An Inner Odyssey

Seeking a transformative nuance in perspective to improve the experience of life and living.

A way in….

What if my problem - holds the seeds of the solution to making life better?

I remember feeling broken in High School, and wanted to find a way to fix myself.

That pain inspired me to explore big questions, and seeking answers led me on an amazing adventure. Today I see the value of my journey and am glad I worked through the challenges of those early days.

I’ll admit I am blind to the value of my suffering today. I do have a taste of faith because of my lived experience - that somehow - I will discover a way to modify a few bad habits I have now to create more of the life I want tomorrow. I also have hope for humanity - that individuals like you - will let go of the social imperative to focus on external chaos and instead invest a few critical moments to improve your own life to better align with your intrinsic values, wants, and artistic temperaments.

I feel for people. I remember my sadness and frustration - even as I was doing cool and amazing things like going to college with friends or traveling. I know there must be people like me that suffer in their day to day lives - even when things are relatively good for them.

I remember vividly being angry when I began to catalog the vast social ills that plague humanity. How could all these smart people and influential leaders not solve these problems? It was obvious that science could find answers to immensely complex equations - yet to address the Slings and Arrows of outrageous fortune (a Shakespeare line in Hamlet) - and end them - seemed an impossibility. Why wouldn’t or couldn’t people fix poverty, sickness, and other major causes of human suffering?

"When we are afraid, we do not see clearly... Critical thinking is always difficult, but it is almost impossible when we are scared. There is no room for facts when our minds are occupied by fear." - Hans Rosling

After reading Factfulness by Hans Rosling, I realized that I had underestimated the progress humanity makes… (I still would like to see more progress - in the lifetimes of the living).

The Journey

That feeling of being broken - led me to explore psychology. And then I asked why solve problems for one person when we could solve them for many… Which led me to Sociology… After traveling the world and trying to get work - I saw that many of the problems stemmed from government - so I studied Government Administration to see if I could improve things from the inside… That didn’t work as well as I hoped. So today I am back at square one - wondering, how can I fix myself.

At UC Santa Cruz - I took a class in Sociology that felt like a Zen Koan in it’s mystic simplicity: Symbolic Interactionism. You and I learn about life from language. That language shapes our understanding, and that frame of learned meaning and felt intuition guides our behaviors. A note: just as language may construct our frame of understanding, I found that our cumulative experiences inform our intuition and gut feelings. I believe how we frame things, and understand our world has immense power. Thus - to fix me - I need to fix my negative bias and start creating a better way of understanding my situation & beliefs that improve my behavior - so that my actions improve life.

"It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it." - W. Somerset Maugham:

After reading the Katha Upanishad, watching the Power of Myth, and reading the Razors Edge, I wanted to learn more about Atman - the essential self. I set off on a journey in my 20’s that opened my eyes and heart to transformational insights. I became a seeker. Looking for the wisdom that transformed Richard Alpert into Ram Das. I found it for a ghost of moment in an Ashram lecture near Rajasthan. I learned it from an architect I hung out with in Nanital India as we were taking a trip to Katmandu Nepal. (It’s inside you, even when you don’t know it).

"Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does." – William James

And that’s kind of the solution - This moment, even with the day to day stresses, the unmet goals, the obligations and demands - can line up with a value we hold or an unconscious pattern embedded in our programing.

For the past few days I’ve been been practicing what once was a good habit. I fell in love with reading a long time ago. Today, there are times when that reading habit gets in the way of my values. So I am faced with a choice. Do I read in this moment or do I align my action with a value that will make my daily life more workable and perhaps enjoyable long term? Can I grit my teeth and close the book, so I can enjoy books in the future - while I am on a much better adventure - because I did some hard work today?

A way out.

Don’t feel like it. Have plenty of reasons not to do it. Fear. Unmotivated. Stuck. Just a few minutes…

These are the tip of the iceberg excuses and distractions my mental program serves up when I think about doing a new action that aligns with my values.

Mel Robbins with her 5 second rule is on to something - if you can cut through the mental mist - the fog of distraction - and ACT - you win the long term game.

The big power of meditation, is not that you stop thinking - (that doesn’t happen) - it’s being able to listen to your thoughts less - to create a distance between what the brain serves up and what you do. The flip side of that is that meditation lets you engage in the activity you are doing more. The Flow state (Csikszentmihalyi).

Here’s the big insight for me - all my thinking about the problems of the world hasn’t solved the worlds problems and also made my life worse. It’s time I stop focusing on the problems of my life - and invest more attention and action improving my long-term game.