It’s only February 5, and due to my daily blogging challenge this year, I’ve already published more blog posts in 2020 than I did in all of 2019.

I realized fairly early in this challenge that it could feel very burdensome if I don’t frame it the right way. I think the wrong way to frame it would be as a self-discipline challenge. That makes it feel stressful to me. It makes the daily behaviors feel like demanding “have tos.” I wouldn’t want the next 11 months to feel like a forced march.

This morning while doing some journaling, I noted that writing is an activity that I often regard as restorative and rejuvenating. Writing can be cathartic. It helps me connect with people. It helps me process and understand ideas better. When I set my intentions properly before I start, the words flow naturally and sometimes even playfully. Writing doesn’t feel so much like thinking. It feels more like not thinking. Sometimes it feels like listening. Sometimes it feels like channeling. Sometimes it feels like dancing.

Writing is a part of my life that I feel that I’ve solved very well. While it still provides plenty of richness and depth, and I still appreciate its role in my life, this isn’t due to the experience of challenge or conflict. Writing feels like a channel that’s wide open for me to continue exploring, like a river I’ve traveled so many times that I know where all the rapids are, yet I still enjoy traversing it again and again.

Writing as a medium fits squarely within my comfort zone, yet it still has many branches that I can follow beyond my comfort zone. Oddly it has become a comfortable way to explore many discomforts.

I tend to think of many parts of life in terms of relationships. For me this way of thinking has been very transformational. What I especially love about writing is how I’ve developed a close, trusting relationship with it. It’s not just the act of writing that’s a source of positivity in my life. It’s my relationship with writing that’s grown so healthy and positive, and I can benefit from that relationship even when I’m not actively writing.

My initial intention for the daily blogging challenge was to more deeply explore my relationship with creative self-expression. This was more of an intuitive decision than a logical one, similar to how you might have an intuitive feeling about connecting with someone.

What is your relationship with money? What’s your relationship with your work? What’s your relationship with social media? What’s your relationship with sexuality? What’s your relationship with your partner (if you have one)? What’s your relationship with your character? What’s your relationship with reality?

I’ve been asking myself these questions for many years. I’ve answered some of them in the form of significant courses. And I continue to reflect upon all of these relationships and more.

Conscious Quality Control

Thinking of different aspects of life in terms of the quality of the relationships is empowering because I know that those relationships exist in my mind. That’s where I experience all of them. While I can say that there are external aspects to many of these relationships, I still process all of the details within my mind. I model each relationship mentally. I feel each relationship emotionally. Some relationships have physical aspects that I experience with my body and my senses, and those signals also get processed through my mind.

I don’t control the externals per se, but I can wield some conscious control over how I do the internal processing. If I notice that the way I represent a relationship is becoming problematic, I can delve into how I’m modeling it. This is tricky work since the initial modeling happens subconsciously. I don’t really control how my mind frames these relationships from the start, but I can consciously discover the details of those models, such as by asking questions and journaling about it. Having conscious conversations with others helps too. As I gain more clarity about how my mind is modeling a relationship, I can look for modeling problems that could introduce bugs in my thinking or give rise to paralyzing emotions, and I can challenge my mind to devise more intelligent and accurate models.

I often think of the architecture of my mind in very physical terms – a collection of neural clusters in my brain. Since the brain exists in 3D space, it has physical limitations that give rise to various artifacts. Some regions of the brain don’t share data very well with other regions. You’ve probably heard the term cognitive dissonance, when we seem to believe something even when we have plenty of evidence to the contrary. My religious upbringing was rife with that. I see this as being linked to the physical structure of the brain. The architecture of the brain doesn’t force congruent thinking. We can have one region of the brain modeling reality one way and another region modeling reality a different way (or simply storing memories that conflict with the first region’s model), and they don’t necessarily talk to each other to resolve these conflicts.

Hence I don’t really take it personally when my mind holds models that lead to problematic relationships. I tend to regard such problems as engineering or algorithmic problems. These problems don’t usually disturb my sense of self-esteem. I recognize that the architecture of my brain is giving rise to these problems, but I also have well-developed tools that I can use to resolve such problems. These tools are my collection of personal growth insights, many of which I’ve been blogging about over many years.

I notice that when many people have mental modeling problems, they tend to take it personally, as if they’re somehow defective, unworthy, or broken. I encourage you not to think like that.

My mental processing occurs within my mind, but that mental processing isn’t me per se. It’s just the software running within me. So if the software is buggy or defective, I like to interpret this as an invitation to explore and experience those bugs, to diagnose them, and to attempt to fix them if I’m so inclined. I try not to take it personally, just as I wouldn’t take it personally if one of my devices behaves in a buggy manner.

This mental model was one that I learned from programming computers and from studying some neuroscience. But I don’t have to root it to the physical to make it work. Quite often I prefer using the subjective reality perspective, and in that context I still regard thought as software, except that it’s running in some kind of simulation instead of within my physical brain. The simulation doesn’t need to have a physical aspect. It could be some kind of dream world, in which case I just consider the dream constructs to be a different type of software.

If I think of thought as software, then thoughts can sometimes be buggy. Multiple thoughts don’t have to agree with each other. Congruence is not a requirement for thought to exist.

Harmony

I also sometimes think of thought as music. Some music sounds harmonious and pleasant, and some doesn’t. Just as we can listen to unpleasant music and consider what’s wrong with it and what needs to be changed to make it sound better, we can do the same with thought.

I often feel this drive within me to make my thinking more harmonious. Sometimes this feels like the drive of life itself. How can life organize itself into increasingly complex yet stable structures? This requires bringing harmony to competing priorities, so the competition doesn’t tear apart the overall structure.

We see this on a social level too. Individuals have different priorities, and this bubbles up to competition among families, tribes, communities, political groups, and countries. Socially and politically we have a lot of disagreements. Our collection social software can be pretty buggy and disharmonious sometimes. But we could say that this bubbles up from our individual software. If we’re internally disharmonious, how can society be otherwise?

I recognize that when I’m working on my own personal problems, trying to bring harmony to my inner relationships, I’m also working on an internal version of our larger social problems. Perhaps the reason I notice certain problems in the world is that they resonate with internal patterns, so I can look at my issues with the world as indicators of what might be issues in need of resolution within myself.

How would we recognize harmony when it’s present?

Imagine a world where politicians greeted each other with hugs and smiles instead of withholding handshakes. Imagine a world where politicians praised each other and expressed gratitude openly. Imagine politicians agreeing on purpose and priorities together. Imagine politicians sharing honestly what they intend to do and what they can’t realistically do. It’s not that difficult to imagine what a more harmonious situation would look like, although it may be difficult to imagine it becoming real.

Can we do this internally as well? What would a more harmonious you look like?

With more inner harmony, you might find yourself doing a wonderful job of balancing priorities, as if you’ve somehow resolved the inner competition by recognizing common ground and getting each part of you to align with that common ground. You wouldn’t experience the problem of feeling like you should work and distracting yourself online instead.

Purpose

One way to achieve this sense of inner harmony is with clarity of purpose. If you can clarify and commit to a strong purpose for yourself, it’s easier to get otherwise disagreeable neural regions to align. A strong purpose can serve as an alignment beacon, but only if you’re really committed.

Thinking of different parts of life in terms of relationships also connects with the purpose idea. Then you can consider how each relationship in your life is serving your greater purpose. How is your relationship with money serving your purpose? How is your relationship with work serving your purpose? How is your relationship with your body serving your purpose? Asking such questions will expose further misalignments in these relationships since some aspects won’t serve your purpose very well. Then you can delve into the misaligned models and see if you can upgrade them to better align with your purpose.

It can be easier to write a harmonious song if you get clear about the purpose. If you compose one track with one purpose in mind, and you write another track with a different purpose in mind, you may inject disharmony into the song. But if all tracks are created with the intention of collectively serving a singular purpose, that can help you to create a more aligned and harmonious song.

I’m noticing the usefulness of this purpose alignment with my daily blogging challenge as well. Each day I seek to fit this into my schedule, there’s the possibility (and sometimes the reality) of running into resistance. Competing priorities can push against this commitment, sometimes delaying it till late in the day. I may not always feel motivated to create. I may be extra busy some days. Sometimes surprises will happen, and I’ll have to deal with those too. With a full year of daily blogging, it’s unavoidable that I’ll experience numerous episodes of resistance from various other regions of my brain.

Trying to push through such resistance day after day can be draining, and if I do that too much, it leads to feeling burnt out and not wanting to continue. Then I have little choice but to lean on self-discipline and force compliance with the commitment. But of course that option isn’t ideal.

There are many options for this purpose, and really it’s just a matter of reminding myself of why this challenge is a good idea. I can focus on the daily connection with the flow of creative energy. I can think about helping people grow and how many people are served by this challenge. I can think about the character growth this challenge is creating.

By connecting with a strong enough purpose for this challenge, I notice that the resistance starts shifting towards a feeling of greater harmony. What’s really interesting is that just having a decent purpose for the daily blogging is also helping other parts of my life to harmonize, not just with this challenge but with each other. It’s like the purpose serves as a core musical track, providing the rhythm that all of the other tracks sync to. And when those other tracks sync to the rhythm track, they also sync well with each other.

For example, I’ve noticed that I’m doing a better job of self-care lately than when I first started this challenge. I’m feeling more relaxed and peaceful while I work, even when I have a lot to do. I’m working with better flow and less stress. January was an extra busy month due to the Stature course launch, and I also had a Panama trip that month, so it was an unbalancing time that took me off my normal routine. February is still plenty busy, but it feels more relaxed and flowing. I think this has a lot to do with finding greater clarity among otherwise competing priorities. Instead of feeling pulled in different directions, I’m doing a better job of getting my activities and projects aligned in service to an overall purpose.

When I get extra busy, my sense of purpose can feel a bit scrambled. I get lost among the trees and have a hard time remembering which forest I’m in. And when that happens, I often find it hard to justify keeping up those vital self-care activities, and of course that just makes things worse. But when I get back in tune with a clear purpose, it’s easier to slow down, and slowing down helps me speed up. Instead of burning the candle at both ends, I do a better job of creating harmonious days and weeks that feel sustainably pleasant. My personal song begins to sound increasingly harmonious.

What’s the connection between clarity and action? Can you achieve better clarity just by diving in and taking lots of action?

The short answer is yes. In fact, often this is a superior approach to making advance plans, at least in terms of the clarity gains you’ll experience.

A key reason that direct action can help you gain clarity is that when you take action, you map out more of the possibility space. Action usually involves exploration. The more you take action, the more you explore. Even when your actions don’t work out, you’re still mapping out part of the possibility space. And this can easily help you gain clarity about your path through this space.

Suppose you go to Disneyland for the first time in your life, and you don’t know the layout of the park. You won’t be able to spend your time there very efficiently, at least not without help, since you won’t have a good map of the possibility space. You won’t know the most efficient way to navigate the park. You won’t know what times to go on certain rides if you want to avoid the longest wait times. You’ll end up spending more time waiting in line, and you won’t be able to take in as many rides and attractions as someone with more experience.

In 2016 Rachelle and I did an experiment where we went to Disneyland every day for 30 days in a row. So we spent a lot of time there, and consequently, our minds now contain detailed mental maps of the park. Whenever I want to, I can picture myself walking around there in my mind’s eye. You can name any two rides there, and I can mentally navigate an efficient route from one to the other, as if I’m seeing all the scenery on a movie screen. And that’s simply because I took lots of action for 12-16 hours a day for a month. As a result of doing this, I can now navigate that space with greater ease than ever before.

Now I could have done a bunch of research online first, and I could have made written plans for what I was going to do. But I don’t think any of that would have given me as much clarity as just diving in and taking action day after day. The mental maps I gained through action and experience are more useful and accurate than those I acquired through learning from others.

I experienced something similar when I got into public speaking. I read many books on speaking. I attended workshops. I had conversations with professional speakers. All of that helped to some degree. But nothing moved the needle forward nearly as much as just diving in and doing a lot of speaking.

My friend Darren LaCroix, who’s the 2001 World Champion of Public Speaking, likes to say that there are three steps to getting good at speaking: stage time, stage time, and stage time. He gained skill through direct action, and he had a mentor that encouraged him to never turn down stage time. Darren was taught to always say yes to stage time, even if he had to drive hours to participate in an open mic night for a few minutes. That’s some dedication!

When Darren began building his comedy and speaking skills, by his own admission he was atrocious. Less than a decade later, he was a world champion. That’s a nice success story, but it’s also a clarity story. Darren created refined mental models of his area of expertise by speaking a lot, by doing stand-up comedy, and by traveling around the world for stage time, stage time, and more stage time. Darren is also one of the more focused people I know in terms of his goals, projects, and actions. His clarity largely comes from direct experience.

If you try to minimize how much action you take, thinking that you’re trying to be more efficient, that’s understandable. It seems logical at first. But it’s generally a mistake because you won’t map the possibility space as well if you resist taking action.

A common reason people resist action is that they have limiting beliefs about the exploration phase. They think it’s risky. They don’t want to fail. They don’t want to waste time doing things that don’t yield immediate results. And again, that’s very understandable.

But if you’re too focused on getting an immediate result, you’re surely going to struggle with clarity because you won’t develop a deep enough understanding of the possibility space around you. You won’t have a good map of the territory that you’re in.

During his championship speech, which was called “Ouch,” Darren purposefully fell down on stage to demonstrate the value of failure and how it’s all part of the learning process. It’s is also part of the mapping process.

Now if you’re in a situation where you can’t afford to map the space first, like if you’re going to Disneyland only once in your life for a single visit, and that’s it, then what’s the best way to have a good visit that packs in a lot of value? Well, you could muddle through on your own, but perhaps the best way would be to have someone with superior experience show you around and be your tour guide for the day. You’ll probably get at least 50% more value out of the experience if you can enlist the assistance of someone with a well-developed mental map.

You do something similar whenever you pay for expertise. You pay for access to the mental maps of an experienced doctor, dentist, lawyer, accountant, and so on. Realize that you’re often paying for clarity when you do this, and the way you purchase clarity is by paying for access to superior mental maps. Let that be a hint that experience gained through direct action can be an equally effective avenue for building clarity yourself.

In some spaces you can do both. When I learned public speaking, I did a lot of speaking to map the possibility space through action. I also learned from mentors like Darren with vastly more experience. That’s a quick way to learn new skills and also to gain clarity.

But between these two choices, I still think your best bet is to favor learning through direct action when you can. Put in the time to map the space. As you build a stronger mental model for the space you’re in, you’ll naturally experience an increase in clarity.

When I get an opportunity for more stage time, I still hear Darren’s “stage time, stage time, stage time” mantra echoing in the back of my mind, which nudges me to say yes most of the time. I know that more stage time will further refine my mental maps. That’s one reason I accepted an invitation to perform the emcee role at an event last week in Panama. I was already going to the event anyway, but being an emcee isn’t a role I normally do, and that means I’d learn something from it. It was a great experience and upgraded my clarity about public speaking in a way that sticking to the familiar wouldn’t have accomplished.

When you set a goal within a space that you’ve done a good job of mapping, you’ll be able to traverse the space more efficiently because you’ll know the territory. You’ll know how to get from point A to point B, just as if you were walking from one part of Disneyland to another after you’d already spent a month there.

But if you stubbornly refuse to map the space you’re in, well… good luck with that approach. I think you’re always going to suffer from a lower level of clarity and more confusion when you do that.

Ultimately this boils down to some pretty simple lessons: Explore the world around you. Explore the field you’re in. Explore the possibility space. And if you don’t know what to explore, then pick anything because any exploration will improve your mental models more than no exploration. Be willing to fall on your face now and then as well; that’s also part of the exploration process.