There are not words to adequately express my thanks as I look back over the first year of the Me.Now. Movement. A year ago, I was an idealist with no experience managing a website or writing blog posts. Today, I am a published author and award-winning speaker with a new daughter, midway through my MBA. Allowing myself to value ‘Me’, and to take action ‘Now’ has given me courage and opportunity I never knew before. And for those who have journeyed with me, I know the same is true for you.

With the new year fast approaching, I am eager to share that new opportunities continue to present themselves for our community! Podcast hosts, bloggers and event coordinators have started reaching out to me for interviews and speaking engagements for 2018. One particularly exciting development happened in late November 2017 when I was approached by two separate casting agencies for large-scale, national television production projects. While I’ve always felt comfortable behind a keyboard or on a stage, the challenge of preparing myself to talk in front of a camera was humbling and unnerving. I cannot share details of either project at this point, but I promise to update this group as soon as possible after I find out if either, neither or both opportunities choose to move me forward! 

To wrap up 2017, I am excited to revisit the 4 goals we set for this first year and happy to report that 3 of those goals have been met or exceeded. I will have to challenge us further to reach new heights in 2018!

  1. Grow the movement by 1 member per week in 2017.
    STATUS: Our Movement has grown to 78 active members and more than 100 followers. That is 340% above our objective! We’ve seen members change careers, grow families, start new businesses and achieve new healthy lifestyles. The message behind the Me.Now. Movement is stronger than ever because of the courage, commitment and community this group represents.
  2. Gain exposure for the Movement on 1 public media outlet in 2017.
    STATUS: The Me.Now. Movement has gained exposure in newsprint, multiple podcasts, and two separate news media interviews! It would appear that our original goal was not as aggressive as I had thought. Once the Movement’s mission was shared, it quickly grew momentum among those eager to build a better future.
  3. Generate $5,000 in income to grow the Movement in 2017.
    STATUS: Unfortunately, this goal was missed in 2017. With just under $4,000 generated, our Movement was able to grow considerably in terms of professionalization and promotion. Despite missing our financial target, I am confident that 2018 will come with new avenues to raise the capital we need to keep growing!
  4. Write 1 blog post a week on the Me.Now. Movement website in 2017.
    STATUS: Our weekly blog posts continued through October 2017, at which point a new opportunity arose to translate blog content into book publication. After a few discouraging obstacles, I was successful in getting ‘Everyday Espionage: Winning the Workplace’ published as an eBook with a limited print edition. Many of you reading this post have that hard-copy print edition in your possession. A second installment is already in the works for 2018 and I am excited to keep growing our Movement’s legacy! 

We are one year closer to where we want to be. Even though the destination is unclear, the progress is undeniable. I continue to find my inspiration from this group and from those of you taking risks and seeing achievement along side me. For all of you, I am grateful and humbled to call you friends. 

For those exploring the Me.Now. Movement, welcome. For those ready to commit to your journey, I commend you! And for those who trek every day through the fear and doubt of accomplishment, I and others stand beside you to lift you up and celebrate your success. Journey on.

One Life. No Compromises.

 

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“Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I recently came across a statement by author and performance coach Jack Canfield where he expanded on Dr.King’s quote:

“Think of a car driving through the night. The headlights only go a hundred to two hundred feet forward, and you can make it all the way from California to New York driving through the dark, because all you have to see is the next two hundred feet. And that’s how life tends to unfold before us.”

In 2011 my wife and I decided we were going to adventure our way through northern Thailand to find and attend one of the most elusive cultural festivals in the world: Yi Peng. If you’ve ever seen a travel guide or sales brochure with the picture of a night sky full of floating lanterns, that is Yi Peng. Like all great cultural festivals, Yi Peng has suffered commercialism and cheap tourist knock-offs of the celebration can be found all over Southeast Asia. But there is still only one authentic Lanna Yi Peng festival and it can be found in Chiang Mai, Thailand on the night of the first full moon of the second month (‘Yi Peng’) in the Lanna calendar (November in the western calendar). And for anyone with the patience and willingness to roam through a city that doesn’t speak English, following strangers who look at your guide book photo and point toward a barren dirt mound on the outskirts of town, Yi Peng is waiting for you.

Jack Canfield’s visual of a car driving in the dark is powerful because we’ve all had that experience. We were all afraid of night driving when we first started driving, and we all see it as second nature over time. That journey in 2011 was one of the most rewarding drives in the dark I’ve ever taken. Like Dr. King notes, no great achievement is easily visible from the starting point. Sometimes we have to trust that the next step will become visible only after we take the first step. That first step into the unknown, that blackness just beyond the headlights, is always the hardest.

When you get to Yi Peng, you will see hundreds of strangers gather on the mount with you. The sun sets and darkness collapses around you. Then one by one, small candles ignite and large paper lanterns are handed through the crowd. Families gather together to unfold their lanterns and light the candles that hang at the bottom. They speak their prayers and wishes for a good year out loud and believe they are filling the lantern with the same. And as the candle glows brighter and the hot air fills the lantern, everyone releases their hopes into the sky. And for a while, there is no more darkness. The lights of a thousand dreams blanket the hill and fend off the darkness. As the lanterns float higher and get caught in strong breezes, they are swiftly carried away together to higher altitudes and faraway places. The light fades away and the darkness returns.

What Yi Peng taught me was that we do not need to find lights in the dark before we move forward. Instead, we need to be the lights in the dark that carry our dreams higher.

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In the multiverse of possible life-streams I could have lived or could be living even now, I am certain that Law is the bane of my existence in all of them. Law is about passing subjective judgments based on partial inputs managed by a process open to interpretation by experts who disagree. Call me crazy, but I’m pretty sure that Desperate Housewives and Survivor follow the same methodology.

Judgment does little to improve our society. If anything, it demonstrates its own uselessness through a lack of productive output. And yet even though we hate the feeling of being judged, we often let the opinion of others define our sense of personal value.

We all know the cycle. First we seek our parents’ approval, then our teachers’ approval, then our friends’ approval and so on until we convince ourselves that the approval of others is the chief objective in life. Because we carry decades of approval-based life experience, we learn to proactively fear negative judgments from our employers, partners and peers. Our fears begin to drive our actions and we quickly find ourselves doing what we think we must instead of doing what we know we must. It can be hard to maintain hope in those moments when predatory judgments pin us down like prey.

But the funny thing about predators is that they only prey on the weak. We’ve all seen YouTube videos where the prey fight back: hippos crushing crocodiles, water buffalo goring lions, and birds pecking vipers. When prey fight back they are no longer targets; they are threats. Those who judge also prey on weakness; they seek to criticize those who will not fight back. Even worse, they ignore or reject those they judge unworthy of their time. But take heart! Power lies not with those who judge but with those who choose to ignore the judgement of others.   

There will always be those who judge and those who fear judgement. The key is knowing that there is also a third option: to do neither. Focus on what you want to build and recognize that judgment cannot keep pace with achievement. Judgement destroys but community constructs. Ignore those who judge you – let them judge. Your future lies in what you have yet to build.    

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Convergent  –  \kən-ˈvər-jənt\ – Adjective: tending to move toward one point or to approach each other. EX: A tornado is powered by convergent airflow.

This week showed me the power of convergent community; a group of individuals moving toward a single point while at the same time moving toward one another. Merriam-Webster’s reference above to the power of a tornado is absolutely fitting. In a time where so much seems to divide us, I am grateful for the opportunity to see the impact when community unites us.

It all started with a simple blog post by William Mohaupt: St. Petersburg, Florida. Most people blog because they love to write. Writing for the pleasure of others is stressful and intimidating, but writing for your own joy is liberating and empowering. So was the story here, when William wrote about his recent trip to Florida and posted it to his virtual portfolio on WordPress. For a few days, his readership came in ones and twos like all new bloggers. Then on the fourth day his readership spiked into the hundreds. Days five and six continued to grow exponentially and his post blew past the one thousand reader mark. Today, twelve days later, his post has been viewed by more than 3,000 people!

A quick Google search will show that most bloggers are happy to have 200 views in a day. New bloggers often go a full year with fewer than 50 views a day. The blog you are reading has a good day when 40 viewers stop by. For those of us dedicated to sharing, the metrics are second to the purpose behind the content. That said, seeing how far your writing can reach is a powerful experience.

I find incredible encouragement and wisdom in posts by a young British blogger named Matt Kitson. While I’ve never met Matt, I am pretty sure of two things: 1) he and I are part of a convergent community dedicated to inspiring change, and 2) neither of us have seen 3,000 readers yet (MATT: My apologies if I’m wrong!). After seeing William’s post explode past 3,000 viewers, I couldn’t help but compare myself and wonder if my ‘good day at 40’ viewership was a sign of failure. Then one of Matt’s posts jumped into my head: Top Life Lessons I’ve learned from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s book. In this post, Matt summarized Arnold’s views on his blockbuster flop, ‘Last Action Hero.’ Using Arnold’s story, Matt shared the message that the, “world doesn’t care about your failure,” and instead we should look ahead to our future successes.

When we compare ourselves to others as a way to validate success or failure, we stop being part of the community. In the same way a tornado funnels into one point on the earth, all those who focus building a better future will one day converge and drive powerful change. Nobody counts the number of times we fail, or miss, or flop; the only metric that counts is the metric that shows we tried. Only those that never start are guaranteed never to see the finish line. 

So where do all these pieces converge? William wrote his blog post on May 20th. I shared it with my ‘good day at 40’ followers on May 23rd, one of which happened to tag a restaurant discussed in William’s post. The social media person for that restaurant decided to reply to my post and re-post William’s blog on May 24th. 3,000 views later, the post keeps growing. I keep posting even when I doubt myself because of people like Matt who share wisdom from people like Arnold. My viewers grow, as do Matt’s, as do William’s. And in the end, our tornado will change the world.

“Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.” – Mohammad Ali 

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History is written by those committed to the struggle, the fight – ‘La Lucha.’ While most goals do not make it into history books, there is comfort in knowing that nobody finds achievement to be easy. Meaningful goals always involve a struggle. It is in that struggle that we find courage, learn to trust our community, and expand the limits of our own capabilities.

Our April Challenge has entered its second week. For those participating, you may be feeling some of the struggle I am talking about. With nearly half the month past, progress can sometimes be less easy to quantify. My goal for April is to write 5 consecutive blog posts before April 30, 2017 that give practical guidance on how to set, maintain and achieve goals. While this post completes the third in my series of five, it has been harder for me to author this series than any other individual post on the Me.Now. blog. Organizing, researching and crafting my posts – knowing that they must all work together while also offering incremental encouragement – has taken me firmly out of my comfort zone. But despite the challenge, I remain confident that the goal was properly set (P-I-R-A-T-E) and that victory only comes after the fight!

Every goal has a midway point; the peak where the struggle is greatest and fear and doubt try to press in. As you approach your peak, know that you are not alone. I am trudging through my struggle now; hoping that this post resonates with readers, questioning if this series is making a difference, and fearful that I will fail to encourage those who trusted me with their own April goals. I am choosing to embrace the struggle; to recognize that I will learn from it only if I let it teach me. The fear and doubt that I feel are distractions. They bring no benefit and instead try to rob me of the fulfillment that the struggle promises.

Take heart during your struggle. You can achieve what you have set out to do! There are others struggling to climb the peak with you, even if you do not yet know their names. ‘La Lucha’ is hard. It is a road paved in doubt and fear. But roads are built to be traveled, not to be destinations. The place where the road ends is the goal.

Good luck, and keep fighting!

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Me.Now. is proud to celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD) with our weekly blog post! I am the product of 3 generations of dedicated, high-achieving women and I am hopeful that I will get the opportunity to raise a daughter to carry that proud heritage forward. IWD is committed to the goal of full gender equality for women around the world. Like IWD, Me.Now. recognizes that the only future worth pursuing is one where gender equality is beyond question.

IWD’s commitment to gender equality started in 1908 when a group of 15,000 women rallied in New York to demand voting rights, better pay and healthy work conditions. 109 years later, IWD’s goal for gender equality still has not been reached – but it is getting closer. IWD exemplifies the perseverance and the unstoppable progress that can be achieved when courage and commitment meet. Me.Now. strives to emulate the community and encouragement shared by IWD and millions of women around the world.

My father died when I was a toddler. I have no memories of him. My memories are of my mother and grandmother, who raised me together until I was 5 years old. While I admit to having the cultural advantage of being the first-born boy in a Hispanic family, my childhood was framed by responsibility and independence as much as it was by hugs and kisses. My mother and grandmother were the picture of discipline and determination. My mom, an Air Force veteran and widow, worked two unskilled jobs to support the two of us. My grandmother was born in Mexico and worked as a small business book-keeper in Arizona to build her English skills and raise her family as proud, first-generation Americans. Growing up with these two women as my guides, I had to learn to dress myself, feed myself, and care for myself from a very young age while they worked countless hours to break through cultural and gender stereotypes in the early 1980s to earn a living wage. I could not have asked for better examples of courage and ambition than my mother and my grandmother.

My mom has two sisters and one brother. In a funny coincidence, she went on herself to have two daughters and one son. Every woman in my family, from my youngest sister to my oldest aunt, fosters the tenacity and fearlessness of my mother and grandmother. As a result, our family gets to celebrate the stories of these women – all of them educated, self-made successes – and see first-hand how ignorant stereotypes crumble in their wake. Even more valuable, the men in our family have the benefit of growing up from a foundation of gender equality. A foundation paved by 109 years of courage.

My son will never know bias against women until he encounters it from his peers. When that day comes, I can only hope his mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and father have prepared him to reject sexism, advocate for equality, and advance our world to a better tomorrow.

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The most intense, focused resolve that I ever witnessed came in the form of a K9 police dog takedown. As part of a military training exercise in 2003, I watched a military police trained German Shepherd sight, close, and attack a mock-suspect. What impressed me the most during the demo was not the control and precision of the K9 handler, but rather the unwavering commitment from the animal to complete its assigned task. The dog moved like a targeted missile, closing the distance quickly without a moment’s hesitation after being given the command. It struck the mock-suspect hard, dedicating every bit of strength, focus, and ferocity to neutralizing the perceived threat.

For those watching with me, we knew how the exercise would end. The whole scenario was rigged, after all. The suspect was wearing a padded suit, knew where the animal would strike, and had multiple safety spotters – to include the K9 handling officer. It was an exercise with a limited time-frame where nobody was going to get hurt. After a few seconds, the K9 officer would give the stop command and the audience would smile and praise the impressive display. We all knew that… except the dog. For the dog, there was no ‘routine exercise’. The dog had one objective only: takedown the target by any means necessary. For the animal, the padded suits, staged theatrics, and amused spectators were inconsequential to the decision to attack.

With 2017 upon us and the question of what (if any?) resolutions to set, I find myself taking a lesson from that brave police dog. Too often we treat the changes we want to make as if they are only exercises or experiments; demonstrations for a closed audience and a limited time. We become distracted by fear, fun, or frustration and lose some of our original commitment to the objective. This year, I challenge all people to consider their goals through the lens of that K9, where success is the only option. We all want to overcome some aspect of our life that keeps us from where we want to be. This year, I propose we attack that goal with ferocity and resolve that is blind to distraction.

Before we all bolt off with teeth bared and hair raised, keep in mind that no K9 operates alone. Every dog has a K9 handler and only together are the pair an effective team. They train, sleep, eat, live and serve together. They are family, friends and partners. The community they have with one another is what allows them to stare fear in the face and stand resolute. As you consider the fight ahead to reach your ambitions, know that our community is ready to stand with you. Resolve is always greater together.

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