Manage to Engage

Let’s reframe responsibility. No one is inherently responsible or irresponsible. Responsibility is simply the ability to respond to a situation. You have the opportunity to respond in every situation you are in. And the irony of it – what I call the responsibility paradox – is that people who aren’t being responsible don’t wonder if they are being responsible, because that is the responsible thing...

One of the best tools for claiming self-authority is the enneagram. It’s one I use constantly. When you learn to understand and use the enneagram well, it is completely life-changing. Rarely do we understand how differently people think until we really dive into this work. And when you know yourself, how you communicate, and how other people perceive you, incredible things happen. This episode was...

I discussed the willingness to lose it all last week, and I want to start by clarifying something: being willing to lose it all does not guarantee that you won’t lose it all. That’s a hard pill to swallow, but it’s true: the stronger your will, the higher the likelihood that you will have to fail – and fail hard – to achieve true self-authority. You won’t know the price until you take the leap, bu...

Last week we talked about why “follow your passion” is poor advice. It’s understandable that we’d think that. We’ve been conditioned to think that acquisition leads to action, and that action leads to feeling or being a certain way. But what if we’ve had it backwards all along? What if it’s the being that leads to doing, and that leads to having what we want? That’s the true path. This episode was...

There are two things that define the mature self more than anything else: a soulmate and a passion path. Neither are something you go out and get – you attract them by being the kind of person who deserves them. But we’re not conditioned to work on who we are. Instead, we’re told to define what we want and acquire it. “Find your passion.” We have to deconstruct our current paradigm and start worki...

Our society places such concern over intelligence. We’re led to believe that getting good grades, going to college, and gaining certified knowledge will lead to happiness, but the reality is just the opposite. The more intelligent you are, the better the mind gets at obstructing our feelings. The first step to overcoming this mental block is to realize that it exists. We can’t conceptualize oursel...

As you explore your own authentic power, you need to be aware of the ways in which you give your power away. Maybe you’re bolstering your lack of authority by joining a group dynamic that gives you a sense of control or power. And of course, being a part of groups is not a bad thing. But unless you’ve forged yourself in the fires of loneliness, you will never know how you are leaking your power to...

Doing nothing is hard. You’ve done the hard work to dredge up feelings from the deepest crevices of your mind, and now you’re supposed to stop… but doing nothing is still doing something. It is an active process. Any behavior that serves to numb feelings is suspect. Treating the symptoms rather than the cause only leads to feeling worse. When you really see what’s happening in your life – without...

We’ve learned to challenge our parents’ reality and establish emotional boundaries. That’s hard work. But many of us are afraid to keep tugging on that thread and see what unravels. When your emotions are all out in the open, what are you supposed to do with them? All you have to do – as simple or as complex as it may seem – is to look at it, embrace it, and feel it. And do it without judgment. Wi...

Doing the work is, surprisingly, only half of the work. The second – and often more challenging – part is to take a closer look at what comes out. Previously, we had looked at some uncomfortable parts of our pasts: acknowledging our weaknesses, examining the flaws of our parents, and looking at the relationships between them. We’re going to take some time to reflect on the lessons we’ve learned, a...

We’re in a whole new world of work. We have the dominant generation creating higher and higher demands for their work while, at the same time, businesses try to find the balance between meeting their wants and honoring their own internal hierarchies. Then there are the challenges of remote work. We’re starting to see the benefits and drawbacks of having a remote workplace. How can we get the best...

I offer weekly member webcasts, online courses, and mentorship at clearandopen.com because it’s my truth that, with the right tools, anyone can eliminate the people, money, and time problems holding them back in business. And I share parts of these webcasts and courses on this show because I want to help you, too. I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Ap...

Last week, Rishon Blumberg shared his concept of hiring “10x” talent. Today, we’re going to look at how you can manage and retain that talent – or, if that talent is you, how to make sure you’re getting the most from the companies that hire you. I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts .

Rishon Blumberg is an entrepreneur and the co-founder of Brick Wall Management, an entertainment management company. As they hired freelancers to build websites and apps within the industry, they kept bumping up against the same problem: good, reliable talent is hard to find. When people started calling tech talent “the new rockstars,” Rishon and his co-founder wondered if they could take what the...

Previously, we looked at how your relationship with your parents — and more specifically, your acknowledgement of their flaws — is essential to claiming self-authority. Ignoring reality is dangerous. In the short-term it gives us relief and removes the discomfort of non optimal experiences. But in the long-term, ignoring reality makes us incapable of recognizing what’s actually real. The job of an...

The biggest roadblock to becoming stronger is our refusal to get deeply intimate with our weaknesses. As an extension of that, far too many of us are unwilling to acknowledge the faults in our parents. There is nothing more important than looking at your parents weaknesses, because it’s easier to see than your own. And the more we learn about our parents, the more we learn about ourselves. This ep...

We’re always told to “play to our strengths” while downplaying our weaknesses. We strive so hard to hide our shortcomings — both from others and ourselves. In reality, they are both two sides of the same coin. Without understanding both, we never see the full picture. Our biggest challenges are an expression of our greatest strengths. Let’s learn to see the best in ourselves — by acknowledging the...

Competence lies in the gap between who you think you are and what is actually true about you. The role of a teacher or mentor is to help people look into the gap between. If you never risk achieving excellence and finding out where you fall short, you will be stuck succumbing to mediocrity. A healthy ego should oscillate between believing you are awesome and seeing how far you have to go without d...

The path to competence is paved with failure. Failure is the moment when you realize that your competence is an illusion and clarifies what you need to gain it. The problem is that so many people are afraid of failure. And fear of failure leads to mediocrity. The safest thing we can do to avoid failure is to never try at all. To achieve competence we have to become friends with failure. This episo...

As we’ve discussed recently, money is a symbol of value. Applying that in our lives can lead to a paradigm shift in how we approach money. But first, we have to repair our relationship to producing value which has been warped since childhood. This episode was originally recorded as part of the Money: From Burden to Freedom course , available at ClearandOpen.com . I’d love your feedback. Click here...

Like money, competence leads to problems when we think we know what it is… and we think we have it, but don’t. To get to the highest peaks of excellence you have to take a deconstructive approach to competence — that is, focusing on where you are incompetent. We’re going to delve into the true definition of competence, and where incompetency is born. This episode was originally recorded as part of...

The true essence of money and the way it is expressed in the world are at a complete impasse. That’s where so much discomfort around money comes from. We do not feel comfortable with the reality of money as it exists in the world, and yet we see no path to change it. So what are we going to do — change the way the world views money? Or change our world? That’s what we have control over, and the on...

The discomfort many of us have around money shows up in different ways. Now that we know what money truly is, it’s natural to start applying that to our current perception of it. As we clarify and further understand money, we become more comfortable with our relationship with it. This episode was originally recorded as part of the Money: From Burden to Freedom course , available at ClearandOpen.co...

Before we can talk about money and our relation to it, we have to come to a common definition of it. Today, I’m going to define what money is — and what it isn’t — to parse out how that relates to you. This episode was originally recorded as part of the Money: From Burden to Freedom course , available at ClearandOpen.com . I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the s...

It’s surprising how little we are actually in control — most of us, anyway. We think we’re sitting in the driver’s seat. However, we’re really in the passenger seat, staring out the window, occasionally shouting out directions but never really paying attention to the road. The truth of the matter is, you’re never really going to take that wheel. As you do the work, you’ll become more comfortable w...