Manage to Engage

When in your life have you wanted something so much that you were willing to do whatever it takes to attain it?   For some of you, the answer might be never, or at least not recently. Because we can have almost anything we want whenever we want it, and as a result, our society is collectively losing its resolve; commitment and dedication are dying... and this could be a dangerous trend.   So over...

Zero looks like nothing – but it’s NOT nothing, and something magical happens when you learn to let go and embrace zero.   Because all of our suffering is dependent on an initial assumption about the kind of experience we’re supposed to be having; a vain attempt to control reality by projecting something onto a situation.   So today we’ll examine the power of zero and what it looks like when you e...

Have you ever said to yourself or out loud, “You’re driving me crazy?”   This is a really common saying, but it’s never true. No one else has the power to control your emotions. And when we say this, we’re diminishing our own role in what we’re experiencing – and our own power.   It’s definitely not easy to remain peaceful when we are challenged by other people and difficult situations, but learni...

Anyone can lay in a sensory deprivation tank and find peace – but what about when someone cuts you off in traffic, when you are in line at the DMV, or an employee makes a mistake? Then, finding silence is hard work.   But like Dorothy in Oz, you’ve had the power all along. Today I’m going to teach you how to find it. I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on iTu...

In our increasingly noisy world, an industry has popped up selling silence by the hour through things like sensory deprivation tanks and a variety of meditation practices. These can be useful tools or shortcuts, but that silence is always there – it’s the canvas on which our experiences are painted.   Over the next four episodes, I’m going to explore the power of abiding with that silence, and how...

As a manager, you can’t step in and solve someone else’s problems, but you can hold up a mirror so that someone can see the problem and start solving it themselves.   And one of the best ways to help someone confront reality and start addressing a problem is by asking a question based in genuine curiosity. The danger here is triggering someone’s fight, flight, or freeze response, which will stop y...

When you identify the thing that is really causing a problem in your life or business, it’s usually not very difficult to solve – but many of us waste time and money barking up the wrong tree because there is some uncomfortable aspect of reality that we’re trying to avoid.   However, all the effort we put into avoiding reality causes disproportionately more discomfort than just looking reality in...

We’re often more committed to things in our life being nice and cozy than we are to reality, even if that coziness is causing problems in our family, our relationships, or our businesses. However, there’s a real danger here because lacking a commitment to truth obscures real problems and creates obstacles that hinder personal embodiment and organizational success.   So in this episode, I want to s...

What are you resisting?   If you need help tracking it down, first find the most significant chronic pain in your life.   So often, we are unconsciously resisting some aspect of reality that we don’t want to accept as true until this frustration causes so much pain that we can’t ignore it anymore and we are forced to either change or suffer.   Today we’ll analyze where this resistance comes from,...

The role of leadership can make you feel unappreciated, lonely, and exposed – but it does get more comfortable if you learn to BE a leader. The process isn’t easy, but nothing in life worth doing is.   So today we are going to explore the ways you can practice embodying leadership and the care you have to give yourself so that you don’t end up compromising during the learning process. I’d love you...

A few episodes back, we discussed how subjectivism became extreme in our society, which is apparent when we see the popularization of terms like ‘alternative facts’ and ‘fake news.’ And we can thank Descartes for that.   However, even with this subjectivist approach to life, people are not living in accordance with Descartes’ philosophy and examining their perception of the world. Instead, we sett...

As we mentioned in the last episode, our education system is not designed to teach us how to embody what we learn and change at the level of being. It’s a formulaic system of tests and regurgitation. Then by the time we reach early adulthood, we tend to crystallize and never change again.   That’s not what we offer at Clear and Open. We offer you the opportunity to try on and use different forms o...

In this four-part series, we will reframe and expand our definition of learning. To start, we will focus on the difference between learning to become something and learning a set of knowledge in order to do something.   Traditional schooling and education invite students to find the formula that works and then regurgitate specific information at the appropriate times. So from a very young age, we...

Subjectivism has, in many ways, caused the steady decay of the economy, the news, and our shared reality – But there is a common solution to all of those problems.   To conclude this series, I will outline the one brave step you can take to help yourself and the people you manage to escape the distortions of our subjective reality. I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for...

Over the past couple episodes, we’ve discussed how the United States has developed a dangerous relationship with reality.   Today we’ll be talking about why businesses are responsible for bringing our society back into truth, and how framing management and leadership as a spiritual practice, like meditation, can help us create companies that can accomplish this. I’d love your feedback. Click here...

With the rise of ‘alternative facts’ and ‘fake news,’ we have entered an era characterized by ethical subjectivism. It is the idea of individual rights, which the United States was founded on, taken to a dangerous extreme.   It is my truth that when you commit to living in reality, it will support you – and this becomes a challenge when there is no generally agreed upon reality.   So today we will...

Here in the United States, especially when it comes to our economy, we live in a false reality.   Today we will establish how mediocrity perpetuates this paradigm and what it looks like in practice, laying the foundation for our discussion about Descartes, Money, Meditation, and Subjectivism over the next few episodes. I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on i...

As a society, we put a premium on honesty – but there’s a massive gap between how we value honesty and how people tend to embody it.   In reality, most of us want harmony more than we want honesty. However, a business culture won’t grow or improve without critical and constructive feedback, for both employees and managers.   So for the conclusion of this series on why people quit their bosses, not...

It is my truth that life wants you to change, and it’ll hint, prod, and push you until something starts to give.   When you choose to respond to life’s prodding, you have two options: manufacturing personality traits to strategically achieve a particular outcome or pursuing authentic change. I argue that the former will only work for so long before life responds accordingly, thus reaching the resu...

You can find people online who are offering what appear to be easily accessible and digestible solutions to almost any problem. These articles and videos are effective at pulling people in because it’s natural to crave a quick fix, but no 10-item listicle is going to provide a realistic and long-lasting solution to management.   Sometimes you have to change who you are to make progress, not accrue...

Many of us idealize a lifestyle devoid of responsibility or challenge. But if you ever pursue the dream of spending every day eating pizza and drinking mai tais on the beach, or whatever your fantasy looks like, you might be surprised by how unfulfilling a challenge-free life is.   So while you're listening, I want you to be curious: consider what your current perception of a challenge is and how...

When were you taught how to be a good boss and manager? I know that didn't come up for me in public school, or even secondary education.   Instead, we were conditioned and trained to be individual contributors, often rewarded for the poor project management habits that we developed in the process. Nothing was more important than knowing the answer to a problem, even if we only retained it for a co...

We’re all resisting something – and a lot of us are resisting help.   A good manager will help you change for the better; your sherpa on the road to excellence. So when we resist management by throwing up our authority projections and shame issues, we aren’t sticking it to the man. We’re really sticking it to our own self-development.   But you always have the opportunity to stop resisting, and to...

Do you think of excellence as a noun, something that can be pursued and earned through enough effort, or as a verb, something you practice and strive for every day? I’d argue it’s the latter; an orientation to life rather than an achievement.   But our society isn’t conditioned to practice excellence – we’re watchers and dreamers, and for the most part, people are content with simply dreaming abou...

We’ve spent the last few weeks learning the ins and outs of managing others. And now that we have that context for what exactly good management looks like, we can start the process of setting aside our shame issues and authority projections so that we can also be managed effectively.   Although cooperating may not be our first inclination when confronted with an authority figure, it really is in o...