The benefit of hitting bottom is, it causes us to hold a new type of conversation with ourselves. 

It forces us to recognize the festering of our own emotions. The disgust with whom we’ve become is what makes us say, okay we’re ready. This isn’t funny anymore. It’s time for a wholesale cleanup. 

Rushdie, when reflecting on his recent bout of depression, joked that one of the great benefits of hitting bottom is, now you know where the bottom is. 

Anyone struggling with addiction can relate to this moment. When life gives us the gift of a low, we finally realize just how far off course we’ve gotten. There’s no more guessing about where or how we went wrong, and so, all we can do is accept it, own it, forgive ourselves for it and start taking action to heal it. 

The fascinating part is, this bottom out moment not only happens to people, but also to communities. Cultures. Sometimes entire countries. There’s some catastrophic event that rocks the tribe to their core. It creates a seismic shift in their collective conviction. And people shout out loud, first inside of their heads and then outside in the world, okay, this is bullshit. We can’t live like this anymore. 

And then, just like the alcoholic who wakes up naked on the side of the road in a pool of his own vomit, the culture, too, wakes up. Maybe for the first time in a long time. And the subterranean forces just below the surface of their collective psyche start steering the ship of their actions. 

They start making plans, asking for help, donating money, volunteering their talents and doing whatever work is required to heal. In the hopes that accepting their brokenness might crack them opens to a new kind of wholeness. 

It’s one of our greatest human endowments. The ability to catalyze the energy of disgust into an agent of change. 

And so, before you start chiming the armageddon bell, consider the gift of hitting bottom. Use it to help yourself to a big humility sandwich. 

And then use that energy to go out there and make things better. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

What if things were meant to get bad in order to mobilize you to take a step in the direction of your wholeness?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

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Think about the last ingenious idea you had. 

Inside the theater of your mind, it sounded interesting, useful and even profitable.

But then, once you shared it with your team, people looked at you like your dog does. Tilted heads, vacant eyes and drooling jowls. Even as you heard the idea came out of your mouth, you couldn’t help but realize just how absurd it really was. 

Why does this happen? Why do things sound so much better inside our heads? 

Simple. Because humans are idiots. 

Actually, here’s the real answer. When we try to regulate by ourselves, we get stuck in a circle. It’s only through the context of the other person that we reach true understanding. 

That’s why it’s so important to get out of our heads and verbalize our thoughts and feelings and ideas with other people. The social mirrors automatically surface the weaknesses and complexities of our own thinking. By using our words, the audience shows us what’s wrong with our thinking and what’s right with it. 

This concept plays out in musical performance all the time. When the composition phase of a tune is complete, that doesn’t mean the song is finished. Quiet the contrary. It’s just starting the journey of finding out what kind of song it was born to become. 

Stipe, the lead singer of the most successful alternative rock band in history, says that the real song only emerges during live performance. Because unlike singing into a hairbrush in the hotel bathroom, now there’s actually an audience to receive the music. A social mirror to reflect back the song’s true potential. A backboard against which the artist bounces his original idea and, in return, receives a more evolved version of what he started out with. 

That’s the divine gift of the other. The space between us is generative and holy. 

And so, whatever you’re thinking and feeling, whatever ideas are running through your brain, don’t keep them to yourself for too long. Because connectedness is the only frame in which we healthily and successful regulate. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

What are you keeping to yourself that needs to come out? 

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

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It’s a great relief to look to nature for simplicity. 

We can use it as a way to calm down during times of chaos and not further complicate our existing problems. 

For example, how does the flower push its way up from the ground and through the crack in the concrete? Simple. Throw slow, gradual, persistent pressure that’s so small, it can’t even be measured.

That’s the kind of thing that makes me feel like everything is going to be okay. Watching something that uses all of its divine urge and power to thrive in spite of every manner of hardship? That’s heroic. 

And if a flower can do it, so can we. 

The hard part is, whatever progress we make won’t come to us as a gift. We will have to work for every inch of growth. Ask anyone who’s been in a band or a startup for a while. 

People labor in obscurity, usually for many years, before they gain traction and receive mass appeal. Everything takes longer than we think it will. 

But the rewarding part is, regardless of the outcome, our progress can never be taken away from us. The person we blossom into along the way, that’s ours. We own that. It’s our property. Forever. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Have you accepted that making your idea real in the world takes consistent, persistent, unglamorous application of energy toward that idea?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

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When I was seventeen, my high school football team blew a fourteen point lead in the final few minutes of the championship game and wound up losing in a devastating upset. 

Our head coach almost had a heart attack. The bus ride home was a quiet one. But before we slumbered into the locker room with our heads hung in shame, he said something we never forgot. 

Don’t get complacent. You will become imprisoned in the tower of your success. 

Coach had a flare for the dramatic. But that moment never left me. Even twenty years later. 

In fact, it’s relevant to the modern career journey. Because our premature sense of satisfaction can keep us from doing the hard work necessary to grow. Our expectation can cause us to take the good we have for granted and feel entitled to the things we want. 

And that’s when we lose. The question we have to ask ourselves is, are we refusing to reinvent because we’re comfortable with our current level of success and don’t want to let go of what’s working? 

I have a musician friend who has a motto around this issue:

The best way to reinvent yourself is to not become too successful. 

Because that way, you’re not too prosperous to be enthusiastic about things. You haven’t outgrown your curiosity. 

There’s still time and energy to disrupt your own point of view and put more points on the board. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Are you starting to feel entombed in the complacency that will eventually spell your decline?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

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Human beings are primed for immediate gratification, and if we don’t have to be patient, we won’t. 

Which is unfortunate. Because despite our natural longing to do things quickly and instantly, the axiom of sustainability never changes. 

Everything that lasts, starts out slow. 

My publishing business took a few years to make sense, a few more years to make money, and even a few more years to make an impact. And on many days, my patience was hanging at the other end of a very thin thread. 

But I stuck with it. And continued to stick with it. And seventeen years later, there’s no doubt the payoff was worth it. 

Of course, much of it is my personality. The capacity for delayed gratification seems to have been hired wired into me from day one.

But understand, it’s not one hundred percent nature. There’s some nurturing in there too. Perseverance is a fire that needs oxygen. And so, things like playing high school football and learning an instrument at a young age and writing every day and practicing yoga and meditating regularly, each of these endeavors were refining fires. They forced me to get good at not going away. They challenged me to tap reservoirs of patience I didn’t know I had. 

And now, my perseverance never ceases to amaze me. 

Are you willing to play the waiting game between pain and will? How many activities are you engaged in that give you the chance to sit still and let something happen to you very, very slowly? 

Because that’s where sustainability comes from. 

Zen monks say the worst thing we can do with a difficult question is try and answer it too quickly. Perhaps life works the same way. We accept that waiting for things we want is hard and often takes agonizing effort. 

But we trust that the process of getting there will be more than worth the slog. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

How will you contribute to your reserve of patience this week?
* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

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Brown was right when he asserted than mankind’s evolutionary obligation was to use all the powers at its disposal. 

Who doesn’t want to be alive in all their parts? Who doesn’t want to use everything they’ve ever learned? And who doesn’t want the opportunity to bring all of themselves to everything they do? 

The challenge is, when it comes to the relationship we have with our own power, it’s complicated. 

Some of us hide from our power. Some of us give away our power to the highest bidder. Some of us put limits on our power because we don’t know any better. Some of us have no idea how to turn our power loose. Some of us consider power to be a dirty word and either ignore it or tamp it down. Some of us are swamped by feelings that drain away our power. Some of us set arbitrary limits on what the power in our life will be. 

The list goes on. There are as many relationships with power as there are people to have them. 

What matters is this. Power is a neutral construct. It’s under no obligation to be used. It’s free and ready to be conducted into whatever we decide. 

But we have to decide. And that’s the hard part. 

Deciding requires us to free ourselves from the limits of tightly defined identities. Deciding requires us to step beyond the stifling boundaries of our former selves and aim our lives in a more powerful direction. 

It’s a ton of work, but then again, so is upholding the story that we’re not equipped to handle what life throws at us. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

What kind of power do you need to do what you want to do?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

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Joy isn’t the goal, but the experience we create for ourselves on the way to the goal. 

But most of us invert that process. We obsess over the imagined details of some future event, at which point we will finally feel happy and complete and whole. Only then do we deserve joy. 

This carrot on a stick approach can be highly motivating for some. The only problem is, it’s a pattern of thinking that can undermine any joy that might be had along the way. 

By postponing our happiness, we separate ourselves from the ecstasy of the moment. What’s more, it sets us up for disappointment if we fall short of our goal. 

Meng’s radical book about joy on demand, which explores the art of discovering the happiness within, makes a practical suggestion:

Accelerating towards joy, we ought to front load joy in the process. To introduce joy from the beginning, rather than waiting to discover it at some point years from now, risking that we don’t get there. Joy is not unlike a close relative, a favorite member of the family, someone we can always rely on to be there for us. 

Meng’s argument is a strong one. We reward ourselves not only for accomplishing goals, but also for setting and reaching milestones along the way. 

And not unhealthy rewards like eating four slices of chocolate cake. But wholesome sources of joy, uncontaminated with greed, ill will or the seeds of future suffering. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

What’s your favorite way to front load joy into the process?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

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People are highly motivated by finding out that it’s not their fault. 

We love looking for something external to blame for everything that’s wrong in our lives. 

My mid to late twenties was a period of my life symptomized by bloating, abdominal pains and host of other gastrointestinal delights. 

But of course, these issues had nothing to do with the fact that I was a workaholic codependent love addict trapped in a toxic relationship. 

No, they clearly stemmed from a dairy intolerance. Better go vegan. That’ll solve everything. 

Wrong. Cows weren’t the problem, cowardice was. The reason my guts were tied into knots had nothing to do with eating cheese and everything to do with my inability to notice, take responsibility for, and work through my own emotional issues. 

But that’s what human beings do. We cling to whatever blame we can find and use to make sense of the story of our lives. And we mount an evidence campaign about why everyone around us is a delusional asshole who can’t see how special we are. 

Gibbard’s song lyric comes to mind:

I feel I must interject here; you’re getting carried away feeling sorry for yourself with these revisions and gaps in history. So let me help you remember, I’ve made charts and graphs that should finally make it clear, I’ve prepared a lecture on why I have to leave. 

Here’s another example. We receive negative feedback from the boss on our performance. But instead of internalizing the criticism, owning our role in the problem and creating a plan to improve, we goes online seeking negative reviews from past employees that confirm our suspicion about what a crappy place to work that company really is. 

Once again, picking up the blame thrower. Motivated by finding out that it’s not our fault. 

Condemning the process, people or the place as the sole perpetrator of our discomforts. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Are you wasting your energy blaming, or investing your energy repairing the damage?
* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

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Imagine taking a road trip with five people, each of whom is giving you conflicting directions as to how best to get to the destination. 

One guy paid for the gas, so he feels entitled to have the last word. 

One lady thinks she’s a great driver just because she has a license. 

One guy comes from a town that only used bicycles for transportation. 

One lady is a straight up bitch that thinks she invented the car and knows everything. 

One guy has taken dozens of similar trips in the past, is convinced that his particular route is the fastest and most effective way to get there and anyone who disagrees with him is a fascist. 

Meanwhile, you’re trapped behind the wheel not only trying to navigate through this rainstorm, but also control the radio, sort through everybody’s contradictory feedback and take the right exits, without popping a vein in your forehead. 

Oh, and to make matters even more infuriating, once you finally arrive at the destination around midnight, you get a text message from the guy who was supposed to meet you there, alerting you of a last minute change of venue, and so, now you have to drive sixty miles in the other direction. 

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what work feels like when you have no process. Chaotic, frustrating, redundant and causes resentment to fester like an underground swamp fire. 

A delightful reminder that process isn’t what gets us to the goal, process is the goal. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Where do you lack process most?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

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Here’s the hard part about being a blacksmith. 

You have to find a delicate balance of having enough irons in the fire to keep you busy, but not so many irons that you become overwhelmed and inefficient. 

With too few irons, for example, the blacksmith has to wait around until things heat up. And it becomes difficult to stay constantly busy. Plus, he’s vulnerable to a single point of failure if something goes wrong. 

But with too many irons in the fire, the smithy spreads himself too thin. He can’t keep track of what stage of heating each rod is at. And then it becomes overwhelming to keep up a steady pace of work. 

Everyone can relate to this struggle. We all must strike the same delicate balance in our own work. Here are few strategies that helped me over the years. 

First, respect the limits of your executional bandwidth. Identify the optimum number of projects that you can handle at any given time. Only then can you set proper boundaries. Without this critical first step, you quickly become exhausted and exhausting to be around. 

The second step to balance is taking a realistic, honest and humble view of your own goals. Because even if you do start out your workdays with aspirations of grandeur, full of energy and good intentions, that doesn’t mean it’s sustainable. 

The question is, are you moving at pace that allows you to stay connected, and to act in the service of whatever is emerging? 

That’s balance. Choosing not to force the pace of your work. Embracing wisdom over velocity. 

One last helpful strategy for balance is creating a time cushion. Making it easier on yourself instead of always running a race against the clock. After all, most things take longer than you think they will. It’s smart to build some flexibility into your schedules and projects for when the world decides to interfere with our plans. 

Without this cushion, you become too scared to give up the task for a moment and allow yourself the space we need. And that only creates frustration to your already overloaded system. 

Remember, when you feel exhausted, it’s probably because you’re fighting against yourself. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Do you have the appropriate number of irons in the fire? 

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

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