Members of the polyamorous community have a beautiful term called compersion, which is the empathetic state of happiness and joy experienced when another individual experiences happiness and joy.

Essentially, it’s the opposite of jealousy. According the founders of the movement, compersion is the antidote to the insecurity, fear and anticipated loss of a partner over their affection for another lover. 

It sanctions the idea of our partner deriving pleasure separate from us and from another source, ultimately strengthening the connection between the two people. 

This is not a new idea. Buddhists have been practicing this principle for thousands of years. Monks use the term mudita, which means vicarious joy. The pleasure that comes from delighting in other people’s well being without the strings of self interest.

Now, if this way of relating to people seems difficult, it’s because it is. Our nature as humans is to become competitive and comparative, not compassionate. 

I’m reminded of a brilliant standup special. Rock explained the difference between men and women as follows. 

When women go out with their friends and have a good time, we are happy for you. But it doesn’t work the other way around. Women do not want us to have a good time, ever. If you come home from work, and she sees a smile on your face that she didn’t put there, she’s gonna get suspicious. That’s right, if you go out and have a good time with your boys and she asks how it was, you just say, it was alright. Because cause if you go beyond alright, you’re gonna be in a fight. 

And so, if we want to have a more holistic relationship with joy, we must learn to feel it when it has nothing to do with us. 

To be happy simply because somebody we love is happy. 

As my grandfather used to say, the meanest feeling of which any human being is capable is feeling bad at another’s success. 

It’s time to practice a little compersion. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…  

Whose happiness are you resenting? * * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Buy my latest devotional! 

A Year in Hot Yoga: 365 Daily Meditations for On and Off the Mat. 

Now available wherever books are sold.

Namaste.

Gandhi was right when he wrote that joy lies in the fight, in the attempt, in the suffering involved, not in the victory itself. 

Proving, that it’s one thing to locate joy in spite of our suffering, but the harder question is, can we locate joy inside of our suffering? Can we get to a place where we’re so grateful and engaged and in love with our own process of growth, that even our most difficult and painful experiences are witnessed with joyful awareness and complete presence to the miracle of being alive? 

It’s like having sore muscles after a tough workout. Personal trainers call this condition delayed onset muscle soreness, which is caused by muscle microtearing, which helps build muscle fiber and make them stronger. 

Which means, we’re doing the work. We’re growing. 

And so, we can whine to the world about our deltoid muscles hurting every time we raise our arms in the air, or we can find joy in the fact that we have pushed ourselves hard enough to warrant a physical response. The choice is ours to make. 

Now, there’s another piece to the suffering puzzle. One that pays real emotional dividends later on. Because during hard times, if we’re willing to engage our imaginations, we can also locate joy in the fact that the skills we’re building now will contribute to our story as an individual in the future. 

James, the epistle who wrote letters to the twelve tribes scattered abroad, said that we should consider it pure joy whenever we face trials of many kinds, because we know that the testing of our faith is what produces perseverance. And we should let that perseverance finish its work so that we may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 

That’s how we manage ourselves between life’s bright moments. Not only finding joy in the fact that we’re alive and breathing and gloriously suffering, but also finding joy in the vision of the person we’re becoming. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…  

What’s your strategy for locating joy inside of your own suffering?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Buy my latest devotional! 

A Year in Hot Yoga: 365 Daily Meditations for On and Off the Mat. 

Now available wherever books are sold.

Namaste.

Saunas are helpful for relieving stress, relaxing muscles, circulating blood, flushing toxins, cleansing the skin, boosting the immune system, moisturizing our hair, and if we’re lucky, finding a date for the weekend. 

But make no mistake. Going to the sauna is not a workout. Our brain may think it is because we’re at the gym and getting sweaty and feeling invigorated at the end. 

But if we’re not moving our body and elevating our heart rate, we’re not exercising. Period. 

Not to take anything away from the schvitzers of the world who relish the sauna experience. But let’s not bullshit ourselves and the world about our efforts. Let’s not sit in a hot room for twenty minutes, hit the showers, grab a smoothie and spend the rest of the day bragging to our coworkers about our intense exercise regimen. 

My mother has spent the past thirty years as a fitness instructor and personal trainer. And as she tells her clients, it’s not a workout if there’s no work. 

We must learn to discern between the principal and the peripheral. 

We make this mistake in our professional lives every day. Confusing activity with progress, movement for achievement and effort for results. 

Spending two hours catching up on email might make us feel productive and effective and accomplished. But the question is:

Did we create any real value in the world? 

Did we make the world a better place? 

Did we do something worth writing in our victory log? 

Doubtful. 

Maisel’s provocative book about the anxieties of creativity addresses this issue in a way that nobody else ever has. For a creator, he says, discipline means creating regularly. It can have no other meaning. Being disciplined in some other way, like doing yoga every morning or doing superb work at your day job, is not only not an artist’s discipline, but it may even be a person’s avoidance of his artist’s nature. 

Our challenge, then, is to discover which excuses we use to justify our procrastination. To honestly ask ourselves if the tasks we’re engaged are genuine workouts, or just taking another sauna. 

Both have their place in life. But if we’re not able to tell the difference, we’re only bullshitting ourselves. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…  

Are you highly skilled at convincing yourself that you’re more productive than you really are?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Buy my latest devotional! 

A Year in Hot Yoga: 365 Daily Meditations for On and Off the Mat. 

Now available wherever books are sold.

Namaste.

As the world record holder of wearing nametags, I’ve conducted a significant amount of field research around the experience of labeling. 

And what I’ve discovered is that it’s a doubled edged sword.

Depending on the context, labeling can either be helpful or harmful. 

Affect labeling, for example, is the process of attaching words to feelings. It helps us manage our emotions, empowers us to classify and understand what’s going on around us and, if need be, change our unhealthy behaviors and choices. 

Ask anyone who has experience with the panicking spread of anxiety, labeling is one of the few vehicles through which we exert some measure of comfort over the course of our own lives. 

In fact, reflecting on my own mental health history, my healthiest way out of panic has always been through the ability to identity and put a comprehensible label upon my feelings. 

That’s the power of emotional labeling. Freedom begins with naming things. Once you’ve put a word to it, you’ve separated yourself from it. And that means it can’t control you. 

Creative labeling, on the other hand, is a very different animal. Because in the process of bringing new projects to life, words can obstruct understanding. When there is naming, the name is often mistaken for what has been named. 

The secret to building something real and lasting is not being so damn focused on defining it. When we spend an extraordinary amount of time naming and labeling and understanding and crispy articulating something, that can actually steal energy from the joy of making it. And the act of labeling can diminish the capacity of an idea to fulfill their potential. 

Ultimately, the goal is to be careful not to dismiss labeling as either a panacea or blanket mistake. It all depends on context. 

Some things require a nametag, some don’t. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…  

Are you enjoying the bird’s song, or trying to classify the kind of bird that is singing?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Buy my latest devotional! 

A Year in Hot Yoga: 365 Daily Meditations for On and Off the Mat. 

Now available wherever books are sold.

Namaste.

Toffler predicted that the
acceleration of technology would leave people suffering from shattering stress
and disorientation aka, future shock. 

A central tenant of his philosophy was the concept of information overload, a
term he popularized to define the moment when the amount of input to a system
exceeded its processing capacity and resulted in a reduction of decision
quality. 

Understatement of the millennium. 

Fast forward to the digital
generation, and mankind has now produced more information in the past decade
than in it has in the previous five thousand years. 

Future shock, indeed. 

My
question is, how does this impact the creative process? Because the job of the
artist, is to find inspiration in life’s daily occurrences that most people
take for granted, and burn it as fuel to make the world better. 

That’s why there
are hundreds of applications, platforms and communities designed for note taking,
organizing, clipping, managing, curating and archiving the world around us. 

Because we’re not only suffering from information overload, but inspiration
overload as well. 

But here’s the problem. Inspiration is a critical part of the
creative process, but it’s not the only part. If we spend all of our time
collecting ideas to help us research how to enter the right mindset so we can
prepare to sit down and hold a space to motivate ourselves to create a plan so
we can brainstorm about how to visualize the possibility of eventually getting
started on doing the work, we haven’t done anything. 

We’ve confused getting
inspired with making progress. 

That’s not productivity, that’s pornography. 

The
thirst for research, the obsession with consuming, the addiction of inhaling,
the opiate of organizing, these activities, while seemingly productive, are
actually expressions of procrastination and perfectionism. 

Because they don’t
do anything to move the story forward. They only paralyze the characters. 

I
once wrote a book about how
ideas are free, but only execution is priceless. 

If you’re feeling too
overloaded to read it, allow me to 
summarize all four hundred pages in one sentence. 

You don’t need an
idea, you need an I did. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…  

What are you mistaking productivity for?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Buy my latest devotional! 

A Year in Hot Yoga: 365 Daily Meditations for On and Off the Mat. 

Now available wherever books are sold.

Namaste.

What are you confusing productivity with?

In the show business world, you don’t make money until you make somebody else money. 

That’s why no organization wants to be the first person to trust you. Because if you’re not a proven well, if you don’t have a history of producing oil, and if you don’t have a reputation of getting people laid or paid, you have no leverage. 

I remember hearing a veteran talent manager, reflecting on his career in the entertainment industry, put it perfectly:

In the show business world, he said, agents are heat seeking missiles. When the client is hot, that person is everything. Smart, funny, talented, good looking and brilliant. But when the client isn’t hot, they’ll call them back later. 

The goal, then, is to think of ourselves as objects worth targeting. Not unlike infrared technology itself, we must behave in ways that generate and retain heat so our work is highly visible within the marketplace wavelengths, when compared to everything and everyone else in the background. 

What’s more, we must deal directly and impersonally with the resistance if and when that fire fizzles out. 

Meaning, not taking it so damn personally when the heat seeking missiles don’t seek us out. 

Because the reality is, it’s not because somebody liked us, it’s because we sold. 

It’s not whether we were good, it’s whether we were hot. 

We can’t become so vain that we think the song is about us.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…  

Are you sending people objects of interest, are you are doing something to make yourself an object of interest? 

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Buy my latest devotional! 

A Year in Hot Yoga: 365 Daily Meditations for On and Off the Mat. 

Now available wherever books are sold.

Namaste.

You have bought into the story that this is progress. 

Instead of wisely cutting your losses and getting on with your life, you keep nobly persisting, refusing to take no for an answer, chasing down leads for opportunities that are ridiculously out of your reach, believing that your passion and personal stamina will actually make a difference. 

Because just like your mother always said:

You’re special and different and therefore better and more deserving than anybody else. Don’t let anybody tell you any different. 

And so, the voice inside your head says:

You just wait and see. Once those bastards finally come to their senses and realize that they’re going to have trouble living without me, they’ll come crawling back. 

That’s not determination, that’s delusion. It’s unrequited love. One sided infatuation. Trying to please people until they can’t stand you. 

And the problem is, popular culture has falsely portrayed this kind of persistence as something that pays off when the rejecter comes to their senses. 

But unfortunately, real life doesn’t work that way. 

Here’s what really happens. 

The lovelorn wallflower spends his entire adolescence fantasizing about dating the most popular girl in school. And then, at the senior prom, once he finally musters the courage to corner her at the party and share his meticulously detailed plans about their perfect future together, he realizes that his love has nothing to do with her. 

It’s just a performance. It’s just an elaborate story he built inside his head that has no relationship with reality. 

Real life isn’t an eighties teen drama. Think about the story of progress you’re buying into. 

Learn to become more sophisticated about your relationships, both personally and professionally. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…  

Are you cutting your losses early and often?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Buy my latest devotional! 

A Year in Hot Yoga: 365 Daily Meditations for On and Off the Mat. 

Now available wherever books are sold.

Namaste.

The problem with a diary is, it’s private. 

Which means we can hide. Even if our words are raw and honest and bloody and real, with a diary, the risk and vulnerability and intimacy associated with sharing our truth with the world have all been eliminated from the equation. 

It’s just more winking in the dark. 

Not to minimize the importance of privacy and the value of keeping a diary. Studies have been done, books have been written and lectures have been given about the creative, therapeutic and cognitive affects of keeping a private record of one’s thoughts. 

I wrote in journals for decades and found the practice to be comforting, liberating and enlightening. 

But nothing beats bearing your soul in public. The daily practice of naming your shit, claiming your shit, letting the world into your closet, leaving yourself nowhere to hide and living life unguarded, that’s the stuff of true liberation. 

If you’re in public, making predictions, noticing things, revealing your deepest fears, admitting your mistakes, pining for truth and processing your emotions, your life gets better. Period. 

Because you’ve painted yourself into an honest corner. You’ve given yourself an apparatus of emotional accountability. 

It’s terrifying, but that’s the whole point. If what you’re about to say and sharing does not make you anxious, you are not building intimacy. 

My mentor used to tell me, before publishing anything, always ask yourself:

What risk do we run in presenting this material? 

Hurting people’s feelings? 

Being seen as imperfect and human? 

Alienating and polarizing readers? 

Disqualifying myself from future job opportunities? 

Becoming an outcast from the herd? 

Tarnishing my precious little reputation as an expert who has all the answers? 

Demonstrating the world that happiness isn’t always easy for me? 

Watching all of my cherished friends and family members abandon me because right here, right now, it has suddenly occurred to them that I’m an unlovable creep who deserves nothing? 

What do you risk in presenting this material? It’s not a writing mantra, it’s a life mantra. 

Just bear it. The thing that makes loving you impossible is the thing that wants to live. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…  

How could you build an apparatus of emotional accountability?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Buy my latest devotional! 

A Year in Hot Yoga: 365 Daily Meditations for On and Off the Mat. 

Now available wherever books are sold.

Namaste.

I have an entrepreneur friend whose business operates at a snail’s pace. 

Each of her projects take several months concept, several more months to incubate, and in many cases, several years to execute. 

Which isn’t abnormal for a small business owner, it’s simply the polar opposite of my own creative personality. 

Personally, my approach is to aim for volume, not accuracy. To ship things impatiently, imperfectly and prolifically until I fall asleep or develop carpel tunnel syndrome. 

In an effort to further remind myself that not everybody is just like me, I wondered why her work traveled at the speed of molasses. Because I suspected there were excuses undergirding my friend’s blanket justification of procrastination. There always are. 

Procrastination is the symptom, not the problem. 

What happened next surprised me. She said:

I under resource myself to relate to the world as scarce. 

What a fascinating revelation. Imagine how many of us entrepreneurs allow our projects to stall and drag because we’ve contracted ourselves into a state of scarcity. 

It’s the classic fallacy of playing small. Evaluating our work too narrowly. Eschewing growth out of integrity for our humble origins. Publicizing our sacrifices to impress others with how little we need. And depreciating and downplaying our gifts, talents and dreams for the fear of making too much of a ruckus. 

Which isn’t to suggest scaling is a panacea. But choosing to be less helps nobody. Operating form a place of scarcity, the deep belief that no matter how much we do and have, it’s still not enough, helps nobody. 

True satisfaction is the feeling that there’s a fullness in our lives rather than emptiness. 

Let’s turn off our modesty filters, just for today, instead of getting tangled in our own false humility. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…  

Do you abundantly believe that you have enough, even in the wilderness of an uncertain future?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Buy my latest devotional! 

A Year in Hot Yoga: 365 Daily Meditations for On and Off the Mat. 

Now available wherever books are sold.

Namaste.

Kohn’s definitivecritiqueof competition gave language to a deep belief I’ve held my entire life, but could never clearly articulate. 

He argues that we have a competitive code in our chromosomes. The frantic scramble for position, prestige, profit and power is hardwired into us. Our biological roots tell us that life is fundamentally a competition, and we must construe our world in win or lose terms. 

As such, we’ve crafted a society that trains people to treat coworkers as adversaries. To triumph over others and regard them as obstacles to our own success. 

Resistance to competition is otherwise viewed as suspicious an unamerican. 

In fact, there is no corner of our lives that is too trivial or too important to be exempted from the compulsion to rank ourselves against one another, he writes. There’s no place for sentiment, it’s a matter of survival. We crave the sweet but ignoble satisfaction that we are better than someone else. 

But the irony, of course, is that it’s just a coping mechanism. A clever form of self soothing. Because while competing, we overcome the fundamental doubts about our capabilities. 

While competing, we stave off the persistent, pronounced sense that we are fundamentally no good. While competing, we taste perfection, assert our freedom and triumph over death, experiencing a form of existential affirmation.

Consider the office mate who treats people as invisible, as long as she gets what she wants. She looks at others every day as if to say

You are my rival, you are an it to me, an object, something I use for my own ends. 

But her desperate struggle of treating approval as a scarce commodity and turning love into a kind of trophy that must obtain at the expense of someone else ruins it for everybody. 

The race to win turns all of us into losers. 

I don’t actually have a point here. It’s just relieving to know that life doesn’t have to be an endless succession of contests. 

That daily existence doesn’t have to be structured upon the need to be better than. 

Kohn’s research reassured me that competition need never enter the picture in order for our skills to be mastered and displayed, and for our goals to be set and met. 

Thank god. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…  

Are you fueled by the competitive edge, or the compassionate one?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Buy my latest devotional! 

A Year in Hot Yoga: 365 Daily Meditations for On and Off the Mat. 

Now available wherever books are sold.

Namaste.