UNEXECUTIVE

Unconventional coaching for extraordinary people

You Decide What Happens To You In Life

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For most of my twenties stuff just happened to me.

I got fired from my sweet touring job because the drummer was an asshole. My girlfriend broke up with me because some guy snaked her out from under me. My car broke down because some asshole wanted me to drive on a bumpy road with their girlfriend to see some stupid rocks.

This is how life went for me. Things would go poorly and I would blame someone else.

Then when I was 28 I moved into a monastery. I thought I was just going to be there for a few months. It would be a good story to tell to women I met on other adventures.

But the first time I had tea with a Zen master something shifted.

We were talking about the challenges I felt I had in life, the woes that had befallen me, the people who had done me wrong. At one point I said, “I have a hard time connecting with people, because I’m so much smarter than most of them. I just don’t know how to do it sometimes”

🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️

I cringe every time I think back on that moment. But the Zen Master didn’t flinch.

He said to me, “Consider Shizen (the other Zen Master at the monastery), she’s one of the smartest people I know. She’s a doctor, she’s written several books, but she connects with everybody.”

The words stopped me in my tracks. I had a few objections, but slowly I let it sink in. I was making this shit up. I was being a victim to myself, my life, and to everything that happens to me.

Slowly I began to change how I felt about my life and I began to see that I can decide what happens to me. And here’s you you can too: ​

REALIZE THAT YOU DON’T HAVE CONTROL

The illusion of control is the ego’s greatest lie.

One of the things I started to see when I meditated for hours a day was that I largely don’t have control over what happens in my life especially when it comes to what other people do, think, or say about me. I can certainly change my response, my relationships, and my choices going forward but I found that I didn’t actually have control over most of it.

Life happens, people change, sometimes you find love, other times you find loneliness. Your choices still matter but it doesn’t change the simple truth that much of life occurs outside of our ability to influence it.

As I began to accept them, I was able to relax. Instead of life being this personal drama where everything was a vast plot point in my own story, I began to see so many events like gravity. They were things that were just happening vs things that were happening to me. ​

GET PRESENT TO YOUR IMPACT

You affect people and your life more than you realize.

As I spent time mindfully watching myself with other people I started to notice that the way I listened to people made a difference. When I looked at them with a subtle judgment about the way they told a story, they felt it. They would share less, they would be more cautious.

But when I tried to listen more deeply, and be more present without objections or inner dialogue people opened up to me. They shared more of themselves. They actually became more interesting to listen to… And I started to want to listen to them.

When you start to notice how what you do affects others, you may start to notice that there are certain things you want to do differently. You want to be more interested in what your boyfriend is saying. You want to be more patient with other drivers. You want to be a bit different because you can see how what you’re doing has an effect.

I found this kind of desire so natural and powerful. It wasn’t a need to change myself to please someone else, it was a desire to be different with life so that people and life would be different with me.

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MOVE FROM BLAME TO RESPONSIBILITY

Not everything is somebody’s fault, but anything can be your responsibility.

For most of my twenties, I looked for people to blame and I usually found someone.

But as I sat in silence in the monastery trying to practice compassion, I made a simple mistake. If it wasn’t their fault, if it was unkind to blame others, then maybe the solution was to blame myself.

I can distinctly remember hours of weeping in the midst of self-woe at how I had screwed up my life. It was my fault my girlfriend had cheated, my fault I had lost that job, my fault that my friends had treated me poorly.

My love of drama hadn’t changed; it had simply turned back in on itself. It took me a while to see that the drama wasn’t helping. I was still playing the same blame game I always had. So I let it go.

I began to see that for most things I had a part to play in how they went, but so did the people around me. Yes, I had treated my girlfriend’s love for me lightly and yes she had decided to start seeing someone else. Yes, I didn’t communicate clearly with my friends and yes they made assumptions because it was easier that way.

The more I let go of blame the more at ease I felt. But I didn’t stop there.

I also began to see that I could choose to be responsible for things. If I wanted to have a better relationship with my mother I could make sure we talked, even if she wasn’t the one who was going to call me. If I wanted to be safe when I drove, I could give other drivers more space.

While there was no ONE person to blame for anything, I could make myself the ONE person who was going to try for things to go differently this time.

And once I made myself that ONE person, I was able to create what I wanted.

My Whole Team QUIT! And How To Let Go

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I’ve been thinking a lot about the choice to let go of something. Hope, people I care about, how I want things to be…

SOMETIMES LETTING GO SEEMS EASY

I recently took Facebook off of my phone and Ipad. I rarely go on to check it, just to post and share.

This didn’t feel that hard to let go. I notice an urge to go back and check it sometimes, but generally I just don’t, it’s that simple. If I can survive the urge I stay with letting go.

SOMETIMES IT FEELS HARD BUT GETS EASIER

Recently my amazing assistant told me she wasn’t happy. At first, I tried to figure out a way to get her to stay but I don’t want someone to work for me if they aren’t happy. So we agreed to give it the weekend.

Over the weekend I stayed up SUPER LATE working really hard out of fear and panic. But I eventually saw what I was doing. I relaxed. I accepted. I let go.

So on Monday when my other assistant said she was quitting too it was fine. I felt some fear and I accepted it. I ended up talking to the last remaining member of my team on Wednesday of that week and we got clear it was time for him to move on as well.

I let them go. I was scared. I was sad. But it just felt like what wanted to happen. I relaxed and let go.

SOMETIMES IT FEELS IMPOSSIBLE

There are a few things in my life I continuously struggle to let go.

The need to try really hard.
Remembering my ex.
Dreaming about my future partner.

All of these feel impossible to let go of. Especially in the moment.

Pushing really hard is easy for me. Life has often felt like a bare knuckle boxing match and I just need to punch my way through.

Over and over I see myself doing this and I let go, but it comes back again and again.
I’ve sort of given up on the idea that this will ever go away completely.

Every time I feel resistance, I feel sadness. Part of me wants to reminisce, part of me wants to let go, part of me wants to feel grief.

Slowly I let go but there’s often pain. Even in the clarity of the path ahead.

Finally I often dream or fantasize about who I might be with next.
Having children.
Making love.
Laughing together.
The simple feeling of peace waking up next to someone.

Again and again, I try to let these go.

These are especially difficult because the fantasies often feel really good.
Sometimes they’re painful because it makes me feel even more lonely now.

But slowly I let them go.

MOMENT TO MOMENT

Moment to moment these things seem like they never move at all.
At times I feel overwhelmed and hopeless.

But when I look back I see them slowly shift and melt.

I work less hard than I used to.
I go long stretches without thinking about my ex.
I forget about the fantasies and am just here in my life.

In these moments patience is the hardest thing for me to muster
I want to let go faster.
Which generally has me hold on harder.

But slowly, gently. I am learning to let go.

40 Things You May Not Know About Me

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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

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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

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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.