Redefine authority. Don't outsource your power.

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Redefine authority. Don’t outsource yours.

We have an authority problem. Mostly, that we’ve outsourced our own inner authority to external “experts” and “authorities.”

Doctors.

Politicians.

Clergy.

Bosses.

Data.

I’m not suggesting that people in these roles are not helpful or good at what they do. (I’m also not suggesting that they ALL are.) I believe in expertise, experience, wisdom, and learning from others.

The problem is, somewhere along the way expertise became tangled up in systems of dominance. Authority became something externalized, something we were commanded to “look up” to. It became hierarchical—and worse, substitutional. It was meant to supplant our own self-knowledge

When that happens, and when we don’t develop our own inner authority—our own self-knowledge, intuition, and agency—we get exploited and manipulated.

It’s time to make ourselves the authority—literally, the authors—of our own lives. We have agency, intuition and instinct to develop self-awareness and self-knowledge. We can collect our own experiential data about what happens when we live life—just by paying attention to our intuition, instinct, and the world around us.

When we develop a strong compass based on our own integrity and self-knowledge—and ADD that to the knowledge of experts, rather than suppressing our own inner expertise in order to elevate someone else’s knowledge—that’s when we can evolve the conversation. Create better outcomes. Create healthier lives.

Don’t outsource your own authority. Write your own life; others can be contributing editors, but you get to author the plot. Write what you know: yourself.

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What’s one way to develop your inner authority? Add your intuition to your intellect.

The Age of Reason has had a good run. 

Reason is good. Reason created some elegant methods for pursuing knowledge. We’ve solved some problems. We’ve discovered so much.

How’s that working out for us? Are we happier, healthier, more in love with life?

For many of us, there’s still something missing.

The Age of Intuition is re-emerging.

True to character, it has been gestating in the murky nether-regions of our soil and psyches, crafting an underground network of connection, meaning, and love as we’ve flailed above, trying not to need all of those things that aren’t susceptible to the slick schtick of reason.

We’ve become experts at consuming knowledge—it is more available to us than ever, we can consume it more quickly than ever.

But… then what?

When we add intuition to intellect, we’re using a broader spectrum of knowledge. Knowledge can grow into the fullness of wisdom.

Intuition IS knowledge.

It’s just a different pathway for acquiring knowledge than the singular cerebral way we’ve been taught over the past few hundred years.

Intuition is thinking differently—not thinking ABOUT things differently (though this will be a likely outcome), but literally using a different mechanism for thinking: intuition.

Interestingly, intuition is not behind a paywall.

Intuition is freely available to all.

Intuition gathers its own data, and still manages to be evidence-based.

Intuition bypasses “authority.”

Which is exactly why it has been maligned and relegated to the world of woo—it’s basically free power. 

Intuition isn’t going to fix all of your problems. But it will add depth to your knowledge, and help turn it into wisdom.

Intuition will help you understand yourself more deeply. It will help you understand others more fully.

Intuition will help you see the patterns that connect your personal experience to the world at large—and beyond.

Adding intuition to intellect is how we find our way back to healthy humanity—deep humans, deep connection, for a healthy planet, for all.

The surprising power of play

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The surprising power of play.

Playing is basically evolution that works well for our nervous systems—not the kind of evolution that requires us to starve, mutate, exhaust ourselves, inflict pain, render ourselves extinct, all that fun stuff. 

• Play is experimentation. 

• Play is iteration.

• Play is pushing past our boundaries.

• Play is creative.

• Play is co-creative.

• Play is strengthening.

• Play helps regulate our nervous systems.

• Play is fun.

• Play strengthens social connection.

• Physical play strengthens our muscles, body language, connection cues.

• Play laughs in the face of judgment--and invites it to play.

• Play dares itself to take it one step too far.

• Play is a way for us to grow and evolve with low stakes. The outcome doesn’t matter—which means we can be open to any possibility arising, rather than trying to control and manage the process so we achieve a predictable process and outcome.

Play is growth mindset.

Predictability, control, managing—these are all excellent things in certain circumstances. And unbelievably boring in others.

You know the phrase, “If you want to make god laugh, tell her your plans?”

I think this is basically the universe’s way of telling us that we are not the boss of her—but she would love to play with us, because she loves a good laugh and loves creating things. 

If you want to grow, PLAY.

If you want to be creative, PLAY.

If you want to evolve, PLAY.

Play answers a surprising number of questions.

How else could the world have ridiculous things like blue-footed boobies and hammerhead sharks and hot-magenta dragonfruit and sloths? There’s a tiny bug on my gardenia with fuzz coming out of its butt—it’s ridiculous. You think these were the a result of serious, controlled work?

No, clearly these are manifestations of the mindset of, “I wonder what happens if I do THIS?”

What if we let go of trying to manage the process, and played through it? Together?

What if we outplayed play?

Want to up the ante?

Practice ridiculosity: ridiculousness at high velocity (I like to make up words, because I love to PLAY).

Don’t underestimate the power of ridiculousness. Go play.

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There’s been a lot of research over the past several years about the importance of play. And one of my favorite books is Deep Play by Diane Ackerman. I highly recommend it!

Step one: Redefine power

Redefine “power” to mean being in love with life. YOUR life.

What would it feel like if you were in love + lust with your life? What would it look like?

What would the world look like if everyone was in love with their lives? What if that was non-negotiable?

I can’t magically make our problems go away. This is not an excuse to turn away from the suffering in the world and what we all need to do to alleviate it.

But I can learn what I love, and hold myself accountable to honoring what I love with my time and energy. I can learn what makes me feel vibrant, and honor that with my time and energy.

I can learn to scale out my perspective so I see how indescribably beautiful the sheer improbability of this planet is.

I can marvel at the craziness of fireflies, and feel a little bit jealous that I can’t do that.

I can do others the honor of asking them what they love, what brings them alive. 

When I allow myself to do what I love, I feel powerful, happy, generous. When I’m filled to overflowing with my own humanity, I want to do that with everyone else.

I happen to think that if we all did this, the world would start healing in bigger and faster ways. And this is totally doable. It’s not everything (or maybe it is), but it’s something.

Joy loves joy. Power loves power. When power is joyful, and joy is powerful, we will have found ourselves smack in the middle of a new paradigm.

Start right now. Some ideas? Glad you asked! Here are a few:

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When someone asks you what you do, tell them what you love.

Then ask them what they love.

What if we were all allies, helping each other to uphold for ourselves what we love, helping us stay true to what we love? What if we were asked many times a day to share what we love, and why? What if what we love is non-negotiable?

We all “do” a million things, play a million roles. I think what you love is the most interesting thing about you. I’d love to know what you love.

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Take off your masks.

We all play a million parts throughout our lives. Often, we put on masks in order to fit into different scenarios, to be acceptable to different people, to be valued by various systems—all of which are playing their parts, as well.

The problem is, we sometimes lose sight of who we truly are beneath our roles and masks.

We play our parts so well, we forget that they are just that: parts.

And when we lose sight of ourselves, we need others to validate our existence, rather than knowing the truth of ourselves—and sharing it—from the inside out.

Who are you without your masks? What would happen if you took them off, one by one? What if vulnerability and transparency was accompanied by relief—relief that you can finally respond to life as YOU, not a small subset of you?

We find ourselves in a strange spacetime in history where we are both starving for connection and inundated with it at the same time.

What we’re craving is not just any and all connection, but authentic, nourishing, pleasurable connection: not surface-level, smush-yourself-down-into-a-box-to-conform empty-calorie connection.

We’re aching for quality, not quantity.

There are those of us who want more of you. There are those of us who want to see all of you, and are waiting for you to reveal the rich facets of who you are so we can play as whole, in-it-all-together human beings.

Trust follows truth.

Connection follows trust.

Authentic connection heals the trauma of disconnection—and of domination masquerading as connection.

Taking off our masks is a great first step.

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Don’t make an impact ON the world, realign with its natural intelligence. And yours.

If you’re reading this, you probably think a lot about where we’re headed as earthlings. I sure do. You know you want to do good, to leave the world a better place. I want that, too.

But I’ve also realized that life wants something from me.

That my intentions, no matter how noble, how visionary, will rapidly become wobbly if I don’t anchor them in what the world needs and desires along with me.

That imposing my vision on the world is a very old-school, will-based, power-over, my way or the highway pattern. It’s all about me. It’s about making my mark, making an impact ON. This is the type of overpowering that happens when we’re actually unsure of our power.

But my relationship with life needs to be consensual.

Playing WITH life, co-creating along with it—that’s the bigger game. That’s the game I want to play. Then it is about me, and also about everyone and everything else. The beauty of this is that, while I might be cultivating my particular vision of a garden, I’m never doing it alone.

Life is telling us what it desires all the time. It is showing us where there are needs all the time. It is giving us opportunities to learn about our deepest desires and gifts all the time (#naps). It is giving us information about what we definitely want no part of all the time (#math).

When we align our natural intelligence—the feedback system of pleasure, pain, love, grief, talent, joy, beliefs, vision—with the natural intelligence of the world, then we will have aligned ourselves with life as it is: a fluid ecosystem continually giving and receiving feedback about how to come back into balance.

This feels much more real than pretending I’m in control of it all.

This is how you co-create an impact FOR the world, with the world.

This feels much more connected to my natural human intelligence, which intuitively and instinctively knows that everything is interdependent, that systems have innate intelligence.

This feels like a relief. Try it out. Let me know how it goes?

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Asking for help is you exercising your agency; it is NOT “victim-mode.”

Enough with the victim-shaming. Asking for help is not the same thing as asking someone to do something for you, it’s asking someone to do something WITH you.

Our true nature is to give, AND to receive. We are not designed to do everything alone.

Do we need to build up our strength, skills, resourcefulness? Absolutely.

Can we be prompted to see and rely on our own power + agency? Absolutely. 

Do we need to rescue everyone? Nope. 

But we need to get real about the fact that there are incredibly difficult circumstances that people need help with. Sometimes, this even means doing something for them.

Telling someone (or yourself) to get out of “survival mode” and into “thriving mode” may be turning a blind eye to the systemic circumstances that perpetuate pain + suffering, and puts all of the burden on the individual to overcome them.

There is a time and place for “thriving mode,” for sure. But we need to be able to discern whether or not our minds, bodies, nervous systems, and external experiences are aligned enough for us to make that transition. If not, we end up stuck and feeling the shame of yet another “failure” to live up to our potential.

Please, be kind with yourself + others. It’s entirely possible that we have within us conflicting parts, some of which are able to thrive, some that aren’t. This is just fine, as long as we don’t bulldoze the parts that aren’t yet ready to shift or glorify the parts that are.

It may be that the “victimy” part desperately longs to know it doesn’t have to do life alone.

We will likely flow in and out if thriving + surviving, victimhood + creatorhood throughout our lives, just because life is life.

We are works in progress, always. So is life. Understanding this might be the most powerful thing you can do for yourself, and others.

Dare to meet life intimately

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Dare to meet life intimately.

Life will only be as fulfilling as the depth with which we’re willing to meet it.

Surface-level connections will fulfill us… at the surface.

But our depths crave intimacy and sharing. Intimacy craves depth, not masks and walls.

What if we stopped holding life at arm’s length?

What if we entered into an intimate relationship with all that is?

What if we were willing to walk through life…

… holding everything with care and protection

… seeing fully

… being seen fully

… open

… being opened

… sharing

… embracing what is, not what we think should be

… releasing masks and performance

… touching and being touched

… loving wholeheartedly

… being moved by life?

The tragedy is that we’ve narrowed down the idea of “intimacy” to something that only happens behind closed doors. (Another tragedy is that sex does not necessarily include intimacy—sometimes, it’s anything but.)

But why not be intimate in every realm of our lives? 

Why not share deeply during lunchtime?

Why not be willing to be moved by a random conversation in line at the drugstore?

Why not hold with care what you see on your walk?

Intimacy is everywhere, if we have the courage to meet it: a type of quantum entanglement that thrills in knowing us—as we know ourselves—more and more fully.

An intimate life is a gift to humanity.

Why not live life as if it were a love letter to the planet?

Masculinity doesn’t need to be detoxxed, it needs to be healed.

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Masculinity doesn’t need to be detoxxed, it needs to be healed.

What does healing mean?

Heading back to wholeness.

Our current cultural norm for masculinity is utterly fragmented—it requires a vivisection of self that is not just unhealthy, but dangerous for everyone.

Men are conditioned to suppress emotions, not show vulnerability, not share their joy and their authenticity, not express themselves in the full spectrum of possibilities. Seeking care or comfort is “for sissies.” They don’t even have the same variety of clothes options women have—simply wearing pink is considered edgy (how in the world did that brainwashery happen?!? So fucking arbitrary.) When they do show any of this, they’re denigrated—for being too feminine.

All of the epithets thrown at men are about the valuelessness of the feminine:

“Don’t be a pussy.” “You cry like a girl.”

What utter bullshit. Completely arbitrary, made-up bullshit. If it were just arbitrary, okay. But the problem is, this does real damage on a huge scale—and not just to women and girls.

The problem is, these parts of ourselves are not just feminine traits of the female gender, they are human needs.

The dominant mainstream indoctrination of masculinity requires men to separate from their humanity. Let this sink in.

This disconnection from self makes men susceptible to being manipulated, and the rage, isolation, and shame they feel are harnessed—because anger is profitable. Because sexism is profitable. Because racism is profitable. Because homophobia is profitable Because shame is profitable. Because divide and conquer is profitable, and it is the oldest trick in the book—because it works.

As bell hooks wrote in her landmark book The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love, “The first job of patriarchy is to disconnect men from themselves.”

The horror of it all is that shame, isolation, and disconnection breed violence, oppression, and rage.

Sometimes that violence is turned outward and expressed as racism, sexism, homo- and transphobia, degradation of the planet and its creatures, slash-and-burn development, domination, exploitation, hoarding, plain old assholery.

Sometimes, that violence is turned inward and expressed as depression, mental illness, self-harm, or suicide.

Everything we see happening in the world today is utterly predictable.

Disconnecting anyone from themselves results in violence—the only variable is how it manifests.

I consider this a crime against humanity.

The antidote, then? Give men (and everyone) the opportunity to reconnect with themselves. To heal. To love. To love themselves, so they can love others.

What would healing masculinity look like?

• Embracing the full, healthy range of expression + emotion.

• Learning how to express anger in healthy ways—not lash out in violence, rage, oppression—so that it can then be transmuted into generative activism.

• Learning how to regulate the nervous system, especially when it’s stuck in a protracted state of fight, which manifests as dominance, violence, exploitation, overpowering, general assholery.

• Learning the skills to connect intimately and vibrantly with all of life, not remain detached, apathetic, or scornful of connection.

• Learning how to discern what one’s needs and desires are, how to communicate them in a healthy way, and how to get them met in a healthy way—so we don’t resort to manipulation, control, or domination to get them met.

• Discovering what nourishing, regenerative relationships look like—with the earth, our loved ones, communities, and self.

• Dismantling the idea that growth = accumulation. Accumulation is just more stuff. Sometimes, that’s dead weight, imbalance, or false growth, or growth according to someone else’s beliefs. True growth includes letting go of certain things, as well as expanding in the direction of what we truly love—not what others tell us we should love.

• Shedding the myth that dominance = power. Dominance is actually a coping mechanism for NOT feeling one’s power. (What a paradigm-shift—the news isn’t that women feel powerful, it’s that MEN DON’T.)

• Understanding that true power comes from within—that love of self is key to our own power. This may well come with learning how to atone, make amends, forgive, grieve, learn new skills, unearth deep soul desires, share gifts, create joy, create health and a healthy environment.

• Learning that healthy, aligned masculinity is the perfect complement to healthy, aligned femininity—not its foe, controller, or oppressor, but its potentiator and balancer.

• Learning that healthy, aligned femininity potentiates and balances the masculine, as well.

• Knowing that this is a healing path for ALL humans, regardless of gender. That we are all flowing with the energies of masculinity, femininity, androgyny, non-binary, and countless other currents that we can heal and express in healthy ways.

• That the more we consciously understand and balance these energies, the more personal power we have to navigate and respond to life in healthy, happy ways.

• Reclaiming joy. Joy is your birthright. Turn it back on, and turn it all the way up. Then share it.

When we can learn new awareness and skills, and cultivate the courage to act on them, life itself becomes our sacred intimate, our partner in potentiation and joy.

That is true power, not toxic power—the kind that heals the self AND the collective in symbiosis. Healing is a collective act.

To heal masculinity, reconnect it.

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If you haven’t already, I highly encourage you to read The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks. I wish it were required reading for every human.

Create what you desire, don't just push against what you don't

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Put your energy into creating what you want to see in the world, not just against what you don’t.

Here’s something interesting:

The root words of “control” are contra and rota, which mean “against the wheel.”

The roots of “influence” are in and fluere, meaning “in the flow.”

Control is against.

Influence is flow.

We are so much more powerful in a flow state, when we are riding with a current we desire—even if we’re trying to redirect it—than we are when we’re pushing against a current, a force, or someone else.

Pushing against something by attempting to control or overpower actually reinforces the polarity and strengthens each opposing force.

If we’re not careful, we become entrenched in the pushing itself and don’t put any energy into where we’re actually trying to go—which deepens that groove of polarity.

“What we resist, persists.” This is why. This is the trap of the binary.

If we ride the current—or create it—we’re accepting what is AND adding our input to help direct it. It gets us out of the polarity of for/against and into some other possibility.

Choosing not to push against doesn’t have to look like surrender: it can look like transformation.

This is one of the reasons I work with my clients to focus on what they are FOR, how they desire to move the needle—and not just on what they are against.

For sure, there is plenty of work to be done in the world for those of us who hold a vision for a more beautiful planet—but true power comes from creating new possibilities.

Power is drained when we focus solely on resisting the old.

The power of creation amplifies itself. The power of control drains itself.

Make sure you are directing as much energy as possible to the NEW possibility, the one you are here to help create.

This is why I often use creativity as a gateway for self-development + systems evolution with my clients—to get us into our own unique flow of authentic power.

It’s our truest power because it’s generative, procreative, and evolutionary—not just a resistant stance to an external force, which creates a closed, binary system.

Doesn’t it feel more fun to be wild, playful, and expansive to create something with that energy than to try to control everything?

Aren’t there more possibilities in creativity and generativity than there are in destruction?

What’s the thing that only you can create? That’s your r/evolution.

What if choosing pleasure IS the paradigm shift?

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What if choosing pleasure… IS the paradigm shift?

Our senses are starving and overwhelmed at the same time.

We’re inundated with noise, traffic, screens, pop-ups, feeds, inboxes, polyester, 7,000 varieties of everything. These choices may be convenient, but they’re not truly pleasurable.

At the same time, so many of us are starved for fresh air, feeling moss beneath our feet, the smell of earth after rain, the taste of foraged greens, simple human touch. Things that seem so simple, but which bring us satiating pleasure.

All of the simple ways to feed our senses have health benefits—being outside, eating fresh, touch—which makes me wonder…

What if pleasure is actually homeostasis?

Here’s my POV:

-Systems seek balance through action, feedback, integration, and iteration.

-Humans are systems: our bodies, relationships, communities.

-Human feedback includes pleasure, pain, sensation, emotions, intuition, and instinct.

-We’ve created A LOT of narratives that glorify pain (No pain no gain! For your own good! What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger! Pay your dues! Do the math!)

-We’ve created narratives that denigrate pleasure (Laziness! Overindulgence! Hedonism! No napping!)

-These stories trained our nervous systems to believe pain = good, pleasure = bad.

WTF. 

Let’s flip the script.

What if healthy pleasure is a virtuous path?

What if pleasure is homeostasis?

Not addiction, overindulgence, nonconsensual, imbalanced, unhealthy pleasure. Definitely not nincompoopery.

(BTW, these aren’t actually pleasure, they’re numbing mechanisms for pain—which is not the same thing. True pleasure satiates us. False pleasure feeds us the promise of satiation as a way to dull the pain, but we never actually get full—because it’s a numbing mechanism, not a nourishing one—which is why we overindulge, form addiction, etc.)

Healthy pleasure honors our individual and communal feedback systems and their need for balance, healthy, connected growth:

~  Sensory, sensual experiences

~  Authentic connection with ourselves, with others, with nature

~  Vibrant health in body, mind, and heart

~  Nurturing

~ Generosity

~ Creativity

~ Generativity

~ Kindness

~ Peace

~Feeling our own healthy power and life force

~ Joy

I believe healthy, well-balanced humans don’t spend much time oppressing, warring, and hoarding because they know they could be having ecstatic sex, dancing, cultivating a beautiful garden, snorkeling with amazing marine life, making art, baking tart cherry pies, having coffee with friends, playing with their dogs/kids/lovers/whoever.

When we allow ourselves healthy pleasure, we don’t really have time for nincompoopery.

AND THAT IS BY DESIGN.

The brilliant human design that comes packaged with pleasure receptors—even the nincompoop base model.

Let’s use them as they are meant to be used: to steer us towards vibrant health + happiness, for ourselves and for each other.

That’s the pleasure rebellion. No rebelling required—just prioritize pleasure.

Why value emotional intelligence?

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Intelligence is a good thing. Thinking is a good thing. Intellect is a good thing. Reason is a good thing. Thoughtfulness is a good thing.

Here’s the thing: emotions have intelligence.

They are also a good thing.

When we develop the skills to listen to them, rather than tamp them down, we are actually amplifying our intelligence.

Emotions are information. They are data-conveying states that arise from the body’s experience of life.

If we dismiss our emotions in favor of our “rational” thoughts, we are dismissing half of our body’s own lived experience. Basically, it’s like gaslighting ourselves.

Not so intelligent.

Emotions exist for a reason: to communicate to us what we need and desire, and as part of the elegant human feedback system.

Emotions try to get us to course correct when needs and desires aren’t being met (fear, grief, anger, e.g.), and to feel satiated when they are (joy, pride, awe, e.g.). 

When emotions work in tandem with our reason, they are an elegant alignment system. 

To attempt to reason our way out of feeling emotion is to shut down a major line of communication—all of that rich information.

Our bodies have their own natural intelligence. When we learn to tune into it all, we give ourselves more awareness, which equals more ways to navigate ourselves and our lives.

That is powerful. That is power. That is human power. Why not use it all?

Why not be human and love humanness?

What could change in the world if we acted more human, not less?

From where I sit, we are living in an increasingly anti-sensory, anti-human world.

So much of life asks us to show up as brains, with bodies in tow as afterthoughts or inconveniences.

Emotions, exhaustion, illness, inconsistency, injury, are considered liabilities.

Have you ever asked yourself: liabilities to what?

Our humanness is a liability to systems that require relentless productivity, predictability, replication, perfection: all those things machines do so they can keep feeding a bigger machine.

But we are bodies.

We are soft around the edges. We intake life, and that affects us physically, emotionally, spiritually—as individuals, and as a collective.

We output life, and that affects us physically, emotionally, spiritually. We have needs and desires that must be met.

But we’ve lost sight of the true needs of humans in an attempt to model ourselves on machine-like perfection.

Humans need healthy connection with other humans. We need to be held. We need healthy pleasure. We need joy and rest and to feel our own fire. We need purpose and community. We need a healthy environment. We need to feel sunlight, clean water, rich soil.

But we’ve treated these as negotiables, afterthoughts, non-essentials—in service to our brains.

Somehow, that became “reasonable.”

The idea of perfection is lovely. Productivity can feel good. Consistency is a fantastic skill.

But there is no movement in perfection—if it changes, it is no longer perfect—so it holds itself rigid and impenetrable until it cracks under the strain.

Perfection cracks because life is change. Life is movement, fluid, sensory, material, and messy.

Our bodily intelligence is what takes in all of this data and feeds it to the brain so it can discern how to feel and act—but we’ve been getting this backwards, assuming it’s our brains that should instruct our bodies. 

Unknowingly, we’ve pit our beliefs against our nervous systems.

What if we flipped the script? What if we knew the body held prized intelligence?

What if we could learn to tune in to our bodily and emotional intelligence and then combine that with the knowledge and beliefs in our brains?

Then, we get to fulfill our purpose—not to be just really smart disembodied brains, but to be wholly human.

Humanful.

Then, feeding our brains with new knowledge and skills becomes an amazing asset to building happy, healthy lives—together.

Let’s do that.