
New book alert. When a chance meeting with an old man leads to a captivating story, the author is swept into a journey through time and the paranormal. Starting in 1966 at Oxford College, the story follows a professor’s pet project to uncover a message that spans all of written history—a message from the devil himself.
As a subscriber, you’re entitled to read The Devil’s in the Details before it hits the shelves of Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other stores! The book is available on Bookfunnel right now. For free. For you.
I only ask that you review it when it is released this summer. Those that read and review it will be entered into a giveaway to win a physical paperback copy.
The post A single breeze… first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
RetoolingIt’s been a bit because I’ve been busy exploring different media avenues. In addition to the podcast I’ve been exploring video shorts for Youtube, and small digestible video bites for Instagram and Facebook. So, welcome back! And check them out on my Facebook as well as my Instagram.
Being succinct, overcommunicating Something a lot of people struggle with is over communicating. The paradox is that they all think they haven’t said enough, but in truth they’ve said to much. The info they were trying to impart turns to static in the mind of the other person. So, more information actually meant less information received. A truly annoying problem. Let’s talk about why this happens and what you can do about it…
The Devil’s in the DetailsI’m currently accepting applications for a free read of my new novella – The Devil’s in the Details. You’ll get to read a free copy and be entered to win a paperback copy. There are limited spots so check out the signup form directly, or just go to markbradford.org and click on the Enter the Giveaway on the top menu. There are limited spots available. Once the book is published the contest is over.
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What is ceremony?If you look it up you’ll be told it is a “ritual observance or procedure.” Most cases refer to weddings, and that’s good because that’s the example I used in the podcast.
Why do I want more in my life?You want more if you’re trying to make a habit stick, or something is important to you but know one seems to understand that—including you. In other words you want something to be more important but haven’t been able to figure out how to do that. I get it. I’ve been there.
How do I add more ceremony?Let’s talk about how you can add more ceremony in your life which will make you feel better in general, make you feel happier, and help you make a habit stick.
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A reminder on the voicesWe use three voices to communicate with ourselves AND others. Even if you get that you may not realize that not only can someone’s second voice be speaking to you, but you might be using your second voice to speak to them.
Confused? Here’s a reminder for those who haven’t read Three Voices.
- Your Third Voice – Your speaking voice, the one I use in my podcasts.
- Your Second Voice – Your inner monologue, dialogue, the literal voices in your head (its much more than that too)
- Your First Voice – Your intuition, your gut feeling, your knee jerk reaction, your moral compass.
Have you experienced these situations?Ever talked to someone and realize that you’re not really talking to them, but instead your talking to their experiences, their fears, their… parent from their childhood? Ever talk to someone and feel like they are not “in character?”
or… ever just sat in silence with someone you care about, and just knew that you were in sync?
In both cases you weren’t communicating with your third voice.
Lets dig inListen to the podcast, and we’ll explore this useful concept and extend the foundation Three Voices. It may just explain an interaction you’ve had and give you an “aha moment.”
Three Voices – helping you communicate with yourself, and others.The post Who do you think you’re talking to? first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Most people think of self care and self love as the same thing. It’s all about you, being nice to you, doing nice things for you. Right? And it has a bit of stigma attached to it to easily make the average person (especially males) feel, well, just selfish about the whole dang thing.
It’s not selfish, it’s vitally important to your mental, emotional and even physical health. It’s important to understand the difference between the self care and the self love.
In this podcast we’ll talk about the following:
- The difference between self care and self love
- Why we make the exception for ourselves even if we treat others well
- How to change your perspective so you are treated the same as you treat others
- Why self care and self love are not just a reward system
- Why it’s not just a one-off system
Listen, and enjoy as this podcast is literally a bit of both self care and self love for you. 🙂
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I decided to make the text for this episode an outline vs. a long form article to match the podcast. Did you like this better?
I. Introduction:
A. Overview of the topic: the mind’s ability to recall negative experiences with ease (Negativity-Bias)
B. Purpose of the story: exploring the reasons why negative experiences are easily remembered and the ways to shift towards a more positive outlook
II. Background: A. Explanation of negativity bias
B. Understanding why negative experiences are easily remembered
III. The Challenge:
A. The difficulties of trying to recall positive experiences with the same ease as negative experiences
B. The impact of negativity bias on mental health and well-being
IV. The Search for Solutions:
A. Overview of different approaches to shift towards a more positive outlook
B. Discussion of the most effective tools for reducing negativity bias and increasing positivity bias (spoiler…)
- Mindfulness and meditation
- Gratitude practice
- Positive affirmations
- Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)
- Social support
V. The Journey to a More Positive Outlook:
A. Exploration of the challenges and obstacles faced while trying to shift towards a more positive outlook
B. Discussion of the importance of persistence and effort in creating change
C. Emphasis on the benefits of reducing negativity bias and increasing positivity bias
VI. Conclusion:
A. Summary of the key points discussed in the story
B. Final thoughts on the journey towards a more positive outlook and reducing negativity bias
C. Encouragement for the reader to continue their own journey towards a more positive outlook.
The post The holy grail of positivity-bias first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Three VoicesIf you’ve read Three Voices then you know we all have three voices that we all use to communicate with ourselves and others. As a refresher and for those who have not read the book, our first voice is our speaking voice, our second is also regarded as our “inner monolog” or “the voices in our head” or even a replay of a conversation.
Seeing it out in the wildLast week I had two encounters with people whose second voice was actively interacting with them (and consequently me). I’m going to skip the interaction I had that was particularly unpleasant for me, and go with the one I mostly observed with the other individual
The scenarioI was chatting with a gentleman and just before I came to see him he’d had an interaction with a man that was trying to goad him into doing something physical. Yes, the other dude was trying to get him to come to blows. He handled it like a champ and did not allow this to happen.
But there was a problem. His second voice was now replaying the interaction over and over in his head. You can imagine how this felt and I could see it in his eyes—that distant look of being somewhere or’ somewhen’ else in time. His second voice was challenging him—asking him over and over again why he didn’t do anything. You can probably relate with a scenario that happened to you in your past.
What he did next was predictable (to me) but invisible to others. Listen to this episode to find out what happened.
The post I saw two voices talking! first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
What’s wrong with me? / Intro to this thingMy unspoken perception (my first voice*) is as follows. I am not saying this is correct, and in most of this it certainly is not, but here it is.
There’s this thing. People who have overcome this have always struck me as… more adult than me. They seem more mature, more developed. But also perhaps more anal retentive? They overcame it—this thing—probably at an early age. They come from better stock, are more educated, more refined. They were taught this by better parents, or at Yale or something.
Of course my interaction with them never proved any of this correct but I continued to have this inner belief.
So then, why didn’t I overcome it and strive to be like them? Well, there’s a block preventing that:
If I overcome this thing two things might happen:
- I will be less me. I’ll be giving up parts and pieces that remind me of my humanity, of what it means to be uniquely me. This manifests itself in all the little baubles I hang on to, with stuff from my past, pics of the kids, old girlfriends, stuff from projects I worked on, or items that I one day may need.
- I’ll be less laid back, less comfortable, less easy to be around. I’ll be more “on” and “professional” at all times, and would even be uncomfortable when I’m alone, because I’ll be this new way. Meaning, if everything’s in its place and perfect then my house is less of a home. I can’t relax because everything is pristine like some sort of loner from a movie. Good people you can trust have messes, and flaws and are human, right?
Those two things are literally the opposite of reality.
I’ve been afraid of tackling this—not just on a case by case basis—but on the whole… as part of my personality. If I fix this I’m fixing me in a way that’s scary. Because what if it leaves ol’ lovable Mark behind?
I suppose this is an innate fear for anyone wanting to make a big change. We seek out that comfort and want to stay there.
But the paradox is that by fixing this you have MORE comfort, not less. You have less stress, not more, and you realistically can be more ‘laid back.’
This is in line with Alchemy for Life, the coaching and podcast I started years ago.
So what is this thing?
It’s clutter.
You might think it’s a joke—this anticlimactic answer to what you thought was mental click bait—but it’s not.
It’s serious, it’s prevalent, life long, and it’s ingrained in your psyche like a bee sting in your flesh. Any attempts to dig it out fail and the poison remains forever.
So now you know my mental blocks for avoiding it. The clutter isn’t so bad. Everyone has a “junk drawer’ anyway, right? So what if there’s also a junk closet, a junk pantry, a junk dresser top, a junk office area, a junk floor made of grey clothing, etc…
“Just put it away”The problem is that, just like saying “no to drugs” there’s more to the issue. You can’t just “put it where it belongs” for more than one reason—the most obvious being that it might not actually have a place. This is due to it being new, a one of a kind, or something that you just haven’t made space for yet.
You may do this because out of sight/out of mind has worked well enough for you. Or—and this is self-worth related—you may think you (and therefore it) is not important enough to warrant the time to make a special space for it.
Even if you live alone you still may fear carving out a space “just for that stuff.” A perfect example is a craft area. Sure the kitchen gets proper space, and the bathroom, and all the supplies that go along with those rooms. But a craft room, or a work area might feel sort of selfish.
And that is exactly what my knee-jerk reaction to some craft rooms has been. When I’d see someone with a really nice craft room, and all sorts of organization, I would sometimes think just how selfish they must be to put all that effort into that… just for themselves! The nerve of them. They should be solving world hunger, or making dinner, not having an epicly laid out room with all their tools and stuff at their fingertips.
And at the same time I envied them. But then they were more adult than me. They figured it out. And being in a relationship with someone like that would be scary. Imagine the expectations!
This craft area idea also extends to the kitchen and the bathroom and other mundane utilitarian areas.
Three reasons for why you create clutterSo I found there were really three things that generated the clutter. In other words there were three reasons that you would not have everything in its place.
Lazy. As you would expect one reason is that you just fail to do it. You have a place, all neat and tidy, but you just leave it out, on the counter, or you just shove a bunch into a big area (the classic “junk drawer”)
There’s no place like home. The second reason is that you actually haven’t made a place for it. But why wouldn’t you?
- Because it’s a one-off or it’s a new thing. You only just started buying/collecting/creating these. It’s too new.
- You didn’t think these things needed a place. You could always just throw them in with other stuff, thus creating clutter you have to sort through.
- I dunno. You might be unsure of what to do. Do these go near where they are used? Or do they go in a place that best suits them?
Sorting into minutiaDo not take all of this to mean that we are sorting down into infinity. That’s not what this is about. A jar of change is perfectly fine, we needn’t make a little tray for pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, half dollars, silver dollars, etc etc. Yes, sorting is the base of much of this, but it can be taken too far. The difference between non-clutter and clutter is the difference between a tray for pens and pencils, and a drawer filled with random office supplies. You don’t have to separate the pencils from the pens if you don’t want to. And in fact, if you almost never use office supplies, then a drawer full of random office supplies may not even be clutter for you. That may make the average person uncomfortable, but if you are a grandma that has an epic knitting supply you just might have a teeny drawer with three pens, two pencils, a few binder clips and a couple paperclips.
It’s all about what is in sync with your life.
Distance and proximity to headYou don’t store your forks in the bathroom. You don’t keep your socks in the garage. The WD40 is not in your top dresser drawer. Duh and double duh, right? We know how to store things by room and purpose… mainly. But we run into problems sometimes because of that. We rely too heavily on it and just stop there. As long as all our bedroom crap is in the bedroom that is enough.
And then the clutter occurs.
So we separate socks, undies, workout clothing, shirts, etc. Drawer, drawer drawer.
We should put things we use most in the easiest reach and/or near our head. Our head is the sensor pod that has the eyes and the ears. We design things so we don’t have to go shove our heads into the top shelf for something we use every day.
You’re not going to bend all the way down or get on your knees to open the bottom dresser drawer for your daily underwear. You want that right up top.
It’s that procedure, simply put, that allows us to organize best.
And you will find that if you are plagued with clutter there are a number of areas that you have done exactly the opposite for yourself. And at the same time it is the keeping important things within reach concept that has allowed you to comfortably forget about everything else—until you need something. Then you discover the nest, and start complaining to no one and everyone about not being able to find it.
Meaningful, purposeful clutterLet’s define the clutter we are not talking about here. We are not talking about what I call meaningful purposeful clutter. Meaningful in that it has a meaning, there is a reason for it. Purposeful in that it has a purpose—it is there for a very good reason. Meaningful, purposeful clutter only exists temporarily while the task that creates them is being completed.
Examples of this are when you are working on your car and now your garage is taken over with tools and parts. Things are laying all over the garage floor as if the car literally exploded.
When you are cooking there are cooking implements—spoons, ladles, a colander—lying all over the counter. There are mixing bowls, pans and measuring cups. Some are oozing ingredients onto the countertop. There’s flour and chopped items everywhere. It’s a mess. It’s temporary, and it has a purpose and a meaning. In a couple hours the kitchen will be back to normal—less perhaps the giant pile of pans in the sink. That too is temporary.
This is not the clutter we are talking about.
We are talking about the one without purpose, without meaning (well there is one in a way) and it has permanence.
Clutter.
You’re not decluttering if you are doing this If you are moving things to another place/room that just clutters that up (and isn’t the actual place it belongs) then you are just adding to clutter to declutter, and that’s not decluttering. That’s exactly what created clutter in the first place—the uncertainty of narrowing it down and just dumping it into an area.
Psychological blocksClearly there is something that prevents us from just having meaningful clutter (see above). Something is causing us to have the clutter that haunts us, annoys us, and plagues us.
It’s something beyond just being lazy, or “messy” or “disorganized” or “not having the time.”
Spoiler: it’s psychological. What follows is an introspective examination of why it affected me. You may relate to this.
Overwhelmed by the taskSo you start decluttering and sorting in good faith, and start to create piles of things and then… you stop. You’re overwhelmed. You start running into the other room, or reading old books, looking at old pictures, find interest in something you haven’t looked at in a decade. Oh, and you should continue this after you eat. Yeah, low blood sugar and all that.
You’re overwhelmed.
Decluttering is overwhelming because you get to a point of permutation that you can’t hold in your brain’s workspace processing area.
Meaning, when you take something out that doesn’t belong, and think there may have to be a new place for that there are only three options. When you take more things out there are three options, and so forth and that can all multiply. This goes here but oh I don’t have a space and is this thing like this thing and how many of these do I even have! Oh I can’t throw all of this out. Dang I wish my house would just burn down and I could start from scratch.
Don’t wish for a house fire. The solution is easy enough.
Listen to next week’s podcast for the solution. If you are a subscriber you’ll automatically get the pdf(s) that contain the roadmap and checklist that takes the emotion out of decluttering.
*Three Voices. My latest experimental psychology, explains that we have three voices and how we use them to communicate. While you’re at all this great fixing, why not pick up a copy. Just $9.99
The post Do you struggle too? first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Review of our most helpful episodes. From Interviews to a unique take on word meanings, to turning negatives to positives (and maybe vice versa) you don’t want to miss this.
The Complete AFL Episode Guide: A Catalog of All Our EpisodesWelcome to The Complete Alchemy for Life™ Episode Guide, where I give you a comprehensive overview of all the episodes in our podcast. In this episode, I’ll be narrating a catalog of all our episodes, giving you the titles and a brief description of each one. Whether you’re new to the podcast and want to catch up on past episodes, or you’re a long-time listener looking to revisit some of your favorites, this episode is for you. So sit back, relax, and get ready for a journey through the the Alchemy for Life™ complete episode guide.
Episodes mentioned in this Episode Guide You’re Not Alone – you have resources in me and AFL. * Just be your Best Self™ – what is that exactly??? * Stop Demonizing Comfort Zones * Potential – a possibly terrifying word * I Assume – Well, we all tdo, by definition! * Seek First to Understand – This is my mantra, and why. * Fate or Destiny – They mean the same thing… but… * Holistic Creativity is a Given – It’s a given for creativity, why isn’t it for everything else? * How do you have time for this?? – Um, it’s usually not time. * Real Life Motivation – We do things for only two reasons. * Speed of your Reality – What if you’re not impatient? * Shelf Life – Offers are not infinite – advice for creatives (and for relationships). * Liminal Spaces – Not just physical but also emotional (thanks to Neil for that). * Think outside the… Group – Are you in a number of groups? Listen to this. * The Four Hour Day – Consider when you actually work. * Hijacked by Ambition – That’s ambitious! Um, is that a good thing? * Labels – Using them can make you smarter (or dumber). * Thoughts vs. Reality – It’s the opposite of what you have been told. Is mindfulness important to you? * What are you measuring? – What you measure might be the difference between success and failure. * Zooming out. What does that mean, really? * Taking a step back – Alchemy for Life is not just a podcast, but a system, and… me! * The tension of disagreement – What happens if you actually admit this? * Did you stop measuring? Sometimes if you measure it reveals the problem… and we don’t want that. ha * Time, Energy and Resources – Widgets vs. Service! – Why doesn’t anyone ever question how long it takes to build a table and chairs? They just value the chairs, right?
Interviews and others:* Robbin Castillo – You must hear this warrior monk. Diet, movement, life. * The King of Birds – BGT runner up, magician, performer, comedian. We talk philosophy * Free Group Coaching – The form is still up on my site, and have done a dad group since this episode. * Three Voices – My eighth book, with an endorsement from a clinical psychologist. The three voices we use to communicate with ourselves and others.
If this is your first podcast, hello and I hope you enjoy this year’s catalog. Reach out and say high with feedback, like, rate the podcast, and if you have a friend that would benefit from one of these I don’t mind if you forward this to them!
Also, let me know what you want me to tackle in 2023!
*Mentioned in this episode: The Myth and Magic Podcast. Neil is the person that turned me on to the emotional variant of Liminal Spaces when he interviewed me.
The post 2022: Most Helpful Episodes! first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Shorting yourself on time-based skillsYou’ve heard this before right? That as you get better and better at something, you can do it more efficiently. So your skill is just as good as your competitor but you do it faster. great! Except that you charge hourly. So now they are getting better for less, and you are getting… shorted.
What’s the real amount of time it takes though?Let’s take aerial photography. You could possibly (illegally) have a friend of a friend fly a drone, take some pics, and then get a memory stick of images. Or you could have an insured, licensed professional (that literally got clearance from the FAA to fly for you today) and do the “same” thing. This professional also has mad video editing skills and gives you very professional, color-graded results. The professional studied for months, paid and took a test from the FAA, keeps the license current, purchases a half million dollar insurance policy for each commercial flight, and learned the software necessary to provide the files. And to top it all off he has the skill to understand the difference between a simple wide shot and a customer that is trying to showcase their landscaping skills.
So did it take him 15 minutes to fly that, or a bit more time that you never see?
Let’s buy a microwaveIf you buy a microwave do you think about the actual cost? The amount of time it took to create it? I bet you don’t. And yet you probably almost always do for the service you might purchase.
Let’s talk about that.
(part one of a two part)
The post Time, Energy and Resources – widgets vs. service! first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
MeasuringWe recently talked about measuring, and now we’re talking about NOT doing it.
Programs runningWe have many programs running. We are always tasting, listening, looking, sampling… and measuring.
Did you stop measuring?“Hi, I’m Mr. Scale! I’m going to disappoint you every day.” 👀 It’s pretty easy to stop measuring when it comes to that particular stat. You just stop stepping on the scale… “until you are ready.” But if you stop measuring then what happens?
Let’s talk about measuring, why you would stop, and what you might want to do next. As always, it’s information and then you can decide. Just ten minutes.
The post Did you stop measuring? first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Tension We’ve talked about tension before. We’ve talked about tension vs. something being at rest and what that means for us. But now I want to talk about the tension of disagreement. Everything’s going to be OK Everything is going to be OK. Does that relieve you? It might, especially if it comes from a […]
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A simple answer for a complex issue… doesn’t work Did you ever have an issue with someone and tell a friend about it? They usually say “Oh well I would just say this.” You roll your eyes , take a deep breath, and attempt to explain that this is pretty complicated, and that you’ve already […]
The post Taking a step back first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
The 30,000 foot view You’ve heard of that phrase—taking the 30,000 foot view, right? But what exactly does that mean? Does it mean to take a step back? Does it mean 30,000 steps back? Considering the big picture? How long do you do this? Do you then zoom back in and if so how long […]
The post Zooming Out – but what does that mean? first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Progress If you’re not measuring progress, how do you know how well you are doing in the pursuit of a goal? Don’t you have milestones and stuff like that? The Alchemy for Life system has a huge amount of tracking, and milestones, and even an icon for setbacks, so why am I even asking this? […]
The post What are you measuring? first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Here’s something you don’t hear – thoughts do not equal reality. In an odd way this is a discussion (of the reverse kind) of mindfulness. Fight of flight Our fight or flight mechanism was designed and evolved to deal with something happening right now. It was designed to deal with reality. If you’re having anxiety […]
The post Thoughts vs. Reality – not what you think first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Three Voices Did you know you have three voices? Do you know that one can always be used to override another? Do you know that one of the voices is also a sounding board that can not only help you (preparing for a speech, reviewing a discussion), but also can torment you if overused (that […]
The post New book: Three Voices first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Labels We all use labels because that’s the base of all languages – complex concepts, descriptions, procedures all contained in a smaller form. Imagine if you had to describe a house every time you wanted to talk about houses. Exhausting. And you’d get dumber. So we create labels for things. But as we talked about […]
The post If you use them you’ll get smarter (or dumber) first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Labels We all use labels because that’s the base of all languages – complex concepts, descriptions, procedures all contained in a smaller form. Imagine if you had to describe a house every time you wanted to talk about houses. Exhausting. And you’d get dumber. So we create labels for things. But as we talked about […]
The post If you use them you’ll get smarter (or dumber) first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Ambition It’s a good thing, right? Have you ever done something, shown something or demonstrated something and had someone say “Well, that’s ambitions?” Has a tiny bit of something negative behind that, doesn’t it? Have you ever started a project only to decide (consciously or unconsciously) to make it much more elaborate, involved, expensive, thorough […]
The post Hijacked by Ambition first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
How long is your day? Ingrained in the society I live in is the eight hour work day. However, to get ahead, to be salaried, to be a manager, a mover and shaker or someone who is launching businesses or being an entrepreneur it’s expected that you work 10, 12, 16 or more hours. Is […]
The post The 4 Hour Day first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Think outside the box (group) We all know that thinking outside of the box has its benefits. Usually this thinking happens with someone who has a different perspective than others. And that, ironically, is what this podcast is about. Groups are great, until they’re not We all are part of one or more groups, whether […]
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Liminal spaces A liminal space is the between space (usually in the physical world). It doesn’t ‘feel right.’ It’s a threshold between two states. The transitory nature usually causes you to feel a little creeped out. Ever done a house tour in which a lot of the personal belongings have been minimized? It’s not your […]
The post Liminal Spaces first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
What are your offers? Let’s talk about your offers. By offers I don’t just mean your business offerings, I literally mean things you have offered to others—whether it’s helping someone to move if they need it in the future, lending your truck, working with someone, forming a partnership, offering to mentor, etc. Integrity and Time, […]
The post Shelf Life first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
What’s the speed of your reality? That’s a trick question, and it sounds a little ooga-booga doesn’t it. It is, and it’s not. A watched pot never boils You’ve heard both a watched “pot never boils” and “time flies when you’re having fun,” right? Though the former is not true, both are rooted in reality… […]
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Special Announcement This is a special announcement about free coaching that is being offered to two groups. The Alchemy for Life™ podcast subscribers group is one of the groups, which is why you’re seeing this. Congrats. Here is the scoop You’re probably just like me. You just want to know what this is all about, […]
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Motivation. People talk about motivation so much it’s annoying. Coaches and speakers talk about it all. the. time. You don’t need another source do you? But here’s a different take… Two parts to motivation The actual hype that gives you energy. This is stuff like music that makes you excited to do the task. The […]
The post Real Life Motivation first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
How do you have time for this? Have you heard this phrase? You typically hear this about a large project or something that is apparently time consuming. But that’s misleading. They are using the wrong word Life is made of three things™ – Time, Energy and Resources. The big secret is that mostly it’s not […]
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Holistic To have a holistic approach is to consider all aspects of the whole. There’s nothing ooga booga or froo froo about that, and if you know me and this podcast you know we don’t talk about things that aren’t tangible. Being holistic is tangible. It just means that if there is a problem or […]
The post Holistic creativity is a given, but… first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Fate & Destiny Fate and Destiny mostly mean the same, don’t they? They’re sort of interchangeable—except for one thing: one makes you feel bad and the other makes you feel good. Free will It’ an age-old discussion, this talk of whether we have free will or not. What do you believe? Do you believe your […]
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Hakan Berg is known as The King of Birds. He was a finalist on Britain’s Got Talent, and fooled half of Penn and Teller on Fool us. Hakan and I had a surprisingly philosophical discussion about laughter, trust, vulnerability, magic and being in the present. We made a discovery together about an element that seems […]
The post The King of Birds first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Mantras We all know what a mantra is—it’s that thing you repeat over and over again; it’s that guiding principle you have; it is those words you live by. Well I have one of those too. For me it’s “Seek First to Understand” and I don’t know if i live by those words or they […]
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Assume Assume: To suppose without information. Is this what you’re doing? is this what you have done every time you suppose without information? Or is this one of those words of power that we take for granted (no pun intended there). Label The word assume can be applied as a label to behavior. What makes […]
The post I assume first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
It’s such an innocuous word, isn’t it? Potential. It doesn’t sound like much when I say it by itself like that. But it’s the doorway to good and bad; to epic success or catastrophic failure. Let’s talk about what it means, what it does, and how it gives us a clue as to which successes—and […]
The post Potential first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
The comfort zone If you hire a coach, have a review or consider accomplishing a new goal invariably the comfort zone is going to come up. And the first thing that will be discussed is you leaving the comfort zone. It will be discussed as if it is a bad thing, even though it’s where […]
The post Stop Demonizing Comfort Zones first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
The solution to all of your problems, past, present and future is to simply be Your Best Self. There. Done. There’s no podcast. It’s that easy. Reality and the thing you have to do first Oh, you’re still here? What’s that in your hands there… a chair? Put that down. Ok, no pressure here, but […]
The post Oh just be your Best Self™ first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Robbin Castillo Robbin is a personal trainer, teacher and coach. He provides Ascension coaching, Holistic personal training and masterclasses. I normally do not feature coaches on my interviews (I tend to get a lot of requests for appearances on my podcast by coaches) but I approached Robbin because of what I saw on Instagram. His […]
The post Castillo Movement first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
You’re not alone. Here are do’s and don’ts for success in 2022. This bullet list and these resources will help you. 2022 and success – do’s and don’ts Don’t make resolutions. Make a goal with a system behind it. Become aware, then act on this awareness (that’s the whole premise of the podcast in case […]
The post 2022 – you’re not alone first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Lets celebrate both today: Check out Balance and the Holidays. Check out a free course on AlchemyFor.Me – Do it to a F.A.U.L.T.
The post Happiness and Learning first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
We have two subjects this Sunday – old news and new news. Old (but extremely important) News Around this time you are feeling an additional pull at your time, energy and resources. It’s the holiday season. Each year I give you a heads up and a warning about what is going to happen—and a way […]
The post Alchemy for ME first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
It’s #nanowrimo – 𝐍𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥 𝐖𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐡. Years back this month came to my attention as a number of people I knew “on the internet” were participating and writing 50,000 words in one month! WOW! I tried my hand at it and unlike a normal person I couldn’t just open Word or something, so I […]
The post nanowrimo – May I be of service? first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Everything is fantasy It is. Think about it. Everything. This doesn’t just apply to people who create something from nothing. This applies to everyone. That includes you. All people do this There’s no job that you can mention that doesn’t do this – bricklayer, marketing exec, race car driver, CEO, artist, writer, stay at home […]
The post Everything is Fantasy Until it Becomes Reality first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Hindsight is 20/20 We say that hindsight is 20/20 in that looking back on an experience already lived you can make some pretty intelligent, informed decisions, right? You can say what you would have done because you’ve already seen what you did do. But this looking back also has the down side of regret and […]
The post You can ask a question… first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Do you have an audience? Some people are saying yes; some people are saying no. But you might be surprised. So people who create content—podcasts, music, painting, books—and people who gather people like musicians and speakers all have audiences, right? Well, they aren’t the only ones. You have an audience if you bring the pies […]
The post Do you have an audience? first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
So what color do you see in the main graphic for this podcast today? If you lived a very long time ago, you probably didn’t say “blue.” Why? Because blue is not mentioned in ancient texts. Does that mean their eyes couldn’t see it? Well, that was what scientists and historians thought until the works […]
The post What color is this? first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
(Pause for eye rolls) 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 […]
The post The Power of But. first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Keeping secrets from yourself 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 […]
The post Do you keep secrets…from yourself? first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
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 […]
The post Upside Down first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Chronic pain & Rare Diseases 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 […]
The post Barby Ingle – Rare diseases, chronic pain first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Your calendar 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 […]
The post The Little Things first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Creativity is/has a super power 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. Creatives vs. non-creatives You know […]
The post The Super Secret of Being a Creative first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
What is ownership? 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. Thoughtful Consideration There are too many things / blogs / Articles out there that are based on just random interactions. This is normally not one of […]
The post Ownership first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Stay in your lane 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 […]
The post Stay in your lane (again)! first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Self Love or crazy? 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. Your friend is important If youir friend is coming over you would definitely make […]
The post Hey Mark is coming over today! first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
It’s addicting Its fulfilling and validating to talk about success. One might say, almost addicting, yes? Invisible 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 […]
The post Are you addicted to (talking about) success? first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Character is what you are in the dark. – Dwight L. Moody and Lord Whorfin (Dr. Emilio Lizardo) I agree with the above quote, but also think there is another version of this: Character is what you are when you’re bored. – Mark Bradford Hard to be in the dark When are you in the […]
The post Character is what you are when you’re bored. first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Happy Father’s Day to all dads and those who fulfill the role of a dad!! Today welcome Mark Williams back to the podcast. if you remember, he is the cofounder of International Men’s mental health day, and speaks on men’s mental health topics and all things fatherhood. Join us as we talk about men’s mental […]
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Today’s chat is with Jesse Lee Peterson. You may have seen his youtube channel in which he chats with guests, or heard his radio show. We talk about his Time, Energy and Resources™ and get into some detailed discussions on men and women. Jesse is a talk show host, evangelist, mentor and counselor. He’s written […]
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Denise McAllister is an author, political and cultural commentator and journalist. She doesn’t shrink from controversy and we have a wonderfully intense conversation. Her new book, What men want to say to women (but can’t) is the focus of our lively discussion. Join us as we continue the Father’s Day conversation. Topics we discuss are: […]
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Michael is a father, a husband and works as a coach in the business sector. We talk fatherhood under the umbrella of Time, Energy and Resources™. Who he is and what he does is essentially the same thing, in his own words. We start our father’s day week with a wonderful discussion with this father […]
The post Father’s Day: Michael Rampolla first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
I’ve talked about The Five Love Languages a number of times. That concept talks about how we express and accept love in one of five ways (its usually a mixture). It’s a good read. But what about communication? I’m not saying (yet) that there are five communication love languages*, but consider how we communicate and […]
The post Path of least resistance and communication first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Everyone likes bubbles right? Everyone is actually in a bubble. People may say that “you’re in your own world” or you “have tunnel vision” or you “have blinders on.” All that stuff is kind of related to being in your own bubble—which we all are. Something interesting happened to me that really brought this to […]
The post Bubbles first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Did you know the better you are at something the more likely someone is to undervalue it? Counterintuitive? Right? Your response is that if someone is clearly better and an “expert” then they would obviously charge more money and be greatly valued. You’re right. But there is a threshold… The threshold Once you pass the […]
The post Epicness is undervalued first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
I want to share two things with you that may change everything for you or your friend.
The post Depression is portable first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Do you lie to the program? Where'd you get that pen from anyway?
The post I’m Sorry Dave first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
The Middle It’s a nice place to visit, but… What is the middle? Well, let me use it as a window to see something you normally wouldn’t. The Bell Curve You’ve probably heard of this, yes? Teachers sometimes grade ‘on a curve.’ I first learned about it many years ago playing Dungeons and Dragons. #NERD. […]
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Tell me who you are and what you do This is how I start every interview I do on my show, and it’s turned into something that is universally applicable. It’s a deceptively simple question. The Persona and the Job Think about the printer guy, the waitress, the mailman, the cashier. Those are all jobs, […]
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Are you a “lifelong learner?” do you know anyone who calls themselves that? Oh, you do? What do you think of them and that statement? Are they? What do I mean “are they?” Well, what did they learn…? What are they learning? Does that seem unfair? Is your (or their) reaction one of indignance? Or […]
The post Lifelong Learners and Lying first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
There are a lot of people talking about conversations, no pun intended. The curious thing is for something that’s such an integral part of our existence—something we use every day in many forms—we don’t seem to be doing it right. At least according to the experts. We all know how to converse don’t we? I […]
The post The Four Conversation Methods first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Want to save about 30% of your communication time in multiple circles of your life? Want to reduce frustration by doing what seems like the opposite thing needed? Want to find out if a difficult person isn’t really difficult? If you answered ‘no’ then i don’t even know who you are any more, man. Just […]
The post Save time and frustration first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
It's been a week, so NOW we can talk about Valentines day.
The post NOW we can talk about Valentines Day first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
I have a confession. When the kids were younger and it was my birthday, I couldn’t help myself. When I was married my wife was a stay at home mom. I had no expectations of presents and like the cliche you only learn once you become a parent, it truly meant the most to me […]
The post Reverse Birthday first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Sorry. That’s just the way it is. Have you ever noticed that? Does this sentence ring true to you? Think about your personal relationships. Think about your clubs, associates and groups. Think about your workplace. Examples You’re at a seminar and someone keeps asking “dumb” questions. What happens then? Other people chime in to help, […]
The post You’re smart so you’re on your own first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
A crossroads This is our 149th episode. I say “our” because quite literally without you there is no podcast. I mean that. It sounds cliche but that’s why there have not been episodes for the last few weeks. As much as I enjoy my voice, my humor, my unique take on things, I don’t enjoy […]
The post Yes or No? first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
More people in my yard. My poor Christmas lights. This time they are dudes. That’s like 20 people who have been hired, just to appear in my yard. Also, apparently I was drunk on eggnog as I titled the podcast yesterday “Eighth Nine.” It’s OK if you didn’t notice. Eggnogg. Glug Glug.
The post Day Ten – There are more people in my yard first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Did you ever ring someone’s doorbell and run away? Like, when you were a kid? What if you rang the doorbell and just stayed there, with like eight of your friends, inappropriately dressed.
The post Eighth Nine – There are people in my yard first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
I live in Wisconsin. Contrary to what the rest of the world things it’s not all farmland—at least where I live, which is a city with 1.8 million people. Sure i take certain things for granted like cheese that squeaks and wine that is based on cherries. But I don’t really have an interest in […]
The post Eighth Day – Awkward Farm Voyeur first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
I now have my UAV Pilot license from the FAA.
Because I didn't stay in my lane. Have you ever been told that—to stay in your lane? Or even pick one?
The post Stay in your lane! first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
More birds. And it’s too cold for this. Go to this google maps location she said. More presents awaits she said. But this is Wisconsin.
The post Seventh Day – watching a frozen lake first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Ok, so I was wrong about the birds being over. And this didn’t end in a triumphant engagement with five other parties in some sort of … arrangement. So, we’re back to birds. But this time I don’t have to keep them. I just have to watch them.
The post Sixth Day – farm invitation first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
I thought I was engaged. But if I am then there are four other parties involved, because there are four too many rings. At least there are no more birds. I have to say this is the most sensible of all of the gifts so far. Five days of gifts. I’m assuming there is some […]
The post Fifth Day – no more birds! first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
I give up. It’s not even funny. And I thought bird smell was the worst part. Nope, not when you are given birds when are genetically engineered to be really loud. And you know, these also look like chickens, but if the chickens were wearing a bib or something. i don’t know, i haven’t gotten […]
The post Fourth Day first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
More birds. Forget about the fact that she knows that I would never have a bird as a pet, I just got three chickens. Seriously, that’s what they are: chickens. This one had a note about being caught up now, and that there are more deliveries. So I’m getting another one tomorrow. Four gifts is […]
The post Third Day first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
I’m receiving gifts from my girlfriend. Apparently she has no idea what I like. And they are odd. So the last gift was supposed to be a couple days ago, and this one was supposed to be yesterday. The shipping/arranging has been off due to the various mandates and lockdowns and things. Apparently. But that […]
The post Second Day first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
I’m receiving gifts from my girlfriend. Apparently she has no idea what I like. And they are odd. I’m not a fan of birds as pets. Sorry.
The post First Day first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
The holidays can be a wonderfully unbalanced time of year. Here's what to expect and how to stay sane.
The post Balance and the Holidays – 2020 first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Passion is for posers That has a better ring to it. You’re told to have passion—and we have covered this in the past in the passion podcast. But today we’re going to talk about two aspects of it that you may not be aware of. You already know that you shouldn’t beat yourself up if […]
The post Passion is for fakers first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Layers Regardless of what you do for a living, there are things between your effort and your final product, or your customer. The more layers, the more things you have to overcome. Organization, physical location, technology, time and even language are all layers. And some of those have sub-layers. Being a yoga teacher, a speaker, […]
The post Layers: What’s between you and what you do? first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Beware of plateaus
A plateau is a flat, elevated landform that rises sharply above the surrounding area on at least one side. Plateaus occur on every continent and take up a third of the Earth’s land. They are one of the four major landforms, along with mountains, plains, and hills. Annnnd, none of that is related to this podcast.
Except in the form of a metaphor. Let’s talk about metaphorical plateues (in goal reaching, in life, in comparing ourselves to others.
- Life does not stop when you reach one
- The climbing in between plateaus is where life happens
- Plateaus can be both good and bad
- I really really can’t spell “plateau” by myself
- What plateaus have you had in your life?
We say something is an “uphill battle” or it’s all “downhill from here.”
Listen for the full story! just 10 (ish) minutes, as always! With pauses for reflecting. Neat.
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Patience is a virtue. Is it? What is patience? Well, as always, it’s not what you think. If that’s true, then what does it mean to be impatient? Have you ever been impatient? Of course you have. have you ever been accused of being chronically impatient? If so, it’s not a problem with your patience, but something else.
Impatience is the outcome of improper data, and can be used to manipulate you… even by you.
Listen to find out what’s really going on, and be prepared to pause and think. If I’m right, then I may just save you hours of time, and loads of frustration… if you understand what I am introducing here. if so, your perception will be changed for good, forever.
- Learn what patience is
- Learn what causes impatience
- Change your perception
Just ten minutes or so…
The post Patience is…nope. first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Do you fly by the seat of your pants? Do you know someone who does? How does that work for you? Do you know what that means, especially in the context of… wait for it… Time, Energy and Resources…?
Everyone in business, and everyone who has ever tried to accomplish a goal, or self-improvement knows all about planning, and writing down goals. But, how does that affect the rest of your life? Your relationships? Even dating?
Are you annoying your clients because of this?
Find out what I mean in the podcast.
The post Flying Pants first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Are you angry? Can I make you angry so you’ll react? Can I suggest something that will make you afraid? Well then I’m an excellent marketer, because those are the two most powerful elements of marketing—fear and anger.
And it’s being used on you constantly by those that want you do buy things, and step in line for their desires.
Listen in on what’s happening, and what is really important.
Hint: It’s not fear, it’s not anger and it’s not FOMO.
The post Deeds not words first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
I really don’t like the word “mindset.” Why? Because it is overused so much to explain EVERYTHING, and then usually accompanied by someone swearing at you because that’s the in thing now with motivational people…
But I have a way for you to change your…. ugh… ok, mindset, that may completely change how you deal with something that might be a struggle: your diet.
Check it out, just and always about ten minutes!
The post Mindset was a dirty word-until now first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.
– Stephen King
I beg to differ.
Skills, skill sets, time, energy and resources Reading and writing are two separate skill sets. Life is made of time energy and resources and the energy it takes to read is different than the energy it takes to write.
Reading a bunch of crappy novels does not magically create a skill set of being an excellent writer.
By this logic if you don’t have the time to sit in a chair you don’t have the time or the tools to be a carpenter.
There are millions of people who absolutely love reading who don’t have the desire, the need for the inherent skill to be a writer. And that’s perfectly fine. Just like there are writers who spend their time thinking about what they want to write and then writing.
Obviously on a very small level this is true –that you need to have read some things that you liked. You read dialogue, descriptions, exposition or lack thereof and began to understand the kind of work you want to produce. Or, more importantly, the kind you do not.
The same goes for other skills—especially those of the crreative type. Listen in for more on this, especially if you are a “creative.”
The post Reading vs. writing first appeared on Alchemy For Life.
Taking a break from handling your Time, Energy and Resources this week, I thought it might be a nice escape to listen to the first chapter of The Sword and the Sunflower. This is a just-recorded audio book entry of the first chapter.
This is experimental as I have mixed thoughts about recording the audiobook for my own fiction. Recording for one of my non-fictions makes sense as it is similar to me giving a talk, a seminar or even a podcast episode on an idea. However, an epic fiction such as this, with nuances, and characters of different ages and genders is something else entirely. I do not know if it is something I could represent properly—even though I am the author. What if my voice does not represent what i am experiencing (or what you should be experiencing) in the story? That’s really important to me.
Regardless, I thought it a good change of pace. Let me know what you think.
The post The Sword and the Sunflower audiobook excerpt first appeared on Alchemy For Life.