When companies are sinking into the financial mire, consultants pull them out. 

But only if they allow them to. 

That’s the astonishing part. Because the founders of these organizations, who are typically wealthy, successful, high achieving white males over the age of fifty, are rarely willing to admit the company has a problem. 

That’s why they pay consultants handsomely to build up the facade of an enterprise that deep down, they both know is cracking at the foundation. They’d rather go down with the ship. 

As usual, then, their problem is not their problem. There’s always something deeper and more insidious. It’s less financial and more psychological. 

Which is a great lesson for any of us to learn, even if we don’t run a million dollar operation. 

Sinclair was right when he wrote that it’s impossible to make a man understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it. And so, our challenge is to be more open minded to humility. To be prepared to abandon our beliefs at any moment. To replace the false shield of pride with one of vulnerability. And to fly in the face of what we see with our eyes. 

Because they betray us. They merely kneel at the central computer of the brain. What we allow ourselves to see is nothing more than an artificially constructed narrative of perception. 

A helpful tool for imprinting a set of new beliefs into our system is to deepen our relationships with challenging people. To surround ourselves with individuals who will not only hold up a loving mirror to our thoughts, but who will also call bullshit on the thoughts are too convenient to be killed. 

Do you have enough people in your life to play that role? 

Whenever we resist killing our own beliefs, it’s usually because we’re thinking small. Whenever we lack the willingness to see the truth, it’s because the truth threatens something that we care about. 

Remember, there’s nothing more exhausting than pretending that upsetting fact don’t exist. 

Sticking our fingers in our ears and repeating, I’m not here, this isn’t happening, isn’t helping the situation. 

Perhaps it’s time to bristle against some of your own beliefs. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…  

What are pretending not to know?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS… 

For the list called, “99 Ways to Think Like an Entrepreneur, Even If You Aren’t One,” 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 2017-2018.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of 

The Nametag Guy in action here!

If our greatest asset is the willingness to acknowledge
what isn’t working, then our greatest action is to seek help, in whatever
necessary form, to keep moving the story forward. 

Regardless of how
uncomfortable it might be to hold out our hands and receive it, regardless how
stubborn we are about succeeding on our own steam without help, and regardless
of how secure self reliance seems when the only person we have to count on is
ourselves. 

Columbia conducted the most widely cited study about asking for help. Their social psychologists found that
people generally underestimate the likelihood of compliance in making a direct
request for help, in part, because they fail to fully appreciate that although
it is difficult for help seekers to risk rejection, it is also difficult for potential helpers to offer rejection. 

Think
about the last time you had to ask for significant help.

When mentally
attempting to predict how successful you might be in soliciting it, did you
underestimate yourself? Did the melodramatic movie playing inside your head
accurately portray people’s response in your time of need? 

Of course it did.
And that’s the beauty of the process. As terrifying as it is to pick up the
phone and admit our vulnerability and let people know that we’re struggling,
we’re usually pleasantly surprised at the speed and readiness and generosity of
their response. 

People are much more willing to help than we think. They don’t
want to be the rejecter any more than we want to be rejected. 

And so, in your
next time of need, practice effectively asserting your own desires. Send out a
smoke signal, believe in your worthiness to receive it, believe in other
people’s desire to deliver it, and stay present for all the steps that come
after. 

Because you’re just about to strike oil. 

The ground will begin rumbling
once you extend your arm. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…  

Where does your aversion to asking for help stem from?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS… 

For the list called, “99 Ways to Think Like an Entrepreneur, Even If You Aren’t One,” 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 2017-2018.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of 

The Nametag Guy in action here!

The work is its own reward. 

To look beyond that is foolish. 

If you can get paid for the art you make, that’s great. If you can build a career out of it, that’s a miracle. 

But any remuneration that you think will set you free and make the slog worthwhile, it’s just stardust. It evaporates the moment you touch it. 

All that matters is the process. The journey. The lessons you learn and the people you meet, the obstacles you overcome along the way, and the growth of your soul as a result. 

Because nobody can take that away from you. 

Gilbert’s masterful exploration of the ebbs and flows of the creative process helped clarify this principle for me. She helped me let go of needless suffering around my work by reminding me of several artistic truths:

People murder their creativity by demanding their art pays the bills. They scare it away by demanding that it pay for their entire existence. But it’s not the world’s fault you wanted to be an artist. It’s not the world’s obligation to pay for your dreams. And so, don’t burden your art with the responsibility of subsidizing your life. That only makes stress out of something that should be a joy and a release. 

It’s such a liberating and encouraging philosophy. Particularly if you’re the kind of person whose stomach gets twisted into balloon animals when he’s forced to assign monetary value to his intellectual property. 

Who cares? I never wanted to be a small business owner, I just wanted to make stuff and share it with people. That’s it. That process was enough for me. Probably always will be. 

The sacred experience of inhaling inspiration, capturing ideas, concepting projects, executing plans and sharing results, that’s a journey scratches every itch that I have. 

Everything else is bullshit. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…  

Are you making a psychic burden out of something that should be a joyous relief?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS… 

For the list called, “99 Ways to Think Like an Entrepreneur, Even If You Aren’t One,” 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 2017-2018.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of 

The Nametag Guy in action here!

Next month, Ixia Press is releasing my new book, 365 Daily Meditations for On and Off the Mat: A Year in Hot Yoga. 

Here is an interview I did on their website to talk about my yoga journey, the publishing process and of course, sweat angel competitions.

DP: I see a commonality in your TEDx talk and your book: you provide an insight or meditation and then ask the audience a related question. Reminds me of a teacher. Do you see yourself as an educator?

SG: I have never seen myself as a teacher or educator, although my work often teaches and educates people. Mentor for sure. But not teacher. Mentors model, mirror and motion. That’s my jam. My purpose is to be an example. It’s much more organic and less labor intensive than world domination. Plus I have terrible handwriting, so teaching is definitely out.

DP: How long have you been practicing yoga? Why/how did you start?

SG: For about 10 years now. Started as part of a comprehensive stress management program after suffering multiple anxiety related illnesses when I was 25–27, including a collapsed lung.

DP: Why hot yoga?

SG: I sweat more than any person alive, and finally, I now have a place where I don’t have to be ashamed of it. Actually quite proud. My friends and I have “sweat angel” competitions at the end of class to see whose puddle is bigger. The heat also is highly healing and humbling.

DP: Why yoga? Why not spinning or running?

SG: Spinning is awesome. Running is great too, but I hurt my knees over the years and can’t handle the impact anymore. Yoga, for me, is more communal, more spiritual, and requires me to do less laundry.

DP: What advice would you give people who think they are too fat/old/whatever to start a yoga practice?

SG: I am no longer in the advice business. If people don’t want to do yoga, then they shouldn’t do yoga. Period. There is nothing I can do to change their minds. Go find something you love and enjoy it. The other thing is, welcome to “The Club of Too.” Ten years ago, I was too anxious, too stubborn, to busy, too fidgety, too stressed, too whatever to do yoga. And yet, I found my way into this practice that transformed my life in about 16 different ways.

DP: Your book is very generous and caring. What do you hope that readers will discover about themselves? Others? The world in general?

SG: That we are not alone, that we are all struggling, that life is exhausting and confusing, and it feels really good to sweat out all bullshit that’s coursing through our veins on a regular basis. Maybe it’s through yoga, maybe something else, but it’s all about practice.

DP: It looks like you’ve been publishing your own books. What’s it like to work with a publisher for this project?

SG: Dover/Ixia has been amazing. They have supported and preserved my voice, which is deeply important to me. They will help elevate this book to reach millions of people around the world, and for that I am profoundly grateful. They also took my picture off the cover, which is a relief. If you saw my face, would you want to do yoga?

Read the original article here.

Buy the book here!

LET ME ASK YA THIS…  

With whom do you need to share your struggle?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS… 

For the list called, “99 Ways to Think Like an Entrepreneur, Even If You Aren’t One,” 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 2017-2018.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of 

The Nametag Guy in action here!

Lewis was more than a professional critic, but also a prolific corresponder. 

More than twenty years after his death, his foundation published an anthology of letters written to family, friends, and fans, spanning from his youth as a student to just a few weeks before his death. 

In one particular letter from the mid fifties, he wrote the following. 

The pleasure of pride is like the pleasure of scratching. If there is an itch, one does want to scratch, but it is much nicer to have neither the itch nor the scratch. As long as we have the itch of self regard we shall want the pleasure of self approval, but the happiest moments are those when we forget our precious selves and have neither but have everything else instead. 

It’s a brilliant primer on the power of pride. Not to mention, a reminder of a lesson that I’ve been trying to learn. 

Pride is the unwillingness to admit that it’s okay not to be okay. 

This kind of mindset contracts our hearts, lowers our receptivity and clouds our vision. No matter how cleverly we rationalize it as integrity. 

I’m reminded of a song lyric from another famous critic. Dylan sang:

When the walls of pride are high and wide, we can’t see over to the other side. 

Proving, that pride can betray our hearts by masking our real fears, but it can also contract our minds by keeping us isolated with our pain. 

And so, if we’re feeling stuck, the best thing we can do courageously and vulnerably share it with another person. Because how nice is it know that what we’re struggling isn’t an isolated incident? How relieving is it to know that everyone is struggling, some people are just better at hiding it than others?

In times of pain, we have to remember that all healing occurs in relationships. That only through the interpersonal account with another person can we push past our pride and enter into the transcendental healing atmosphere. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…  

With whom do you need to share your struggle?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS… 

For the list called, “99 Ways to Think Like an Entrepreneur, Even If You Aren’t One,” 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 2017-2018.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of 

The Nametag Guy in action here!

Seuss
famously wrote a graduation speech in the form of a book to address the ups and
downs of life. 

You’ll come down from the lurch with an unpleasant bump. The
chances are, then, that you’ll be in a slump. And when you’re in a slump,
you’re not in for much fun. Unslumping yourself is not easily done. 

That’s for
damn sure. Because when you’re slumping, it’s difficult to see past the
downpour of negative thoughts. Your mind has convinced you that you’ve lost all
faith in humanity, that life is a massive black hole of joylessness and
despair, and that the impenetrable layer of black, icy futility known as your
career is just a foregone conclusion. 

Good luck unslumping yourself with voices
like that. 

When you feel that bitter, putting your life in perspective is no
easy task. 

The good news is, although you can’t control the dark thoughts that
pop into your head, you can choose
which ones you give attention to and make grow and allow to have power over
you. 

One tool I find helpful in unslumping myself is not only considering, but
also calculating the big picture. The
long arc game. The fact that whatever I’m going through right now, it’s
ultimately a minor blip on the radar screen of life. 

Let’s say my slump lasts
for six months. And I live to be eighty years old. Run the numbers, and that
isolated period of time counts for exactly six tenths of one percent of my
entire life. 

That’s like cutting a penny in half. 

What a relief. Visualizations
like that help me feel a puff of hope. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…  

What calculation might help you unslump yourself?
LET ME SUGGEST THIS… 

For the list called, “99 Ways to Think Like an Entrepreneur, Even If You Aren’t One,” 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 2017-2018.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of 

The Nametag Guy in action here!

I was listening to an interview with the highest paid supermodel of all time. 

Crawford’s thirty years of success at modeling made her an international icon, and so, it was no surprise that she was savvy enough to impart the following piece of advice. 

This business will use you, so you better use it back. 

That’s the story we’re afraid to tell ourselves when we enter into the professional arena. 

That knowing we’re being taken advantage of is the first step in not being taken advantage of. That we don’t owe our allegiance to anybody. And that loyalty is a commodity, not a commandment. 

Look, we have entered the business system of durable goods and supply and demand. Employers and clients and organizations and won’t hesitate to fire us at the drop of a hat for any reason that fit their business needs. 

They’re not into developing careers, they’re into using us like assassins. Like guided missiles. They wind us up, and off we go to help them make millions. 

And so, our responsibility is to choose opportunity, not loyalty. To be absolute opportunists, doing whatever is best for the future in the current situation, unbound by the past. To view the world as a malleable environment, and ourselves equally as such. 

Without this kind of mindset, we end up piling our careers sky high with unrealistic expectations. 

I’ll never forget the first time a client stiffed me. They owed me thousands of dollars and simply did not pay their bills, no matter how many phone calls were made, emails were written and invoices were sent. I was infuriated. Never before had I felt so naïve and helpless and taken advantage of. 

But after six months, there was nothing else to be done. I had to take the loss. Even my mentor advised, sorry to tell you kid, but it’s cost of doing business. 

That was the first time the crushing reality of real life fully dawned on my naive consciousness. I realized, wow, people aren’t here to facilitate me. Nobody is looking out for my career. 

I know you believe that your cement stance is a mark of integrity. I know you’re supremely confident with your own heroic moral code. But you can’t remove the teeth from the cruel bite of reality. 

And so, put aside your innocence for a moment. 

It’s not hypocrisy, it’s how you can live with yourself. 

It’s not failure, it’s being honest about what you want. 

It’s not selling out, it’s doing what you have to do to be okay with yourself. 

It’s not about right or wrong, it’s about moving your life in a direction that makes sense. 

And it doesn’t matter if you choose the future that’s cheaper, it just matters if it’s the one you want. 

Of course it doesn’t feel right, but after a certain point, what feels right might not work anymore. 

It’s time to try some wrong. Fuck your integrity. Go do what you have to do. 

Even if small bits of prostitution may be necessary.

It’s a tough way to live, but a damn good way not to die. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…  

Are you still doing the wrong things for the right reasons? LET ME SUGGEST THIS… 

For the list called, “99 Ways to Think Like an Entrepreneur, Even If You Aren’t One,” 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 2017-2018.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of 

The Nametag Guy in action here!

For thousands of years, we’ve been brainwashed into believing that we should be afraid of our desires. 

Thanks to the powers that be, humans have lived in fear that desire would lead them into dark, objectionable, indulgent and shameful places. 

Consider the origin of the word. 

Desire literally translates to mean lustful. It’s one of the seven deadly sins. It’s a capital vice. Dante even depicted it as the first circle of hell, reserved for carnal sinners who subordinate reason to desire, whose unforgiven souls were blown about in a restless hurricane symbolic of their own lack of control to their lustful passions in earthly life. He said they felt for the tormented whirlwinds, damned for their carnal sins, committed when they let their passions rule their reason. 

No wonder we live in a world that’s been cut off from its own desires. No wonder we keep our lusts in check. No wonder we teach the heart to resist its deepest inclinations. 

Because nobody wants to get caught being naughty. There’s no seat in heaven for those heathens. Better to play it safe and be superstitious, puritanical and repressed, lest we be judged by our fellow man or, worse yet, scorned by the invisible all powerful sky daddy himself. 

But here’s a quick biology check. The human machine is built with powerful dreams and appetites and cravings. And there’s no reason not to honor those parts of our endowment. 

Otherwise, what the hell are we doing here? 

Postponing joy to the afterlife is an insult to the gift of being alive. True freedom is never having to bury our desires. Unless those desires result in hurting people.

Look, our life is a wonderful gauge telling us what we truly want. And it’s time for us to finally decide, as a society, to turn on what turns us on. 

We can’t allow our desires to stay sobbing, awaiting our hand to take action upon them. Instead, we must give those parts of ourselves permission to express in the world. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…  

What will keep your lust burning?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS… 

For the list called, “99 Ways to Think Like an Entrepreneur, Even If You Aren’t One,” 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 2017-2018.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of 

The Nametag Guy in action here!

The viewpoint that it’s all bullshit, that we’re all powerless to do anything and that everything in this world subject to some absurd and inevitable predetermination, that’s not wisdom, that’s defeatism. 

It’s a lazy response to life. A luxury. The weak way out of things. Needless negative thinking that only empowers the problem. 

Yes, it’s more interesting and clever to proclaim that it’s all bullshit. 

Yes, it’s liberating to view life as one long pathetic, purposeless death march on a tiny, hopeless speck of dust lost in an impossibly vast and unfathomably black void. 

In fact, from a purely rhetorical standpoint, it’s also impossible for other people to barter with or talk us out of that version of history. 

But actually believing that it’s all bullshit, that’s nothing more than a cloak of cynicism that cleverly advertises our indifference. 

And not that there’s anything wrong with noticing and accepting and laughing and even surrendering to the profuse amounts of bullshit of the world. 

But the danger is when we start leaning on that story as an excuse to sit home with our arms crossed and not take action on our dreams. 

Obama’s final state of the union address said it eloquently:

It’s a whole lot easier to be cynical, to accept that change is not possible and to believe that our voices and actions don’t matter. But if we give up now, we forsake a better future. We can’t afford to go down that path. 

If we want to plug into the field of all possibilities, we have to release our perceptions from the tight clamp of negativity. That’s the only way to expose ourselves to the opportunities that we would have previously overlooked. 

Remember, if it’s all bullshit, then by definition, that would include the idea that it’s all bullshit. 

Stop giving yourself another excuse not to make things happen. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…  

What story might you be addicted to that’s standing in the way of moving your life forward? 
LET ME SUGGEST THIS… 

For the list called, “99 Ways to Think Like an Entrepreneur, Even If You Aren’t One,” 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 2017-2018.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of 

The Nametag Guy in action here!

Moore’s manifesto about the future of healthcare not only teaches providers to preserve their souls, but also reminds patients to preserve individuality. 

If you express your soul, he warns, you will be eccentric. There is no other way. You will rub people the wrong way. They will criticize you. They will be uncomfortable with your individuality. 

After all, heterogeneity is threatening. Especially in an institution, which usually prefers that everyone fade into the background of acquiescence. 

This manifesto is a perfect reality check for anybody inside of an organization, especially those with a raging individuality that wants to express itself. 

And so, if you’re the kind of person intent on standing apart of how society wants to shape you for its own purposes, expect resistance. Because poking the status quo, refusing to adapt, sticking out and upsetting whatever equilibrium has been achieved, well, there’s just something inherently aggressive about expressing that kind individuality.

But only if you’re on the inside. 

Customers, on the other hand, are free to be as quirky and eccentric and individuated as their hearts desire. It’s good for business. 

Deresiewicz, the former ivy league professor and literary critic, calls this the phenomenon the democratization of creativity. He writes that the makers have the means to sell, but everybody has the means to make. And everybody’s using them. 

Everybody seems to fancy himself a writer, a musician, a visual artist. 

Apple figured this out a long time ago, he says. 

The best way to sell people its expensive tools is to convince us that we all have something unique and urgent to express. 

It’s a balance. We live in the land of rugged individuals with a vision who need to do it their way, but when that individual has a lot of money to spend, individualism becomes a very profitable worldview. 

We must be careful not become victims of our own uniqueness.  

LET ME ASK YA THIS…  

Have you considered who might view your heterogeneity as threatening, and who might view it as an asset to exploit?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS… 

For the list called, “99 Ways to Think Like an Entrepreneur, Even If You Aren’t One,” 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 2017-2018.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of 

The Nametag Guy in action here!