Past Episodes:
The 30% Rule of Communication
In an episode of “Charisma on Command” by Charlie Houpert I learned of the 30% rule, which essentially goes as follows - When speaking, we give ourselves 30% of the time a listener would give us to fill a pause without it feeling uncomfortable. It’s crazy to think the contrast is that drastic, 30%, but it's true.
To materialize this into an example, let's say you’re giving a speech in front of a group for work. You make a solid point, make a great transition to the next topic, then forget what you were supposed to say next. As you think, there’s a pause in speech. We know this moment, our adrenaline starts pumping, we feel our faces flush, and the moment feels like an eternity. You feel the pressure to continue saying something intelligent, so you rush to figure it out and then continue.
That pressure and discomfort you experience is the 30% rule on display. In this scenario, I’d estimate that the average person starts to feel uncomfortable at 2 to 3 seconds of pausing. But what’s important to keep in mind, is the audience is much more tolerant, giving you more than 3x as much time to continue speaking without attributing it as an error or noticing anything too wrong. According to the math, your 2 to 3 seconds is their 7 to 10 seconds, and when you watch a video of someone pausing for that long you'll realize how it’s not that long after all.
I thought that was important - being aware of this 30% rule of communication will help us be more confident speakers when expressing ideas we care about.
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See MoreFacilitate the Flow of Value
As I see it, everything in life is meant to operate as a cycle that can sustain and replenish itself through natural processes. There is truly more than enough to go around, but it’s a matter of how it goes around that provides for all who need it. Inherent to a cycle is the flow, which is how things actually move within the cycle. The force, volume, and rate of change all contribute to this flow. If you become intentional about facilitating the flow, the cycle can be more effective and return more of what it’s meant to create more often.
Think of the flow of money. If you readily pay others to help you, and you pay for things that you need, then you allow the cycle to return money to you and people will find value in your work and compensate you for it. Or think about karma, a good deed done returns to you. The universe has an amazing way of achieving an equilibrium, which means that when you offset that equilibrium it will construct ways to re-establish it.
It’s all a process that is built on the give and take of contrasts, like night and day, masculine and feminine, and it’s so important to mobilize the value so that everyone can benefit from it. The alternative is to have little flow, which means that the value is not readily accessible. It’s stuck in containers, people can’t tap into it, and it becomes perceived as scarce and finite. But you can be intentional about facilitating the flow by serving first, spreading love, and being generous with what you have, with full faith that it will return to you exactly as you need it.
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See MoreAttracting and Chasing
I love the idea of "attraction" and think it offers a really compelling and accurate visual for us to understand. In order to attract something you need to be magnetic, there needs to be some quality that pulls other things toward it because it’s in an aligned or matching state. The thing about our magnetism and attraction is you can choose your polarity, you can set the frequency, and therefore you can get very specific about what you attract. I believe that at all times we are subconsciously attracting and pulling things toward us, good or bad, and gaining an awareness of what that might be could be a great first step.
Now let’s talk about chasing. Chasing in my opinion isn’t all that bad! On one hand you can chase a partner or standard that you’ll never reach, but on the other hand you can chase a goal that really motivates you and gives you a sense of meaning and purpose. In either case chasing involves going against the grain and taking the more difficult and effortful route in pursuit of something. The chase is more of a game and if that’s something that you respond well too then there’s definitely a place for it.
I believe we should be both attracting and chasing. We should be the beacon that pulls things into our lives passively while still taking chances and putting ourselves out there effortfully. What’s important is that you are attracting and chasing the right things in order to realize the life you wish to have.
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See MoreSo Much Is Going Right
Despite the chaos and uncertainty we’re facing in life, especially now, there’s a lot of good happening that we’re not focusing on. It’s natural to be hyper-aware of the negativity, but just for a moment let’s bring your awareness to all of the positive. So much is going right in your life.
The reason you don’t think about some of these good things very often is because it’s just the way it is. However when something good is taken away we realize how good we had it and that we weren’t appreciating as much as we should have when we had it. Like a missed call from your Mom or Dad - That’s something you’re going to wish you had some day. Or the sweat and soreness of a tough workout while you're physically capable of it. Or your health in general and how you go to sleep without chronic pain, or how you don’t have any difficulty breathing. These are all things that we may have in our life that we don’t think twice about, and they deserve more credit.
It’s important to draw your attention to these small things because it initiates a cascade of gratitude that compounds and picks up momentum in your favor. When you train your brain and body to acknowledge more of the good, which surrounds you at all moments, it will begin to attract more of it in creative and valuable ways. And those things that seem like they’re going wrong? Well you can overwhelmingly counteract them with all of the examples of how things are going right, and start to build new associations and understandings that will help you overcome them.
So I encourage you to take a 30 seconds right now to think about how much is going right for you in life, as small and simple as they might be, so that you can appreciate those elements before they’re gone.
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See MoreHave the Courage to Live a Life True to Yourself
A palliative care nurse named Bronnie Ware conducted a study as people were near death and asked them one question, “What is your biggest regret?” The overwhelming response by people at the end of their life said something along the lines of "I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me."
I bring this up because the concept embedded in this thought is the biggest obstacle we face today - We let life live us, we don’t live life. We choose to be responsive and reactive to the different things that are thrown at us, making the most of it, but also not being ambitious and looking to create an alternative for ourselves. We are so strongly influenced by others’ expectations that we default to meeting their standards rather than setting our own.
This influence is so subconscious, so deeply engrained in our decision making, that it becomes the greatest regret of the dying.
So what can we do to overcome this? To gain an awareness on this so that we don’t fall into the same cycle?
Be intentional. Set your own values. Make your own decisions about where you should put your time and energy. Determine what fulfillment, joy, happiness, and success mean to you and not everyone else. When you begin to think independently you attract opportunities in manifestation of those thoughts. You slowly find alignment in your life and the passionate inspiration that comes with it.
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See MorePain Is A Trigger For A Lesson
This is a difficult topic to talk about it, but I want to add some perspective to it. It’s the idea of pain. Pain comes into our lives in so many way - Physical pain after some kind of trauma or chronic condition, emotional pain as people come and go in your life, and spiritual pain as you weave in and out of integrity through your actions and choices.
I don’t want to undermine any of the pain you feel or have felt in your life, but I do want to change the label we place on it and frame it in more of a constructive way. Pain is simply a biological way of getting our attention. It’s a message from our body to our brain that something is wrong and that we should change our behavior. If that’s the case, then is it a stretch to say that the primary purpose of pain is to teach us a lesson?
If we see pain as a trigger that brings our awareness to a lesson, then it provides an understandable purpose to the pain. Instead of giving yourself time and wishing the pain goes away you can be proactive about discovering how this pain is meant to serve you. In the discomfort and emotion of pain it is hard to think rationally and positively, but by setting the intention in advance you can work through pain in a more productive way.
If your heart is broken by a breakup, how is that pain signaling the self-growth you’re meant to experience? If you were let go from your job, or not hired for a dream position, how does the pain of disappointment encourage you to reflect on what you could have done differently? If you feel dejected about breaking your own trust what values did you violate and how can you prioritize them in the future?
Pain is a signal, and it’s up to us to perceive the signal. I believe pain is merely a trigger for a lesson that you need to learn in order to attain the fulfillment and satisfaction you seek.
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See MoreYou're Just Getting Started
No matter where you are in life, what you’ve done, how long you’ve been doing it, this is true for every single one of us - You’re just getting started.
When something begins it indicates a change of state. A change from nothing to something, no activity to activity. Things in our life are constantly in motion and every single day we start and stop and start again. While this might seem like something that prevents us from picking up momentum, it actually functions more like a cycle that constantly renews itself and redirects itself.
This happens because when you’re at the beginning of something, there’s this energy around it, a tangible excitement, that encourages you to invest more of your attention in it and dedicate yourself to it. This fuels your ability to pick up speed at the task and soon be going faster than when you left off!
But now more on the experiential side let’s debunk something important. How is it that you can be doing something for 10 years and you’re just getting started? Well what I’ve found is that as you spend more time on something and dive deeper into it with more expertise, you realize how much more there is to learn and grow into. It raises the capacity and you realize that you are even earlier on in the process to mastery than you originally thought because there’s more to achieve.
No matter where you think you’re at developing a skill, building a business, or achieving a project, you’re just getting started! And that’s the best thing that could happen because then you can approach your work with a more youthful energy.
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See MorePrice Vs. Value with Bob Burg
This is a really important but implicit distinction between price and value. For convenience sake we label things a certain price to communicate their relative value, but that sells things short because it doesn’t account for the very complex nature of our decision making processes. As people we actually prefer to transact with value because it feels more equitable. There’s no one better in the world to make this distinction than the author of the incredible book “The Go Giver”, Bob Burg.
As it is with many things in life, creating, receiving, and evaluating value is an empathetic process. It requires self-awareness to know how your life history allows you to draw certain conclusions, and understand how someone else may perceive the transaction and value built into it differently.
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