Who's calling the shots around here?

At the core of my being, I consider myself to be a builder and a scientist.

I build products, technologies, and teams that help humans be better, and I create experiments to test my wild assumptions and hypotheses about the ever-changing world we live in.

I have noticed recently that I have been allowing my Human to be calling the shots with some of my experiments. I wrote yesterday about a major change to that. Let me explain.

My Human optimizes for moment to moment pleasure and pain avoidance with a very short term focus. My Higher Self only wants one thing: to actualize my potential within this lifetime.

With my Human at the helm, my experiments often result in falsified data.

For example, about a year ago I tried banishing alarm clocks and normal sleep schedules from my life. I would go to bed when I felt exhausted, and I would wake up naturally when my body was well rested. To my Human, this was incredible. Total sleep freedom. To my Higher Self, it was a hot mess. No schedule, no consistency, no rhythms, no structure. Every day was an adventure, which is certainly exciting but definitely not optimized for getting shit done.

When I'm out of alignment, the wisdom of my Higher Self gets diminished and the voice of my Human wins.

I'm realizing that I have done this with so many things. Work, diets, exercise, distractions, video games, finances, relationships. The list goes on and on.

When I run these micro experiments from an unaligned place, its easy for my Human to justify the results to be more focus on the here and the now. Now, there was nothing wrong with letting my Human run these experiments. At the time, I'm sure I needed more sleep or craved distractions. My Human has got my back. I know that.

This simple yet profound awareness explains so much of the inner conflict that has been present recently. I am past the stage of needing the protection of my Human. What a beautiful gift to have my Human know exactly what was needed when it was needed. Thank you.

Now it's time though to let the Higher Self back in the driver's seat so we can make it rain abundance on the whole damn planet.

How can I view myself from a higher perspective?

During a conversation at dinner last night, we stumbled upon a place that we all know is true: it is easier to see blind spots and opportunties for others than it is for ourselves.

While this is the core foundation of coaching and outside leadership, there is so much value to cultivating that skill internally as well. One of my main goals in working with leaders is to help them improve their self-assessment and understand what can be seen so easily from the outside.

This ties directly in with my favorite principle from Ray Dalio's book:

"Look at the machine from a higher level."

If we use Ray's analogy of our bodies as machines, we have a higher self that has the ability to write the code and make the decisions for this machine. Other times though, we let the machine overwrite the rules. We may have too much to drink, skip the gym, not get enough sleep, procrastinate at work on something important. Our higher self knows that all of these things are in our long term best interest, but the machine responds with a hard "Nope!"

How can I best design the system so that the machine is happy, satisfied, and satiated while allowing my higher self to be running the show?

It starts with a radical self-assessment and understanding the wants, needs and desires of the machine. If I neglect the human for long enough in pursuit of the path of the higher self, the human revolts and things break down. That's how I've tended to operate in the past. Long periods of high accomplishment followed by the crash.

Once I intimately understand the machine, it is then possible to design a life that allows the machine to feel like it's getting everything it wants while operating from the higher self.

I realized that this is a pretty far out there concept, and I'm still at the beginning steps of embracing this myself. I look forward to sharing more as I find the symphonic balance between the machine and the higher self.

What should I do?

Nothing.

Do nothing.

Life is too short for shoulds.

Time is way more valuable than a should.

Check in tomorrow if it becomes a must or a want.

If it never moves past a should, refuse to take the bait.

Am I making conscious choices?

Life is a series of trade offs.

We trade our time for money and trade our money for goods and services.

We delay gratification in order to receive larger rewards later.

We exercise and lift weights causing exhaustion and physical pain for both sort and long term health benefits or maybe just to look more attractive.

We eat super yummy foods that don't agree with our bodies and then pay the price later.

We watch just one more episode instead of getting an extra hour of sleep and don't feel fully energized the next day.

It's a similar story for consumers. We choose a more expensive product that is better for the planet. Or we may opt for better ingredients. Or maybe we go for worse ingredients but more aligned with our beliefs. Perhaps, we decide to optimize for price and take the cheapest option disregarding everything else. And still other times, we grab whatever is on the shelf in front of us without much thought at all to save time.

Trade offs are everywhere.

Here are some questions that I've been playing with:

• "Am I consciously making these choices?"
• "How do I ensure that these choices are aligned with with who I am and who I am becoming (and not part of an old story or perspective that no longer resonates with me)?"
• "How can I simplify my decision making so I don't spend 14 hours a day research every little nuance in my life?"

I want to make better choices. I believe that comes naturally from first being aware of the things we are optimizing for and then ensuring our actions to reflect that.

What happens when I don't leave time to integrate?

As we are gifted with a deeper understanding of what it means to be ourselves in this lifetime, new opportunities and challenges present themselves that were not available at previous levels of the video game.

Sometimes we get stuck on the same level for a long time. Some times we don't even realize we are still on the same level. And other times we try to use the Magic Whistle to get to more advanced levels only to realize we needed the skills from that previous level in order to advance further.

Yes, video games were an important part of my education helping me develop problem solving and critical thinking skills, but I digress.

This plays out in real life all the time.

The universe has a funny way of presenting us with similar lessons over and over again until we fully learn and integrate them. I have a handful of repeating themes that have continued to show up throughout my lifetime, and it is only very recently that I've started to notice these patterns.

One of these lessons that I haven't fully integrated is ironically leaving adequate time to integrate.

The world we live in does not reward us for integration. We must achieve and do and create and learn and advance. So we skip over the stage of integration immediately moving on to the next thing. Sometimes, we don't even wait until one thing finishes to start the next.

This repeating pattern in my life has always led to a similar outcome: when I don't leave time to integrate, life forces me to stop and integrate.

This has shown up in so many different forms, but it's always about getting me to slow down and notice what life is presenting to me. I might get sick after running myself into the grown physically. Some form of family emergency might pop up. A company might dissolve or blow up in spectacular fashion. An intimate relationship ends abruptly. Sometimes it's a new form, and other times it's an eerily similar form. Every time though I suddenly have space to step back and revisit what was being revealed at the previous level.

I used to be unaware and unconscious that this was happening. Just plowing through life from one thing to the next. More achievement. More information. More clients. More employees. More books. More conferences. And then, BAM! Something happens to force a hard reset.

I do my best now to allow for more time to integrate, so life doesn't have to be so forceful. And when it's time to slow down again, it feels more like gratitude than pain as I have the opportunity to revisit the previous season and gain greater perspective and understanding.

Bottom line: you either create adequate time to integrate or life will, often unpleasantly, force you to do so.