Anxiety is a source of education

My yoga instructor often reminds us that our main teacher is in the mirror. That the students are to become their own gurus. 

Yes, the instructor will help to keep pace and control the heat and make corrections, but ultimately, it’s through the process of confronting of ourselves, warts and all, that activates real growth. 

What a powerful tool to deepen your practice as a yoga student. In fact, what a helpful lesson off the mat, too. Because that which is scariest to confront often has the most to teach us. 

Kierkegaard referred to anxiety as the nameless and formless uneasiness that has dogged the footsteps of modern man. No wonder much of human behavior is motivated by a desire to escape anxiety. But let’s not forget, anxiety is also a profound source of education for us. Just like the mirror in the yoga room. Anxiety reflects our reality back to us. It implores us to stand up and say aloud what’s missing.

And so, in running from it, we lose our most precious opportunity for education as human beings. 

Anytime I feel anxiety hot on my trail, I try to reserve a small portion of my brain for gratitude. I give thanks for those feelings. And instead of treating the moment as if it were an obstacle to overcome, I use it as a vehicle to answer some questions about myself. To learn what might lacking. To hear the story I’ve been telling myself about my own reality. 

And more often than not, taking that small moment of awareness and curiosity leads me down a healthier path. One where I’m not averting my eyes from something in the mirror that I despise, but walking through the glass and see what lies on the other side. One where I’m not ignore or rejecting or editing out the dark parts of myself, but exposing my nakedness and rushing in to meet it. 

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Are you willing to be your own best teacher?

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Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

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The loss of the other leaves an inner yawning void

Rollo’s research on identity was way ahead of its time. 

First published in the early fifties, during a postwar age of overwhelming anxiety, he found several interesting commonalities among his psychotherapy patients that still hold true today. 

Namely, that every man needs relationships with other people in order to orient himself. After all, he’s a social animal. The human being gets his original experiences of being a unique self out of his relatedness to other person. 

And so, the loss of the other leaves an inner yawning void. A terrifying combination of loneliness and emptiness. Because without other people, we have nothing to bump up against. Without other people, we have no way to orient ourselves. And that’s when we start to lose the sense of our own existence. 

No wonder we hate being alone. It’s the terror of losing awareness of ourselves. The fear of not being able to fulfill our own potentialities. 

But the good news is, we can reverse engineer these feelings. We can nip anxiety in the bud by asking ourselves the following honest question. 

Right now, in this moment, what essential value, that I identify with my existence, is being threatened? 

That simple act of naming our source of anxiety will help us recognize where meaning has leaked out of our lives, which action we need to take to refill the inner yawning void, and with whom we need to orient ourselves while we do it. 

Remember, it is through the eyes of another that we receive a greater sense of our own personhood. And that sense is the best medication around. 

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Which of your relationships can you bump up against during times of high anxiety?

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Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Never the same speech twice. Customized for your audience. Impossible to walk away uninspired.

Now booking for 2015-2016.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of The Nametag Guy in action here!

Open a window to the hybrid horizon

Joni invented everything about her art. 

From performance style to lyrical content to musical genre to guitar tunings to creative process to production style to melody structure to piano voicing to chord progressions to career trajectory, there wasn’t an element of her work that wasn’t original. 

That’s the real art. Not just the force of her message, but the fearlessness in inventing whole new ways of creating it. 

Joni reminds us that our job as creators is to chase down the hybrid. To juggle ourselves into impossible juxtapositions and come out on the other side with something nobody’s ever seen before. 

In fact, the term hybrid has applications across a variety of disciplines, including biology, electronics, film, sports, music, literature, vehicles, language and astronomy. Why not include yourself on that list? 

Consider the definition of a hybrid car. It’s a vehicle that uses two or more distinct power sources to move. What a perfect metaphor for the modern artist. Thinking of ourselves as hybrids challenges us to tap into all of our skills and fuels and energies and dreams to move the story forward. To make use of everything we are in the service of the final destination. 

And of course, every hybrid has its share of issues with aftermarket compatibility. But that’s a minor technical adjustment. The point isn’t to be the finest, it’s to be the first. The point isn’t to be perfect, it’s to be the only. To create the category of which we are the standard bearer. 

Remember, the way we go to market is just as important as the person we are when we get there. 

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Are you always looking to open a window to the hybrid horizon?

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For the list called, “49 Ways to become an Idea Powerhouse,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Never the same speech twice. Customized for your audience. Impossible to walk away uninspired.

Now booking for 2015-2016.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of The Nametag Guy in action here!

The satisfaction of knowing that all systems are operating

A clearing house is a central institution or agency that collects, maintains and distributes something between parties. London coined the term back in the early nineteenth century. 

Lubbock’s built a single room where clerks for local banks met each day to exchange checks and settle accounts, pioneering an innovative exchange process that helped streamline operations, save time, reduce labor, decrease cost, increase efficiency, mitigate risk and ultimately strengthen the banking industry. 

Two centuries later, clearinghouses are now used for a variety of transactions, from legal to financial to informational to technical. 

And so, even if you’re not hypnotized by the sexy industry of futures exchanges and commodities derivatives, there’s still an important lesson to learn from the concept of a clearinghouse. 

Because everyone has dreams. Everyone has things they want to do. Everyone has projects they want to realize in the world. Meaning, everyone is looking for tools to help streamline effort, reduce time, save cost and most importantly, maximize satisfaction. 

And that’s when the clearinghouse comes in handy. It’s not a physical institution that distributes something, it’s a conceptual destination where you can unite all of your interesting goals, intermingling your dreams into a meaningful, cohesive whole. 

When I started making music films, I treated them as clearinghouse projects. Because each movie was a confluence of many dreams. A platform that allowed me to find a home for all of my talents. A productive obsession that freed me flex each my artistic muscles, from writing to singing to guitar playing to public speaking to book packaging to mass communicating. 

And so, whatever dream you’re chasing, approach it as a clearinghouse. Instead of running around the forest putting a few chops in each tree, try creating a big enough axe to demolish them all. Because you can’t beat the satisfaction of knowing that all systems are operating. 

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How is your dream a confluence of many smaller dreams?LET ME SUGGEST THIS…

For the list called, “49 Ways to become an Idea Powerhouse,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Never the same speech twice. Customized for your audience. Impossible to walk away uninspired.

Now booking for 2015-2016.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of The Nametag Guy in action here!

Banish the dragons, banish the heroes

Hempton, the great acoustic ecologist, has circled the globe three times in the last thirty years in pursuit of the earth’s rarest nature sounds. His audio work is a stunning reminder that we should always respond to nature as part of ourselves, not as a stranger or alien available for exploitation. 

After all, the imagination of nature is far greater than the imagination of man. It has its own tempo and flow and an infinite process of creation of which we are only a small part. And humans would be wise to pay attention. 

For example, consider mating calls of birds. Hempton once explained that the love songs birds sing attract mates, but they also draw the attention of predators. What a romantic and terrifying reality. Not just for birds, but for humans too. Because we’re all just stumbling through this forest, singing our hearts out, hoping that the authentic song we’ve been gifted to deliver will somehow match the frequency of a kindred spirit who locks into the harmonic connection and flies across the forest to meet us. 

And sometimes we find the bird we’ve been waiting for, and sometimes we find the hungry bobcat who’s been waiting for us. 

There’s no way to predict it, there’s no way to control it. 

So we accept them both as part of the journey. Because that’s the risk in singing our authentic song. We take a chance in what we attract with our calls. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Are you wiling to stick around and continue to be yourself until the right people eventually find you?

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For the list called, “49 Ways to become an Idea Powerhouse,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Never the same speech twice. Customized for your audience. Impossible to walk away uninspired.

Now booking for 2015-2016.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of The Nametag Guy in action here!

Instead of consulting the literature, write it

Nisbett reminds us that when we have the beginnings of an idea about
something, the worst thing to do is consult the literature before we get
started to work on it. In doing so, he writes, we will be certain to assimilate
our potentially original idea to something that is already out there. 

But it’s just
an ego vortex. A safety drill. It’s creative resistance in disguise. Because
we’re scared. We seek confirmation that this new thing we’re working on isn’t
crazy. That the marketplace will welcome it with open arms. Only then, will we
launch our idea. 

That’s not how innovation works. Nobody changes the
world by finding out what other people already know. They change the world by
committing to the frightening work of flying blind. They change the world by stubbornly
sticking their fingers in their ears and bravely venturing into the dark forest
of the unknown. 

And so, if you’re working on something new and exciting, instead
of consulting the literature, write it. Instead of meeting the standard, set
it. Doing research is procrastination in disguise. 

Jobs never gave customers
what they wanted. He believed people didn’t know what they wanted until
somebody showed them. And so, he spent his career showing them. He never
consulted the literature for objects of interest, he became one. 

Remember, your
greatest currency in this world is your originality. And that demands a
willingness to experiment. Don’t worry about what most people normally. Just
start. Hire yourself. Let the rest of the world that follows be compared to
you. Because the best way to shatter the limit is not to know one exists. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

What industry are you the standard bearer of?
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For the list called, “49 Ways to become an Idea Powerhouse,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Never the same speech twice. Customized for your audience. Impossible to walk away uninspired.

Now booking for 2015-2016.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of The Nametag Guy in action here!

Life is only limited by our own prejudices

There’s nothing more liberating than the thought that we can engage with something without having to subscribe to its content. It all depends on the mindset with which we approach it. 

Holy scriptures are the perfect example. There are thousands of volumes from hundreds of religions from all over the world. And they’re all interesting and insightful and inspiring. 

But only if they’re read literately. Not literally, but literately

Meaning, they are respected for the literature that they are. 

I’ve read The Bible cover to cover multiple times. Not because I’m a religious man of great faith, but because that book is the singe most popular, most printed, most published, most purchased, most read, most recognized, most translated, most demanded, most donated, most circulated, most owned, most influential, and of course, most stolen book in the history of the world. How could I resist? 

That’s the workings of a growth mindset. Feeling strong enough in your own intellectual separateness that you are not fearful of losing yourself. Laying aside your own views and values in order to enter another world without prejudice. Staying deeply curious about a different experience without identifying it with your own story. Launching yourself fully into the stream of life, open to the complete possibility of what could be, while staying in observation mode instead of being sucked into judgment. 

Loy said it best more than one hundred years ago in her futurist manifesto:

Life is only limited by our own prejudices. Destroy them and you cease to be at the mercy of yourself. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Are you treating books as our own personal fortune cookie to confirm your beliefs, or as an objective growth experience to expand your capabilities?

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Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Never the same speech twice. Customized for your audience. Impossible to walk away uninspired.

Now booking for 2016-2017.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of The Nametag Guy in action here!

Cracked open with sudden abundance

The need to constantly evaluate return on investment for every endeavor isn’t the pillar of a shrewd strategy, it’s a symptom of a scarcity mentality. 

Nothing against the accounting department, but there’s a fine line between crunching numbers and robbing ourselves of joy. 

If we are to cultivate true abundance, we can’t spend all of our time trying to financially justify everything move we make. Sometimes we have to, as my grandfather used to say, just buy the son of a bitch. Because nobody saves their way to prosperity. 

The real work is making the internal shift. From scarcity to abundance. From save a dime mode to make a dollar mode. Consider these examples. 

Instead of freaking out that the industry pie is shrinking, trust that more income is always possible. Instead of competing with colleagues, take comfort in your position without the need to surpass others. Instead of racking yourself with guilt over acquiring something new for yourself, welcome the genuine pleasure in obtaining what you desire to have. And instead of measuring and calculating and quantifying everything, learn to trust your spontaneous instinctual abilities. 

After all, human beings have a tremendous range of intuitive powers available to us. We are indeed wiser than our intellects. 

Explaining is draining. Free up the significant abundance that has long been trapped in the exhaustion of trying to convince yourself of return on investment. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

What story are you telling yourself that’s blocking prosperity?

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For a copy of the list called, “8 More Ways to Make Your Email More Approachable,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Never the same speech twice. Customized for your audience. Impossible to walk away uninspired.

Now booking for 2016-2017.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of The Nametag Guy in action here!

Take pause before releasing the hounds

It’s easy to become obnoxious about newfound enlightenment.

Especially when you’re still riding the high of your own epiphany. The natural tendency is to project it onto others. To try and convert everyone you encounter. To take up the mantle of evangelism and declare the glory among all nations and preach the gospel to every living creature and fight those who do not believe until they all surrender. 

Well, that sounds exhausting. Trying to save and fix and control everybody, setting other people’s goals, asserting your moral superiority at every possibility, being the lord of answers for everyone you meet, subtly controlling and molding others in your own image, what a horrible job to give yourself. 

Besides, where will you find the time to build a life of your own if you’re so busy trying to push people to dismantle theirs? 

And so, whatever trendy diet or life philosophy or exercise regiment or meditation practice or marketing strategy or online dating hack is working for you, that’s great. Congrats. Keep it up. But perhaps it’s time to resign as general disciple of the universe. Perhaps becoming the light of the world isn’t as important as simply living in that world for a while first. 

Drop your own expectations of what you want other people to be for you. Respect people’s potential to develop beyond where they are, but grant them the right to be who they are. Be the one who looks for truth, not the one who found it. Because the beauty is in the questioning. 

Answers are highly overrated anyway. Next time you stumble upon a new piece of enlightenment, take pause before releasing the hounds. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

What happened to the last person you tried to convert?
LET ME SUGGEST THIS…

For a copy of the list called, “8 More Ways to Make Your Email More Approachable,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Never the same speech twice. Customized for your audience. Impossible to walk away uninspired.

Now booking for 2016-2017.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of The Nametag Guy in action here!

Everybody’s first word was air

Kristofferson famously sang that freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose. 

But everyone defines freedom in their own way. As they should. That’s the whole point of being free in the first place. 

And so, here’s my definition. 

Freedom is the ability to breathe. It’s that blissful state of psychological sovereignty in which the acute pressures and suffocating burdens and ambient anxieties and piercing distractions and looming deadlines and unresolved issues and open loops and claustrophobic feelings aren’t constricting your life force into a distracted haze, and you can finally just be here now and touch real joy. 

You can breathe. You can revel in the gentle restfulness and slow lightness of being. 

I only know this because I’ve experienced the opposite. Quite literally. When I was twenty six, I suffered a collapsed lung. A spontaneous pneumothorax. I got up one morning, couldn’t breathe, went to the emergency room, woke up a few hours later with a tube in my chest, and then spent a week in the hospital connected to a respirator that did my breathing for me. It was the polar opposite of freedom. 

Of course, it wasn’t a remarkable incident. My suffering wasn’t special. People’s lungs collapse every day. Often times sporadically. And in most cases, treatment is fairly simple. Oxygen and rest. 

However, that experience fundamentally changed me forever. In many ways. One of which was a deeper understand and appreciation one of the most basic freedoms we have as human beings. 

Breathing. Inhaling. Exhaling. 

After all, everybody’s first word was air. And so, that became my goal. Gentle restfulness. Slow lightness of being. Freedom through the ability to breathe. The blissful state of physiological and psychological sovereignty. 

Oxygen. It’s a beautiful thing. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

How do you define freedom?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…

For a copy of the list called, “8 More Ways to Make Your Email More Approachable,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Never the same speech twice. Customized for your audience. Impossible to walk away uninspired.

Now booking for 2016-2017.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of The Nametag Guy in action here!

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