Tag Archives: Values

Silence

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In his autobiography Ben Franklin shared that one of his virtues was silence. He included this description:

Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself. Avoid trifling conversation.

Think about how much time and energy you could save by avoiding trifling conversation and communicating just for the benefit of others or yourself.

I suppose this depends on how you define benefit.

How beneficial is it to comment on what someone shares for the sake of commenting? So you connect for an extra second or two. How much does that matter?

How much of your conversation will even be remembered the next day, let alone a week or a month later?

There’s an opportunity cost when we engage in trifling conversations. We may experience some connection, but it’s a shallow and forgettable form of connection, like being sprayed with a mist that evaporates when the conversation ends.

Do you have any conversations that you still recall years later because of how deep, meaningful, or special they were? How often do you have conversations that you still remember one year later? And how many just blur together in a sea of nothingness?

If you do a lot of online commentary, try to recall some of the most significant commenting you’ve engaged in from the past five years. How much of your communication really benefits others or yourself?

How much criticism have you offered to others that fell on deaf ears or that actually made a situation worse?

I encourage you to play around with your definition of trifling. See what happens if you raise the floor and refrain from making the bottom 25% of commentary that you’d previously considered okay.

What’s borderline trifling that you don’t actually need to share? What cheap laughs could you pass up, even when you have a witty remark on the tip of your tongue that you’re immensely proud of? What debates could you decline to get involved with?

This is an exercise in training up your self-control and self-discipline. When you learn to hold your tongue and be more selective in what you share, it can yield meaningful benefits, including improving your relationships and productivity. Sometimes it’s more beneficial to communicate nothing.

When you release some trifling conversation, you may feel a void in its place, and it may be a deeper void than you expected to see. The invitation is to fill that void with something rich and meaningful to you. If not for trifling conversations taking up space, where else could you invest your time and energy?

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Beverly Hills Rambo

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Did you know that Eddie Murphy wasn’t the original choice the play the character of Axel Foley in the movie Beverly Hills Cop? That role was actually given to Sylvester Stallone, but he couldn’t get some of the comedic elements right, so Eddie Murphy was brought in to replace him.

And did you know that Clint Eastwood wasn’t going to be the original Dirty Harry? Frank Sinatra was set to play that role. Unfortunately Sinatra broke his wrist and couldn’t lift the gun, so the role went to Eastwood instead. Why couldn’t Sinatra just shoot with his other hand?

Who could forget Marty McFly from Back to the Future? That role wasn’t played by Michael J. Fox initially. The movie actually started filming with Eric Stoltz in the lead role, but he was cut after a few weeks due to not being perceived as funny enough.

Changing actors during production is costly, but it isn’t uncommon. Sometimes this happens very late into a production. British actress Samantha Morton completed her role for the movie Her, where she played the voice of the AI. But she was replaced by Scarlett Johansson during post production, meaning that the entire role was re-recorded.

Given all the money being spent by the movie industry, you might expect that they’d get these decisions right the first time and lock everything down. But the reality is that creating a film can be an evolutionary process where decisions are made and then reconsidered along the way.

Sometimes you just have to make your best guess and go forward with action. Even when you do your best to make good advance decisions, you can’t always tell how things will work out. Sometimes you’ll make costly mistakes that will be problematic to fix or redo later.

From the actor’s perspective, it sucks when you get cut, especially after putting a lot of work into a role. Stuart Townsend trained and rehearsed for two months to play Aragorn in Lord of the Rings, only to be replaced by Viggo Mortensen four days into filming. Peter Jackson concluded that Townsend looked too young for the role. Couldn’t Jackson have figured that out sooner? Maybe he could have made that choice sooner, but sometimes you don’t really know how a piece will fit till you see it in context.

Sometimes you’ll also get blindsided by what life throws at you. In the movie Aliens, the actor James Remar was originally set to play the role of Corporal Hicks, but he was arrested for drug possession, so James Cameron replaced him with Michael Biehn.

When you tackle an interesting creative or business project, problems come up along the way. It’s rare for such projects to breeze through predictably from start to finish. Sometimes you have to make difficult choices as you go.

And sometimes you’ll be the one getting cut because someone else has made that decision, or they fell into circumstances where they had little choice.

In film production such cuts and changes are ideally made to create a better movie. Of course there can be politics involved, but sometimes it’s just the right choice. It’s hard to envision a better Beverly Hills Cop than Eddie Murphy, but would you want to be the one to tell Sylvester Stallone that he wasn’t funny enough after you’ve already cast him in the role?

When you face a difficult decision to make, ask yourself what’s best for the story of your life. What’s your big picture? When you put that picture first, what decision wants to emerge? What’s the right thing to do, regardless of the implementation difficulty?

Sometimes the right decision for your story is that it’s time to cut someone from your cast. Sometimes you need to replace the script for your life. Sometimes you need to pursue different roles. And sometimes you just need to step back and trust everyone to do their jobs.

It’s easy to look at a crappy film and wonder how the studio could have released it like that. Couldn’t they tell it was going to be bad in advance? Couldn’t they see all the mistakes they were making along the way? In many cases the answer is yes, but it’s still difficult for someone to step up and make those calls. How do you cut an actor who’s been training hard for months for a role? How do you let go of a long-term career that isn’t working for you? Sometimes it’s easier just to let it go badly and hope that the next project is better.

Imagine looking at your life through the lens of being the movie director in charge of it. Do you like how the picture is progressing? Do you have the right people in the right roles to make it work? Do you need to make any cuts or changes to ensure that the film turns out well? And there any counterproductive forces at work that you need to address?

What keeps you going through all of these tough decisions? Ultimately it’s your vision for the film – or your vision for your life. You can let a variety of different forces push you one way and then another, or you can sit in the director’s chair and direct.

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The Stun Setting

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Lately I’ve been feeling like we’re living through a particular Star Trek: The Next Generation episode.

No, not “Contagion” – that’s about a computer virus.

Not “Thine Own Self” either, but that’s a good guess.

I’m thinking of “The Ensigns of Command.”

That’s the episode where Data, the android character, must convince a bunch of stubborn colonists that they need to immediately pack up and leave the colony they worked so hard to build. The human colonists must leave because thanks to a treaty, the planet where they’ve built their colony now belongs to an alien race called the Sheliak.

The Sheliak are all business and are coming to colonize the planet themselves. While they were willing to negotiate a lengthy and complex treaty with the humans to procure the planet, they otherwise regard humanity as a lesser species and would have no qualms about wiping out any human stragglers they discover upon arrival. The colonists are absolutely no match for the Sheliak.

The Enterprise must begin evacuating the colonists ASAP, and Data is beamed down to the planet to help them start packing immediately.

However, the colonists are very resistant to the idea of leaving, especially their leader, Gosheven. That isn’t surprising since Data did show up out of the blue to basically say, “Surprise! Now you must pack up and leave!” The colonists had been living on the planet for many years and sacrificed a lot to establish their thriving colony.

Gosheven tries to reassure everyone that there’s nothing to fear and that they’ll all be fine. He denies that the Sheliak are a threat (which sounds very much like the idiocy of saying “it’s just the flu” in our current situation). Others join him in their firm stance against fear. But are they being brave? Or just stubbornly irrational?

Here’s a scene from that episode where Data is speaking to the colonists, trying to get creative in convincing them to leave. Everyone in this scene other than Data is a colonist.

DATA: You know of the Sheliak threat. Starfleet wishes to evacuate you for your own protection. Yet Gosheven has decided otherwise. That is his right, and I will not waste time trying to reverse that decision. I admire your conviction in the face of certain defeat. Though doomed, your effort will be valiant. And when you die, you will die for land and honor. Your children will understand that they are dying for a worthy cause. Long after the battle is over, their courage will be remembered and extolled.

ARD’RIAN: Remembered by who?

DATA: Yes, that is true. There will be no one left alive to remember.

GOSHEVEN: (applauding) A valiant try, android, but what a low opinion you must have of us.

DATA: I was simply attempting to describe your inevitable destruction in a manner that would have an emotional effect.

HARITATH: And he describes it pretty damned well.

GOSHEVEN: Are you ready to follow this machine? Give up without a fight? He says we’re going to lose, but I think that’s just his cowardice talking!

KENTOR: What if he’s right and you’re wrong? Shouldn’t we consider that possibility?

GOSHEVEN: This colony exists because generations gave their lives for it. Many people died before we found a way to adapt to the radiation. And many more died bringing water to the desert. My grandfather –

ARD’RIAN: Is buried on that mountain. Well, who’ll be left to bury you?

GOSHEVEN: Have you considered what this evacuation means? Everything we have, we abandon. Everything that we have built turns into dust. Everything that we have accomplished means nothing. Well, I say no. You elected me your leader. Follow me now. I don’t think our chances are as hopeless as he says. And I’m willing to stake our lives on it. Any objections? Good, because here we stand.

ALL: Aye, We stand with you.

(The men slap Gosheven on the back, the women look worried)

DATA: Then here you die.

This episode reminds me of what we’ve seen in many people’s response to the coronavirus. We’ve seen it in Italy. We’ve seen it in Spain. We’ve seen it in France – throughout the week leading right up to the moment the French went into full lockdown yesterday morning.

And of course we’re still seeing it in the USA now.

How well does this approach work?

Let’s check a first-hand report from a doctor in Bergamo, a city in Northern Italy:

The results of the swabs now come one after the other: positive, positive, positive. Suddenly the emergency room is collapsing. Emergency provisions are issued: help is needed in the emergency room.

…

Exams, radiology always with the same sentence: bilateral interstitial pneumonia. All to be hospitalized. Someone already to intubate goes to intensive care. For others, however, it is late. Intensive care becomes saturated, and where intensive care ends, more are created.

…

And every reorganization of beds, wards, staff, work shifts and tasks is constantly reviewed day after day to try to give everything and even more. Those wards that previously looked like ghosts are now saturated, ready to try to give their best for the sick, but exhausted. The staff is exhausted. I saw fatigue on faces that didn’t know what it was despite the already grueling workloads they had. I have seen people still stop beyond the times they used to stop already, for overtime that was now habitual. I saw solidarity from all of us, who never failed to go to our internist colleagues to ask “what can I do for you now?” or “leave alone that shelter that I think of it.” Doctors who move beds and transfer patients, nurses with tears in their eyes because we are unable to save everyone and the vital signs of several patients at the same time reveal an already marked destiny. There are no more shifts, schedules.

…

Social life is suspended for us. I have been separated for a few months, and I assure you that I always have everything possible to constantly see my son even on disassembly days at night, without sleeping and postponing sleep until when I am without him, but for almost 2 weeks I have voluntarily seen neither my son nor my family members for fear of infecting them and in turn, infect an elderly grandmother or relatives with other health problems. I’m happy with some photos of my son that I regard between tears and a few video calls. So be patient too, you can’t go to the theater, museums or gym. Try to have mercy on that myriad of older people you could exterminate. It is not your fault, I know, but of those who put it in your head that you are exaggerating and even this testimony may seem like an exaggeration for those who are far from the epidemic, but please, listen to us, try to leave the house only for the essential things. Do not go en masse to stock up in supermarkets: it is the worst thing because you concentrate and the risk of contacts with infected people who do not know they are higher.

…

Oh yes, thanks to the shortage of certain devices, I and many other colleagues are certainly exposed despite all the means of protection we have. Some of us have already become infected despite the protocols. Some infected colleagues in turn have infected family members and some of their family members already struggle between life and death. We are where your fears could make you stay away. Try to make sure you stay away.

Source: Corriere della Sera (translated from Italian)

That was from March 7, when the death toll in Italy was 230. Fast forward just 11 days to today, and now there are about 3000 dead – 475 of them just in the past 24 hours. In that same time they went from about 5800 reported infections to about 36,000 now. And this is still speeding up.

Soon this will be the situation in Southern Italy too. France and Spain are quickly following suit. More countries are following just days behind.

Of the nearly 36,000 reported infections in Italy, more than 2600 are medical personnel. A number of doctors have already died from this virus while trying to save other people’s lives.

This is a glimpse of what we’re about to see in the USA shortly. Very likely by the end of the month, we can expect hundreds if not thousands of medical personnel to get infected as well, even as they work to exhaustion trying to treat people. And that will still just be the tip of the iceberg with so much more to follow. We are nowhere near the peak yet. In fact, we’re not at Base Camp yet. (Incidentally, Mount Everest is closed too.)

A full lockdown in the USA is inevitable – I’d say almost a certainty before month’s end at the rate things are going. The sooner we reach that point, the better. All 50 states have infected people now, with West Virginia being the last holdout to join.

Each day we’re seeing different cities and states making bigger and bigger sacrifices while the virus makes even bigger gains. We’re progressively locking down, and as fast as it seems, we should actually be moving even faster.

Yesterday night the Governor of Nevada announced the closing of all casinos, hotels, bars, and more statewide, joining schools which were shuttered on Monday. The Las Vegas Strip has gone dark. And yet as extreme as this seems, especially for a city that runs on 42 million tourists per year, it’s still just another intermediate step among more to be taken.

When a full lockdown does happen, and it will, it will likely endure for at least two months, and realistically we may be looking at well into the summer or beyond.

Some are projecting as long as 18 months of this kind of disruption (which may involve full and partial lockdowns), as there may be multiple waves of the virus.

When you see businesses announce they’re shutting down for 2-3 weeks, don’t believe that for a second. As I noted in Sunday’s post: This Will Not Be Over Quickly. When I wrote that post, the U.S. death total from the virus was 63 with 3300 reported infections. Three days later we’re at 8300+ infections and 133 deaths, so both numbers have more than doubled. And this is going to speed up significantly in the days and weeks ahead.

Meanwhile many people are still going out partying and gathering in large groups, such as was reported at the Clearwater Beach in Florida yesterday. Under the current circumstances and given what we see happening elsewhere, this behavior means more painful deaths for many more people, including the deaths of doctors and nurses trying to save lives. Not shutting down sizable human gatherings is ludicrous at this point. The sooner we take action, the more lives will be saved.

Let’s return to our Star Trek episode to see how Data eventually convinces the colonists to leave for their own good.

After his other attempts to convince the colonists to leave fail, Data goes to the colony’s pumping station for their aqueduct, which is the colony’s only source of water. He pulls out his phaser, first using the stun setting and then using a higher setting after he says his first line in this scene.

(The elders are on a raised platform to the side, and four security guards are in front of the pool. Data fires at them)

DATA: Stop. That was the stun setting. This is not.

(There’s a big bang, then energy is seen racing up the pipeline to the mountain)

DATA: I can reduce this pumping station to a pile of debris, but I trust my point is clear. I am one android with a single weapon. There are hundreds of Sheliak on the way and their weapons are far more powerful. They may not offer you a target. They can obliterate you from orbit. You will die never having seen the faces of your killers. The choice is yours.

KENTOR: There are other places, other challenges.

(The security guards recover from their stuns)

GOSHEVEN: I really was willing to stay here and die for this.

DATA: I know that. This is just a thing, and things can be replaced. Lives cannot.

That approach worked. The colonists, including Gosheven, finally agreed to evacuate. So they lived.

Data is an android programmed for politeness and manners. He’s one of the kindest and gentlest characters on the show. He’s willing to accept and befriend everyone as they are, like an android version of Mister Rogers.

And of course Data is very rational, so he starts by greeting the colonists warmly and offering them a rational explanation about what’s happening and why they need to evacuate – a sensible place to begin.

When that doesn’t work, he appeals to their emotions since he knows something about human psychology too.

And when that doesn’t work, he pulls out his weapon but still uses the stun setting initially. Now having good reason to conclude that this too will be insufficient, he quickly bumps it to a higher setting and demonstrates at that level as well. And then he immediately threatens to bump it higher still, to a setting which would effectively destroy something the colonists have been trying to protect. Fortunately he doesn’t seriously hurt anyone, but he does keep escalating until he finally succeeds. Moreover, he accelerates the pacing of his escalations to match the increasing urgency of the situation.

This is a rational approach, isn’t it? For a mission that’s important enough, keep escalating until you succeed, even if you must stretch your character to do so. Data had to stretch his character to succeed in his mission, yet he was able to do so while still honoring his rational core.

And we must continue to do the same. When the stun setting is ineffective, ratchet up your efforts more to help get people off the streets and to stay the fuck home.

Is it rational to continue using the stun setting if it isn’t working quickly enough?

Is it rational to avoid stretching our characters due to fear of criticism or social pushback, knowing by sticking to our comfort zones and refusing to go any higher, we sentence more people to death – including more medical personnel who will soon give their lives trying to save others?

Or is it rational to ratchet up our actions towards the stun setting and beyond until we achieve what’s needed?

If you’ve been trying to help people behave more rationally during this time, yet they’re still behaving irrationally, ratchet up your efforts and attitude, just as Data had to do to accomplish his mission.

This isn’t the time to get stuck at your personal stun setting. This is the time to do what it takes to save more lives and reduce suffering because the actions you take now can and will make a difference.

And lastly…

CLOSE THE BEACH, YOU FUCKING IDIOTS!!!

#closethebeachyoufuckingidiots

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To My Influencer and Marketer Friends

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This is not remotely a “business as usual” situation. Please open your eyes to what’s happening. But more importantly, please open your heart to what’s about to happen.

This isn’t a time to be working on your launches. This isn’t a time to work on your campaigns. The focus on business needs to be put on hold right now.

We all have something much more important to work on right now. We have the leverage to greatly reduce a tremendous amount of suffering and loss of life that’s about to unfold. That this will happen is unfortunately inevitable, but we can absolutely have a meaningful impact in reducing it.

And if there are any marketing and influencing challenges that are worth the committed application of the very best of our skills, this is such a challenge.

The seriousness of our collective situation is going to intensify in the coming weeks – way more dramatically than it already has.

By the end of the month, many more hospitals across Europe and the USA will be where Northern Italy is – overwhelmed and with doctors and nurses dying from the disease too. Hospitals in the USA are already preparing for this by adding tents in parking lots. It’s a race against time, and we have much less time than most people realize. Seattle is already showing us a glimpse of what will soon hit many other cities.

This won’t simply blow over in a couple of weeks. We’re talking months, including the inevitability of 2+ months of full lockdown, which will almost certainly begin by the end of this month.

The best thing you can do now is share the critical importance of social distancing to reduce the spread of the disease, which has a long, silent incubation period. If you do that, you can save a lot of lives.

What if your launches and products are beneficial to people? Of course they are. But consider the opportunity cost of what you could be doing right now instead if you shift your focus into life-saving mode.

I can certainly claim that my work benefits people too, and it surely does, but I think I can be of greater service right now if I respond to the tremendous opportunity of taking direct action to help lower the disease progression in whatever way I can.

One way where I may be able to exert some leverage is to invite more people to join me in helping to get the word out about just how critical it is for all of us to shift gears right now. I’ve already been doing this behind the scenes for days, starting around February 26th. And that’s having some impact. But we still need to do more.

Every day that you work on your usual business instead of promoting the critical importance of social distancing is another day you could have saved lives and reduced suffering. Every day you delay is a missed opportunity for you to truly step up, not merely with personal ambition but with caring, compassion, and courage as well.

This is an extraordinary time for you to take your best expression of ambition and get it aligned with your best expression of caring. This is an invitation for us to collectively change the world in a way that really matters to a lot of people, especially those who will be hit hardest by this disease in the weeks and months ahead.

Where else are you going to encounter such an extraordinary opportunity to do the most meaningful work of your life?

Don’t worry about perfection. Speed of messaging is way more important than elegance right now. Just get the word out as fast as you can. Even if all you do is tell people to stay the fuck home or share the hashtag #staythefuckhome, that will help. Just start with one Tweet. Please.

Don’t worry about being judged or criticized for being an alarmist. By the end of the month, it will be obvious that you did the right thing. You’ll probably wish you’d acted sooner and more powerfully. I already feel that way now.

Please put normal business on hold. Please use your marketing and influencing skills to save lives right now. Every day counts.

It doesn’t matter how big your reach is. Even if you’re just starting a new YouTube channel and only have a few viewers, please get the word out. That’s just as honorable a deed as for those who may reach millions.

Once we’re on full lockdown and people are no longer still going out risking other people’s lives, then maybe it will be an okay time to think about business again. But there’s a good chance your priorities will shift too as the body count continues to rise. Will you still care about business in the same way when people you know start having breathing difficulties, and they’re scared to go to an overcrowded nearby hospital with an exhausted staff and no more beds or ventilators available?

It hurts my heart to see marketer friends brainstorming and pondering the money-making opportunities that may come from everyone being stuck at home, salivating over that captive audience. I can understand that mindset, but I can’t pretend it’s okay. I realize that I must personally do something about that… and encourage others to help us change course as well.

At this time it’s just not okay to be blogging and emailing and tweeting and advertising as if we’re still in business as usual. It’s downright wicked to do such things right now because you’re encouraging others to engage in denial about what’s happening. We need to do the opposite of that. We absolutely must be sounding the alarm to wake more people up to what’s happening. We must do our best to turn the ship of ignorance and denial towards saving lives and reducing suffering.

Years from now when you look back on these days, do you really think you’ll reflect upon how brilliant you were for capturing those extra sales while people were getting sick and dying? Will you feel proud of yourself for your pandemic launches and marketing campaigns?

If you promote stuff that comforts people, that’s great – but save it for later once we’re all under lockdown. Our priorities right now should be to get people to stop silently spreading the disease and to push towards full lockdown to the extent that we can influence that too.

It’s your business and your decision of course. Just please take a peak into your heart and see what it wants to do about this situation. If your current business activities still feel very aligned and if what I’m sharing here doesn’t change anything for you, that’s fine. You have nothing to defend.

While I normally feel very aligned with my business and it’s very flexible anyway, I’m stretching it to go where it needs to go right now in order to push it to be of more service than usual. I’m not willing to be haunted for the rest of my life by the knowledge that I could have tried harder to save lives and reduce suffering – and didn’t. Are you willing to go that route?

This is one of the most extreme times you’ll ever live through. Who do you want to be in this situation? A decade from now, how will you wish you’d responded?

For Everyone

If you see anyone doing “business as usual” posts, videos, promotions, launches, and ads that don’t seem to be helping with the current situation, please actively encourage – no, implore – them to stop immediately and shift gears to save lives and reduce suffering.

Immediately reply to their emails as soon as you receive them. Comment on their posts, videos, and ads right away. Call them out on their Facebook Lives and webinars. Tell them to please focus on saving lives instead of trying to do anything less important right now. Be gentle but please be firm too. And be brave.

Please don’t shame anyone. Please invite them to step up to serve a greater need.

Realize that if you can influence even one more marketer or influencer to help spread the word about practicing social distancing just one day earlier than they otherwise would, you’re saving lives too. You do that, and you’re my hero.

Here are some further resources to help, both for your own education and for further re-sharing:

  • Coronavirus stats – This page shows frequently updated virus stats for all countries, so you can see at a glance what’s happening. Also follow some of the links for deeper stats and data.
  • Stay the Fuck Home – This is a good page for referring people. It shows simple actions to be taken immediately and handle multiple translations for different languages.
  • Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now – Tomas Pueyo’s powerfully persuasive piece with lots of math-based reasoning, charts, and graphs (more than 28M views in the past week). I’ve been sharing this one a lot and feel grateful for Tomas’ efforts.
  • Jason Warner’s Facebook post – A solid math-based post to help persuade people of the importance of changing behaviors immediately. Please reshare this on Facebook. I did, as did 119K other people so far.
  • Messages from Italy – This is a short YouTube video of Italians under lockdown sharing what they wished they’d known 10 days earlier.

Note that my blog posts are uncopyrighted and donated to the public domain. So you’re free to republish, translate, or modify them… no need to ask. Just get the word out that we need to change our behaviors immediately to save lives and reduce suffering.

Please care.

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We Need to Align With What’s Coming Next

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We’ve seen a lot of changes in the world this week due to the coronavirus situation. I think what many people don’t yet realize is that the rate of change isn’t going to be linear. It’s going to accelerate.

Despite all the changes you’ve seen this week, next week’s changes will be bigger still… and the changes coming the week after that will be even bigger. So if your head is spinning now, it will spin twice as hard next week.

In the USA I see people making some adaptations, but they seem to be mentally making minimalist ones. By this I mean that they’re taking in what has occurred thus far, and they’re doing their best to make sense of it based on the events of the past few days. That isn’t going to be enough of an adaptation though. The mental models you’re most likely forming now will break within a week as the pace of change accelerates. You’re going to have to start thinking in terms of the bigger leaps that are coming.

This week in the USA we’ve seen lots of events being canceled. Disney’s parks are closed. Apple closed its U.S. stores. Other businesses will soon follow suit – in fact, most of them will. They just don’t realize it yet. If you’re still showing up at a job today, you probably won’t be by the end of the month.

The new fitness center that I joined in February sent an email earlier today, noting a reduced schedule starting on Monday as well as enhanced sanitization procedures between classes. This is a adaptation based on what’s already happened up to this point, but it’s not aligned with what’s about to happen next. I expect they’ll be closed by the end of the month, and I don’t think they see this yet.

I got a similar impression when I talked to my local guitar store to put my in-person lessons on hold till further notice. I told the employee that I talked to that I doubt the store will still be open two weeks from now. I don’t think he believed me.

These responses are understandable. People are basing their predictions on what they’ve just recently processed. They’re looking at what they see locally. But that isn’t where we should be looking to predict what the rest of this month will be like.

To date there are only 21 reported cases of coronavirus in the whole state of Nevada and zero deaths. The progression over the past several days has been something like 0, 1, 2, 4, 7, 11, 17, 21. It still looks small. But soon we’ll be in the hundreds, the thousands, and then the tens of thousands of infections. And unfortunately the deaths will follow.

The Mayor of Las Vegas has been furious at the media, as if it’s their fault for sabotaging the city, which of course depends heavily on tourism. She’s in an untenable position though, her job being akin to that of Baron Harkonnen in Dune – to keep the spice flowing at all costs. She must be under enormous pressure right now, and it’s only going to get worse for her in the days and weeks ahead.

The Vegas Strip is gradually becoming a ghost town, with so many events being canceled. Hotels are trying to adapt to what they think is the new and temporary reality. They’re closing buffets, restaurants, clubs, sports books, and shows… and offering major discounts for people still willing to book hotel rooms.

Given its huge reliance on tourism, Vegas is going to be hit way harder than most U.S. cities economically. People who work at the hotels and with the conventions can’t simply do their jobs from home, and now their work is drying up anyway. The layoffs on the Vegas Strip have already begun. The local economy is sure to crash and crash hard. That is inevitable at this point.

And yet the casinos are still trying to adapt. But by the end of the month, those adaptations aren’t really going to matter because the situation will be way beyond what it is now. They aren’t really going to have much choice other than surrendering to what’s unfolding.

As much as the stock market has been roller coastering this week, I expect it’s going to crash harder still, significantly lower than the lowest we’ve seen this week. You know who else thinks so? Michael Burry. You may remember him as the savvy hedge fund manager played by Christian Bale in the movie The Big Short – the guy who bet that the housing market would tank. He admits to presently wagering substantially against market indexes due to the unfolding coronavirus situation. Also consider that he’s not only an investor; he’s also a medical doctor. Although he doesn’t practice medicine, he’s kept his medical license active. He doesn’t believe that the “buy the dip” mentality (which causes rebounds) will endure what’s coming. I’m not invested in the stock market at all right now, but based on what I’m seeing, I think it’s going to be downhill for stocks even more.

Even people who are betting on Amazon Prime to pick up the slack should note that some are predicting that this service will come under heavy strain as more Amazon employees get sick and supply chains are further disrupted – and that it may not be as reliable as people expect. It still relies heavily on a large human workforce.

What about Netflix? Well, maybe that’s great for streaming from home, but also note that the company just announced that they’re halting production on all movies and series.

This situation affects us all. While many people are focusing on the economic fallout, we ought to look to saving lives first, especially since this is actionable at the individual level right now.

I know of one private school in Las Vegas that voluntarily closed this week, but the public schools here announced that they intend to remain open on Monday. Keeping the schools open will enable the infection to spread faster, and more deaths will result. It’s a big mistake.

To get a sense of what’s coming to the USA, we shouldn’t be looking around locally. We should be looking to parts of Europe that are a couple weeks ahead of us. Italy now has 21K+ reported cases and 1441 deaths, and the entire country has been on lockdown since Monday. Spain and France just announced that they’re following suit. And Ireland, Denmark, and the Netherlands are locked down as well.

The lockdowns are slightly different for each country, but they essentially mean that people must stay in their homes except for essential outings to get food or medicine. So grocery stores and pharmacies remain open, but schools, universities, hotels, retail stores, restaurants, bars, and non-essential businesses are shuttered.

Why is this being done at all? It’s to slow the rate of new infections.

The USA is lagging behind. Lockdowns seem extreme here still. I understand that impression. We must advance the story in our minds and hearts now though, not a week or two from now. Every day of delay means more infections and more deaths.

The main risk we face is that hospitals become overwhelmed by an increasingly rapid influx of new patients. That’s already happened in Northern Italy. Doctors there have to triage patients because there are too many critical ones to attend to. Meanwhile medical personnel themselves are getting sick too, even as they’re working to exhaustion to save lives. A few days ago, the President of the Medical Guild of Varese (a city in Northern Italy) died from respiratory failure due to coronavirus infection. More deaths of medical personnel will follow, which further strains an overstrained system.

Spain, France, Germany, and other parts of Europe are all about to enter similar phases, and the USA and UK won’t be far behind.

Some claim that the media are blowing this whole situation out of proportion. I think the opposite is true. As serious as this is now, it’s about to get a whole lot more serious. What you’re seeing reported in the media now will seem pretty tame a few weeks from now, and you may look back and wish they’d been louder and stronger in their voices.

We can’t just look at our local present realities to predict what’s coming. We must broaden our perspectives to pay attention to what’s happening elsewhere. And then we must continue to project forward still, not linearly but exponentially. I know this doesn’t come naturally. That doesn’t exempt us from the responsibility. Enough people are smart enough and observant enough to see what’s coming. We must sound the alarm, even at risk of being treated like Cassandra. This is too important not to do so.

The infections in many places are doubling roughly every week. In the beginning that seems small. It’s not a big deal to go from 10 to 20. It’s really going to look like a big deal when we’re going from 100K to 200K or from 1M to 2M in a week. We’re about to tax our medical system like never before.

It’s true that getting infected won’t be a big deal for most people health-wise. But this virus is way more deadly than the flu.

Of the 80K coronavirus cases that have ended so far, meaning that the people are no longer showing signs of infection, 93% concluded in recovery, and 7% concluded in death. And there are still 76K open cases that we know of… and still increasing rapidly each day.

But of course due to rampant under-testing, especially in the USA, the actual numbers are much higher, and they’re going to go much higher still. Many people are infected but aren’t symptomatic yet. Meanwhile they’re infecting others.

For people under 40, the mortality rate is about 0.2% (and virtually nil for children under 10). For people in their 40s like Rachelle and me, it’s double that (0.4%). For people in their 60s it’s 3.6%. For those in their 70s it’s 8%. And for those in the 80s or older, it’s 14.8%. So it’s a lot more dangerous for older people. It’s also significantly more dangerous for men than for women.

But these numbers depend heavily on whether people have access to good medical care. The risks go up substantially when hospitals get overloaded.

About 1 in 5 people who get infected will need to go to the hospital, and about 1 in 20 will need intensive care. On average, those who will die are averaging about 17 days from infection to death. Respiratory failure isn’t a pleasant way to go out (much like drowning).

The average person will infect 2.5 other people, and those people will infect more. So this isn’t just about you and your health and your personal risks. If you get infected, you’ll likely recover, and the experience will be much like having the flu, but there’s a good chance you’ll pass on the infection to other people, eventually contributing to a chain that sends people to the hospital and ends some people’s lives. Do you want to be responsible for that?

What we can do now is to take action to prevent becoming part of those chains. It’s too late to stop or fully prevent what’s coming because the infections have spread too far already, so there’s a sense of inevitability to what’s about to happen next. But we can still take personal action to slow it down. And we must in good conscience do that, starting immediately.

This means not going out unnecessarily and keeping in-person interactions to a minimum. As much as we may resist social distancing, we’ve got to do it, even before we feel it’s necessary. If it feels like you’re being too extreme, your timing is actually reasonable. The time to change your behavior is this very hour.

I know this isn’t pleasant, but get the picture in your mind of someone going through respiratory failure in a packed hospital hallway lined with critical patients who can’t get into the ICU. Imagine someone’s grandmother or grandfather painfully gasping for air, panicking and unable to even call for help as their lungs strain against the inevitable. No one is available to attend to them. No respirators are available. They’ve been triaged by an exhausted doctor or nurse, who’s also coughing while trying to save other people. Connect the dots between your actions and these consequences. Don’t languish in pretending.

If you don’t immediately remove yourself from this causal chain, you’re not just going to give some people the sniffles or a fever. You’re potentially going to snuff out some lives in a most painful way. You’ll be contributing to some serious misery.

Is this an over-the-top visualization? Is this extreme? No, this is what people are really dealing with in Italy right now. In Iran bodies are being dumped into mass graves visible from space. I wish this were a bad movie. But this is real. And we need to connect the dots between our actions and what we could very realistically cause and contribute to.

So many of us have been in denial of the causal chains of how our actions affect other lives. And here’s a huge wake-up call screaming at us to finally connect those dots.

Do you care? Does any of this make it through the objections of your mind?

I’m not willing to risk being the cause of someone else being unable to breathe. The very thought of that makes my own lungs tighten up, and I feel like I can barely breathe myself. Justifying some extra workouts at the fitness studio or squeezing in one more guitar lesson just isn’t rational. I cannot risk adding more bodies to those hospital hallways.

Rachelle and I are voluntarily isolating ourselves and have been doing so for several days already. We stopped going to the local fitness center earlier this week, and I canceled all in-person guitar lessons till further notice (my last lesson was a week ago). We canceled an in-person meetup with an out-of-town friend that we wanted to see this week as well. We’ll do our best to practice social distancing for as long as necessary.

I encourage and implore you to join us if COVID-19 has reached your city too, even if it seems extreme or early to take such actions.

Every day you continue going out is another day you could contribute to the chain of someone’s life being snuffed out early and most painfully. Regardless of what your local government is doing, we need to do what we can as individuals to slow this down.

The second thing you can do is to invite and encourage others to join you. I realize that many people will reject the idea and it may cause you some social strain to do this, but even if you only influence one extra person to take this step a day early, that can make a meaningful difference. Rachelle and I are doing this because other people made the effort to express the importance of this step, and for that I’m grateful.

It will be a challenge to get through this. It’s going to be a very different year than you were likely expecting. But this is what life is offering as our challenge for now. Think carefully about how you’d like to express your character during these difficult times, as you’re going to carry the memories of those decisions for the rest of your days.

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Thoughts on LGBTQ

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People who know me well won’t likely see any surprises here, but I don’t think I’ve done a good enough job of clearly sharing certain values publicly, so I’d like to correct this now.

I’m pro-LGBTQ rights. I think LGBTQ people should have the same rights as anyone else, and I don’t think they should be discriminated against. I feel this should be a worldwide right, not a local issue.

I think everyone should be free to marry whomever they want. Truth be told, I’m even in favor of poly marriages that include more than two people.

I think people should be free to choose their bathrooms based on their gender identity. Really though I think that gendered bathrooms are a throwback and unnecessary, at least for mature adults. When I was in the dorms at UC Berkeley, we had one shared co-ed bathroom on the floor that everyone used, and it worked just fine. We all used the same sinks, showers, and stalls (separately of course). There were no urinals.

I have personal friends, colleagues, and business partners who are LGBTQ, and that’s been the case for years. Some are in gay marriages or partnerships.

I welcome more LGBTQ friends into my life. We usually connect well, especially values-wise. Living a non-mainstream life is one way that many people embark on a path of conscious growth, so that’s a big piece that we usually have in common, regardless of our different life experiences.

Business-wise I welcome LGBTQ customers. We’ve had LGBTQ workshop attendees at (probably most of) our live events since we started doing them in 2009. We’ve also had some LGBTQ members in Conscious Growth Club since we started in 2017. Inside CGC we maintain a very sane and welcoming community based on reasonableness. Here’s a snippet from our community rules:

Exercise Good Judgment, Reasonableness, and Mutual Respect

This is a community for members to help each other grow, so please treat it as such. Personal attacks and name-calling as well as profane, pornographic, racist, sexist, anti-LGBTQ, or otherwise demeaning or offensive communication will not be tolerated. Recognize that there’s a human being behind every post, and behave accordingly. When you disagree, provide reasoned counter-arguments that improve the conversation.

I actually just added the “anti-LGBTQ” item to the list today. I felt like it was already covered less directly, and adding it doesn’t affect what we’re already doing, but I’d like to call it out explicitly. I want LGBTQ people to know that making them feel welcomed in our community is important to us (especially in ways that other parts of the world may not make them feel welcomed).

Recently I’ve been making a conscious effort to make my creative work more inclusive. For instance, instead of using words like boyfriend or girlfriend, I’ll use partner instead. I’m also watching out for when I use gendered pronouns where it may not be appropriate to do so. I’m not perfect at this since my upbringing and education were rooted to different standards. For at least the past year or two, I’ve been consciously thinking about this and trying to catch these unconscious behaviors that could make my work less welcoming. If you catch something that you think I’ve overlooked in my work this year and beyond, please do point it out to me.

You could also say that I’m anti-(anti-LGBTQ), meaning that I will kick people out of my sphere for anti-LGBTQ expressions or behaviors, especially those that make LGBTQ people feel unsafe or unwelcome. So if you’re one of those people who thinks that anyone should be free to decline business to LGBTQ patrons, I don’t want you to patronize my business. If you think that the gender identity or lifestyle of many of my friends is wrong or misguided, I will take it personally even if some of them wouldn’t take it personally. You can still read the free articles on my blog as much as you want though, and hopefully some of it will help you crack open your crusty-ass heart. But definitely don’t try to bring that attitude into our community, such as our live events or CGC.

To me this isn’t about the business ramifications. I just think it’s the right stance as a human being.

If I know that someone is closeted, I’m not going to out them of course. I think people should be free to disclose what they want to, when they want to, and with whom they decide to share it. I’m disgusted by the idea of forcefully outing someone without their consent.

I think LGBTQ people should be free to show PDAs (public displays of affection) whenever they want. I often hold hands, hug, and kiss in public, and I think anyone should be free to enjoy that form of expression openly.

I’m straight and always have been, and I love being male. I do have some sexual kinks, but they only involve women. I’d say I’m a solid 0 on the Kinsey scale (0 = straight, 6 = gay), and I don’t think I could stretch to a 1 if I tried. Apparently that’s unusual though. Most people tend to be somewhere in the 1-5 range, and it’s also common to fluctuate in one’s sexual preferences over time. So my pro-LGBTQ values aren’t because I count myself a member of this group based on gender identity or sexual preferences, but I do resonate with them on values alignment.

My wife is bisexual but more into men than women. I think she rates herself around a Kinsey 2.3. I rather like that we’ve been able to share a mutual interest in some women that we’ve both found attractive. On a day to day basis though, I can’t say that this aspect is a big part of our lives. I’m sharing this part because it’s true, not because I want to lay claim to the “married to a bisexual woman” as the main reason for my values here. Rachelle does have strong pro-LGBTQ values though, and it’s fair to say that her values in this area have influenced me to pay more attention to LGBTQ-related fairness and justice than I did before we met. So she does deserve some credit for that.

In truth what’s more real and visceral to me is feeling a lot of compassion for what LGBTQ people have to deal with in today’s world, not just people I know personally but everyone. This also links up with personal feelings of disgust towards religions that promote anti-LGBTQ bigotry.

A specific triggering event that made me want to write this post now was watching the recent Apple TV+ documentary series Visible, which reviews the past few decades of how LGBTQ people have been portrayed on television. Rachelle and I watched it together, and I highly recommend it. While most of it didn’t surprise me, and much of it was like a walk down memory lane with old TV shows like Three’s Company, I will say that it helped me feel even more empathy for the struggles LGBTQ people have had to deal with – and are still dealing with.

So if you count yourself among the LGBTQ community or their friends, I just want you to know that I care, not just with words but also with actions to make our community more welcoming, compassionate, and supportive of you being you.

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Conscious Conversation – Steve Pavlina and Martin Rutte

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Here’s the video of my Conscious Conversation call with author, speaker, fellow Transformational Leadership Council member, and long-time friend Martin Rutte.

We had a lively chat about Martin’s Project Heaven on Earth (which is about how to create a better world for all of humanity), pursuing impossible goals, and many other personal growth topics.

[embedded content]

Here are some related links:

I hope you enjoy the conversation. 🙂

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Replacing Mission Statements with Invitation Statements

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Google’s corporate mission is: to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Facebook’s mission is: to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.

Microsoft’s mission statement is: to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

The mission statement of Amazon is: We strive to offer our customers the lowest possible prices, the best available selection, and the utmost convenience.

What I find interesting about these (and many other mission statements) is that they’re about empowerment. They’re about giving people greater abilities, access, and resources.

They’re also infinite in scope. There will always be more information to organize, more communities to build, more people and organizations to serve, and more selection and convenience to develop.

Moreover, these missions aren’t necessarily at odds with each other. They can all co-exist. They could cooperate with each other.

Imagine if we combined all four of these companies into one and gave them a singular mission statement. What would that look like?

Let’s pull out the key elements first:

  • organize information
  • provide useful access
  • empower people
  • build community
  • grow closer
  • achieve more
  • save money
  • expand options
  • improve accessibility

I think we can compress this a bit more since some items are related:

  • organize information
  • empower people
  • connect people
  • achieve more
  • expand options
  • improve accessibility

Ultimately I think we could compress this all the way to just one item: empower people.

I’d say this is pretty close to the mission of the Pakleds in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Samaritan Snare”:

We look for things that make us go.

Unfortunately, when the Enterprise crew tries to graciously help the Pakleds, the Pakleds kidnap the chief engineer and make him do their bidding without consent. The Pakleds don’t see a problem with this. They’re just following their normal mission.

I find it interesting that what’s missing from these mission statements (and countless others) is consent. If you think about it, there’s a certain aggressiveness and pushiness to them.

Organizing the world’s information requires capturing it. The world has a lot of information, much of it stored in people’s brains. Google’s mission as-is would require getting at these contents and making them accessible to all.

Facebook’s mission could be seen as pushing some people to connect in ways they may not want to. Does everyone want to be nudged closer together? What if some people don’t consent to that and would rather keep their distance? Communities empowered by Facebook are already impacting our lives in ways we didn’t consent to. That’s true even for people who’ve never directly participated in the service.

Where did we consent to achieving more? Not everyone wants that. Some are quite content achieving the same or less. Yet Microsoft’s mission is to give the gift of increased productivity to everyone “on the planet.” How does a child consent to this? Wouldn’t that mission eventually lead us to Borg implants from birth?

If you’re an Amazon customer, do you necessarily want the “lowest possible prices”? Is that even a good idea? What if you prefer higher quality at higher prices but with less waste, reduced environmental impact, and more sustainability? Non-customers have to endure the impacts of this mission without their consent.

Can anyone simply spin up a new global mission and foist it upon us without our consent? Yes, presently they can, and they do. And this will continue because Pakleds are abundant in the galaxy.

This non-consent aspect of corporate missions gives rise to much resistance though. Other people and organizations eventually start pushing back, especially when they’re being personally affected by missions they don’t agree with.

When someone else defines a mission whose impact will affect your life even if you never become a customer, isn’t there a part of you that wants to respond, “How dare you!” or “You arrogant bastard!” or something worse?

What’s the alternative though?

While I don’t think it’s realistic to predict all of the ripples a business may create over time, especially a big one, I do think we can at least consider the consent angle and develop less aggressive, more consent-based statements that still empower people.

At the very least, some common sense could be used. With billions of people on earth, there’s a good chance that someone will object no matter what mission statement you come up with, so it probably shouldn’t be about pushing some transformation for everyone on earth. You can limit it to those who’d accept and appreciate it.

So perhaps a better statement for Microsoft would be: to empower people and organizations who invite and appreciate Microsoft’s help and support to achieve more.

Now it’s an invitation, not something you’re forcefully ramming down my throat. I feel less resistance towards it. The revised statement would give me squishier feelings towards Microsoft. The old statement makes me feel inclined to object or at least to make jokes about it – mainly because the everyone-on-the-planet aspect is ridiculous and stupid. Maybe I’ll make it my mission to help everyone at Microsoft acknowledge this.

Here’s a thought – what if we did away with mission statements altogether? Where did those come from anyway? Don’t these trace back to religious missionaries who forcefully pushed their views on other people without consent? And military missions to fight and kill people? Why are we continuing this violent tradition?

How about if we replace mission statements with invitation statements instead? Invitations are much more agreeable. Invite people to participate in your vision to create a better future, but don’t push your vision on the whole world because people will fight you on that. If you force your mission onto people without consent, so much of your otherwise creative energy will be wasted on defending yourselves eventually, and you’ll deserve that kind of response.

Invite people to your party, but don’t make attendance mandatory, and show some respect for your neighbors who may be affected by the party.

You don’t have permission to change the whole world. Maybe you think you don’t need permission and you can do it anyway, and you can use that frame, but it will result in a rising resistance because that framing is violent. If you want to set yourself up for fight because you think it’s noble or something, that’s up to you, but then you have no right to be surprised, shocked, or outraged when people push back because that’s a predictable outcome of your framing.

It’s awesome to empower people, and kudos for doing that. But consider the benefits of inviting consent for where, when, and how you do this. If it’s a cool invitation, people will say yes and show up. And even when they decline, they may still appreciate being invited. This means less energy wasted on defending against rising resistance… and more energy you can invest in throwing bigger, better, and more interesting parties… parties that make us go. 🙂

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Exploring Beyond the Cage

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I just read an interesting BBC article about why there are significantly more vegan women than men, which is mostly summarized by this statement at the top:

When women hold two incompatible beliefs, they’re more likely to change their behaviour to reconcile them. Men, by comparison, tend to dig themselves in.

The article cites a variety of studies that delve into gender differences and how these connect with dietary decisions. Reading it had an odd effect on me, making my vegan side feel good and my male side feel primitive and stupid.

While I do consider myself an ethical vegan today, this article reminded me that I didn’t go vegan for reasons of compassion or concern for the well-being of animals. While I was aware of factory farming and the cruel ways that animals were treated, that argument didn’t move me. I used to be one of those guys who’d hear those points and then want to eat a burger afterwards. I’m not proud of that, but it’s the truth.

I don’t think it was because I wanted to snub my nose at people trying to tell me what to do. It didn’t feel like I was trying to assert dominance either. I think it had a lot more to do with being out of touch with my feelings. I simply didn’t feel much compassion for animals. Either my heart was silent on the issue, or my brain couldn’t detect what my heart was saying.

I could know that animals were suffering, but this awareness remained on an intellectual level. It didn’t trigger any meaningful caring or compassion within me. I was more likely to think something like, “Sucks to be them, but oh well.” Watching animals in pain was almost like watching a balloon being popped. Animals were just objects, and their fate was of little consequence.

What ultimately got me to transition to veganism was curiosity, but more specifically it was about risk reduction. A prior personal growth experience made me aware of one of my blind spots, and this made me more open-minded about exploring and investigating other potential blind spots.

That prior blind spot was religion. I was raised within the bubble of Catholicism throughout my childhood, and I came to see it very differently when I was 17 years old. I left the Church behind and began exploring other points of view, which was massively transformational. That was one of the most growth-oriented times of my life. It sure took a lot of courage though. I had no help when I began leaning in that direction, so it was a very lonely path with plenty of resistance from other people. I really had to trust my intelligence and reasoning to get through it.

When I looked back on my religious upbringing after I transitioned away from it, I could see more clearly just how blind I was and how full of holes my previous beliefs and perspectives had been. For example, since atheists didn’t worship God, they were doomed to suffer for all eternity. And so when I eventually met an atheist boy, I wasn’t really sure how to relate to him. How exactly do you play sports with someone who’s doomed? Is it safe to be on the same team together? What if he touched me – was being doomed infectious, like cooties?

At first I felt sorry for the guy. He was older than me but obviously in a lot of trouble. I found it odd that he didn’t feel sorry for himself though. I’d assumed that a doomed boy should be more messed up. He seemed totally fine and normal for a boy his age, even nicer than most. That situation created a cognitive disconnect.

When I learned about vegetarianism and veganism some years later, part of me recognized that this could be another of those situations where the insider and outsider perspectives are very different. I realized that if I only explored one side, I’d never really understand the other side, and there was a very real risk that I could be stuck in another thought bubble. That meant that if I didn’t try the opposite for at least a short time, like a month or so, I could potentially be doing the equivalent of remaining Catholic for life without ever understanding what a non-Catholic perspective was like. I shuddered at the thought.

I saw this as an enormous risk, one that I couldn’t ignore. The risk that I might inadvertently do the equivalent of spending my whole life Catholic really bothered me. What if the diet I was raised to eat was another one of those areas where I’d be wrong and deluded all along? I had to find out if that was true or not.

Once I adopted this framing, it was pretty much inevitable that I’d eventually do some personal exploration in this direction. It was just a matter of figuring out when and how to fit this experiment into my life. I started with a 30-day vegetarian trial between semesters in college in 1993. And then 3.5 years later, I did a 30-day vegan trial in January 1997. Both of those experiments became permanent lifestyle changes.

Again, compassion wasn’t one of my reasons for doing these experiments. I was much more concerned about the risk of getting stuck for life in a potentially erroneous thought bubble. The huge differences between the inside and outside perspectives of Catholicism were still fresh in my mind, even though I didn’t begin these diet experiments till about 5 years after the transition from religion.

My memories of the prior transition were frequently refreshed – whenever I’d pass a church, see a church on TV, or interact with family. Even seeing Ned Flanders or Reverend Lovejoy on The Simpsons was a reminder of the trap I’d successfully escaped – and a powerful warning that I could still be trapped inside another bubble.

So for me this exploration wasn’t really about getting into vegetarianism and veganism. It was about exploring outside of the reality bubble of animal products. I absolutely needed to know what was outside of that bubble. Not discovering the truth for myself was too great a risk.

I had learned the hard lesson that I couldn’t trust the people around me. When I was surrounded by religious people, we were all inside the same thought bubble together. It was only when I spotted a window to an outside world – in the form of meeting a nice doomed boy – that I began to wonder if I might be missing something.

So truth poked my bubble. Don’t you just hate it when that happens?

I wasn’t at all sure what the exterior perspective would be like though. When I did my 30-day vegetarian trial, it really was just a trial. I had no expectation that it would stick. I assumed it was just going to be a temporary experiment and that I’d be back to eating animals on Day 31. My intention was to explore and experience vegetarianism, so I would finally know what it was like. But I didn’t actually want it to stick. I wanted to open the door to answer truth’s knock, hear the sales pitch, and then say, “No, thank you,” and close the door like I was dismissing a couple of Mormons on a mission. I wanted to reassure myself that it was fine to return to my old diet since I had checked to see what life was like outside that bubble. I wanted to make sure that my dietary thought bubble was okay and that I didn’t have to abandon it.

Of course my assumption was wrong. It took perhaps six months to realize that I wasn’t going to return to eating animals. With the 30-day vegan trial, it didn’t take as long. If I recall correctly, I felt that I’d continue with veganism even before the initial 30-days were up. The first week of seeing all that dairy clog purging itself from my body helped to convince me that I should never put that gunk back inside me again.

These days I care a lot about animals. I feel for them in ways I never felt when I ate their flesh and eggs and drank the milk intended for their babies. My relationship with animals used to be one of entitlement and indifference, and I didn’t see anything wrong with that. I didn’t feel what I feel today. These feelings simply didn’t exist in the old bubble.

Going vegetarian and then vegan really helped to clean and revitalize my heart-brain connection, but I had no idea that I was missing anything when I started exploring in this direction. I gained a sense of empathy and compassion that I couldn’t remember feeling previously, except maybe in some vague memories from when I was very young.

Reading that article about the stubbornness of men hit home with me because it reminded me of what I was like in the old bubble. I feel so grateful that somehow I found an intellectual backdoor that enabled me to escape it. While I went vegan as an experiment to address a potential risk, I remain vegan for a much stronger set of reasons. I’m no longer indifferent and emotionally out of touch like I used to be. My ability to treat animals as products was an artifact of a thought bubble I left behind a long time ago. While I was in that bubble, I couldn’t connect with their beauty.

I spent many years of my life inside a thought bubble of animal neglect and abuse. While it’s not one I’ve visited for many years, I remember well enough what it was like on the inside. From the inside it doesn’t look like abuse. It just seems normal. I can recall plenty of meals with friends back in the day where animals were part of the experience, and it didn’t seem strange at the time.

I can also see why many men aren’t persuaded to explore veganism by the compassion argument. I understand how some pro-vegan arguments could make some men want to do the opposite. I don’t really think this attitude has so much to do with asserting dominance over animals though. I think it’s really a form of clinginess to the familiar thought bubble. It’s a retreat from a perceived threat. The response is more fear-based than many men would care to admit. It’s a retreat from a potential truth.

What convinced me to explore beyond the bubble was that I recognized a potentially greater threat – that I could be stuck inside a very limiting subset of reality that could trap me for life if I was too passive. The only way to know if I was indeed trapped was to explore beyond the cage. I had to know what was outside. And when I saw that life was better outside, I saw the cage for the trap it was, and I never wanted to return to it again, just as I never wanted to return to my old religious cage again.

Veganism isn’t a restrictive form of eating or lifestyle. It’s entirely the opposite of that. It’s immensely freeing to live outside of the old cage. This path helped me develop senses that I didn’t know I could possess. It invited me on a tremendous journey of upgrading my relationships with animals, with people, with life, and with reality.

The experience of escaping the old bubble was similar to realizing that I never had to go to confession again – no more sharing my sins with a creepy collared guy. My old relationship with animals was creepy as hell. But like the creepiness of confession, I couldn’t see or acknowledge that creepiness from within the bubble. Such is the nature of a thought bubble – you can only see the full truth of it when you experience the inside and the outside for enough time, and then compare notes.

This makes me wonder what kind of framing could have sped me along and helped me progress faster when I was younger. If the compassion argument would have fallen on deaf ears, what argument might have influenced me to explore outside my bubble sooner?

I think there is a better argument that would have worked, and it’s largely what I shared here. You could call it the Bubble Boy frame.

I was developing a healthy respect for people who explored beyond the bubbles that I grew up with. Once I had popped my first major bubble, I gained a much weightier understanding of the risks of not even seeing a bubble in which I could potentially be trapped for life. Considering that I could still be going to mass every Sunday – and confession too – if I hadn’t seen the bubble for what it was is creepy as hell.

That’s still a convincing argument for me today. This perspective has nudged me to explore outside of other bubbles that I was raised with – the bubble of employment, the bubble of monogamy, and so on.

The desire to discover new truths is compelling, but even more compelling is the desire to avoid spending your whole life in a cage and never even seeing the cage.

So I think I’d have found the perspectives of the cage, the bubble, and the trap a lot more compelling than any compassion-based arguments. Those lenses got me moving even when my heart-brain connection was offline. I didn’t want to spend my life as a bubble boy or cage boy.

These days those perspectives aren’t as compelling as they used to be. They still feel relevant and meaningful sometimes, but I now find it simpler to trust my default heart-brain intelligence instead of needing to lean on the bubble boy crutch for guidance. I am super grateful that I came upon that crutch when I did though. It was an empowering perspective – not the only tool in the toolbox but certainly an effective one for escaping nearly invisible cages.

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Launch Principles

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In case you might find this interesting, these are the principles I use for designing course launches. I tweak this list for each new course, but overall it’s been pretty stable.

When I have a tricky design decision to make while developing the project design document (or during the launch itself), I consult this list. It’s a way of refreshing my alignment with the principles I want to follow. Careful thought went into coming up with this list, and they’ve already proven themselves to me, so I know that I can trust them.

Trust

Assume trust, and launch to people who trust me. Don’t chase low-trust people. Let people invest when they’re ready.

Encouragement

Encourage consumption of the pre-launch content. Encourage buying. Encourage consumption of the program.

Openness

Be open and up front about the offer. Don’t hide or obfuscate my desire for people to buy and appreciate what I’ve created.

Co-creativity

Stay flexible and adaptable throughout the launch. Invite feedback. Quickly incorporate worthwhile suggestions. Show that I’m listening and responding with action to improve our co-creative alignment.

Enthusiasm

Share enthusiasm for the co-creative experience. Help people feel proud of their investment.

Groundedness

Share logical reasons why participating and saying yes to the offer is a good idea for those who are aligned with it. Also point out the potential shortcomings of the offer and how that may affect people. Be straight with people, and don’t overplay the benefits. Building long-term trust is more important than a one-time sale.

Caring

Express genuine caring for people throughout the launch process, the delivery of the program, and beyond. Don’t stoop to tactics that amount to “pretending to care.”

Playfulness

Embrace light-hearted humor and fun, especially when it’s spontaneous.

Honor

Hold myself and others accountable to a high standard of honor. Hold people accountable to doing their part once they accept the offer.

Gentleness

Gently invite people to participate and invest. Open the door, and let them be free to walk through it.

Safety

Keep the process psychologically safe for participants. Don’t use tactics to trigger people emotionally. Connect with compassion, not forceful persuasion, and let them maintain emotional control.

Alignment

Favor alignment over sales volume. Filter for aligned people, and seek to dissuade misaligned people from participating. Attract people who are very likely to benefit from the offer. Make heart-aligned decisions at each step.

Win-Win-Win

Make win-win-win offers: good for them, good for me and my team, and good ripples for the world. Use this standard for pricing decisions too.

Boldness

Offer strong, bold, unique growth experiences that pack in a lot of value.

Simplicity

Don’t complicate the process unnecessarily. Don’t slow people down if they’re ready to progress faster.

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