Are tarot cards a gateway to the divine?

I have a confession to make.

Tarot cards played a significant role on my personal journey into mindfulness and spirituality.

When I lived in San Francisco, we had a deck of Spirit Animals cards in our meditation room. I enjoyed pulling cards from the deck. It was purely entertainment at first. And then it became a practice of self reflection. What is this card trying to show me?

I’d start to notice coincidences. I’d pull the Deer card right before crossing a mother deer on my hike. I’d pull a Simplicity card after a group of people shared that my genius is making complex things simple.

I’m aware of biases, randomness and the human desire to connect the dots. But this went far beyond that for me.

The synchronicities and interconnectedness that I saw occurring with tarot cards started appearing in other areas of my life. The cards opened up a pathway of possibility that previously was closed. A true “what if” was now unfolding.

What if everything and everyone is connected somehow, someway, and we’ve been conditioned by society to feel separate? What if we’ve always been deeply intertwined with nature and the cosmos and each other, and we’ve created stories over the centuries to mute this?

This is where my current beliefs reside. I have many more questions than answers that are constantly evolving, but I believe that there is some greater interconnectedness at play. It is a connection that we have sacrificed for convenience. We have become so good at dismissing it that it requires a deep remembering and listening to even get a taste of it. It’s a belief that I’m excited to continue exploring over the course of this lifetime, and I’m grateful for those $20 tarot cards from Amazon for their part in this story.

Where do I begin?

With today being the first day of a new decade, it felt appropriate to write about some of the feelings that come up at the beginnings.

I have started more companies in my life than I ever imagined. I've spent time on additional products that I never even made it to the official company stage of life. And I'm right in the middle of starting something again.

And almost always there's been this question of "where do I even begin?"

There's so much to build, read, write, create, explore, learn, grow, and do that it can feel overwhelming. I've found this simple formula that has served me well, and I'm writing about it now as a reminder.

In solving any complex problem or building anything signficant, I've found it's best to look for the building blocks to unlock the next level.

Break down the situation into the significant and major accomplishments that make the rest of the game easier. Level up each step of the way to accomplish bigger and better things.

Here's a quick real life example of this.

When we started NY Tech Day, neither myself nor my partner had any connections in the NYC tech community. We didn't have an audience to jump start this. We were literally started from scratch with a powerful idea and a lot of skeptics.

I knew to hit the massive numbers we were promoting and expecting, we needed to up level quickly. I started by getting two prominent startups to agree to attend as featured startups. It took a list of 50 dream startups to get there: 48 no's to get to 2 yes's. With those two on board, we were able to get some initial press. Now with 2 featured startups and a few press articles, we were able to attract investor interest. Then the attendees started flowing. Then the sponsorship sales became easier. And finally the rest of the startups jumped on board. None of that could have been done without executing at each level of the game. Building blocks.

All told, we ended up with 200 startup exhibitors, 4000 attendees and over 10 high dollar sponsors for a first year event in a brand new market.

As I sit here at the beginning of this new year and with this new venture contemplating where to start, I'm reminded of the simple and powerful answer.

Start on Day 1. Level 1. Figure out the skills required to complete this level and move on to the next.

Why is simplicity so damn sexy?

One of my self-described super powers is bringing simplicity to the complex, and yet I continue to find opportunities to simplify my own life and environment.

My personal website was one of those areas that wasn't so simple. I had a hero video with the tech stack from The Avengers (it was dope), artistically photoshopped images, beautiful backgrounds and color patterns. And as much fun as it was to create it, it felt like too much. If people didn't see how creative my website could be, am I still creative?!

My website wasn’t inspiring me to write more, it felt stale, and it felt forced.

So I spent some time recently redesigning it down to the essentials. It's easier for me to write and publish more. There's no fluff or theatrics. No proving. Just an outlet for my Thoughts and an easy format for people to follow along.

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Spending two years in San Francisco, I've built relationships with some amazing visionaries and futurists.

They would share these beautiful ideas of where we are going and what's possible, and it's incredibly inspiring. Almost without fail, the more forward thinking they are, the more difficult it is for them to express what was going on inside their head. 30 minutes into the conversation and I would finally start to get it.

All of that complexity makes it next to impossible to get started. It's too far out in the future. Where do we even begin?

We as Creators and leaders have to do our best to simplify. Bring things back to the present moment in tasks, ideas and bite-sized chunks that can be manageable. The complex, future visions are important, but the beauty is in the simplicity.

I would often use the "my nephew" test with people. He's 8 years old. If he can't understand what you're talking about or figure out how to use your app or what problem you are solving, then there's opportunity to simplify. When he was 3 years old, he opened up snapchat and figured out how to post a snap. That's an admirable benchmark for ease of use.

Keep it simple. It is more effective, better for engagement, better for retention, and easier to build, iterate and improve.

We have to fight the urge to believe that more features, more complexity, bigger words and jargon make us look smarter and more sophisticated. The only one we are trying to prove that to is ourselves. Let it go.

Simple works. Be comfortable and confident in the simplicity and the results will speak for themselves.

Isn't blogging dying?

Probably, yes. It certainly feels like blogging is becoming a fossil of the days of internet past.

And I kinda like it even more for that.

There's arguably much better methods of marketing online these days. There's better ways to get content distribution. There's better ROI out there for getting eyeballs to see your message.

But.

I'm not writing again for page clicks. I'm not building an audience to monetize. I'm writing consistently again for these reasons (in order):

1. To clarify and simply my own thinking and understanding of things that are important to me
2. To establish a creative outlet for asking and answers powerful questions that are fascinating to me in the moment
3. To create a historical record of my own growth and development over time (some of those original blog posts are super cringeworthy)
4. To have something to share with people when these questions come up in coaching and leadership conversations when there's a desire to dig deeper

Any other benefits from publishing these posts consistently again feels like a bonus. And, since I'm on the subject, I'll share a few other random thoughts about what I'm doing here.

• I've decided to follow a Q&A format for these posts. I love questions. So each post will be a question that I've been thinking about, that comes up in meditation or conversation, or a question that I've answered too many times ;)
• I've decided to have a mailing list for this simply for ease of use for people who want to consume this content but don't enjoy the inconsistency of my writing times (I'll send out a weekly email with a summary of all of the posts for the week)
• I am always open to new questions or topics. If there are any specific requests, send them over and if they fit roughly into the intersection of leadership, innovation and entrepreneurship I'll do my best to simply my thoughts for you.

While blogging and short to medium length content is quite what it used to be, it all depends on what you are looking to get out of it. For me, it's the perfect format for clarity, simplicity, creativity and documenting my thoughts.