A friend of mine who is a youth development consultant has this great question he asks the students:

How much of yourself, percentage wise, are you able to bring to this activity?

It’s a powerful filter for kids to use in any endeavor they pursue. Because it challenges them to search for places where they don’t have to keep their intellect on hold or their personality in check. 

Where their authentic voice can take flight and travel. Where they can carve out a special space in the world and operate at their highest point of contribution. 

It’s actually a very rare thing, both for kids and adults. Not everybody is fortunate enough to find venues where they can bring a hundred percent of themselves. In fact, it’s hard to believe it when somebody even asks you to be yourself. 

But it is possible. It does happen. The rare opportunity to make meaningful use of everything we are is out there for each of us to find. 

And when we do, we’re home. Every molecule in the universe will feel like it’s in its right place. 

How much of yourself, percentage wise, are you able to bring? 

Keep asking yourself this simple question. And trust that it will be enough to get the love you need.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Is there a ball and chain in the place where your mind’s wings should have grown?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

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Each of us has, in one way or another, been programmed to deny our own desires. 

And if we have any intention of living authentic, integrated and fulfilling lives, we have to transform our relationship with our own needs. 

In four separate areas. Accepting, assessing, expressing and applauding. 

Each of which requires us to shift from one state of being to another. 

First, there’s accepting. 

Instead of shutting down and walling in our seething cauldron of resentment, we allow disappointment to guide us into a deeper understanding of what we need. Instead of anesthetizing ourselves away from our own hungers, we accept ourselves as people who have needs that deserve to be met. 

Second, there’s assessing. 

Instead of sacrificing own our sanity and health in the name of pleasing, we actually take the time to care for ourselves first. Instead of convincing ourselves that the only option is to acquiesce to people’s demands or be the bad guy, we take the necessary steps to become a more whole person. 

Third, there’s, expressing.

Instead of passively waiting for another person to make the first move, we take responsibility for meeting our own needs. Instead of being disconnected from our own desires, we risk revealing our real requirements to others. Instead of denying ourselves things that bring us joy, we confidently and courageously ask for that which serves our long term wellbeing. 

Finally, there’s applauding. 

Instead of hedging, apologizing and justifying along the journey, we own the process as life. Instead of feeling guilty about asking for and obtaining what we need, we actually enjoy it when it arrives. 

Remember, you get what your hand calls for. And the result of tasking responsibility for meeting your own needs is something you can find anywhere else. 

A wellspring of total body bliss. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Are you allowing yourself the freedom to accept, assess and express what you need?
* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

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Each of us aspires make ourselves proud. 

And one of the central ways we accomplish that is by manifesting our values. By creating and living in a universe where our beliefs are successfully achieved. 

The hard part is scaling this concept organizationally. Because when you have hundreds or even thousands of employees, possibly scattered across multiple offices, cities and even countries, your values can’t simply be words on a wall. The mission has to be more than a statement. 

Character is what happens when values become verbs, and so, it has to evolve into a living framework. A structure within which people situate themselves and their actions, that allows them to classify things and good and bad and behave accordingly. 

Without putting that kind of system in place, you’re just winking in the dark. 

Buffer is a tech company that knows exactly who they are, what they do and why they do it. Their abbreviated encapsulation of their ten guiding principles is an inspiring manifesto in and of itself, but it’s only the beginning. 

One of their lead developers had an innovative idea. What if all of their team members could be reminded those values daily? Even hourly? 

That’s what inspired him to this slick web browser extension that replaces the standard new tab page with a rotating wallpaper of their company values. The images are inspirational, aspirational, and the words are mantras to live by. Each time you open a new tab, you are reminded who you are and what you believe. And you can’t help but smile and reflect and think about ways to improve yourself. 

The question is, do you know which values make your team feel fully alive when you honor them? 

Excellent. Now go do something with them. Find a way to keep them in front of people’s faces. 

Because the quality of feeling alive comes when we act on our values. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

How will you remind your team why they do what they do?

* * * *

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 true that each of us must figure out how we’d like to enforce our limits. 

But the irony is, even boundaries need boundaries. Because if we get carried away building walls around ourselves, we end up in a janitor’s closet of our own making. 

If we stubbornly draw too many lines around our lives, before we know it, the rising tides of alienation will carry us straight out into the abyss. 

Wilde once said, everything in moderation, including moderation. 

This is exactly what he was talking about. The limits of our limits. 

And so, our challenge is erring on the side of someone who calmly states their needs and sets healthy boundaries; as opposed to someone who is a defensive, obstructionist, isolationist, pusher awayer of people. 

Because extremes in anything accomplish nothing. And it is our stubbornness that keeps us lonely.

But it’s different for each of us. If we truly want to live in a more connected world, we all have to get under a microscope and figure out what is keeping us small, isolated and hidden. 

Mellody’s brilliant book about identifying codependent thinking was instrumental in my growth around extreme boundaries. She wrote that the sad thing about walls is that although they give us solid protection, they do not allow for intimacy and leave us even lonelier. 

A nice reminder that we can use almost anything to alienate ourselves. And so, we must introduce balance so we don’t swing wildly from one extreme to another. We must not to let walls be the only means by which we connect with others. 

And we must remember that most people don’t bite. Unless we ask them to.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Are you cemented in your isolation and confirming your belief that others aren’t worth your time?* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

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Seligman, the pioneer of positive psychology, writes that our way of explaining events to ourselves determines how helpless we can become, or how energized we can become, when we encounter life’s everyday setbacks as well as its momentous defeats. 

It’s certainly the smart mindset to have. Believing that the narrative isn’t done to us, rather, it’s something we choose, this is an essential part of being resilient. 

The challenge, though, is that the story of our life is rarely as tidy and eloquent and theatrical as we’d like it to be. Consider a few of these universal conundrums. 

How do we know if the emptiness we feel is cause for clinical concern, or if it’s just a new phase of the spirit preparing itself? 

How do we know if we’re having an actual anxiety attack, or if it’s simply a painful whole being reaction to the nameable and predictable problems of human living? 

How do we know if the event happening to us is an abject failure, or something that is positively shifting our life into a whole new direction? 

How do we know if this experience is best thing that ever happened to is, or if it’s simply another part of our journey? 

How do we know if this problem really a crisis, or yet another one of the ongoing issues of ordinary misery that confronts all people? 

The short answer is, we don’t. Certainly not now. Probably not soon. And in fact, sometimes not ever. 

Even after we’ve looked back at our lives through the gauzy veil of bullshit we call hindsight, we still may not walk away with a clean story about what’s happening to us. 

And that’s okay. We can’t always expect to get full understanding from ourselves. 

The good news is, that doesn’t make us helpless, only human. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Are you still berating yourself for not knowing everything?

* * * *

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 arc of my social experiment. 

It’s been nineteen years. Over six thousand days. And in the beginning of my adventure, wearing a nametag twenty four seven was just this quirky thing that I did. 

It was pure. There was nothing behind it. No reason or motivation or strategy or objective. 

But then, about two years into it, the nametag morphed into my business. And my brand. And my career. And my obsession. And my purpose and calling and addiction that consumed my whole life and was tied to my inner most sense of identity, for better or for worse. The nametag was everything to me. Without it, I was nothing. 

Which brings us to now. And strangely enough, it feels like I’m back where I started. Now the nametag is just this quirky thing I do. Just like in the beginning. 

The only difference is, now it’s worn from a place of joy. 

Not neediness. Or compulsion. Or dependency. Or desire for attention. Or an addiction to approval and applause. Or a need to fill some kind of existential hole of belonging. 

Just joy. 

The nametag is a part of me that used to be the heart of me. It’s something that identifies me, but no longer defines me. 

Maybe that’s what the journey of self is all about. 

Learning to live larger than our labels.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

How will you loosen the hold of each identity so you don’t get completely lost in it?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

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One way to work through our boundary issues is to invert the interaction. 

To consider our internal experience, both physiologically and emotionally, when other people set limits with us. 

For example, do we immediately become defensive or embarrassed when people tell us their boundaries? Or can we calmly let others draw lines in the sand without begrudging their integrity? 

Does something inside our stomach get put on alert when people are firm with us? Or are we inspired and honored when somebody loves us enough to teach us how to treat them? 

It all goes back to expectations. If we create a story inside our heads about what we think people owe us, then any boundary set with us will cause resentment. Our bodies will tighten. Our emotions will heighten. And the relationship will have unnecessary tension. 

But if we empty our mind of all the expectation, not intending to fix or save or change people, then we have ample space inside to respond peacefully, no matter what answer we get. 

That’s the thing about boundaries. Some people have a hard time saying the word no, and some people have a hard time hearing the word no. It’s a two way street. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

What happens inside your body when people set boundaries with you?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

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Prechtel’s poetic book about grief and praise says that beauty is anything seen, felt, or realized that charms or delights the better part of us into wanting to live on, in order to see, feel and understand more without the scared part of us being in charge of what it wants the world to be. 

Attesting, that beauty is more than simple aesthetic pleasure. True beauty binds us to it. It strips us naked by its presence. 

Moore echoed this sentiment in his book about spiritual healthcare, citing that beauty is anything that vaccinates the soul and creates a sense of delight and expansiveness in our bodies. Beauty offers temporary relief from worry and pain and brings us closer to the sublime, which is the region of the divine. 

When we actually slow down enough to allow that experience to happen, it’s literally magic. 

There’s a mystical union with life and the world around us. And it becomes a moment where you’re happy to be alive and want to live forever. 

What’s interesting is, this beauty is never not there. It has an infinite time clock. The problem is when we shut ourselves off from it. When our standard operating procedure becomes running around all day with our hair on fire, dealing with twenty things at once. 

That’s when we become too busy and driven to be able to receive what is rightfully ours. 

And so, if we are bothered by a lack of beauty in our life, it’s probably because we’ve turned ourselves into machines. Because we have given in to the resistance, which is any force that tries to prevent beauty. 

Koppleman’s tragic film about substance addiction and its destructive powers says it best. 

Every moment of beauty goes away. But then there’s another one. And another one. And another one. You just have to be alive to see it. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Are you keeping tokens of beauty present in your life?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

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In order to leap forward into new artistic possibilities, every creator must be willing to destroy what they’ve created. 

And not physically, of course. Hendrix setting fire to his guitar was legendary and rebellious and punk rock and everything, but for most of us, it’s not exactly a scalable growth strategy. 

That’s why we expand our definition of the word destroy. 

To destroy is to lay waste. Meaning, stripping away all the attitudes and ideas and goals and projects that no longer serve the person you’re becoming. 

To destroy is to put an end to. Meaning, letting go of the activities that you only engaged in because of other people’s expectations. 

To destroy is to remove structure. Meaning, snapping your brain, body, and body of work out of all their normal routines and patterns and safe places so they can run free. 

To destroy is to defeat completely. Meaning, untrapping yourself from your signature work, even if that’s what your audience now wants and demands from you. 

To destroy is to take away power. Meaning, remove all the parts of your work that are dictated by the marketplace pure commodity and nowhere near the razor’s edge. 

Sound violent? You’re right. It sure is. 

But hey, better to destroy yourself than create opportunities for other people to do it for you. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Are you willing to destroy the light, go into the darkness and become transformed by the experience and come out more alive?
* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

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There’s nothing more powerful than saying no to people. For us and for them. 

But if you struggle to believe that, perhaps a little reframing is in order to snap you out of your codependent tendencies. 

Think of this way. 

When we say no, we are not rejecting another person, we are simply refusing a request. When we say not, we are not criticizing another person, we are simply asking for what we need. Expressing our reality clearly. 

Therefore, even if saying no sounds like the hardest and most demanding response in the world, we have to trust that it is an act of love. Towards ourselves and others and the world in which we all live. 

Saying no is an instrument of integrity and a shield against exploitation. Saying no is what allows us to bring quality energy to the world. Saying no is the fundamental strategy we have for setting real boundaries. 

And doing so won’t tilt the world on its axis. Ever. Promise. Quite the opposite, in fact. 

My entrepreneur friend has a great saying he uses with highly demanding clients. 

I am not telling you how to run your business, I am educating you about how I run my business. 

Now that’s power. 

Remember, saying no protects both parties. 

Don’t let poor boundaries disguise themselves as compassion. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

What’s the most painful boundary you’ve set?* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

It’s the world’s first, best and only product development and innovation gameshow!

Tune in and subscribe for a little execution in public.

Join our community of innovators, artists and entrepreneurs.