I’m stealing Marshal McLuhan’s words here, don’t “walk into the future looking through a rearview mirror.”
It has been an interesting week for me. Often before I am about to have a new insight into the meaning of my life, I get confused. I feel lost. I feel frustrated. Then I get a little pissed off at myself, thinking I should know better. I am a coach after all. I teach this stuff day in and day out. And yet, I am human, and we can only ever operate, on our own, up to a certain point before we run into our own blind spots, our own limitations, and our own inability to see what we have never seen before. You don’t know what you don’t know. You need someone in that third person position to shine a light on your darkness.
I am the perennial lone wolf. And try as I might, to be a part of a community, to live amongst the tribespeople, I always end up retreating back into the wilderness.
...whenever a real man appears on the scene - colleges being nothing but grooming schools for the middle-class non-identity which usually finds the perfect expression on the outskirts of the campus in rows of well-to-do houses with lawns and television sets in each living room with everybody looking at the same thing and thinking the same thing at the same time while the Japhies of the world go prowling in the wilderness to hear the voice crying in the wilderness, to find the ecstasy of the stars, to find the dark mysterious secret origin of faceless wonderless crapulous civilization.
- from The Dharma Bums, by Jack Kerouac
When in do-mode, I find it hard to make time to sit and reflect. My body gets agitated. My mind rebels and acts like a toddler, easily distracted, wandering off to chase the next shiny object. The best I can do is squeeze out a few sentences at a time. But really, the best thing for me to do is MOVE!
So that’s what I did. And I brought my audio recorder along to capture the flow of my thoughts.
Track List
What to do when you get lost in the mental fog of your mind [0:00]
The Block Universe Theory [8:29]
Finding meaning in your life [13:34]
A simple life hack [18:00]
Who is writing your story?
Quiet Ambition
Where do my ambitions lie?
Sue Liburd MBE DL is a crazy ambitious black lady. I usually don’t call out race when I write, but Sue says her number one superpower is being a black lady and she uses it to her full advantage.
She was the guest speaker at one of the events I facilitated this week. My talk was on building the future you and ambition. Sue was the perfect guest speaker because she is one super ambitious lady. Even I got exhausted listening to all of the things she is involved in at the moment. She’s a non-exec director on several boards to include the NHS Lincolnshire Clinical Commissioning Group. She’s the Deputy Lieutenant in support of the Lord-Lieutenant as Her Majesty the Queen’s representative in Lincolnshire County. She runs several businesses and is an author and speaker among other things. And she’s only in her 50s.
One of the delegates asked if she had all of her ambitions planned out. Sue’s response - Yes! She knows what she’s dong with the remainder of her 50’s and her ambition in her 60’s is to be admitted to the House of Lords. She’s making the moves now to realize that ambition.
My original thoughts to myself were that my ambitions pale in comparison to Sue’s. But then I thought, actually no. My ambition is a quiet ambition, not one of titles or board-level directorships. My ambition, though quiet, is all-consuming and that is to be a creative force for good.
I made a video of the mental fog track. The words are slightly different, but the meaning is the same.
I’m in this crazy creative period where I seem to be giving birth to a load of creative projects one after another.
Last month, I launched (or rather re-launched the Wisdom Experience Podcast as the Digital Calm - a weekly dose of chillout and chat with my good friend Naomi. And this week, I launched another show (that has been in the wings waiting to happen) with my friend Daniel. The show is called Try All You Want, and it is pure entertainment - no moral themes, no wisdom, no lessons to learn, just pure music, mayhem, and fun. The bonus bit is it’s a live show hosted over on MixcloudLive, Friday nights 8 - 9:30PM UK time. And that should be enough, but it isn’t. I’ve also lined up an interview podcast as a sister show to the Digital Calm. In this new show, I’ll be collecting wisdom stories from people that inspire me.
Endnotes
I hope you enjoyed the Notes this week. As always, I enjoy sharing my notes with you. Thanks for all the feedback I received last week. I really do appreciate it. One way you can support the Notes is by clicking on some of the Amazon affiliate links. It doesn’t add anything extra to your bill, and I get a little kickback in the form of a commission on any purchases you make via Amazon (it doesn’t even need to be the thing I’m linking to).
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Lastly
Let’s keep the conversation going between Notes. The best way to communicate with me online is Twitter. But if you’d rather chat off-line, hit me up on WhatsApp.
Peace and Love,
Clay