Here's What’s Wrong With the World Today

If you really want to know what’s wrong with the world today, I’ll tell you the truth about it.

At an amusement park on Saturday, a man a couple chairs down from me was passionately complaining about other people at the park:

"No one says ‘excuse me’ anymore!"

"People have no regard for others!"

"People are so ignorant and selfish!"

Other than being at that amusement park, I was in the car for about 15 hours this past weekend on a couple long rides. One thing I love about driving is that, for many of us, much of our crap comes up while driving.

“People are so selfish!”

“I’ve got to be aggressive or I’ll be taken advantage of.”

“People are oblivious to their impact on others.”

“You’ve got to drive defensively because other people are idiots.”

“You couldn’t wait 5 more seconds?!”

When these judgments come out, they’ve got a passionate energy for many of us. We can be so right that others are so wrong!! We can be so right that there’s something wrong with the world!!

In the car, there’s anonymity. We don’t know what other drivers’ intentions are, so we assume the worst. And because we don’t know who they are, we don’t feel much shame about being aggressive, selfish, and/or judgmental towards them.

And while we cultivate those judgmental thoughts and harbor that sadness, frustration, and self-righteousness, it’s like we’re drinking a poison. We’re harming ourselves with those perspectives and that energy. We’re betraying ourselves.

Why would we do this to ourselves, to the people we care about who are with us, and to the strangers around us that we don’t know?

We must be getting something out of it…

Each and every one of them is a harsh complaint about someone else or the state of the world, but can you see the real purpose behind all of them?

We get to avoid responsibility.

We get to avoid responsibility for maintaining peace and calm within.

We get to avoid responsibility for managing our well-being and safety without blaming others.

We get to avoid responsibility for being the source of positive change in the world around us.

Instead, we sit back and complain that the world and its people have gone to sh!t.

If you really want to know what’s wrong with the world today, I’ll tell you: Nothing.

Nothing’s wrong with the world today. Nothing at all.

Go ahead, take a moment and think of all the proof you have that I'm wrong.

Those are YOUR reasons. Those are YOUR arguments. Those are YOUR excuses.

A whole lot more becomes possible when we get responsible for our mindset and the impact it has on ourselves and others.

Yes, of course something else is possible all around the world. I'm not suggesting we let go of our desire to have a positive impact.

What I'm suggesting is that we let go of the perspective that there's something wrong, and instead get to the inspired, empowered, and effective work of creating what's possible.

The “Be the change you want to see in the world” quote wasn’t exactly as Gandhi said it, but it captures it well. How he actually said it is this:

"If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.”

As long as we keep cultivating a perspective that there’s something wrong with the world, we’ll keep seeing a world that’s wrong - and our actions will be consistent with a world that’s wrong. Complaining. Blaming. Justifying. Abdicating.

If we alter our mindset and cultivate a perspective that there’s something right with the world, we’ll see more of that - and our actions will be consistent with a world that’s right. Love. Inspiration. Community. Well-being.

One of those paths is the path of resignation and cynicism. The other is the path of hope and possibility.

Choose.

Thanks so much for reading. 🙏❤️

P.S. As a transformational coach, I help people and organizations move beyond their self-imposed limitations to be their best and feel amazing. If you’re interested in finding out how I can support you or your organization, schedule an exploration with me. 💌

4 Breakthrough Principles Underlying Our Frustrations

(This post describes the 4 principles underlying the How to Stop Getting Pissed at the People You Love conversation I hosted in June.)

I was pissed! THREE TIMES I told our older son to lock both locks on the door when he comes home in the evening. On all three occasions he DIDN'T do it - he only locked one of them!

“Dude, it’s not complicated! I’m not asking a lot! Lock BOTH locks when you get home!”

I felt immense frustration and would think through all the ways I could punish him for not following simple instructions. I would then think through ways to manipulate him to do what I wanted him to do.

And my emotions would stay fuming about it...

Principle 1: Our emotions show us what we’re committed to.

Look for your values and commitments beneath the surface of your hot emotions - that’s what really matters to you. We wouldn’t give a damn about the issue if there wasn’t something at play that we cared about.

What’s beneath my getting pissed about the door locks:

• I value my family’s safety

• I value doing complete work

• I value listening and respecting each other

• I value being responsible

The fuel for my getting pissed wasn’t the door locks - it was that I value those other things, and my son not locking the doors put those values in jeopardy.

Principle 2: Our hot emotions are defensive, secondary emotions designed to protect our vulnerable, primary emotions.

Of course I felt justified in getting pissed! However, getting pissed was just the secondary emotion I felt. Underneath that frustration, I felt hurt. Hurt that he didn’t listen to me. Hurt that he didn’t respect my desires and instructions. Hurt that he was maybe more interested in thinking about his friends than he was in listening to me.

Principle 3: Our vulnerable and hot emotions are a reaction to insecure thinking, NOT to our circumstances.

Here’s the truth of it. If I didn’t have insecure thinking in how I thought about myself as a dad, my son’s behavior wouldn’t hurt.

For me, here’s the thought: I’m not interesting or cool enough.

That thought is an insecure thought - it’s the source of my hurt and my getting pissed.

As a dad, I may never be interesting or cool to my kids as perhaps I once was, but that has nothing to do with me. My insecure thought - that’s all about me.

Principle 4: We have more say over how we show up than we’re usually aware of.

This is part of the foundation of all self-creation, and it’s how we disrupt unhelpful patterns in how we emote to the people we love.

Regardless of how my kids show up, I’m committed to being an extraordinary father. To me, this means being unconditionally loving, kind, and respectful.

When I’m pissed, I’m usually none of those things.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that we should never get pissed or that there’s anything wrong with getting pissed. What I’m saying is that getting pissed doesn’t usually align with who I’d love to be with my kids.

When I’m being an extraordinary father, I’m living in alignment with all of my core values in life.

The choice here is to be my ordinary self who takes things personally, gets hurt, and then gets pissed, OR to be my extraordinary self who consciously brings love, kindness, and respect to each of my interactions with my kids (and others).

The choice is mine, and it's yours too.

Thanks so much for reading. 🙏❤️

P.S. As a transformational coach, I help people and organizations move beyond their self-imposed limitations to be their best and feel amazing. If you’re interested in finding out how I can support you or your organization, schedule an exploration with me. 💌

Our Insecure Thinking Is Selfish

I was 25-years-old, standing in my first classroom as a new teacher. I was about to be surrounded by thirty 17-year-olds I had never met before.

I was a fairly insecure adolescent, but I stood there on my first day of teaching only mildly nervous and mostly excited to meet my first students.

Why wasn't I feeling insecure???

I had a secret weapon.

Adolescents can sense inauthenticity immediately. They can see right through our masks and they can smell our insecurities.

The way most high school teachers I’ve worked with manage their insecurity is by knowing more than their students. When the main currency in school is knowledge, the teacher is the richest person in the classroom!

But knowledge isn’t actually the main currency in the classroom - our shared humanity is.

Here’s what ALL students want: to be seen, to be listened to, and to be honored and respected as valuable beings. Students are human beings, and ALL of us want to be loved and to belong.

And that is my secret weapon: I know how to move beyond self-concerns to show up 100% present, engaged, and connected with my students.

There’s nothing special about me, so why don’t more teachers effectively do this? Actually, why don’t more of us love and honor others in general in our daily lives?

Instead of sharing in the wonder, sanctity, and beauty of our humanity, we gossip. We complain. We blame.

We fester in our opinions and righteousness, then blame others for not giving us the space to contribute. We make fun or we pander, we fume in private or fume to our colleagues to get them on our side.

You see, we’ve all got insecure thinking at times. These self-judgments (many of them from decades ago) are still holding the reins on our mindset and being. These unexamined and active self-judgments determine who we get to be, how we get to show up, and who we let in.

Think of all the enjoyment, health, and productivity that's lost in managing our insecurities.

What we never learned in school, however, is that each of us has an innate capacity to complete and move beyond our insecure self-judgments.

You see, insecure thinking is selfish. Insecure thinking puts our attention on ourselves. Insecure thinking denigrates our spirit and the spirit of others.

Until we adults start dealing with our self-limiting, spirit-inhibiting, love-prohibiting, sympathy-soliciting insecurities, we will never be truly free…

Free to be satisfied. Free to feel great most of the time. Free to love unconditionally. Free to be loved unconditionally. Free to live full-out our authentic expression.

Until we close the chapter on our insecure self-judgments, we’ll never make the impact we are here to make.

If you’re ready to do the work to lay to rest your self-limiting judgements and beliefs for good, reach out and let’s connect. Regardless of what your insecure thinking says about it, you can handle this transformational conversation.

Your world is waiting for you, and I’m here to help.

Thank you so much for reading. 🙏❤️

P.S. As a transformational coach, I help people and organizations move beyond their self-imposed limitations to be their best and feel amazing. If you’re interested in finding out how I can support you or your organization, schedule an exploration with me. 💌