40 Things You May Not Know About Me

Recently I turned 40 and I was thinking a lot about my life and everything I experienced.

And while I share a lot about myself online there are still many things people don’t know about me. So to commemorate my birthday I’m going to share 40 things you may not know about me. I hope that as you see me, you’ll be more willing to see and share yourself.

  1. I once ran a fair game where I convinced people to put on a chicken suit, get inside an inflatable ring, and fight each other with oversized boxing gloves. The game was called sumo chicken boxing and people had to pay for the privilege.

  2. I once sang Christmas carols for Vice President Al Gore while his election fight against George Bush hung in the balance (he looked very tired)

  3. I volunteered for several summers as a counselor at a Buddhist summer camp. My counselor name was counselor Tofu.

  4. I have performed at the famous Blue Bird Cafe in Nashville and the best response I got was for a set of parody songs I wrote about balding. (Secret balding guy being my favorite)

  5. When I had hair I’d get self-conscious about the bald spot in the back of my head even though most people didn’t notice it. Which is why I usually wore a hat.

  6. The main reason I keep my head shaved is that I like the simplicity of it and I think I look better without hair.

  7. The only reason I didn’t have a beard for three years is because my ex-partner didn’t like how it look and felt, but I generally prefer having a beard and usually grow one every year.

  8. I left college with only 6 credit hours to finish. It took me an additional 6 years to finish those credit hours and finally graduate college (I had some stupid righteous story about it for a long time which I had to eventually admit was dumb)

  9. I almost had a minor in both dance and communications but didn’t get enough credit hours to finish either. My favorite dance classes were improv classes.

  10. In high school I was an award winning debater and speaker. But I really shined in mock congress where I introduced bills to annex Canada (I mean it’s basically the US anyway) and to turn Tennessee into a perfect parallelogram (It’s so close!)

  11. I once performed Mozarts Requiem in Carnegie Hall and it’s still one of my favorite pieces to this day to hear and sing along with.

  12. Until college I identified as a libertarian and voted for George Bush in the first election. It wasn’t until I got exposed to more ways of thinking that I slowly became more progressive. I now support universal health care and raising the minimum wage among other things.

  13. I was a soloist and select group singer in my church choir growing up and link many of my early spiritual experiences to performing music in church.

  14. My first ‘drug’ experiences were smoking cigarettes I had bought when I had gone to Germany to visit my sister (who was studying abroad). About once a month I would sneak out late at night and smoke behind the house where I grew up.

  15. For ten years I was a pack-a-day smoker. My preferred brand was Camel lights, though I would sometimes smoke camel reds and parliaments. Sometimes I still miss smoking, but not that often.

  16. My first ‘business’ was selling glass pipes that I bought from a friend of a cousin in Florida and resold to my friends at college. I made a pretty good profit, but I wasn’t great at the business side of things.

  17. In college my freshman roommates and I were so messy, tour guides would bring tours by our room to gawk at the spectacle and we had to write letters of apology to the housing services at the end of the year.

  18. While many people know I lived as a Zen monk for two years, few people know that for a year I serve as the Jisha or attendant to one of the Zen masters. It’s a position of great honor and I had to learn to anticipate his needs and prepare meals for him during retreats. I often made specialized grilled cheese sandwiches and cheese plates with ornate decorations.

  19. One retreat we did every year at the monastery involved going out to sit at dusk and then making our way back after dark. I learned that you can see a path with your feet if you walk slowly enough.

  20. Though I loved my time at the monastery a year after I left two senior students accused the teachers of abusing power and being narcissistic. I talked to several ex-students and tried to understand why they had left. The stories they told me changed my view of the community and it’s why I no longer practice with those teachers or endorse other people going to the monastery where I spent two important years of my life. I’m still very grateful for their guidance.

  21. When I was in my late twenties I did an epic trip across the US and hiked more than 180 miles in national parks. I finished my trip by going to India for a month which was the first place I encountered Buddhism and meditation. That trip had a HUGE impact on my life.

  22. I ran for multiple student body offices in high school and didn’t win a single one. I thought being smart mattered, but really I wasn’t very good at being popular.

  23. For a long time my favorite color was green but it slowly turned to red over the past 5-10 years.

  24. I didn’t have a cell phone until a couple of years after college and I resisted getting an iPhone for years because I thought they were excessive. I still feel this way about new technology until I have it.

  25. Part of the reason I originally moved to Portland was because I wanted to live somewhere I could go skiing. I trained and worked as a ski instructor my first winter but stopped after my car broke down and I decided not to get it fixed. Then I didn’t ski for 8 years.

  26. I lived without a car for almost a decade and really resisted buying one because I loved the simplicity of life without a car. And although I’m glad I have a car now I still miss the time in my life where I didn’t use one.

  27. In high school I put highlights in my hair several times. In college I dyed my hair fire truck red and at one point had my hair in dreadlocks. I’m lucky that not many pictures of these choices exist.

  28. I was pretty involved in boy scouts until I broke my left arm at camp while riding on a rope swing. After I broke my arm I immediately asked for a stick to bite on when they set my arm. Then I rode in the back of a pick-up in the rain to the hospital but the break was so bad that the rural doctor refused to fix it so I had to ride inside the pickup for two more hours to go to a different hospital before having it set.

  29. Almost ALL of my romantic relationships have either started out as long distance relationships or have ended up being long distance for a significant portion of our time together.

  30. For over 10 years I used marijuana almost daily and was a proud ‘pothead’ for most of it. Though I wasn’t aware I was numbing myself to life. At the time it felt like a good way to cope with all of my feelings and the out of control racing of my mind.

  31. I was born in Germany and lived in Greece until I was 3 years old. On the night I was born, my grandmother got confused and fell down the basement stairs. We ended up going to the hospital together.

  32. Apparently I was anxious to get into the world because my mother wasn’t in labor long and when I was born dislocated a shoulder when I was born. Apparently, I was in a rush to get here being born at 4:18 in the morning.

  33. Though I love camping as an adult, I only went camping once with my family growing up. When I asked my parents why they told me that I whined the entire trip and was so annoying they decided never to take me again. (I of course remember having a great time #kid-memory)

  34. I am incredibly romantic and have been my entire life. I have written a series of letters for a partner I wasn’t going to see for 3 weeks so she could open one from me each day. I have bought overnight tickets to surprise a partner with flowers. I have written countless romantic poems and songs. I’ve even saved old receipts and trinkets in relationships and love creating complex and beautiful romantic experiences for partners.

  35. I was a successful middle and high school wrestler all because I didn’t make the soccer team in middle school. I was a three-time regional champ and placed 5th in the state my senior year. The hardest part was making weight and I tried things like eating a liquid diet, running in a plastic suit, and sitting in a sauna all in order to lose weight.

  36. I didn’t lose my ‘virginity’ until I was a sophomore in college.

  37. I’ve been a writer my entire life and even attended a writing camp when I was in middle school. Though I didn’t get serious about writing until the last few years. If you search well enough you can even find some of my angsty college writing on the internet. https://ergosumsam.livejournal.com/

  38. I have few food preferences, but I hate cheesecake, cheez-its, and goldfish crackers.

  39. I remember most of the important songs I learned growing up. For example, my claim to fame in elementary school was getting the lead in the school musical in which I played Christopher Columbus and I can still sing much of my big solo number (which was of course not about the murder of indigenous people)

  40. While I’m incredibly loving I have a hard time letting love in. But when I do I apparently make a face that lets you know you got it in there.

Ok, that’s it, there are 40 things about me. My hope is that as you read this you’ll see yourself in this and also realize that each of us is rich, deep, and different even as we are boring, ordinary, and the same.

Which is something we can only see when we let others see who we really are.

Love,
Toku

 

How To Deal With Stupid & Pointless Assignments

For most of high school, I thought many of my teachers were idiots. I didn’t think they were bad at teaching, it’s just that I thought many of the assignments they gave us were pointless: rote memorization, filling out worksheets, papers on inconsequential topics, etc.

My life was filled with pointless stupid assignments I was doomed to execute. This experience continued into my work life. “If you have time to lean you have time to clean” is a phrase I’ve heard more often than I care to admit.

Some of these tasks seemed to have value while others seemed like busywork created simply to extract as much labor from me as possible even if that labor was largely pointless.

Like many people I dreamed of the day I might work for myself and end this barrage of pointless work. But alas the epoch of meaningless tasks haunts me still.

My company is incorporated in Nevada, a state that requires a use tax. But since I don’t actually conduct any of my business in Nevada I’m exempt. Yet I still have to file an empty use tax return every. single. month. Pointless.

Slowly I began to see that life, human life, with governments and health insurance is a life filled with pointless assignments and tasks. There is no escaping it. But I wanted freedom so I created it. By refusing to do anything pointless ever again.

Here is how:

1) Accept that I don’t always see what is and isn’t pointless.

For example, I thought math was mostly dumb in school. After all, when would I need to use math in my adult life. That’s why humans invented calculators. Yet I have built amazing spreadsheets to analyze sales data, do my own finances, and create forms for my clients. All of which are based on the logic I learned in math class. True I probably don’t need to know trigonometry, but having a basic understanding of how logic works has been incredibly valuable.

This step isn’t really about whether something is or isn’t pointless and stupid. It’s really just about accepting that I may not see why I need to do something. It’s an invitation to relax and be open to the idea that something could have value even if I can’t see it.

2) Realize that thinking something is stupid, pointless, or a waste of time is simply a judgment, assessment, and interpretation I’m making.

For a long time, I felt firm in my conviction that making a bed is a pointless act. After all, I’m just going to get back in it at the end of the day. I felt similarly about cleaning. I felt like cleaning dishes mattered, but not much else, everything fell victim to entropy so why try and fight it.

If you had visited my home at any point in my early to mid-twenties you would have seen this philosophy born out in empty pizza boxes and scattered clothing.

I interpreted cleaning as meaningless because I couldn’t see the impact it had on my mind, my self-respect, and the feeling tone of my home. To my twenty year old self, cleaning was mostly meaningless. To my nearly forty year old self, cleaning is an essential part of self-love and of integrity. So much so that I even make my bed when I leave a hotel.

The key here ISN’T that my twenty year old self was wrong, but rather that it was just one of many ways of viewing cleaning. My nearly forty year old self view is also just one of many. The difference is that viewing cleaning as an act of self-love feels more empowering, enlivening, and also increases other people’s ability to enjoy my home.

If everything is an interpretation then you can take anything that’s pointless and give it meaning. You can also take something that has a lot of meaning (you don’t like) and make it pointless.

A capacity that’s essential for leaders and anyone seeking depth through personal growth.

3) Realize that I can choose to create meaning and empower anything that I do.

Once I realized that I was making up that things were stupid or cool I began to realize I had the power to shift how I felt about things.

The first time I really saw this was when I was at the monastery cleaning toilets. The cleaning kits we had included big rubber gloves that were always several sizes too big. This made the process of scrubbing toilets difficult and awkward. At first, I felt frustrated by the gloves, by having to clean the toilets, and by how gross it all was.

But at the monastery, we were constantly encouraged to look at things with compassion and curiosity. So one day I decided to clean the toilet without the gloves.

I watched as my aversion to touching toilets arose, but I realized it was just a judgment. I began to see the love I was demonstrating in my actions. Here was a thing no one wanted to deal with, but dealing with it meant a lot. If the toilets were left unclean they would smell worse and worse. The aversion in others using it would grow. People would be more and more careless.

But as I cleaned I was taking all of that aversion on. I was creating a space that would have people feel more comfortable in a space that’s hard for many people to feel comfortable in.

I began to see the remains of this very human process of expelling waste as an expression of life. What I was doing was just like weeding a garden or wiping a child’s nose. It was an expression of love.

Slowly I began to empower this act that I found aversive. Once I had done that I could apply it to every part of my life. Parking in a spot further away was a gift to someone who couldn’t walk as well as me. Buying a slightly dented can meant someone else got a nice pristine one.

More and more I realized how much control I had over how I empowered things and so I started empowering things that I used to feel victimized by.

Instead of going to class and feeling bored because I ‘already knew’ what they were talking about, I saw how I could study the way the teacher taught and figure out what was and wasn’t working.

Instead of feeling annoyed when I missed my bus I saw each missed bus as a discovered moment to read or meditate.

Slowly and surely I began to transform the pointless into the meaningful.

It didn’t mean I didn’t try to eliminate excess work. I still looked for effective ways to get things done and eliminate excess tasks, but when I encountered something that I couldn’t work around easily I began to look for how to empower them.

Not only did my experience of my life change, but very often I found a way to learn something new from something I would have considered a waste of time before.

This is the miracle of discovering meaning in the meaningless. And it’s something you can discover too if you’re only willing to give it a shot.

Love, Toku

 

I’m Being Breadcrumbed by God

Last year I got a clear message from God, or the universe, or whatever you want to call it, that I needed to do a 9-month dating diet. And so that’s what I did.

For 9 months I didn’t engage with women romantically. Not only that, I even paused some friendships where the energy was flirty. I set aside time for spiritual practice, meditation, journaling, and spending time in nature.

I began to write daily letters to the sacred feminine all while grieving the breakdown of my last relationship.

Slowly, as the grief faded and COVID got worse, something strange started happening to me.
The ambition I used to rely on was nowhere to be found. My long term visions seemed almost meaningless. The more I let go of the future, the more I relaxed.

I still had moments of clarity from time to time. The clouds would part and I would see where I needed to go or do next.

Sometimes these bursts of insight would be clear and full, like knowing I needed to have a certain conversation with my father or that I needed to reach out to an old teacher to clean up a relationship. But sometimes I’d just get a direction, a word, or even just an energy I needed to explore.

I felt it each time I chose a new city to travel to and each time I looked for a new potential client to connect with. But even though these nudges felt magical, I often found myself frustrated. For years I’d been the guy with the five-year plan, the quarterly business focus, and the big hairy audacious goals.
Now I felt like I was drifting from one insight to the next. Except each insight felt different. Because they each invited me into a deeper faith and trust in life, god, and the universe.

It took me a while to realize it, but I was learning to feel, choose, and see from another part of myself. I was being asked to trust this connection to the divine, to the mystical nature of reality, and to my own intuition.

In the past, my life was mostly run by my ego - my desire to prove something to the world - and slowly I was letting that go. I was learning to follow the divine even though the divine had been breadcrumbing me all year.

What they never tell you about faith and a life of deep spiritual practice is just how little you’ll know as you step deeper into the fire of it. They never tell you that as the path unfolds, it becomes less and less about knowing where you’ll be in five years and more about your faith that there is a path, that you are being guided, and that there is art for you to express.

So for now I’ll just keep looking for the next breadcrumb and when I find it, I’ll just take it as it comes.

 

Stop Being A Simple Leader

In some ways, leadership is incredibly simple. Leadership is about guiding the future by using the tools of your past.

You decide what matters from a place deeper than your ego. Figure out how to make an impact on it. Use your wits, experience, and relationships to make that impact in a sensible and sustainable way. And then continue to develop yourself so you can lead more people and more projects with more skill and less effort.

And yet the true nuance of leadership is unsimple because it rests on who you’re being as a leader. It’s not some performance of the seven habits of highly effective people or the execution of a perfect morning routine and optimized schedule.

We all admire people with this kind of discipline, but the true leadership qualities we crave are so much deeper than that.

Empathy
Wisdom
Presence
Responsibility
Depth
Power

To be a leader is to inject leadership into your marrow. To stand for your leadership in the midst of your own terrible failure. To allow your heart to be shattered while holding to your belief in the possibility of people.

It goes beyond managing KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) and quarterly goals. It’s about managing your own heart, the way you breathe in times of crisis, and how big you can expand your awareness.

It’s the reason so many great leaders were also highly spiritual. Because leadership demands more than just the tools and techniques.

It’s what makes leadership unsimple, but also powerful.

 

Your Life Is Art

No one signs their name anymore. Not really. We make a half-assed squiggle with our finger on a digital screen. We scribble our name on documents, the letter collapsing and falling over.

I’m the worst at this. Except when I went to vote by mail. Then my signature was pristine, perfect, and crisp. I wrote it with care because it mattered. Because I knew someone was watching.

You might think that how you sign your name doesn’t matter. After all, the card company isn’t going to check it. The barista or waiter isn’t either. Even when I write “check ID” on the back of my cards almost no one asks.

And as a stand-alone occurrence, it probably doesn’t matter. After all I’m not singing the declaration of independence or the constitution.

Recently I started to notice this trend in myself, towards convenience, speed, and efficiency. It started to bother me. Because my life, your life is not a thing to be dispensed with, to be scribbled off.

Your life is art. Or it can be.

Last month I had a virtual date. At first, I thought I’d order us dinner. Maybe get some flowers delivered to her house. But then I realized that I could make art with it. So I made a website. Nothing too complex, it only took me an hour or so.

The website guided us through the date. I gave us a structure. The date itself became a form of art. I shared it with a couple of other people who were helping me out and they were both moved by it.

Over New Year’s weekend I went hiking. And the conversation I shared on that hike was art. It was about couples who go hiking. We spent a few moments together laughing and taking in the scenery. We weren’t concerned with the mileage or exactly how fast we wanted to go. The hike itself became art.

When I cook, I feel into the food. I cut the onions, making sure the carrots look uniform. I try to add different colors of sweet potatoes. I think about a garnish. So that when the dish is done, there’s texture, shades, and so much more. The food itself is art.

This is what it means to make art with life. Sometimes it’s dramatic, a bold gesture, a full on production. And sometimes it’s incredibly subtle, like how you sign your name on a digital pad.

Making art with your life is possible, here’s how.

1) Notice what you don’t notice:

There are places where all of us take things for granted. The way our love kisses us in the morning. The way you make your coffee. The way you brush your teeth. These places are rich repositories and opportunities to create art with your life.

Your relationships are filled with small moments of unconsciousness and routine. So simply start noticing what you don’t notice, what you step over, and what you take for granted.

2) Look at it from a new perspective:

There are things we get through and there are things we create through. We get through waiting for the plane to board. We create through writing a birthday card for someone we love. We get through washing the dishes. We create through cooking a special meal as a treat for ourselves.

Everything that is a ‘get through’ moment can become a ‘create through’ moment.

I learned this really well when I worked in the kitchen at the Zen Monastery I lived at for two years. In kitchen practice everything we did was infused with mindfulness and compassion. We cut carrots with love. We stirred pots with deep presence.

I swear you could taste it in the food. And you could certainly feel it as you cooked.

What we were doing was no different than what is done in commercial kitchens all over the world, but it felt different.

We took a perspective of wonder, curiosity, and attention to what we did.

After you notice what you didn’t notice, try to look at it differently. See if you can see it as an invitation into creation. Ask yourself how could I create through this?

3) Answer the question “How could I create through this?”

The next step is simple. You answer the question, with an I could.

I could write poems at the bus stop.
I could connect with my Uber driver.
I could draw a small masterpiece on the coffee shop Ipad.
I add a garnish to my dinner.
I could really connect with my beloved as we say goodbye.
I could be fascinated by my child’s day even if it’s so simple.

You don’t have to do all of these things. You don’t have to do any of them. This isn’t about finding what you ‘should’ do or the ‘right thing’ to do. That’s not the nature of art.

This isn’t painting by numbers.

You’re just looking at what you COULD do. If making art with your life is new, you can spend some time here. Just dreaming. Thinking of things to try. You can’t stay here, but it’s a good start because you’re opening up new possibilities for yourself.

Slowly carefully lovingly let yourself be open to what’s possible.

4) Try something . . . anything

Once you’ve gotten a few ideas one will call to you. For me, the one that scares me or lights me up and turns me on the most will speak to me. So now it’s time to try it out.

I’ll be honest at first you’re going to be a bit awkward and clunky. You may get some weird looks, but you should try it anyway. You’ll realize you can survive being a bit silly and absurd. And often it will go way better than you can imagine.

Not all art is a success, but that’s not the point of art. The point of art is to create something new, to express something, and to allow that something to blossom and wither in a moment.

So try something. It’s ok if it’s not the boldest thing, it’s ok if it is super bold, but just try.

5) Learn and refine

Now that you’ve created something and put it into the world, refine it. Draw a different kind of sun on the coffee shop Ipad. Add a smile to your present goodbye kiss. Ask your kiddo about their day at dinner instead of when they get home. Try rosemary instead of thyme as the garnish.

Artists don’t just paint one painting and stop. They create and recreate. They try again, they add something else, they take something away.

The reason why learning and refining are so important is that they help you move from a moment of expression to a practice of it. Instead of making art an event—like an anniversary dinner—it becomes part of the ritual of your life.

This is the final step and it is the one you have to keep making again and again.

I realized that you might be wondering why you’d want to do this?

Why not just have a nice dinner with your partner once a year?
Why not just squiggle my name on an Ipad?

For me, the reason is simple. Life is the most rare and precious commodity you have. Especially your life. You’ve only got so many days, so many moments, so many chances.

It’s like you’ve got a box of crayons and they’re wearing down all the time and you never really know when you’ll get to the bottom of them.

So what do you want to do with them? You can squiggle your signature. Die of boredom waiting for the bus. Resent and cling to routine out of a need for control.

Or you can make art with them. Over and over again I’ve chosen art and I’ve seen the people around me who I most admire do the same.

So please choose to make art. It can be simple even mundane art. But even then, it will still be art.

And at the end of your life you’ll be so grateful that you chose to create through it.

 

The Art of Leadership

Many people think about leadership as a process or a method.

If I input X then I can get my team to give me Y. And that might be true if the people you were leading were simply robots; easy to program and decode.

But the nature of leadership is that it’s messy humans leading messy humans. Humans who have deep-seated fears, hang-ups from the past, and dreams about the future.

So many leaders try their best to squeeze their teams into a box they want them to be in. They talk about leadership like a big chess game or a mass propaganda campaign. For a long time, that kind of leadership was effective, but the smarter and more powerful human beings have become, the less effective that style of leadership has become.

This is why I often talk to my clients about the art of leadership.

When you see leadership as an art you can begin to see the constraints of your team like the colors in your palette.

You can begin to see the uncertainty in the market place as the distortion your eyes create when it looks out on a landscape.

You can begin to see each challenge as an invitation to create art, inspiration, and possibility.

But this can only happen if you let go of the machine of leadership and the x=y mentality.

If you paint by numbers 1 may equal red, but if you paint as an artist 1 can be any color you want, so long as it invokes purpose, beauty, and serves the people you long to change.

Leadership as an art can be intimidating because what’s right gives way to what works and who’s in charge gives way to who’s committed.

But people are done being treated like machines. Especially the kind of smart, talented, caring individuals who you want to lead.

This is why when you take on the task of leading with art not only does your life get easier and more interesting, the people around you also become better at being who they already are.

 

How I Reply To Social Media Posts I Don’t Agree With

Anti-vaccination posts.
Anti-mask posts.
Posts about Bill Gates being a Lizard King
Posts that spread racist or sexist ideas

You see them all the time. You don’t agree with them. But what do you do about them?

This question comes up for me all the time. And each time I’m torn.

On the one hand, I know that allowing misinformation and bigotry to spread unchecked only makes things worse.

On the other hand, EVERY time I respond to one of these posts I get attacked, piled on, dismissed, or even worse I somehow seem to invite more conflict from both sides.

So what do you do?

To be honest, this is why I avoid commenting on posts I disagree with, but when I do I have found one way to offer a different perspective that seems to create the most space for people to connect around their shared values.

Here’s what I do:

1) Talk about your own experience – Instead of telling people they’re dumb or crazy. Simply share your own experience of you’ve grown and changed in your understanding.

For example, this year I bought a gun for target shooting. I believe in gun control and yet when I went to buy my gun I found the process frustrating. It seemed like there were so many loops to jump through and details to manage. But then I remembered that if I was angry or bent on violence all the steps and safeguards may have given me space to really think about my actions, it might have helped me calm down, and decide to not hurt someone I cared about. I get how annoying it is, but I’m glad we have laws that help keep us safe.

Now when I talk to people who are against gun restrictions I can share this experience. Not from a place of ‘guns are bad and you’re a violent nut for liking them,’ but from a place where I truly honor the desire to do something you enjoy and the frustration with laws that seem to get in the way of that.

By sharing your own experiences of how you relate to an issue, you make your opinions about you. You invite people into a story of your life, rather than creating a story about theirs.

2) Honor other people’s feelings – Often when we disagree with someone we discount how they feel. How can they be angry at immigrants? How can they be scared of something that’s been proven safe? How can they feel so reassured by false facts?

But even though they may have come to a different conclusion, their feelings are real.

SO when you talk to people honor their feelings. Express empathy with their desire for freedom, the longing for safety, their sense of unfairness, and then offer a new way to look at the same issue.

“I understand that you get angry at the thought that people who break the law might take jobs from law-abiding citizens, it makes sense, and I learned something the other day about immigrant labor that made me think differently about that.

“I understand that vaccines feel scary and that after hearing some people’s stories you feel cautious. When I hear those stories a part of me feels worried too.”

When you do this, you’re letting them know, ‘ You’re not crazy to feel that way’ and I have a different take on it. When you really hear people, you make it easier for them to hear you.

3) Don’t make other people wrong – Finally, if you can, don’t make the people you’re disagreeing with wrong. We usually do this by saying things like

“people who don’t wear masks are idiots” or “anyone who doesn’t get their kids vaccinated is a bad parent”

If someone is calling you an idiot or a bad parent, you’re not likely to listen to them.

So instead let them be who they are and simply offer an alternative point of view.

“I get that people who don’t wear masks care about their personal freedom, but for me, I realized that in this case, my freedom might hurt someone I love.”

“I can really feel the love anti-vax parents have for their kids. I care about my kids too and I’m scared they might get sick from some of the horrible diseases we have vaccines for. . . “

By understanding and honoring their intentions even if you disagree with their conclusions makes a big difference.

At our core, we all want the same things. We want our friends and family to be safe and happy. And while the strategies we use to get there might be different, the desire is the same.

Learning how to tap into this, is sort of like a magic spell. One that helps us connect with the deep humanity underneath opinions and points of view. If you can learn to come from this place consistently there’s so much that’s possible. ANd it’s this kind of deep compassion that our world needs now more than ever.

 

3 Questions To Achieve Balance

With no office to go into and our dining room table serving triple duty, the concept of work-life balance may seem more elusive than ever.

Sure we’ve got child care to deal with and reports to finish. So we squeeze ten minutes of virtual yoga in a week, order take out to give ourselves a break, and never seem to be able to catch up with our endless personal and professional to-do lists. But that’s what being a top performer is about, right?

For years I thought being ‘successful’ in business meant sacrifice. I liked #hustle posts and worked 60 hour work weeks. But it was all ok because it was ‘just for now’ and ‘would lighten up soon.’ I thought once I scaled and leveraged I would have the time and space to do things I want (and maybe even take care of myself).

That day never arrived. Instead, I burnt out and was forced to choose something else.

That’s when I learned that the key to balance is less.

And here are the three questions that helped me find my way to the space that truly felt good.

1) Is my life enough? Can my life be enough?

For years I thought my life had to become something else. I had spent 10 years stoned and drifting from one job to the next. Yes, I had some cool stories, but I often looked around and felt behind. I’d never be a 30 under 30 or even a 40 under 40, (Was there a 50 under 50 category?)

So when I started my own business it felt like I was always trying to catch up, to prove something to someone, but no matter how much I achieved, (six figures in two years as a coach, clients paying my $20k+, a TEDx Talk) I was never satisfied.

Then I started asking myself, what if my life is enough right now? Can I be satisfied with it, even if nothing changes?

Slowly I began to relax. I didn’t stop working or creating (I actually wrote two books that year) but I felt differently about work. Instead of being fueled by a need to prove something I was filled by a desire to serve and to do work as an expression of my life. From this place I was able to see what was extra and slowly let it go.

2) Why am I scared of open space?

Often I have filled my life with things just to pass the time. I’ve signed up for classes, created chores, did extra work, answered stupid emails, and so much more. I began to realize I was scared of open space. And I began to wonder why?

So I cleared extra time in my week and I made space to just be. Sometimes I would putter around doing dishes or play guitar, sometimes I would read books and go for long walks. In that space my feelings emerged, loneliness, grief, but also joy and peace.

I saw that my fear of open space was a fear of feeling and of being with myself. Once I had faced this fear and felt the relief of allowing my heart to breathe, I was able to let go of the things I only did to fill my time or push away the anxiety underneath all the doing.

3) What could I do better if I was fully rested?

For a long time, I only slept 6.5 to 7 hours a night. I would wake up in the morning with a grip in my chest. I would stay up at night hoping another episode of the office would put my worries to bed. But instead of dealing with my anxiety and my lack of worth I simply floated through life half awake and half irritated.

When I finally cleared some space with myself I started sleeping more and better. Instead of the anxiety raiding my bedtime hours I was dealing with it during the day and that meant I had space to relax at night.

The better rested I felt the better I worked. The better I worked the more unwilling I became to work from tiredness. And all of this led me to see how working from a place of depletion only made it easier to be stressed out and overwhelmed.

This insight helped me become bolder in what I let go of and more disciplined in saying no and letting other people do their part. Slowly things that I was convinced I had to do just started disappearing, people around me stepped up to help me out, and I found that being fully rested made it more possible for me to be fully resourced as well.

That’s it, these three questions are the ones I come back to again and again. They remind me that balancing too much isn’t really balance, it’s simply a shell game where I shuffle my stress and anxiety to a different part of my life. Instead, if I find a way to make more space, do less, and trust myself slowly, balance doesn’t become this Olympic feat.

 

Is Your Love Life At Risk? Learn The 3 Reasons Your Relationship Isn’t In A Rhythm

For 9 months I abstained from romantic relationships.

It’s a choice I made after stepping out of my longest romantic relationship (over 3 years) and my most committed (we were engaged).

Our relationship in many ways had been a fairytale. I first saw her across a dance floor and was drawn to her immediately.

We were friends for a while. My crush was apparent to both of us. Her attraction took more time to develop.

We had an intense first date in a far off city. That left both of us wondering if this thing was going to happen. After all, we lived across the country from one another.

And then I showed up on her doorstep with flowers two days later. Saying I was moving to her city if she’d have me.

She said yes and the fairy tale began.

But of course, there was a lot that wasn’t very magical. I had to work hard to adapt to her. Her diet. Her need for quiet. For things to always be a certain way.

We ignored the things that didn’t make sense. Like how differently we felt about having kids. Like how we fought when we played music together. Like how loud and messy I tend to be and how super neat she wanted everything.

We thought our love was enough. And it was… until it wasn’t.

Now after some time and space to reflect I can see ‘some’ of the mistakes I made.

And a lot of them had to do with how we never really found the rhythm to our relationship. This rhythm is something people don’t talk about a lot.

They talk about polarity and compatibility. They talk about good sex and communication but the rhythm is something else entirely.

EACH RELATIONSHIP HAS A RHYTHM

There’s your rhythm. The way you do life, laundry, shopping, eating. It’s more than just the method or process. It’s the beat to your life.

And then there’s your partner’s rhythm. The way they clean a kitchen, cook dinner, decide which movie to watch on Netflix.

And then there’s the rhythm of the relationship. How we do laundry, talk about our days, decide when to have sex, and dream about the future.

This is the rhythm that determines how a relationship works. It determines what gets talked about, what values are prioritized, and eventually what creates the feeling of a relationship.

But if you’re like most people, you never find this rhythm, because you don’t know how to create it. Instead, you’re probably doing one of three things

  1. One of you is fully adapting to the other’s rhythm:

This is a lot of what I did in my last relationship.

She didn’t eat gluten so I didn’t. She didn’t like watching scary movies so we never did. She needed quiet time at certain hours so I tried to be quiet.

In my mind, I was being chivalrous. I was loving her. But what I was really doing was denying my own needs. Until my needs came knocking like an angry loan shark.

Now it might be that one of you just has more of a rhythm to their life. That’s ok. You can use one person’s rhythm as more of a baseline. But you can’t just go by one person’s rhythm. At least most of us can’t. Because while it may work for that one person, it probably won’t work for the relationship.

And even if it does, one person adapting to another is a hallmark of codependency which makes for a deep but also very unhealthy connection.

So if one of you has a more established routine it’s ok to start there, but you have to find a way to adapt, to modulate, to include what the other partner needs and wants.

If you’re the more routine oriented person, the transition will be hard. You don’t have to change everything but it’s important to make space for the new rhythm to emerge.

If you’re not making space, you might be doing this instead . . .

  1. You’re both compromising all the time

This is another mistake I made later on. I mean luckily we realized we had to shift our dynamic. I owned up to pretending not to have needs. But then instead of owning what I wanted, we simply tried to find a middle ground.

This may seem like the obvious solution. You don’t like Thai food, I don’t like Indian, so we’ll get tacos instead.

And while it may make sense logically, the rhythm of a relationship isn’t simply the halfway point between your beat and mine.

Over time you’ll both end up unhappy. You’ll be eating Tacos and dreaming of pad Thai, while I dream of a fluffy dosa floating on a cloud.

There’s a time and a place for compromise but what makes a relationship workable isn’t just splitting the difference. It’s about each of you really owning what each of you wants: to feel, experience, do, and embody. And then working to create a rhythm that has those needs and desires met on a regular basis.

This can be hard for many people to accept. Especially if you’re the partner who’s used to giving in and setting aside your needs. It’s vulnerable to say I want this.

I’d like if we went for a walk together after work, I’d like you to buy me flowers every week. I don’t want to go on vacation with your family. I don’t want to watch TV while we eat dinner.

Owning what you want is scary. Because you might not get it. Because it may create conflict. But without that honesty, you can’t find the rhythm of the relationship and you can’t see if it has the potential to last long term.

Then again even if your relationship has lasted a while it’s still possible to lose the rhythm. This leads me to the 3rd place relationship rhythms go to die. . .

  1. One or both of you has become resigned or victimized by the pattern of your relationship

This happens when one or both of you have created a rhythm that doesn’t work. Or you’re still following a rhythm that once worked but isn’t’ serving you anymore. Then, instead of addressing what’s not working you simply decide that it can’t be any different.

This happens a lot with people who have kids or for people who have been in a relationship for a while.

This happened to me about 2 years into my last relationship. I gave up on having the kind of sex life I wanted, I resigned myself to having a partner who was ambiguous about having kids, and I gave up on being able to feel heard when we fought.

It would be easy to blame my partner for this but my giving up wasn’t on her. Sure she contributed to our dynamic but it was really all about me just not advocating for myself anymore. I stopped sharing what I needed in an attempt to maintain a peace that wasn’t that peaceful, to begin with.

You see, a relationship rhythm isn’t the same as a relationship rut. It’s not a default position your relationship gets stuck into like the way you can’t help humming holiday carols in December. It’s not something that you just fall into. It’s active. It’s something you have to actively discover and bring life to.

A relationship rhythm is an act of creation.

You and your partner have to birth it together. You have to create it. And you can either do it unconsciously (like so many people do) out of old habits, childhood wounds, and baggage.

Or you can create it out of love, possibility, and innovation.

So if you want Indian and you partner wants Thai, maybe you find a farmers market that has a great booth for each. Or maybe you cook a meal at home that starts with thom kha soup and dosa and moves on to a fusion curry dish.

You don’t compromise and you don’t give up. You find what the needs are at the very foundation and create something that satisfies them both.

You create a rhythm that is something unique to the two of you. And then you see how that feels.

Because that’s really what makes a relationship work. It’s not the cuteness of one of your smiles or the ability of one of you to cook gourmet meals. It’s about how the relationship you create looks and feels to both of you.

To do this well you have to know who you are and why you care about buying organic food. You have to really understand why your partner loves cleaning even if you think it would be more efficient to hire a cleaning service.

To find a rhythm is to find real intimacy, to truly discover what makes you tick as a couple. And while it can be challenging, it is certainly worth the effort.

Love Toku

 

Devotion vs. Obsession

For a lot of my life, I was devoted to things that I couldn’t help but pay attention to. After college, I dated a girl who wasn’t a good fit for me. My roommates at the time took us canoeing and we fought the entire time. Years later they told me they could always tell how a relationship was going for the people they took on these trips. If they fought the relationship usually wouldn’t last.

Still, I couldn’t let her go. Even when she got engaged to someone else I found myself calling her and having these wistful conversations. I wasn’t good for her and she wasn’t good for me. But I was devoted. The devotion just wasn’t by choice.

If you pay attention to music, books, and music this is the kind of devotion you see a lot of. This feeling of not being able to stop thinking about someone, to stop pursuing some dream, to let go of a hunch. And obsession isn’t always bad. People who are obsessed with science and math have made incredible discoveries, but obsession isn’t the most powerful way to relate to devotion.

This is especially true in our relationships but it’s also true for our work.

No matter what it is, a beautiful partner, an amazing project, or a challenging problem to solve, obsession always runs out. It wanes and trembles in the face of reality.

True devotion is more solid than that. True devotion is a choice you make to give yourself to something, and that means giving all of yourself. Not just the self that always feels like showing up. It means giving the part of yourself that’s grumpy, unsure, full of doubt, and tired. It means offering yourself with all of your imperfections.

True devotion finds a way through obstacles and the ebb of energy.

This is the shift the Buddha made before he became enlightened. For years he was obsessed with waking up. He starved himself, stood on one leg for days, and sat with tremendous physical pain, but when he let go of his obsession and instead brought his devotion to practice everything shifted.

This lesson is one I’m still learning, because for me obsession feels more familiar. It feels easier to lose myself in my desire and passion for someone or for a project. And sometimes I let myself. But I don’t stay there.

As I let go of the emotional intoxication of obsession I either return to devotion or I let it go. Because I’m not really interested in living my life from the standpoint of a victim even if it gives some energy and excitement. What I’m interested in is living my life from the standpoint of a leader and giving my full devotion to those things that are truly worthy.