More buzz

 A while ago I reached out to booktuber Brad Proctor and he was interested in a copy of The Entity. This video is an unboxing where The Entity is the first book that's unpacked:

Self-improvement retreats: determination to succeed

To realize anything in life you will need determination, grit, the willingness to go the extra mile, and you will have to work harder than everyone else. But that’s not all it takes: to get ahead in anything you need to work smarter. You need to have a general idea of where you’re heading, how you’re going to get there, and how you will stay ahead in your game. 

This doesn’t mean that you need to be the first. In every human pursuit you will be inspired by role-models that were there before you. When you initially walk down that same road, you will have this notion that you will never be like them, and that’s why you will not succeed. Here’s a funny little thing though: if you stick around long enough, you will realize that you will never do things like your role-models, because you’re not them. You have your own ideas, your own angles, your own wisdom, your own personality and that’s how you fill those shoes. 

When it comes to new pursuits, it’s rarely the case that it’s the first player who wins and dominates the field for decades to come. It’s usually a good second or third that’s able to see what the first player doesn’t see: small improvements and tweaks that the first one wasn’t able to come up with. Google, Apple, Facebook: they were all seconds. But what’s more: these companies were all man-made, which makes this an analogy for your career and ambitions as well.

Running as an analogy
When I studied physics and philosophy there were stretches that I needed to wrap my head around ideas at a higher pace than I was used to, so I needed to find a new angle. I gave running a try and as it turned out it was easy enough to get into, but to move beyond 3-4 miles was where it became more technical and therefore more difficult. This is where I needed to develop the right focus, which in my mind is laid out best in Chi-running. 

That was at the time of a second running craze: around 2000 it seemed that everyone was jogging. The premise is simple: it’s the ideal work-out that you can fit into any lifestyle. You just need a pair of shoes, shorts, a shirt and somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour to spare. Running gets you in shape, it builds stamina and it gets you to clear your head. I have been running for 15 years and it has been one of the work-outs that I keep coming back to. 

More recently I read an article about one of the guys who popularized running back in the 70s. I haven’t read his book yet, but it seems to be a classic (in case you’re interested, it’s titled The complete book of running). It was the book that started it all, and that’s also what first started Nike: it was initially geared towards running before they branched out towards basically all sports. 

These days there are quick seconds who makes better shoes: in my personal experience that’s Mizuno. I have stayed with this brand for  about a decade and I keep coming back for more. It has everything that you might want in good running shoes: comfortable, sturdy, supportive and lightweight. These are the shoes that I bought most recently, and those are the ones that I would consider buying next.

Run during the week, not while on retreat
Running is what keeps you going, and more. It clears your mind when busy, and it gives you that extra boost that you need to be on top of your game. It doesn’t mean that you can repeat this day in day out, in fact about one third of all folks who engage in sports over-train: they don’t incorporate rest-days to get the full benefit of a work-out. 

Rest days aren’t just important for your body, but also for your mental state. For the last fifteen years I have stuck to this very simple rule: no matter how busy it gets, I take one full day of rest. By rest I don’t mean just inactivity, but slow activities that help me get a better perspective, and that’s why I prefer to call it a retreat. 

These days it’s churned out over and over that all the big CEOs read about one book a week, and they attribute part of their success to reading a lot. In all honesty, my life is too busy to read one book per week, but I do aim at getting a better understanding of things on that one day of the week that I have set aside for my retreat.

It’s then that I look into sharpening my mind and to widen my gaze. Some days I pick up a book, I read long-forms that reflect on current events, I read up on blogs, and yes ---- I also watch my fair share of YouTube. The key is that throughout the day I force myself not to think, let alone spend time on my job or the pursuit of my second career. 

Just to be clear: that day of retreat isn’t just about you and your mind. It’s also the day that you spend just a little more time with your family. Those are the people that you should care for the most, and who care for you the most. Without a strong family unit you will not achieve anything, in fact that’s what Stephen King says about his family: he attributes his success to the fact that he has a family, not despite of that. 

During the last few months of lock-down there are a few books that inspired me the most: Rich dad, poor dad, Geopolitics of emotion and 7 habits of highly effective people. On my to-read list are The intelligent investor, and a few works of fiction, 11/22/63, The Gun Slinger and The Forgotten Island.

In summary
- quick seconds or thirds are usually more successful, because they dodge prior mistakes and are able to take a better perspective
- working-out helps you to recharge your batteries, both mind and body. By far the easiest and most effective work-out is running.
- build in a one-day retreat to sharpen your mind and spend time with your family.

Prime directive: Gaze wide, aim far.



Continue reading:

Living autobiographically: how to use narrative identity
On writing the story of our lives in such a way that we can live with ourselves.




Choose another path: how to identify opportunities in life
On figuring out what you're made of and when to seize opportunity.




Gaze Finder TV: On principles and brevity
On the way principles can make us better at what we do, and the way brevity makes us seem more knowledgeable.

Buzz.... For The Entity and The Island

Sometimes things cross your path when you're not looking for it... When I was trying to find an angle to promote my current non-fiction Gaze wide, aim far, I saw a review of an excellent novel titled The Forgotten Island. 
I read some of the reviews, and through that review I ended up on the blog of an excellent reviewer named Matt with a small message in the corner: accepting submission.
Finding a quality blog is hard, but it's even harder to find one that's accepting submisions. Long story short, I send out paperbacks of my two novels and they were recently featured in a post on a popular instagram feed (click to see the actual post):

https://www.instagram.com/p/CBql_k0geuX/

A review will follow later... The blog is Team Redmon in case you're interested and it also has an instagram page....

Living autobiographically: how to use narrative identity

We all picked them up at one time or other: memoirs of famous people. By reading those stories, we hope to learn some tricks to become more successful ourselves. Or maybe it’s more at the surface, and it’s little more than fascination. The latest craze is of course Becoming by Michelle Obama, and the current anti-craze is Apropos of nothing by Woody Allen.

I haven’t read either, but I would imagine that I’d pick up the second one before the first. I mentioned the introduction of Manhattan in the third part of Gaze wide, aim far, because it’s visceral and it makes sense. Recap: a man (Allen) narrates clips of a city (Manhattan) and he drops about a dozen incomplete thoughts (fragments). Then fireworks erupt over the city and the classical music climaxes. 

If you have never seen Manhattan, then you should at least watch the introduction to understand what I’m talking about. This is one of those instances when something is ‘all of those things’, because many of our experiences are plural in the sense that they tend to mean something else to different people. That’s the human condition in a nutshell, and that’s okay.

Past and future as a continuum

Autobiographies are by definition accounts of a life lived, a looking back and a reflection when all things are set and done. It’s like a movie: once it’s written down, the story is the same every time around. But that’s when you write things down. If an autobiography stays in your mind, then it stays fluid and in a way past and future melt together in the face of a narrative that shifts and changes gears as we try to understand and comprehend.

And that’s another point right there: many times in life we do things without exactly knowing why. We either act on instinct, out of boredom, out of habit, or we’re urged by some outside force to get something done. Of course we tell ourselves that we have free will and all that, because we are all existentialists in that we try to define ourselves, and we’re nihilists when we don’t. What’s in the middle is much more interesting, or better yet: what’s ahead of us. 

There are a lot of modern problems that have to do with this inability to deal with a life lived. The most striking are still soldiers that come back home and crash and burn in ptsd. For most of us, we don’t have lives lived as soldiers, but it’s more everyday, and in a way more ‘real’. More times than not it has to do with something that happens outside of ourselves that we can’t deal with at the time, and that ends up wearing us down. 

In terms of fiction: the terror is outside of us. This is exactly the fictional premise that Stephen King started with and that he applied throughout his career and that he addressed with the simple question: what do ordinary folks do when faced with a terror? That’s the same mechanism like the inability of living with that life lived, but it’s that on another level. It has become acceptable, because it has created its own symbolism. 

This might be less of a leap than it seems at first. The way most of us deal with things that happened during the day is when we sleep (besides discussing things with our spouse or partner, but that’s a given, right?). When we sleep, we dream. Most of those are forgotten by the time we wake up, but those that we do remember are fantastic and over the top. 

Those dreams take on a reality and a symbolism that’s very much like works of fiction. How it works exactly isn’t well understood, but the base premise is that the subconscious kicks in and does the heavy lifting for us. When it doesn’t suffice, ptsd and all that other nasty stuff kicks in, and we have to find another angle in our waking life. 

This is obviously the extreme, and I didn’t intend to go there when I started this piece. Let’s paddle back a little.

Redirecting the narrative

Personal autobiographies are more than an account of a life lived, it’s more than a story as well, and that’s where we get by stretching up the notion of past and future, and mixing that with a narrative that changes over time, because of how we lived our lives, but most of all ---- how we look back on our lives. 

That’s where the whole fluidity comes back in. That’s where you are able to take your account of the past and how you feel about that past, and project it towards the future. That’s the point where the story becomes more than an account that’s written down at a certain time. That’s where a story becomes part of our identity. 

This was one of the first things that I discussed in part one of Gaze wide, aim far: to some degree, how we see ourselves is a story, and in fact ---- a narrative because it continues, and in that sense it makes sense to define it as the narrative identity. To do that you need to both reach back to the past and aim for the future. That’s what is meant by living autobiographically. 

By and large this is part of finding out who you are and where you stand. It’s sorting yourself out, it’s you figuring out who you are and this is one of the keys that’s needed to not just develop a wide gaze, but also to be able to aim far. Understanding yourself and the world around you is the width of the gaze, but to aim you need to know what’s within reach for yourself, and for that you need to have developed a keen sense of who you are. 

This is where it pays of to study biographies, to talk to mentors and family to figure out how they got to where they are today. If you manage to mix insights from those instances with a wider understanding of living autobiographically and narrative identity, then you will have a very powerful tool at your disposal. 

In summary

- autobiographies are aimed at understanding the past

- powerful fiction is written around a theme and will help you to understand the world around us (check out my fiction-blog to learn more about that; including my novels….)

- aiming personal autobiographies towards the future helps to create a narrative identity

- to some degree, changing the story of who we are can help us figure out who we are, and is called narrative identity

- mix this insight with studying how role-models created their success will widen your gaze, and help gear you up for success.

“Gaze wide, aim far!”

“More, more!”

“In a few days, partner.”

Leave your comments below.

Choose another path: how to identify opportunities in life

This here is a really big one, because let’s face it; no matter where we are in life there is always that very subtle and nagging notion of what life would be like on the other side. In hindsight it’s always easy to determine that we should have done this or that, but the simple fact of the matter is that life isn’t lived in hindsight. Life is lived by moving forward.

When I was about to turn 30 I did find myself near that cross-road where I felt that I needed to turn things around. By signing a contract for a three year job abroad, my initial thought was that I was just postponing having to this or that. But that’s also looking back, because three years can be long enough to start a little groove that can very well end up creating in a whole new path. 

I think that most of the reason that we want something else has to do with us not being happy with our current situation ----- whatever that may be. It’s very rarely the case that we choose another path, because things are going exactly the way we want them to go. This may seem like a trivial distinction, but it may be an essential element of you not having sorted yourself out as yet, or you running away from things. 

The not wanting, or the being stuck in a situation communicates immediacy, and a willingness and a need to act in the short-term. I guess you already know where I’m going with this, but here it comes still: to figure out a move generally takes more time than you have, or are willing to take.

When to cease opportunities

For opportunities to be viable there need to be a few things in place. Basic requirements are timing, the person and possibly a bit of money to get the ball rolling (and to buy more time if needed). But before any of this matters, you need to know what to look for and how to identify the right time to make a move.

In an earlier post I was commenting why Good Samaritan isn’t that much of a song, and even though it’s about the anti-shoulder to cry on, there’s one line that makes total sense: “I’m not the one to sort you out.”. This one is so simple and it cuts so close to the truth that it’s easy to miss. This is the stuff that takes time, and that’s a turnout of a life lived. This one mostly depends on you.

For any of that you need to have some skin in the game: it’s about what you know about life, what gets you riled up, what gets you upset and all that. To have any of that, you need to have at least a small bit of the lived life. You need to have experienced success, but more than that, you need to have lived through that experience of failure, when you hit the ground running. That’s where you get to find out what kind of person you are, what you’re made of, what you stand for, and what is and isn’t within your realm of possibilities. 

These evenings during dinner we’re watching parts of a rerun of the Giro d’Italia. I never really watched this tour, and in all honesty it’s more fun than its popular counterpart (Tour de France): the Giro is a story about men that battle through snowy mountains, flat roads, dirt roads, rain and all that. 

To be a runner is hard and in a way I wouldn’t wish a life like that to my worst enemy, but at the same time: it’s heroic. It’s about things that most of us are unable to do. What sets it apart for me is that small notion that as a runner there will be at least one moment in the year where you literally hit the ground running. You will open your skin, break some bones and run the possibility of death. It’s like fighting a war without all the political non-sense. 

Most of those runners work towards those tours for years: they might start training in their teens, but it’s only when they peak in their twenties and thirties that they enter the hardest of these races. That means that there are literally years of preparation, of figuring out whether they are cut out for any of this, besides the literal competitions that do this sorting out for them. 

Give yourself time, but also: be practical

I’m not going to imply that any of us, let alone most of us are cut out to be runners. Most of us are not so lucky that we can turn sports into a career, so most of us need a more practical approach. 

When I was in my twenties I felt stuck after studying computer science. That’s when I did some soul-searching, I looked at jobs that ran in my family and I looked at projections of job opportunities for the coming years. I opted for maybe a less glamorous job, but one with definite challenges and job security. I enrolled in physics with the aim of becoming a teacher. 

Fast forward 15 years, with me having been in the job for a little over 10 years, and I’m at a new cross-road. This time the time-constraint is less of an issue, which gives me more time to prepare a more thorough move. To give you a hint: look at the world around us (pandemic/recession/demonstrations) that was already changing in the face of discontinuity of life-long jobs, the rise of the gig-economy and the advances in AI. What do you think my next move is going to be about?

To identify any of those opportunities in life requires the kind of mind-set where you invest in getting an understanding of the world around us, figuring out who you are (sort yourself out), and using projections of future employment to your advantage. 

My point here is that none of this is humanly impossible, but it does require a willingness and certain actions on your part. That’s where it becomes essential to develop the right mind-set, because without it you will have a very hard time to stay focused in the long run. The mind-set will help you to stay on the right track.

That’s where pastimes might come in that will have an improved mind-set as a ‘side-effect’. Sports is an obvious one, and to get this benefit from sports, you don’t even need to compete in any way. Just working out regularly is enough to build discipline, to focus on something, and guess what: you will feel physically better in the long run as well. 

Besides sports you may want to look into the way you spend your free time. Of course you need your down-time to relax and recover, but you might just set some of that time apart for reading longer articles or books. Sports and reading are just two examples of habits that will set you up for the right conditions to develop the kind of mind-set that will gear you up for success. 

In summary

- sort yourself out (figure out who you are)

- aim to get a deeper understanding of the world around us.

- read far and wide (articles and books).

- engage in sports on a regular basis.

First principle: Gaze wide, aim far. 

Leave your comments below.

Gaze Finder TV: On principles & brevity

Axis pandemic – recession: how to solve social inequalities

As I’m writing this down we’re in the midst of it all: the 2020 pandemic has come down on us for a few months now, the recession with millions of job-losses has just reared its head, and in May/June demonstrations were all over to address police violence against people of color. 

The violence based on racial profiling has been systemic for years, and it has the same deep roots all over. It’s bad in so many ways, and it has been bad for so long that it almost seems that there’s no way out. That’s why it’s so important that it gets our attention, although it needs to be more than just that. 

What started these demonstrations in The States, with spinoffs in other nations, was said to be caused by the violent killing of a black man at the hands of police officers. It was hardly a singular event. A recent article came up, show-casing that this was just one in a string of events, even when narrowed down to the first months of 2020. The article gave insight in terms of extent, but it didn’t do much in terms of the larger narrative as to why people were all of a sudden so fed up that demonstrations flared up all over. 

That narrative is vast, it’s complex and it reaches far beyond the massive social awareness against injustice based on ethnicity. What got everyone involved this time wasn’t just the brutality, because there’s no doubt about that: it was brutal. 

The ‘more’ of all that has to do with the current events, mixed with what was set in motion as far back as five, ten or twenty years ago. The ‘more’ has to do with frustration about current events, about injustice of all kinds that are visible in social, economic and ethnic demographics, that are the limiting factors that are handed down to us when we’re born and put some of us at a disadvantage from that time on.

The ‘more’ is about debt, mounting costs of living, mounting costs of pursuing degrees, and the mounting impossibilities of building a better life. It’s also about what we feel that we’re entitled to and that’s just out of reach for many of us. It’s about facing uncertain times, it’s about unemployment, it’s about looming evictions, it’s about not having any substantial savings, and last and least of all: it’s about politics. 

It’s all of these things, and it’s about what it’s like to be so deep in a hole that there’s no way to crawl out no matter how much you scratch and fight. But it’s also to point out that it might just happen to any of us, and that’s were it unites, and where it builds towards an understanding of what it’s like to have reached your depth, and then to be kicked down. 

The message to ‘defund the police’ is a smart way to address politics and legislation: it moves the message beyond ‘right and wrong’, because that’s a non-debate (everyone knows and agrees that police violence is wrong). The ‘defund’ is actionable, and what it does, hopefully, is that it leaves the rotten elements without a job, eating the dust. 

Having lived on both sides of the divide, I have seen this debate up close. I was the majority back home in The West, and I have become the minority on The Island. The debate is always there, and from time to time it’s flaring up, and it very rarely moves beyond the pointing fingers of right versus wrong, where everyone agrees on the injustice, and the unrightfulness.

As an outsider (I’m not of color) I sometimes see things more clearly, and in my mind the only way to deal with those things is by securing yourself in a good job, by working towards credentials, by building generational wealth to secure a certain position and social standing. It’s the same mechanism as ‘defund the police’, where you place yourself above pity, jealousy, xenophobia, fear and the big r. Let them eat the dust. 

Of course, politics needs to do its part eventually, wrongdoers and those who are complicit need to be brought to justice, advocates towards equality need to be elected in public office, and our societies need to strive towards unity and inclusion. All of these things need to be done, but generally those are outside of our personal sphere of influence. Where it comes to our private lives, we should secure our own position, and that of our families first. 

In these times we need social inclusion on all fronts, and that’s by and large what is missing on the global political stage. Obama was about that, he was able to utilize rhetoric that unites and that moves democracy forward. That’s where you put yourself above the debate. Yes, he was a black president, but most of all he was a great president. 

In a recent op-ed of the New York Times, the writer made a case for Lincoln, and how he would have acted these days (because there’s also the pandemic and recession to consider):

Lincoln, in our darkest, most divisive hour, was able to dig deep into his soul and find the words “with malice toward none, with charity for all … let us strive on to finish the work we are in” and establish “a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Great words have the power to unite when they are spoken from the heart, they express how all of us feel, and they paint the picture of how to move forward. 

Don’t expect too much from politics these days. Biden is largely unknown and he doesn’t have that stride of a great statesman. It seems to me that people will be more likely to stick with what they got in uncertain times. That’s bleak, but it might just turn out to be the reality of things. Then the question comes up: what can you do when the demonstrations are over?

Start with yourself, your family, and those that are close to you. It seems to be the only viable way, for now. Gaze wide, aim far.

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