This Sustainable Life

Today was a rough day for me in New York. Most of my solo episodes I start with a point. Today brought me down enough that I decided to share more openly some thoughts I get when seeing situations that look hopeless and are deteriorating. Normally I try to support others. It occurred to me, I hear almost nothing back from listeners, friends, family, or the world providing hope or support. More commonly people seem mystified that I or anyone would try to live sustainably when they could instead eat, travel, buy, etc with nary a thought of stewardship or empowerment.Below are my notes reminding me of a few things during the day to cover while speaking. As I'm writing these words, fireworks---that is, loud explosions---are going off within a block or two, unofficial.Helicopter since 5:20No masksLitter everywhere, every mealJust saw Story of PlasticNobody seems to care. We can go a day without water, but 8 oz bottlesPolice everywhereMayor absentPresident exacerbatingWhy bother?Am I missing signs of mainstream effective action?Plastic production higher than ever Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I haven't taken political stance because I am working to removing wedge-ness from environmental policy. I'm working for people to see laws about how people affect others through the environment as we view traffic laws. We don't see red lights as red tape or bureaucrats telling us what to do. They make our world safer even if they slow us down sometimes. One day we'll see keeping mercury out of fish and other pollution similarly.I met Jonathan in person practicing democracy---gathering signatures in my neighborhood. I learned of him after meeting Andrew Yang, whose candidacy I valued.Last year I heard Andrew Yang speak and liked his message enough to read his book, The War on Normal People, and learn more about universal basic income. I listened to Andrew on several podcasts until I felt I understood what he was campaigning for and why. UBI, for example, has had centuries of support across the political spectrum. Who knew?I talked to Yang's campaign people about helping with their environmental platform. (I'll talk to any politician about their environmental platform, since they could all use help). One of the outcomes was meeting Jonathan, gathering signatures a block from home. I like people acting in my world with passion, genuineness, and authenticity. Read Yang's book to learn the platform and what's driving it.In a tradition of successful people, Jonathan had left Harvard before finishing to support Yang's campaign, then to run himself in New York City's 10th district, where I live. He cares. He also acts personally on the environment, as you'll hear in this episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Think of where you are now in two ways---first, how it looked before humans arrived there, second, how it looks now.The difference is our influence, which results from our behavior, which results from our beliefs, values, hopes, dreams, and so on. In other words, the environment is the outward manifestation of our beliefs. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dave Chappelle set a line for himself that when he became famous he would not cross it. His life crossed it and he left a successful show and a $50 million contract.He returned to become more successful than ever. I recently saw him win the Mark Twain award.Here's Wikipedia on him staying true to himself:Season 3 was scheduled to begin airing on May 31, 2005, but earlier in May, Chappelle stunned fans and the entertainment industry when he abruptly left during production and took a trip to South Africa. Chappelle said that he was unhappy with the direction the show had taken, and expressed in an interview with Time his need for reflection in the face of tremendous stress:"Coming here, I don't have the distractions of fame. It quiets the ego down. I'm interested in the kind of person I've got to become. I want to be well-rounded and the industry is a place of extremes. I want to be well-balanced. I've got to check my intentions, man."Immediately following Chappelle's departure, tabloids speculated that Chappelle's exit was driven by drug addiction or a mental problem, rather than the ethical and professional concerns that Chappelle had articulated.Chappelle's decision to quit the show meant walking away from his $50 million contract with Comedy Central.[...]In an interview with Oprah Winfrey that aired on February 3, 2006, Chappelle explained his reasons for quitting Chappelle's Show. He also expressed his contempt for the entertainment industry's tone-deafness regarding black entertainers and audiences:When I see that they put every black man in the movies in a dress at some point in their career, I start connecting the dots. [...]Chappelle said on Inside the Actors Studio that the death of his father seven years prior influenced his decision to go to South Africa. By throwing himself into his work, he had not taken a chance to mourn his father's death. He also said the rumors that he was in drug or psychiatric treatment only persuaded him to stay in South Africa. He said,I would go to work on the show and I felt awful every day, that's not the way it was. ... I felt like some kind of prostitute or something. If I feel so bad, why keep on showing up to this place? I'm going to Africa. The hardest thing to do is to be true to yourself, especially when everybody is watching.Draw your lineWhere do you draw your line to prioritize acting on the environment? Does billions of people restricted to their homes not cross it? How about rivers catching on fire?You will love life more if you don't allow yourself to watch ourselves cross our lines. You will love the meaning and purpose you create by making the environment your priority.Whatever you give, the work will return more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dov and I started by talking about experiencing fun for the first time. I'm not the most fun person ever but a lot more now than before. He handled context that kept me from recording before despite knowing I wanted to. By context I mean legality, framing, and things that if you don't cover it's just talking about drugs, not life.I shared a few stories showing how I integrated the social skills the MDMA experience helped prompt, which leadership work eventually complemented and augmented when I went to business school.But the deep part of this episode is my sharing my experiences of powerlessness as a man compared to women, as well as the stories of few men who experienced similar situations that suggest to me my situation isn't rare. Note that I don't describe problems with women but a system and culture that says hashtag believe women without accountability or equality.My leadership work has been leading me to become famous but I've been afraid to get past a certain level for fear of one of the stories I tell in this episode. I had to share this to liberate myself from that fear. Again, I'm not afraid of the truth, nor of women, but of an unfair system and, for that matter, a culture that is predisposed to silence me in this area.Since recording I found some old emails from her. She found my girlfriend, I don't know how. She found postings of mine and tried to out my anonymous identity as an attraction coach, she included a picture of me with my girlfriend in an email to me, I think implying she knew things about me I hadn't told her and could act on them. One of her last emails to me listed things she wanted me to know and said "and you really don't know what I can do", which to this day I take seriously.I've held a lot of this stuff inside since the mid-90s---the experience with the woman in grad school, the late 90s my experiences with ecstasy, the late 2000s learning attraction and seduction, and the mid-2010s seeing the unaccountable power society gave a woman should she choose to act on it. But my practice is openness, allowing yourself to be vulnerable, sharing your whole self, and integration. Not sharing the experiences in this episode held me from my potential.My leadership work is about helping people improve their relationships with themselves and people they care about. I find they work best when I don't hold part of myself back, especially the most important parts, or separate parts of myself.Sharing this stuff has been a new beginning---no longer censoring myself out of fear of hashtag movements silencing my voice and experience. I'm moving to stop holding back experiences I found most developmental.EDIT: After recording this episode I shared the story with my mom. After she heard me describe the stories with women, she told me that the woman emailed her!In this case, she seems to have a lot more power. If a man wrote "You don't know what I can do" or contacted a woman's mother, he could end upin jail. If a man complains, many people will ask what he did to deserve it. Again, my issue is with a culture, not truth or women in general.Sharing these stories has opened me to share and has given me courage to act despite the fear. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Education and learning, not just scoring higher on tests, is at the core of my leadership practice. Today I bring a luminary of education work, Julie Wilson. As hyper-educated person who late in life, in my 40s, learned that doing well in school didn't mean success in life, especially in an educational system based on coercion and compliance. I came to see learning social and emotional skills improved my life more and solved our greatest problems.Covid-19 is one of our greatest problems, affecting education more than nearly any other field. Partly it's affecting our brittle, non-resilient educational bureaucracies, which differ from teaching students. It's also affecting learning now and for an unknown time to come.I wanted to talk about self-directed education and we do, but we started with Julie revealing an inside view of an area with as great upheaval and consequence to everyone as any, as well as her personal take.I was blown away at how much the pandemic is affecting education. I knew it was big but hadn't thought it through.Empty buildings, parents not knowing what to do, teachers not working, kids unable to play with each other, isolation possibly leading to more testing, at the same time potential for reconstruction, closer families, more love between the adults in children's lives and the children, the adults being their parents more.I haven't begun to consider it.After we stopped recording I said I hope I wasn't too assertive or aggressive about the ship at sea part. I confess I was speaking out of confusion and frustration, most likely revealing my ignorance. She said she valued the prodding. I hope I helped.The Human Side of Changing Education: How to Lead Change With Clarity, Conviction, and Courage Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Here are the notes for the introduction I read for this episode:This episode covers a few big experiences that led to my dedication and intensity, starting from sports, my relationship with my father, acting lessons, and various highs and lows. The intriguing stuff about drugs comes about two-thirds through. Since recording this episode, I've asked a bunch of people their thoughts on sharing about taking them. I guess I'm behind the times that I still think sharing doing something illegal was a problem, but everyone talks about how normal it is to talk about, citing Michael Pollan, Joe Rogan, Sam Harris, Snoop Dogg, and so on. What's wrong with our laws that they're this out of touch with society?Dov starts asking me about my childhood, when I always felt on the outside looking in, wanting to hear from others what to like. Early sports teammates led to a couple experiences that led to my dedication to sport and life, learning not to skip games or practice. Not getting playing time in a big game led me to taking competition seriously. eventually evolving to top of some fields but still never developed killer instinct.We covered my relationship with my father guiding my leadership direction to compassion, empathy, making someone feel understood, and support. I share why I love teaching and coaching leadership, at least some reasons.Anyway, the experience of connection from ecstasy predicated and enabled my leadership of connection, empathy, understanding, and other social and emotional skills. Dov nailed at the end how important feeling understood and making others feel understood is to me, as rarely feeling understood.We covered how meaningful in my coaching practice I find it that clients regularly tell me that people they lead cry tears of gratitude, saying no one has listened to them so much and made them feel so understood so that they could at last devote themselves without inhibition to act with passion. I reiterate that despite the hundreds of people I've taught to lead this way, no one has devoted themselves to lead me this way or to make me feel understood, despite my telling them that simply doing the exercises in my book verbatim will do it. I'm sad to say, not my family, friends, managers, girlfriends, . . . no one. I don't know what's wrong.Anyway, back to this episode, I finally started entering the inside crowd in New York City clubs, though also playing ultimate. After decades, I started replacing insecurity and tentativeness with security and confidence. Ultimately, my experience with ecstasy revealed to me emotional intensity I from then on knew I could recreate if I tried, as could anyone.But all of what I shared so far, what I felt until this point of speaking with Dov made me fear opening up. It all just allowed me to surface the real source of my fear -- being a victim of what could only be called sexual assault, knowing other men who were victims of sexual assault, and the fear of mainstream society. To clarify, I'm not afraid of the truth, but I'm afraid of hashtag movements that, well . . . I asked Dov for another episode, so you'll have to wait for it to find out my greater fears.Episode 253: My greatest triumphs, My greatest shamesJalapeños, contact lenses, and dedication Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Race is a major topic since police killed George Floyd in custody.I consider one of the major problems that people don't feel heard or understood. I see virtually no one in authority showing that they are listening.A friend who is white shared some of how she is struggling. I shared my background regarding race. She said I should share that background. I shared it with others. They agreed.This episode shares my experiences regarding race---a loose collection of memories. One person said hearing my details helped him think about his, which was my goal: to help people express themselves.I start from my earliest memories through grade school, high school, graduate school, starting companies, and recent reflections.Episode 253: My greatest triumphs, my greatest shames Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Many people suggest people as guests who are doing "environmental things". They don't know my strategy with this podcast, which I describe in my solo episode Clarifying my strategy. The crux is that I focus on leadership and bringing leaders to the environment before focusing on the environment. I consider our behavior the problem to change. Environmental degradation results from behavior. Most people are trying to make some process more efficient, like making cars electric or use less plastic in some process. That's management. It accepts the values of a system that pollutes, and generally augmenting and accelerating it: Uber doesn't decrease miles driven. It increases it.Chad started Living Lands and Waters, a non-profit where people get in the river and clean garbage. It started with just him and grew to huge. Here are some videos profiling their work.I looked at what Chad does and can see what others might: one person won't make a difference, even the organization won't, it doesn't scale. Silicon Valley wouldn't get it.Read former guest Anand Giridharadas's Winners Take All to get how sickening "doing well by doing good" is. Anand treats the problem of contributing to the problem while feeling you deserve thanks for acting like you're solving it. He on economic disparity, not the environment, but the pattern is the same.Chad shows the joy, community, and connection in doing the work---that is, he's changing the values we act on. You can tell because he works himself, with his hands. He doesn't tell others to do it instead, in part because he enjoys the work. He met the woman he married picking up garbage.I heard a guy doing what everyone says is tilting at windmills, enjoying it. He's changing culture by living the change and bringing others on board.In a world many people throw up their hands and lament that they can't make a difference, he's enjoying himself and cleaning the world, leading others to change. If you say, "But it's not enough," well, do your equivalent. He outperformed his expectation and he's enjoying himself.I brought him on because I envision a world where, like him, everyone does their part. That's cultural change. Cleaning the world and keeping it that way means changing culture. You can be jaded and holier than thou. Or you can get your hands dirty, work, and enjoy a life of stewardship, responsibility, joy, community, and connection.Living Lands & WatersSome videos profiling their work Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For background, first listen to my first Sex, Drug, and Rock and Roll episode, part 1: Rock and Roll, how Bruce Springsteen's Broadway show motivated me at last to share some episodes about me. Listeners have asked to know me. I tried to put myself in the background, considering leadership and nature the important parts of the podcast, as well as the guests.Bruce sharing personal stories showed me the value of sharing, in his case about the man behind the music and in mine the man behind the podcast. In that episode, I committed to sharing more about myself and sank my ships, so, like Cortes, I couldn't retreat.Still, weeks passed without sharing. I shared my fear to act with leadership guru and past guest, Dov Baron. I talk about his episodes possibly most for his committing so fully.He said: "Here's the solution: I'm going to interview you as a guest on your podcast." I immediately saw he had the solution. Since seeing James Lipton being a guest on his show Inside the Actors Studio, I'd thought of copying the idea. I knew Dov would guest-host perfectly for why I loved him as a guest.Today's episode is the first of three episodes he interviewed me for, each delving into parts of me I've feared sharing publicly. I think you'll enjoy them. Within the first few minutes, he asked what politically incorrect views I held and what people misunderstood about me.Dov led me to share without my usual evaluating my words while saying them when talking about sensitive subjects. He spoke supportively, sharing about himself and giving views that enabled me to share what I usually protect.Only in the third episode do we reach my most poignant fears, but Dov laid the foundations in these first few minutes.This first episode is about my relationships with women, which I worked to change late in life in a deliberate, non-mainstream way. We cover how little intimacy I felt with them in my first few decades, then how my learning about vulnerability and support led to blossoming of relationships in all parts of life. My working on relationships with women contributed more to my leadership development than probably business school, where I took classes from top professors at one of the top schools for the field in the world.I talk about how following mainstream advice and learning from women led me to feel shame and hide my most important parts. I also talk about how I feared mainstream views about how I overcame prejudices that came from mainstream society, since I overcame them through what the mainstream called misogynist. They call it pick-up artistry, but my experience, starting late in life, nearly 40, was the opposite of the common caricature. On the contrary, I first learned to open up with women, then with everyone---family, coworkers, everyone I met. I'm still often socially awkward and restrained, but less than before.This first conversation with Dov is my first foray into conquering fears that people could hurt me, but also realizing it wasn't me they'd attack, but their misunderstanding of me. Listen to all three episodes to get the full picture. I thought the fears I mention in this episode were my big ones, but they actually set the stage for the ones in the third.I can't express my gratitude enough to Dov.I alternate between finding this episode cathartic from sharing deep, important things and obvious, like doesn't everyone have rites of passage. In any case, I feel liberated from having to hide these things.I'm also disappointed that I live in a world that demeans what led to some of the most important growth in my life while supporting what actually led to me being withdrawn while feeling full of myself. Relistening to the episode, I could sense a new beginning. I could sense fading the fears in the puritanical culture of people attacking me. But now I feel strengthened to continue being myself despite the fact that they get parades and I don't, that people celebrate their sexuality while they suppress mine.Still, the next two episodes go further. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.