Hidden in Plain Sight

A couple of years ago I sat in front of a yoga studio waiting for it to open. Across the parking lot was an empty suite. A business had so recently vacated that paper was not yet placed over the windows to block the view into the interior of the building.

If you were looking at the building you could see the entirety of the space from the front through the glass entry doors and large windows meant for lots of light and big window displays. Through more large windows flanking either side of the building, you could also see through the length of space, from one side out to the other. 

While I was sitting there, I suddenly heard a loud sound coming from across the parking lot. I looked up and saw that a crow had suddenly flown into one of the side windows. It took a few hops on the ground and then began trying to fly through the building again, flapping its wings relentlessly as it only pressed itself against the same window. 

The crow did this yet again and as I got up to try and help it in some way, clearly seeing what it was doing and where it was trying to go, it flew back a few feet from the window, and with that space away from the window flew straight up and over the building to the other side.

Our challenges can have a way of narrowing our focus. Sometimes, the obstacle is NOT the way. 

Simple solutions are often right in front of us, hidden in plain sight…

Sometimes all that is needed is a step back to gain a wider perspective.

On Receiving

On my journey of mastery, there are many ways I’ve cultivated receiving in the past year. Everything from spiritual practice and exploration of what more is there in this moment to receive to the simple full acceptance into my heart of a simple "thank you" given to me from another human.

There are many reasons why and a big one is, as a giver, to restore my balance of giving and receiving.

There is a thematic interconnectedness to life. If I’m not fully open to receiving, say, a thank you from someone, that same crimp in my receiving is likely showing up in other ways. (Uh, did someone say money?)

I have become more attuned to places I can open myself to receiving and much of it has been a very conscious process of slowing down, becoming observant of and removing the walls that get in the way: deflecting, minimizing, turning attention off of me and turning the acknowledgment back onto the other person, are but a few example.

There is a passage in the learning process when something goes from conscious competence to unconscious competence. This is always something exciting to me as this means all of the work has sunk in so deeply as to become part of my being…a natural, unhindered self-expression coming through me.

Towards the end of last year, I was recognized as rookie of the year at my gym. When my name was announced, I raised my arm and pumped it in the air as I walked up to accept the award.

Check it out:

I’m so in love with the way I received this award because it is what naturally came out of me as my name was announced.

In the past, this is something I would have tamped down, been humble about (and perhaps even slightly embarrassed about, if I’m honest.) I would have tried to accept as quickly as possible so as to get any attention directed towards me, off of me.

Watching this is my feedback that the passage from conscious competence to unconscious competence is taking place. It is feedback that receiving is at an integration point.

If you are still with me, below is the part that I really want to share, because it probably sounds kind of crazy but I want you to know about it.

There’s a huge difference between knowing something intellectually and knowing something in my bones. The body and mind are both are important (it’s the same system really.) I am always look for creative ways bring my physiology into my learning process.

Here is one of the processes I used in my cultivation of receiving.

I began looking for something that gave me a felt sense of what I imagined receiving to feel like. I wanted to find something that was bigger than any context that I would find myself in on a daily basis.

I ended up seeing a video of world champion athlete Annie Thorisdottir being cheered for. The first time I watched it was an intense visceral experience for me, it still is actually. I knew I had found what I was looking for.

You can see it here:

I would go on to take this video and as a starting point, view it while highly attuned to what was happening in my physiology: any flow of energy, any sensation, any ripple in my experience, really.

I would then begin to breath into the feeling, fully allowing it into my body while getting to know more and more of the felt sense of it in my body.

Over time, I added a layer of visualization to the feeling, imagining that the roar of the crowd was for me. I would do this while also getting a sense of how my body wanted to move in that visualization.

As I spent more and more time doing this, I would notice some of these same feelings, though not as intense, generated while I was accepting an acknowledgment from someone, or a thank you from someone in real time.

And this is the exact process I used to burn this feeling into my being and cultivate a more open receptivity.

The mind is so incredibly powerful.

The learning process can be so incredibly creative.

There are not many people with this commitment to mastery and learning. There are not many people who would go to this length to cultivate themselves. I offer that in this world where everyone is trying to find the best hack, the path of mastery is a super power. In this world where everyone wants a short cut, the path of mastery IS the shortest way.

I am committed to mastery as it is a way that helps me squeeze every last drop out of every single moment and experience of my life. It is a way that, dynamically, my best becomes my baseline, which then has an exponential effect on the way I create impact.

While the path of mastery is not always easy, it is worthwhile as a beautiful way to be in love with the depth of every moment and every experience life has to offer for us.

On cultivating space as a way of life

Why is space important?

A fundamental piece of work I do with any client is learning to develop a greater capacity to turn on intensity and the highest performance state by learning how to turn off more intensely and being in that relaxed, open, diffuse state.

It's an exploration of the oscillation between tension and slack, stress and release, movement and stillness, that becomes a core habit.

Why is this important? Well…. acess to greater energy, increased idea and insight generation, skill and information integration are a few of the benefits.

We tend to get caught in this middle zone where the tension is always somewhat on.

We wrestle with an idea or challenge and it is in our conscious thinking on repeat, yet not in a focused way or a way that helps us solve a problem any more efficiently in time or energy.

A simple example that comes to mind is misplacing something. Ever have the experience where you’ve misplaced something, are looking around all over the place and it singularly occupies your attention? You cannot find it, you retrace your steps, you think about all the places you could have left them, then at a certain point you simply give up and let it go. Maybe you take a breath to reset. Then in that exact moment you either find the item or remember where it is placed.

As a musician I would notice this process in rehearsal. The orchestra would be struggling with a passage, repeating it over and over. We’d be taking direction and feedback from the conductor and none of it seemed to help the passage. Either a break or the end of the rehearsal would arrive, then when we came back, we would pick up where we left off and suddenly the passage would come together beautifully with no problem; somehow in the NOT rehearsing everything was solved.

On a physical level, we understand the principal of space, and turning off, a bit more clearly. When we work out intensely, we understand that the recovery time is just as important for us to get full benefit from the work. In yoga the savasana IS part of the asana, they work together to create benefit. If you study any world class athlete, their attention to down-regulation, rest and recovery (doing nothing) is equally important as the intensity they bring to their physical training.

There’s a body of research on the learning process that shows clearly how periods of space, of distraction and a diffuse attention away from the material that has sharply been learned and focused on, is fundamental to increased learning.

Space is where miracles and magic happen.

Learn how to turn off….learn how create slack, release and stillness. Give your body a chance to recover and realize greater energy peaks, release your conscious mind and let your subconscious and intuition do its work.

Why is it that on some level we know this and yet we are still challenged by stepping away and turning off efforts completely?

One of the behavioral patterns that arises goes something like this:

We do something, then a result happens….

If the result was a success, we jump in again wanting to create another success as quickly as possible. (Strike while the iron is hot! Keep the mojo going!)

If the result was unintended, we move on as quickly as we can to avoid the feeling associated with a failure and to make up for lost time in getting to our goal. (Try, try again! Grin and bear it! Just do it! Buck up!)

The deeper cut of this is that so often it boils down to an internal piece we all deal with on occasion: the belief that we are not enough.

This loop puts us into a subtle reactive state where there is no space for greater insight or energy renewal.

There’s are a couple of ideas you’ve probably heard:

WORK SMARTER, NOT HARDER

&

SLOW DOWN TO SPEED UP

In these ideas, I believe that not working at all or the ability to shut the system down as much as possible is the key component to creating the performances, the insight and the results we are aiming for.

Learn more about how slack, release, and stillness are keys to greater performance, energy, insight and ideas for you.

Find the smallest ways to cultivate space and shut the systems down; mentally in your intellectual pursuits as well as physically. It’s all the same system, one will benefit the other, one will help you learn about the other. Start with the micro, then cultivate on the meso, then you’ll understand how to create this on the macro level.

In that space is your next brilliant idea, the solution to your problem, the energy that are trying to cultivate for excellence in your performance.

Let magic and miracles occur.

Cultivate space as a way of life.

On healing a broken heart

Here I am

It’s this morning.

After darkening the page, still I see nothing closer in trying to put words around something I am trying to get to.

Somewhat frustrated with not being able to touch what was wanting to come out, I go outside for a few breaths of air.

Maybe the words aren’t for today…. Maybe it’s simply that place where words end and it’s just time to point in the direction of, look towards and feel.

I walk down into the yard some, listening to the birds, wondering what beauty I would see in the flowers, feeling the crisp air wake up the rest of my body below my neck…and wondering what all of this was about...

My legs slowed my body down as if to say hold on, you forgot something….

And then my tears.

No stranger to me over these past few months, though these tasted different.

On a recent visit, a friend showed me something that had a few different “synonyms” for healing. “Healing is holding memories, not fearing them,” is the one that has stayed with me.

Last night, I asked for forgiveness for my part in all of the pain and heartbreak that has been felt over the past few months. As scary as it was for me to ask for forgiveness for those dark parts of me I don’t want to admit to and as vulnerable as it felt for that other part of me that just wants to hold as tightly as possible for fear of forever being alone, I finally felt free.

I felt all of the pain, all of the hurt that I had a hand in contributing to. I felt all of why a heart might close to me land on me with gravity.

I felt so much compassion.

I felt our hearts soften again. After all this time of disconnect, I felt let in and welcomed again. I felt the infinite, vast, expanse of connection that we’d previously floated in. Even if it were just for that moment in that time last night, it nourished.

Through an act of forgiveness everything slid away and here I am this morning with a joy inside my tears, a swelling to my breath, a (bitter)sweetness in my blistered heart, a warmth that whisper to me: welcome home.

Forgiveness.

I am sorry. Please forgive me.

And what was it I was trying to get to? What was I trying to get words around?

I don’t really know any more actually….

But if healing is holding, not fearing, memories….

What was once a story of pain and hurt is less so.

It’s a story I now get to revel in gratitude for all the ways it was so beautiful and sexy and loving and ummm sure, messy, but also fun, playful, adventurous and extraordinary, magical, mystical, divine….human…ours.

What a story it is…YES.

Once upon a time,

I fell in love….

On creativity

One of the most impressive acts of creativity that ever I witness is the incredibly vivid and detailed story of "I'm just not creative."

You can't NOT create. EVERYTHING is your creation.

An algorithm for creating

1. Show up

2. Respond to what shows up

On cultivating a child like mind

A key component of high-level learning is cultivating a resilient awareness that is the older, conscious embodiment of a child’s playful obliviousness. ~Josh Waitzkin

I'd also add: inquisitiveness.

This quote beautifully captures a principal shared in so many other texts. The Tao & Zen Mind, Beginners Mind come to me immediately as two of the many.

It is this learning and creating, while not knowing, that gives rise to our most exquisite moments of self-expression.

It is these moments that most inspire me, wether as my own creation or as witness of another's. This is the remarkable gift we have available in every moment. This is what I embrace as a process and see as a beauty of this extraordinary life.

Peak energy cultivation

Do you know what your peak energy capacity feels like? Or does your awareness of your energy occur to you more that you just know when you don’t have any?

I was listening to a conversation two of my friends were in about energy and it got me to thinking about how often this topic comes up with my clients and how my own relationship to energy has changed over the past few years.

One of the comments that really struck me was that the starting place for a lot of us in how we relate to our energy is that we know when we don’t have it, or that we have some. There isn’t much more nuance to it than that.

We have very little feel for when we are at our peak energy, even less of a feel for when our peak energy is aligned with our peak focus. We have even less of a feel for how to cultivate our peek energy, and beyond that even less feel for how to create a daily architecture that maximizes our peak energy and peak focus.

Why is this important at all?

Our energy is more valuable than time. Think about it. Would you rather have 10 years left in this world, yet with no energy to do anything with that time, or a final month yet all the energy to give everything you wanted to those moments?

Understanding how to cultivate peak energy is essential to high performance, masterful learning, creative expression, and a more fulfilled life.

Much of the time, what I notice is we (including me) are walking around half asleep and half awake. We aren’t in a fully rested, relaxed, alert state of being AND we don’t quite have access to turn it on from 0-60 in 2.5 seconds.

There are so many different energies one could keep an eye on: sexual, relational, creative, financial, sound, etc.

I like to have an overall awareness on 4 as my baseline: Physical, Mental, Emotional and Spiritual. I find everything else can be looked at through one of these lenses.

If you do nothing else but begin to notice your energy in each of these 4 places, that alone could be revelatory and life changing.

To take it further, the journey of creating more energy can be as simple as taking an energy audit. Note every activity, and I do mean EVERY activity, you do throughout the day. Note the time you spend on it and assign some value between 1-10 of both what energy you have for it and how engaged you are in it in those moments.

An even simpler exercise is to simply list in one column the people, places, things, activities and thoughts that drain you of energy/ where you are leaking energy and in a second column the people, places, things, activities and thoughts that fill you/source you with energy.

With either of these lists, the practice is then incremental subtraction: eliminating, one by one, the simplest things that have a draining effect on your energy.

On a surface level, the simple removal of these things is going to help give you more energy. Somewhat like reducing spending on unconscious purchases is going to create more money in your bank account.

There is also a deeper cut you can take a look at which I find even more beneficial.

The place to look is who am I being that is creating this as a drain? Or what is the perspective I am holding on this that has it make perfect sense that this is a drain on my energy.

Sometimes the surface removal of something is good enough and is the simple most effective solution. Other times it really is about the deeper work that is required and necessary so that we are able to better to understand our internal relationship to our energy and the patterns and rhythms that arise out of that relationship. We can create a trap for ourselves by trying to rearrange the entire world around us. It’s an internal vs external orientation.

These practices will have us be less asleep, and you may be asking, but how do I begin to have a feel for my peak energy? How do I cultivate the ability to harness that more often?

For now try out and be consistent with what is offered here and from there, if you would benefit from being in more direct conversation, send me a message and I can create some time for you.

Loving you so,

Allan

Imagine….

Imagine not being able to feel….

Not being able to feel the warmth of the sun on your face.

Not being able to feel the cold ice of a drink on your lips.

Not being able to feel connection while gazing into your lover’s eyes.

Hurt or sad or heartbroken or pained….there’s a choice.

Shut down, close and create a way of being that never feels that again.

Or stay in an open heart, feeling all of the pain.

Imagine not being able to feel...

Yes.

Open my heart to its hurt.

There is a choice I could make to shut myself down and make certain that I never experience this again.

That’s one way.

Another way is the path I’m choosing. It’s the one of sensing the pain to be felt and not only walking towards it to find its edge, but also being fully willing and fully choosing to step right over that edge into it’s fullness. The edge that feels so daunting and engulfing…Where is the bottom of this? Will it devour me?

I walk into it and notice that there is space. I am wider than it. This opens up my capacity to feel. Everything. The fullness of it all.

I believe that we are here, in this world, in this body to feel.

Imagine NOT being able to feel.

There is no safety in love.

On presence, leadership and love

Fully present.

Effective leadership.

Unconditional love.

If you are having to practice the first word, you are not actually practicing the second.

See what you believe

We all have a whole library of unconscious beliefs and ideas that largely run the show and have things go the way they go for us.

When we are wanting to create a breakthrough of any kind, we have to first make conscious what is unconscious.

If we can't see something, we can't work with it.

If we can't work with it….

it’s going to work us.

Deepen your presence

Deepen your presence...

See while looking.

Hear while listening.

Feel while touching.

The “why” of pursuing excellence is a mystery

"I want to do it because I want to do it."

~Amelia Earhart before her solo flight across the Atlantic ocean.

"There is no why. When I see a place I can put my wire I can not resist."

~Phillipe Petit when asked about his high wire walk between the Twin Towers directly after his accomplishment.

________

The greatest journeys are not only physical accomplishments, or mental pursuits, they are also aesthetic and spiritual.

The “why” of pursuing excellence is a mystery.

It’s a calling to discover the essence of something out there, as well as something within. In the end, what we discover and touch is there for but a brief moment as we lift our gaze to see a vast unfolding of something more to learn, or something deeper to connect with or something more magnificent to live into.

Our ceiling becomes our floor.

Our best becomes our baseline.

We simultaneously integrate a high level of physical, emotional, mental and spiritual understanding that becomes our foundation and our expression, while also joyously seeing that we also know nothing and are nothing.

We smile at it all, inhale a breath.

With a gleam in our eye, and a knowing of the heartbreak, frustration, sadness, agony, doubt AND love, success, joy, fullness, confidence, laughter that comes with reaching for the stars and giving our all, and wanting to give it well, dig back into ourselves and take the next step on our journey.

On mistakes

Depth of presence is always a key differentiator between those who are average or good and those who are the very best.

A way to reach the top of any domain quickly is to simply make no mistakes.

Yet we are human and making mistakes is part of our process. On the back end of a mistake, we have to accept our humanity, learn from our mistakes and remain in the present moment to maintain access and choice to the expansiveness that is happening now. it is so easy to trap ourselves in what happened moments ago, staying stuck there as time and the rest of the world flows on without us.

On the front end, there are a few places that create blindspots and biases that have us making choices that are out and out mistakes or lead to mistakes.

Slow down, deepen and widen your presence when you find yourself in any one of these elements and especially when you are in 2 or 3..

• Being outside of your normal environment.

• Being on the downside of your physical or emotional capacity.

• In a sense of urgency.

• In the presence of authority.

• In the presence of large groups doing the same thing.

• When doing anything that requires a high degree of concentration.

• When in information overload.

Do your best work. Be the best.

Energy is the spark of creation

One of the basic rhythms we are born into is the expending and regaining of energy. From the broad stroke of a day, we give energy through the day and we recover and regain energy when we sleep.

If we zoom in and look more finely at our waking day, it too contains oscillations of energetic peaks and lulls.

Unfortunately, we live in a world that is hostile to rest, rewarding productivity at all costs. The saying “You can sleep when you’re dead” comes to mind.

We have learned to override our rhythms and flatten out our oscillations into a linear relationship to our energy. There are plenty of studies that show the detriment of overwork to the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual dimensions of our lives.

Thisistheblurofalifeofconstantdoingneverrestingorrecoveringgogogoconsumeconsumeconsumeoutputoutputoutputaddictiontostressoverridingthebodiesneedsgetshitdoneatallcostscaffeineupalcoholdown.

Our ability to cultivate a deeper introspective awareness of our own oscillations gives us a way to work with our natural rhythms.

Stress is actually good thing, we would not grow with out it and we increase fulfillment when we see our own growth by overcoming challenges.

We have forgotten how to listen to and work with the pulse of our own lives.

The ability to release and turn off intensity, to release stress on the macro and micro level of our lives leads to more sustained, higher level engagement and performance in all of life’s dimensions: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.

Ratherthanlivinginablurofconstantoutput…

Learn to listen to your own energetic rhythm. Learn. To. Create. Space….

Yesyyoucanstillbuildintensity. But listen….

Listen to your pulse…buffer intensity with release.

With space. To rest.

To let go.

And recover.

And regain energy….

Because energy is the spark of creation.

Our incredible mind

Isn't it quite incredible, how much our mind has no idea what it's really talking about when when we are leaning into the other side of our comfort zone?

When, with no good reason, we are going for what we really want?

When, with sometimes nothing more than an impulse, an intuition, a nudge, that feeling that something is coming through you to follow....

When we are creating what we really love in the uncertainty of where it is all headed?

It's like trying to explain a love of squirrel suit flying to the Risks Department.

Unstoppable?

Can you imagine not stopping to cry when grieving a loss?

Can you imagine not stopping to rest your weary head?

Can you imagine not stopping for something that brings us directly into that moment and touches our soul?

Can you imagine not stopping to give our heart and our attention to someone who takes our breath away?

Why are so many of us trying to be unstoppable?