Here’s why your personal brand sucks. Here’s why you’re trying to be a clone of Chris Brogan or CC Chapman or Whitney Hoffman and failing miserably at it. It’s not because you’re stupid (well, most of you aren’t, except for the folks who repeatedly get phished on Twitter for clicking on “LOL iz this u” links – yeah, you’re stupid), it’s not because you’re boring (again, most of you aren’t, but if your Twitterstream is filled only with “New Blog Post: …” – yeah, you’re boring), it’s because you’ve failed to distill your essential quality.

Your essential quality is something that transcends any particular job, technology, platform, or idea. Your business card may say that you’re a database engineer or a sales associate or the Vice President of Strategy and Innovation, but that’s not what’s essential about you. What’s essential about you is a quality, a trait, a method of working in the world that is unique to you and very difficult to even put into words, much less copy.

Your essential quality will take you years, possibly a good chunk of your life, to even realize. Once you know it, though, once you find it and cultivate it, you rise rapidly above your peers. You rocket past them because you know this strength of yours and can focus what you do in your life to feed it and deliver results that no one else can deliver.

It’s taken me close to two decades to figure out my own. Put into words succinctly, I’m really good at playing with blocks. I used to call it derivative thinking, but that’s largely meaningless outside my skull. What I mean by playing with blocks is that I can see all these different pieces of systems and put them together in new and different ways. This lets me do things like make odd Twitter videos combining tools and techniques together. This lets me be a competent martial arts practitioner, breaking free of only pre-arranged routines to use the tools in whatever fits the moment. This lets me talk to people of wildly different professions and trades and find ways to make whatever I have work with their businesses, and vice versa.

What you’re good at, what your essential quality is, what makes you who you are isn’t something anyone else can tell you. Others can’t see inside your head, just the results that you produce – and how you got to those results is different from your perspective than anyone else’s. Defining and refining your essential quality takes a lot of introspection and a lot of self-honesty, because as you investigate yourself more and more, you realize all the things that you’re not good at, some of which may have defined your very identity in the past.

You’ll have to let go of an awful lot that you think is you. For years, I thought I was a damn good technology professional. I’m not. I’m a certain kind of thinker whose essential quality happens to work well with technology. In the past half decade or so, I’ve thought I was a marketer, and heck, other people think so and even made me a professor of marketing. I’m not. My essential quality works well in marketing, too. In another decade, who knows what I’ll be doing, but it will have that essential quality at its core.

The one suggestion I can offer if you have the guts, the bravery, to set out on that journey is to find a creative outlet for expression of some kind. Photography, art, music, dance, playing World of Warcraft, writing, speaking, martial arts, anything that lets you express yourself will do, because it will help you to pull out of yourself the various ways you express your essential quality. The process of figuring out what I’m good at took years. Most of it came from practicing the martial arts, because the method in which I train is ideally optimized for this kind of thinking, which means I get to practice the pure form of how I think on a regular basis in a way that delivers instant, unmistakeable feedback. Your method of figuring out what you’re good at will differ, but I recommend it be something expressive so that you can see your essential quality in action.

Once you figure out your essential quality, your personal brand will take care of itself. You won’t even need to name it or publicize it on your blog or Facebook page, because you’ll be so damn good at being yourself that your name will become your brand. Folks might not even be able to put into words why it is they like you or want to work with you. They’ll just know that they do, that they want to be around you, that they want to work with you, hire you, marry you, etc.

You will transcend personal branding itself, and ultimately live the life you were meant to live: yours.

Good luck on your journey. It’s long, but the destination is worth the journey.

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“Serendipity is the effect by which one accidentally stumbles upon something fortunate, especially while looking for something entirely unrelated.” – Wikipedia

I’ll be contrarian to my good friend Chris Brogan in saying that serendipity shouldn’t matter to you. Here’s what I mean. There’s an interesting expression in ninjutsu: banpen fugyo. Literally, change, never surprised. Toshitsugu Takamatsu, the previous headmaster of the Togakure Ryu ninjutsu school, is quoted as saying there’s no such thing as surprise for the ninja.

Stephen K. Hayes, my teacher’s teacher, often says that luck is merely energy that is unchanneled.

If you’re really good – really good – at life, if you’re working towards mastery of all that life has to offer and all the potential you have in life, then surprise and serendipity should be the gravy. They should be the bonuses at best. Why?

At the Web 2.0 Open, one of the exercises I asked people to do (adapted from Stephen K. Hayes’ phenomenal Evocation workshop) is to pick out something in your life that seemed like a lottery ticket sort of experience. Pick out something that was just wow! and good fortune came your way, and tell that story to a friend. During the event, I asked people to talk to the person next to them about their experiences, telling this story of a magical moment in their life when something fortunate happened. I told my story of co-founding PodCamp with Chris Brogan and suddenly finding myself on a jet to Sweden to put on PodCamp Europe at Jeff Pulver’s behest.

Serendipity, right? Good luck, right?

The second half of this particular exercise was to take the exact same story but retell it in a fashion where no luck was involved, where you made it happen and the natural course of events was that your efforts and focus created the outcome of success. I asked people to exaggerate if they needed to, but make the story work. Again, my story was of how hard Chris and I worked to create PodCamp and make it the success it was, and naturally events occurred which led to us being asked to create PodCamp Europe.

Here’s the funny thing: with a significant majority of the room, very little or no exaggeration was needed. Very little. Most people were able to find enough factual evidence in their lottery ticket moment of all the things they had done, all the choices they had made, that led to their good fortune. More than a few spirits perked up as they realized just how much of a hand they had in their “luck”.

This is the power that you have, the power that you give away, the power that you forfeit when you chase serendipity, when you hope for good things to happen just because instead of taking the reins for yourself.

Take charge of your life. Take charge of your destiny. Yes, leave room for hope and serendipity, leave room for good things to happen as bonuses to what you’re already doing, but do not live another day in your already too short life counting on hope when you have the capacity, the capability to take the wheel of the ship for yourself, to make good things happen, and to set the stage for the results you want.

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Go read this story on CNN about a two and a half hour rape of a 15 year old at a San Francisco high school function as nearly two dozen people stood around did nothing, or worse, joined in. No one called 911. No one got help. Very reminiscent of the Kitty Genovese case and the bystander effect.

How do you stop something like this?

How do you counteract something like this?

How do you prevent something like this from ever happening in the first place?

Philip Zimbardo, of the Stanford Prison Experiment, has an elegant solution. The problem is the diffusion of responsibility. When a group of people are involved, no one person feels responsible. Only someone who steps forward, someone willing to take risks of social and physical violence, someone willing to bear the burden of breaking a conforming mindset can stop this.

In short, a hero.

Watch this TED talk featuring this discussion:

Dr. Zimbardo’s idea of hero courses is a good one, but probably won’t come to a school, church, or workplace near you any time soon. So how do you get started on this today? His idea of heroic imagination has deep, deep roots, stretching back over thousands of years, across multiple continents. At Stephen K. Hayes’ Evocation seminar, one of the exercises done by participants was a detailed exploration of what our inner superhero looks like, sounds like, and acts like. While it’s impossible to recreate even a fraction of that seminar in the bits and bytes of a blog post, I’ll leave you with a question you can ponder, one that will get you that first step down the path towards finding your own superhero.

Instead of thinking about superhero powers, think about superhero actions.

If you had all the superhero powers you wanted and needed, what would you as a hero stand for, and what in all of the world would you first fight against?

That single question will tell you not the kind of superhero that exists in your daydreams, but the one that exists inside of you right now.

What do you stand for?
What do you stand against?

Think about that as you ponder the San Francisco rape, the Kitty Genovese bystander effect, and Dr. Zimbardo’s lecture. That will be the first step towards awakening your superhero and the superheroes of all those around you.

Do it soon. Do it now. Right now, more than ever, our world needs as many heroes as it can get – including you.

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It’s nearly impossible for me to describe exactly what Evocation was or what happened in a general sense because Evocation was an intensely personal exploration of understanding our self-imposed limits and how to shatter the barriers of what’s holding us back from achieving true success in the world. Evocation was a completely different seminar for each person who attended because every person in the room faced different, unique challenges in their lives. The areas of exploration and growth that I needed to explore, the questions I needed answers to were very different than the ones of the person sitting next to me.

Evocation was exactly as it sounds – a seminar that evoked reactions, thoughts, and insights about our problems with our own minds, memories, emotions, and experiences acting as both student and teacher, both problem and solution. It was an esoteric seminar in the most powerful sense of the word esoteric – all the good stuff was all direct experience rather than textbook learning, which is another reason why it’s so hard to describe.

Here’s an example of esoteric. Let’s take something that a lot of people haven’t eaten: a lychee nut. If you’ve had lychees, all I have to do is say the word and it evokes the taste, scent, and experience of eating one. If you’ve never had a lychee, no amount of verbiage in this post will ever come close to granting you the whole, authentic experience of biting into one. The only way you can truly understand a lychee nut is to have the direct experience. I can tell you perhaps a local store near you that sells them, or another name under which it might be sold, but in the end, the experience of biting into one and the wonderful taste it imparts (if it’s fresh and ripe) is something you can only experience.

In fact, the more I might try to blog about a lychee, the less likely you might be to try it. I might stumble upon an explanation of a lychee that’s good enough for the casually curious, and once you’ve got that explanation, you’ll pass it by. Your mind will say, well, we have a general idea of what it’s probably like (even though you have no idea whatsoever), so it’s not worth running out to the store to get one.

So rather than write about Evocation any more or how life changing an experience it was for me – heck, I came away with an entirely new sense of identity and self, a better, more powerful version of the me that got on a plane in Boston last week – I’ll only suggest that the next time Stephen K. Hayes offers a seminar like Evocation in the future, screw Blogworld (or whatever else is happening then) and go to Dayton to train with him. The experience will be unlike anything else you’ve ever done, and the tools you’ll get to make your life better, make your business more successful, and make you happier as a human being will be worth it.

You will emerge with an astonishingly clear vision of who you are supposed to be in this life, the true, authentic, heroic self that is inside of you right now, silently screaming to be free.

I’ll close for now by extending my sincerest thanks to my teachers, Mark Davis of the Boston Martial Arts Center, and Stephen K. Hayes, for an incredible Evocation experience that was infinitely more valuable than anything I might have won in Vegas, and a hearty “see you next time!” to my fellow Evocation participants.

There will be much more to come in the days ahead as the lessons of Evocation settle into my mind and begin to produce the results I want to create. I hope you’ll stick around as we explore together what’s possible.

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We are an optimistic people as a whole. We believe in beating the odds, in luck, in winning against the improbably. Our culture is infused with these beliefs, from superheroes saving the day and defusing the bomb with seconds to go on the clock to sports teams that pull out amazing victories from nearly certain defeat. We’ve conditioned ourselves to believe that there is always a way to win, and that more often than not, luck or fate can swing our way, which explains why casinos are perpetually crowded.

What do you do, however, when you face a situation in which you cannot win? How do you deal with facing truly, legitimately impossible odds?

The answer, from a martial perspective, might surprise you. You surrender to the inevitable. In the martial arts, there are specific techniques for this, sutemi-waza, sacrifice techniques. Rather than fighting all out and wasting what resources you do have left on a fight you can’t win, you surrender and go with the flow – and sometimes, just sometimes an opportunity appears that was previously invisible, an opportunity perhaps not to win yourself, but to play a part in an ultimately successful outcome.

In truly unwinnable situations, this might be laying the groundwork for someone else to take up your fight, whether it’s sabotaging enemy supply lines or feeding your enemies bad information to make it easier for your allies to win after your capture and execution. This might be focusing all of your remaining time to raising money and championing the cause of an organization dedicated to defeating the disease that killed you. Ultimately, it’s about taking what resources you still have available and using them for maximum effect before your time is up, whether that’s a moment on a battlefield, a year until your corporation declares bankruptcy and locks the doors, or a decade until a disease claims you. Use what you have while you are able.

The ultimate unwinnable fight is against death itself. Not too far from my office, there’s a centuries-old graveyard that I walk through at lunch when it’s pleasant out. Walking by the headstones, I get brief glimpses of lives and people I’ve never known. I see headstones denoting deaths of people who, when their time came, were younger than I am today. It’s a stark reminder that we’re all only here for a little while, and to make use of what resources we have during that time for maximum impact.

As I walk, I wonder – in two centuries after my death, what will people be pondering as they stroll past my grave?

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None of these people will succeed. Not one of them.

Why can’t you copy these people? Why can’t you achieve the same success they have if you do the same things they do, or use the same gear they do?

You’re not them. That’s why.

So what if you want to achieve their levels of success? How do you do that if you can’t be them? You have to decide instead to model their outcomes. Here’s an example. Instead of saying that I want to be just like Stephen K. Hayes in martial skill, it’s more productive for me to say that I want to achieve the same outcomes as him on both a macro and micro scale. I’ll look not necessarily just at what he does in a technique to make it work, but also at what the outcomes are on his training partner – loss of balance, inability to counterattack, a fall at a certain angle.

What’s the difference? By focusing on outcomes, I know what capabilities and skills I have that can generate those same or similar outcomes. See, I don’t have Stephen K. Hayes’ skills or abilities, so for me to just try to mimic and copy him will only result in failures for me, or sporadic successes at best. By focusing on the results I want to copy, I have a better chance of making them happen because I know what my capabilities are with my own skills and abilities, and I know what combinations of my skills and abilities can create those outcomes.

For example, Stephen K. Hayes may be able to unbalance someone simply by virtue of his position relative to them. My level of skill in positioning isn’t nearly as good, but I know I can achieve a similar effect by punching someone in the face in a certain way. The techniques and minutiae are different, but the outcome – a person falling backwards in a certain direction – is the same, and if the technique’s success is contingent on that person falling backwards just so, we’ll both achieve success. Mine requires more compensation for skills I don’t yet have, but the outcome is the same. The success is the same.

It’s important to keep in mind that some results I won’t be able to get to with my current skill set, no matter what, in the same way that my general understanding of physics will not, no matter how creative I am with my skills, get me to a point where I can create a particle accelerator in my backyard next week. I can, however, figure out what results are part of the pathway to that end result that are within reach now and start working on those.

Think about this in your own quest for success, and when you encounter a roadblock, rather than try to merely copy the person who has achieved the success you want, look at their outcomes and which outcomes you can achieve with your own tools, abilities, skills, networks, and power.

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I’d like to take a few moments to say that while the student certainly made effective use of his katana that a katana isn’t exactly the ideal home defense weapon. Here’s why: it’s a really big weapon indoors. Outdoors (where, according to some accounts the confrontation took place, others putting it in the house or in a garage), a katana is a fine weapon. Its length, edge, and relatively lightness (compared to heavier European swords or even older Japanese tachi swords) make it a formidable amplifier, and against a skilled practitioner, it’s extremely hard to overcome.

Indoors…

You see the general problem. Unless you’ve had a great deal of practice using a sword indoors, chances are your home, apartment, or office will be working against you with a weapon designed for use on a battlefield.

Please accept these bits of unsolicited advice from a guy who’s practiced with swords a lot and studied self defense a lot:

1. If someone’s in your home and you have the option to do so, run like hell and call the police. No piece of property is worth risking your life for, and virtually everything except maybe sentimental items can be replaced.

2. If running like hell isn’t an option, get yourself and anyone else you care about together inside, lock and bar an interior room, and call the police.

3. If you have no other choice, meaning that either someone you love or you are directly in harm’s way with no other resort, then and only then should you attempt confrontation, and probably not with a sword unless you’ve got nothing else or you’ve got an awful lot of training under your belt. That can of fake lavender air freshener or toilet cleaner under your sink will probably work better to confuse and disorient a home invader long enough to let you escape, rather than a sword.

Other views will differ, of course, but at least in what we teach at the Boston Martial Arts Center, your very best bet is always self preservation, escape and evasion, then defensive tactics, then as a last resort, offensive tactics. Not only does this order of priorities give you the best chance of coming out of a self defense situation safely, but it also is most likely to protect you legally if the case goes to court. If, in your testimonial, you explain to the authorities, the judge and jury, and legal counsel that you made every effort to escape and evade, to defend, and only when you were given no other choice and you believed serious or mortal harm was imminent did you take a life, you are likely to be cleared of any charges of excessive force.

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The kamidana traditionally has a few common items in it – a shimenawa rope, designating it as a sacred place, above or nearby. There’s a kagami mirror, signifying that the true source of your power comes from you, if you can only see clearly enough to recognize it, a set of sakaki greens, typically pine or other evergreen cuttings, symbolizing life and growth, tomyo candles that hold purifying fire and light your way, osonaemono offerings of rice, water, and salt (offering food for the ancient spirits, symbolizing giving respect to all who have come before you), and a kagaribitate watch fire stand, symbolic of standing guard against evil.

So what does this have to do with anything? Well, the idea of a spiritual seat, or a place of power, is something that a lot of us don’t have any more. Many have places of power like the church on Sunday morning, the temple on Friday night, the dojo, but rarely do we have a place of power near to us, and for those that travel a lot for business, what places of power you do have (like home) you’re away from an awful lot of the time.

Give some consideration to creating a kamidana for yourself in your own home, and a portable one for on the road. In either, think about the things that you derive power and strength from. The classical Shinto kamidana might resonate with you, but chances are if you’re not of Japanese heritage or an avid practitioner of classical Japanese martial arts, it’ll probably be a curiosity more than anything else. Look instead at your own sources of power, your own culture, personal history, and traditions for these things:

- What designates a sacred place for you? It might be a symbol, like a crucifix or the Star of David, or something as simple as a favorite colored cloth.
- What designates self reflection for you? A small hand mirror might be appropriate, or a crystal.
- What designates growth for you? A freshly cut flower? A few green leaves? A small potted plant? Heck, even a tank of sea monkeys if that’s what means growth to you.
- What designates all that is light, bright, and right in your world? If you’re a parent, perhaps it’s a photo of your child or a favorite drawing they’ve made for you. If you’re a pet lover, maybe it’s your pet’s photo. Whatever you love and whatever you fight for in the world, this is it.
- What designates a connection to meaningful parts of your past? A locket from your grandmother, maybe, or an aged family photo, perhaps. Find something in your past that is symbolic of your roots’ strength.
- What designates watchfulness against negative habits, energy, people, and events? Maybe it’s an icon of a saint in your tradition or another holy figure. Maybe it’s a favorite quote on a small card, or a picture of a hero that you associate strongly with.

Take the time to set up a spiritual shelf, a little place of your own power, something that is in a protected little space somewhere in your home or office. It doesn’t have to be big or obvious – you can even keep it in a desk drawer if need be, but make it a place that you use to remind you of what you stand for, what your true power is, and what you want to achieve in the world. Use it daily, even for just a few moments, to focus your mind and take a few deep breaths, reconnecting.

If you travel a lot, take a small cloth with you and items that designate each of the meanings, and in your hotel room, set up this little place with your stuff that again reminds you of what’s important to you. In those lonely moments when you miss home and all that it symbolizes, looking at your own symbols of what you’re doing the travel for will help you forge on and refresh the connections you have to your own power.

Try it and see how it works for you!

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They tend to grow, from a little tiny scratch, barely worth noticing, to a monstrously large spiderweb in a fairly short amount of time, and what’s more, as the crack gets bigger, its rate of growth accelerates. The vibration of the car, of your driving, makes the glass crack all the more quickly. The speed from a scratch to an inch takes time – the speed from an inch to a foot is startlingly fast, and before you know it, you’re at the shop getting a new windshield.

When it comes to limitations, whether internal or external, breaking through them very often isn’t a sledgehammer’s swing to victory. More often, it’s just a small crack in the glass – but that first breaking point is the key to that barrier eventually shattering into dust.

For example, there’s a student at the Boston Martial Arts Center who’s relatively new. For privacy reasons, we’ll just call her Katie. Started not too long ago. She came in with no confidence, no belief in herself, and not even a clear sense of why she was there. Katie started taking classes, started learning just a few of the basics, and one day during a class I was teaching, she delivered a solid lead jab to her partner’s heavily-padded target. Her partner, a guy who probably outweighs her by a hundred pounds or so, was knocked back and down.

That was the crack in the glass for Katie. Prior to that day, the idea of knocking down someone with a lead jab was ludicrous for her. But in that moment, the glass cracked, and suddenly what was impossible was not only possible, but real. That changed her instantaneously and irrevocably, and now, just a few weeks later, Katie’s a different person. Her mind shattered a limitation and is now wondering what other barriers and limitations she has that are equally vulnerable, equally breakable.

The momentum of the glass cracking is picking up.

Now, you don’t have to be a martial artist to experience this. You do have to be willing to step outside your comfort zone, try something out, be completely okay with failing, and be tenacious in trying until you do reach at least one success, until you know that impossible is possible and can be made manifest, made real. Maybe it’s cooking a new dish that’s legendary for its difficulty. Maybe it’s publicly showing that painting you’re privately proud of but anxious about others seeing. Maybe it’s standing in front of an audience and speaking for half an hour.

Whatever your limitations are, know that once you make even the tiniest crack in them, as long as you keep driving, momentum will be on your side, and your barriers can be shattered.

Keep on driving!

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Fear. Fear of ridicule, of loss, of pain. The folks who are winners in life are the folks who have conquered their fears, trampled them as they ran towards the future. The folks who are not winners in life are the folks who are shackled by their fears, imprisoned in their self-made cages.

Let me tell you a story about fear, from the martial arts. A long time ago, a decade ago, the test in my dojo to go from green belt (intermediate) to brown belt (advanced) was incredibly rigorous. The test was typically three parts. In the first part, you as the candidate faced off against one of the senior black belts in the dojo. They had a shinai – a four foot bamboo practice sword that, while it wouldn’t cut flesh or break bones, would still hurt like hell. Their mission was to try and beat you with the stick for what seemed like an eternity. Your mission as the candidate was to escape and evade them as much as possible – not even to defend or counterattack (which was usually met with a stick to the face) – just to evade and escape.

The second part of the test was similar but unarmed, and the third part of the test, after your adrenaline was shot and your body was near exhaustion, was to demonstrate techniques in application. Somehow you had to get past your own exhaustion and summon not only physical strength but also intellectual sharpness.

During my first attempt at the brown belt test, I was outside in a rocky field, about halfway through the first part of the test. I had managed to evade with relative success the bamboo sword, when suddenly the sword came at my feet. Instinctively, I did a dive roll over the sword, but badly miscalculated where I was in the field. I landed, shoulder first, on a fairly large rock and dislocated my shoulder.

It took the better part of 3 months to heal that injury, including living in a cast for 6 weeks, and some fairly intensive physical therapy, as I’d separated and torn up a lot of my shoulder. Worse, I’d taken a massive hit to my own confidence. Getting back into the dojo was hard enough, but once I was back in class, I found that I was physically afraid of doing certain techniques for fear of re-injuring myself. It took a lot of time for me to slowly ease myself back into the full swing of things, and before I knew it, testing time had rolled around again.

Suddenly, a test that was a source of anxiety and fear the first time around became a gigantic monster made of fear the second time. I had to fight more than just a black belt with a practice sword – I had to fight my fear of re-injury, my fear of humiliation, my fear of the test and all it had symbolized as my greatest failure in the martial arts to that point.

The second time through, I failed the test again. That was okay, because it didn’t feel like a failure to me – I got through it uninjured, and so at least one fear was put down. One of the senior black belts offered to coach me in the weeks after that second test, to help me with the continued fears of injury by more or less punching me silly every week until I got better and better at evading and escaping.

The third time through the test, I felt the familiar fears, but they were muted. They could shout that I couldn’t do it, that I should just give up, that it was crazy for me to keep taking risks, but what won the day was knowing that I had the tools and the little successes and victories along the way.

I passed.

Not only did I pass, but I passed well, from what the other judges had said. My fears lost, and in that moment, my passing had exploded the confidence I felt in myself, in my training, in my teachers, and in everything I had done up to that point. All of the darkness fell away, and I came away from the experience transformed, ready to advance, ready to explore my new potential.

I tell you this story so that you can know that your fears can be conquered. Your fears can be beaten. What helped me beat my fears was knowledge and momentum – small successes that to others appeared like defeats but to me were progress against my fears, my greatest enemy. Whatever it is that you fear, start eroding at those fears today. Take little steps, little bites out of the fears. Prove to yourself that you can win against them, that you can beat them back, that you can get out of your own way long enough to win.

The strength that you need to find in yourself comes from that momentum, from those little victories that you string together. If you fear your body image, start walking or running, just a little bit, and commit each day to going just one step farther. If you fear speaking in public, start by speaking to yourself, then speaking to your webcam, then moving to small groups. Take each success and build on it until you’ve built a bridge over your fears.

The final ingredient you’ll need is the support of true friends, friends who will help you acknowledge your fears and that having fears is okay, who will support you and if they’ve faced those same fears, guide and mentor you. If you are mentoring someone, teaching them, coaching them, it’s vital that you do not make things easy for them. No fear means no opportunity to face your fear and beat it.

With this triumvirate – belief in yourself, belief in a proven way to beat your fears, belief in a strong community of friends to catch you when you fall – there is no fear you cannot overcome. If you want to improve yourself, search deep inside for your fears, pick one, and slowly start chipping away it it. Like all prisons, there’s always a weak spot from which you can make your escape.

Photo credit: Matthew Ebel

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What if, though, you don’t have a choice? What if it’s a red ocean and by circumstance or necessity you don’t have the luxury of moving to a blue ocean? How do you win when the odds are stacked against you in every way possible? Here’s a few thoughts from ninjutsu.

1. No perimeter is 100% secure. When it comes to finding your way into a C level office to have an opinion heard or finding your way to a job interview, there are gatekeepers, keymasters, etc. No perimeter is fully secure. There is almost always a way in.

Some thoughts: neutralize the gatekeeper, or even better, co-opt the gatekeeper. Find a way to ally yourself with a gatekeeper and then you’ve got your own personal concierge. If the gatekeeper is also an advisor, so much the better. Find the weak spot on the perimeter and press until you’re through.

2. Cultivate assets early and often. This is an old, old ninja strategy called katsura otoko, where you put an agent into an enemy territory long before – as in years or decades before – you need them. Disguised as a member of the community, they secretly gather information and recruit new allies to your army, but they’re rarely pressed into service until a critical moment.

You know all those junior people at corporations, the interns, the entry level folks? Find the promising ones in your own company or your competitor’s company and give them a hand. Mentor them. Help them out where you can in subtle ways. As time passes, you’ll not only gain their trust but you’ll also rise in power in the company along with them. In a few years, that entry level assistant may be EVP, and your friendship and efforts will have gotten you farther inside than you could possibly have otherwise done.

3. Look for crisis to be helpful. In old ninjutsu, the joei no jutsu strategy was to send in your infiltration teams to an area under severe crisis, like when an army was about to invade. The local warlord, desperate to conscript as many troops as possible, grabbed everyone they could with minimal or no background checks. What would be cautious recruitment in peacetime became haphazard carelessness in wartime. As a result, ninja agents got swept up into the enemy ranks and were positioned to gather information or conduct sabotage.

Every company facing a crisis of some kind looks for as many resources as possible, from hiring new employees to pulling in outside consultants. In a PR crisis, any friendly voice is welcomed. These are the times when you deploy your forces, volunteering, advocating, and being present and available to help. Putting yourself on someone’s radar in good times can be tough, as they have no need for you. Putting yourself on a VP’s radar in a time of crisis can secure your position of influence rapidly.

None of these strategies are exclusive to a red ocean environment, but they work well in nearly any environment due to human nature. If you as someone who is underrepresented want to break down barriers without burning bridges, consider looking at these and many other infiltration and subversion methods to sneak your way past glass ceilings and locked doors to the prize that you covet. If you as a small business want to win against much larger competitors and difficult conditions, these strategies have been proven time and again in the highest stakes contests of all on the battlefield.

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@ambercadabra: Ah, o’Hare on a Monday AM. So many friendly people. Ahem.
@cspenn: Watch footfalls. It’s an easy way to pass time in crowds.

What did this mean?

Footfalls are, simply put, how people walk. Some people walk as if they’re gliding across the floor with grace; others look like they’ve just newly risen from the grave as zombies. All of the walks and footfalls are unique and are signatures of our past and present. Watching footfalls in a public space gives you great insight into the people around you.

What’s interesting about the footfall from a ninjutsu perspective comes from a lesson in the middle level material of the Koto family tradition. There’s a moment in someone’s walk, after their foot has been placed or committed but before their weight has been transferred, during which you can strike them with relatively little force and knock them back or on their butt. Strike them sufficiently hard enough at that moment and you might even put their lights out, because the body is wholly expecting the footfall to be completed as several million previous ones were – with transfer of weight and progress forward.

When something interrupts that deeply ingrained habit, the body has almost no idea what to do, and it’s in that moment of confusion through what should have been an orderly, predictable transition, that the ninja technique displays its power. You’re not going head to head with the person’s strength (after their weight has transferred) and you’re not attacking from too far away (before they’ve stepped) because they’ll react and adjust. Only in that moment of transition do you get an opportunity to truly take advantage of someone’s habit and knock them into next week.

We as a society, as a culture, as a world of business are going through a similar transition and disruption now, especially in media. Our media footfalls are used to the broadcast model, where media broadcasts the message and the consumer receives it passively, then goes out and buys things they don’t need. The transition and disruption of new media has thrown a ninja strike into traditional media’s footfall, and it’s falling on its butt as we take advantage of its confusion.

The lesson moving forward is simple (but not easy): as new media becomes mainstream, as new becomes mundane and habits form, look for the footfalls. Watch to see what traditions and rituals appear, watch their timing like you watch people in the airport, and you’ll know when to disrupt them, when their moment of transition becomes your moment of opportunity. More important, as you keep an eye towards the future, look for services, technologies, and ideas that will be the ninja strike to other present day footfalls in your industry or niche. Learn the ideas and you’ll have carte blanche to take over that niche while everyone else is catching their balance.

Keep your eyes open and your feet on the ground!

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chrisbrogan: 10,000 hours of practice: the magic number of skill mastery. – Gladwell.
cspenn: Gladwell failed to answer how to overcome advantages that other outliers have. Only major flaw in that book.
chrisbrogan: meaning, in a pool of many 10k folks, what causes one person to rise?
cspenn: more like his hockey example – if you were NOT born in the 3 golden months, how can you still excel?
chrisbrogan: I thought he posited that you can’t.

You can.

The art of the ninja is more about perseverance and psychology than throwing stars and swords. Ultimately, the ninja faced Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers to an opposite extreme: they were outnumbered, outfunded, outgunned, and outdone in nearly every way. They faced an unforgiving wilderness, a hostile government, treachery at every turn, and no room for error. By any rational standards, they should have been instantly wiped out, quickly condemned to the dustbin of history as a mere footnote.

Yet amidst all this, they still had to win, against impossible odds. How do you win against the outliers, against people who have all the advantages of resources, time, energy, manpower, and culture?

One of the “hidden secrets” of ninja sword fighting that we’ve been exploring recently in the Boston Martial Arts Friday black belt classes is that the outcome of certain sword kata (patterns) is more dependent on mastery of yourself and your emotions than on what your attacker does. Certainly, you don’t take lightly someone in front of you with a four foot razor blade. You pay attention to them. You guard against them. But your success doesn’t hinge on just them.

The “secret” to “winning” in these routines is more about finding the weaknesses inside of yourself that are holding you back or causing you to make stupid mistakes, and minimizing their impact. I can’t speak for my classmates, but overcoming the desire to “win” (even though it’s just a practice exercise with nothing to “win”, not even a cookie) is one of my biggest weaknesses that I’m working on. If I can get past that, if I can just be there without trying to force an outcome, if I can get out of my own way, I am successful more often than not.

Sun Tzu, the war strategist, is often quoted:

One who knows the enemy and knows himself will not be in danger in a hundred battles.
One who does not know the enemy but knows himself will sometimes win, sometimes lose.
One who does not know the enemy and does not know himself will be in danger in every battle.

Most people, most businesses, most everyone falls in the third category. We don’t really know ourselves. We don’t really know what we’re up against, and frankly, it’s amazing we succeed at all. Make inroads even just a little at knowing yourself or knowing what you’re up against, and your chances of success go up.

The ninja won against all odds because they didn’t face perfect opponents. Certainly, they faced incredible odds, but by dedicating enormous time and energy towards knowing themselves and their own weaknesses, and doing their best to mitigate those weaknesses, they were able to win against enemies who statistically should have beaten them to a pulp 100% of the time – but didn’t.

Here’s the second-greatest “secret” of all: it’s easier to know yourself than it is to know the unknown future ahead of you. If you’re going to invest a ton of time and energy trying to even the odds, your best bet is to start with yourself. Yourself, your team, your organization or company, the things that you have control over and that you can study in great depth.

How do you do that? I leave that to my seniors, my betters, and recommend you pick up a copy of How To Own The World, by Stephen K. Hayes. An-Shu Hayes does a far better job laying out a practical means of figuring out what’s holding you back than I ever could. If you want to win more, go grab his book, read it, and practice the lessons in it.

(yes, there is a greatest secret of all, too. not for now.)

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My teacher, Mark Davis of the Boston Martial Arts Center, asked us to write a bit about how we got involved in the martial arts and why we’re still here.

Way, way back, as far as 4th or 5th grade in school, I was the short, unathletic kid who ended up getting bullied a fair amount. (the inside of a locker is surprisingly spacious if you’re not claustrophobic) Once I got to high school and found myself in a much larger population including some folks who took bullying rather seriously, I decided in 1989 to try out martial arts and asked my parents to take me to the local YMCA. There I met a teacher of Isshin Ryu karate and spent the next 3 years or so progressing through the grades and material in his school.

Learned some really interesting things from him, too, since he was by occupation a prison guard – things like, if you’re going to beat someone, do it with a garden hose since it doesn’t leave permanent marks for a judge to admit as evidence but still hurts like hell. Stuff like that was what kept me looking for something more in the martial arts than just how to administer a beating to someone else – but whatever it was that was missing from my training, I certainly wasn’t going to get it at the karate school.

All during this time, the ninja boom of the 80s was reaching its peak. I remember hanging out more than a few times in the martial arts section of the local bookstore, looking to see what other interesting things there were out there. One set of books always captivated me – a series of large format ninja books by some guy named Stephen K. Hayes, who was billed as the Western world’s foremost authority on ninjutsu. The ninja warriors seemed like they had it all – superior fighting skills, Jedi-like powers, and the ability to change the world to suit their needs.

Where do I sign up?

Well, it turns out, you really couldn’t sign up. Back then, there were very, very few legitimate ninja schools in existence (and to be truthful, there still are very few that are worth anything) and getting accepted into one of them meant having to rearrange your whole life, so I filed that all away as a wishful teenage boy’s fantasy and kept on training.

My martial arts career, such as it was, took a radical left turn when I went to college. Before going to college, I’d been prepping to take my black belt test in Isshin Ryu, feeling great about the progress I was making in the martial arts, thinking I was all that and a sandwich to boot.

On the first day of the martial arts club meeting, I met a sophomore from Boston named Peter Steeves and learned that he was a junior student at a school called the New England Ninpo Society – one of the very few legitimate ninja schools in the country in Stephen K. Hayes‘ lineage. (today, that’s the Boston Martial Arts Center) I decided to see if this guy Peter was legitimate and at the first workout, unleashed my tournament-winning spinning roundhouse kick.

He politely stepped to the side of it and punched me in the face. After laying on the floor and staring at the ceiling for a while, I asked him what he did. He said, “Well, you kinda missed…” and right then and there I asked him to show me what he’d learned in his training.

We spent the better part of four years working on whatever he was looking at in his training. Peter would head home during breaks and study with his teachers, Mark Davis and Ken Savage, then bring back whatever he’d learned and we’d try it out to the best of our abilities. Starting in my junior year, during holiday breaks like spring breaks, I’d go to Boston and spend the week taking every class I could at the Boston dojo. Nothing says spring break like traveling to one of the least warm, sunny places in America in early March!

As with all things, life changes. I graduated from college and decided I wanted to train more regularly, so I uprooted my life, quit my job, got accepted to graduate school, and moved to Boston, renting an apartment literally about a 3 minute walk away from the Boston dojo. That was 1998, and I’ve been there ever since.

What’s interesting throughout this entire journey is what kept me in the martial arts. To be blunt, I started in the martial arts because I was tired of being on the receiving end of some bullying and wanted to give back better than I got. One of the starkest lessons I’ve ever learned was that first workout in college – no matter how fast, tough, or powerful you think you are, there’s almost certainly someone else who is going to eat your lunch.

These days, being tough, being some super warrior is fairly far down on the list of motivating things to me. There are so very few things in life that are worth fighting for – family, loved ones, the safety and health of friends – and so many ways in which others can harm you without ever laying a finger on you. Ask anyone who’s ever been unemployed or desperate for money just how vicious life can be, and you quickly realize that being a tough fighter by itself isn’t much help there. Ultimately, a successful martial practitioner has to be able to win no matter what the situation is – and 99% of the battles we fight every day don’t involve bare knuckles or swords.

The reason I still train and go to the dojo twice a week is because so much of the ninjutsu training is about mastering yourself and learning powerful strategies for dealing with the threats to your happiness and the happiness of the people you care about. That’s what keeps me coming back – learning more, refining what I know, and learning some more on top of that.

It’s not just martial arts, either – the meditation and mind sciences in our tradition help me to improve myself from the inside out – everything ranging from understanding why I react in certain ways to how to lose my temper less.

Some of the strategies and ideas I’ve learned in my training I now share, both as an apprentice instructor at the Boston Martial Arts Center, but also in my work in new media and social media. For example, the old ninja battlefield strategy of joei no jutsu finds new life in a case study of using new media to locate a missing child successfully.

I’ll wrap up by saying that everything here is subject to change as I get older and more experienced. I may look back on this post in another decade and laugh my ass off at how ludicrous it seems from the perspective of a mid-40s, 30 year practitioner of the ninja martial arts. I look forward to that day, because it will mean that I’ve grown past what I understand to be true now – and I hope we’ll share the laugh over a beer when I do.

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For example, in a particular martial arts kata (routine or exercise) I remember stumbling over one movement time and again, and my teacher helped me to get past that because he’d made those exact mistakes when he went through the exercise. Now, as an apprentice instructor at the Boston Martial Arts Center, I see my juniors going through that exercise… and making those same mistakes, which I then help them to get past, relying on my teacher’s advice to me.

What does any of this have to do with social media? Here’s what: unlike martial arts, where you have to rely on slightly fuzzy (or very fuzzy, depending on how many times you’ve been hit in the head) memories of what someone has gone through, in social media you have a gigantic written record in our blog histories. Justin Levy made this point at SMJ Boston, and it can’t be underscored enough.

Want to know how folks like Chris Brogan or CC Chapman got to where they are today? Want to achieve things similar to what they’ve done? Look back in their blog histories. Look what they did to get things rolling – like Chris Brogan’s Grasshopper New Media (does anyone remember that?) or CC’s Random Foo productions. Look back at the original PodCamp from 3 years ago (seems longer than that, doesn’t it?) and see how that got started.

(Food for thought: if you live on Twitter, this historical record is much, much harder to come by. Keep your blog alive too.)

The end goal of a sensei in the martial arts is for a student to surpass their teacher so that they can explore, learn, and grow together as colleagues rather than in a rigid hierarchy of student and teacher forever. Once you get to a certain level of expertise, each begins to learn new insights and share them with the other so that both can flourish. Each has something to teach the other and to learn from the other.

As you develop your social media skills, as you look back at the written record of where we’ve all been and where things are going, remember to catalog your own insights so that when your juniors are coming up through the social media ranks, you can share with them all you’ve learned as well.

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cspenn: @chrisbrogan I am stingy with my recommendations, but when I recommend something, I *mean* it. High bar, but kudos if you reach it.
GuidoS: @cspenn how can you be stingy about recommendations but not about people in your network? Isn’t association partly an endorsement?

To some, perhaps. In the slightly warped perspective of the ninja, association isn’t recommendation. Association is information. If you look at the folks who follow me on Twitter, who are friends on Facebook, who are contacts on LinkedIn, you’ll find an enormous variety of folks, from Asian cooks to college students, from presidents and CEOs to exotic dancers, from independent musicians to search engine optimization wizards. All of these people that are in my network are folks I ‘associate’ with, but more importantly, each of them has unique perspectives and information that I find helpful.

There’s an old ninja expression relating literally to seeing in the dark – the lower you go, the more you can see. Try it at night sometime. It’s a metaphor as well – the closer to the ground, to the real people doing real stuff, you can get, the more you can see. It’s easy from a financial or economics perspective to look at macro stuff like GDP, the Dow Jones, etc. but if you want some real insight, you need to put boots on the ground and see what’s really happening. You can only do that through association, through making lots of acquaintances across the spectrum of people out there.

Recommendation is different – recommendation to me means that I have experience with some aspect of the person, product, or service, and when I recommend something, I confer a bit of whatever trust you have in me to that person, place, or thing. In this crazy world we live in, trust is exceedingly scarce, exceedingly rare, and something that you should absolutely be stingy with.

Associate with lots of people. Associate to learn, to grow, to share your experiences. Recommend only when you want to confer trust, because if you blow it on a recommendation, you betray that trust a little, and as everyone from Presidents to CEOs to the broken hearted know or are finding out, trust is very, very hard to recover.

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A lot of your personality is revealed when you take up arms against someone else, whether in self defense or aggression. How you fight, your particular fighting style, reveals your traits – strengths, weaknesses, identity. After all, in a fight, you’re tapping into your most primal traits. Do you flee? Do you stand your ground? Does ego get the better of you? A fight is also incredibly stressful – how you react under intense stress tells a great deal about you.

That said, very few people get into fights frequently, which is a good thing. We like for our friends’ lives to be safe and free of violence.

Enter virtual worlds like World of Warcraft. Here, in a safe environment where players incur no true physical harm or injury, their skills, strategies, and temperaments are tested in ever increasingly difficult forms of virtual combat, from dealing with single encounters to fighting entire armies.

How a person behaves in a virtual fight is, of course, different than a real world fight – the risk to life and limb alters the equation, as it should. That said, you still gain a great deal of insight about how someone behaves under pressure:

- Does their temper get the better of them? Can they be goaded into making unwise choices?
- Does their ego hook them, forcing them into situations that grow ever worse for them the harder they struggle to reconcile desire and reality?
- Do they lack patience, rushing into unknown or known dangers foolishly?
- Do they have maturity, knowing how to lose gracefully and win even more gracefully?

All of this comes out in virtual combat, just as it does in real life combat. So what’s the point? What does this mean for you, especially if you don’t participate in virtual worlds like World of Warcraft?

Simply this – if you’re an employer, one of the most novel ways you could find a new employee would be in a virtual world, in virtual combat. Are you looking for a certain personality fit for your team? Do you want someone a little headstrong but willing to be bold? Does your corporate culture dictate a cool, calm, conservative demeanor, even at the expense of aggressive progress?

Very few things offer insight into your personality like the stress of combat, whether virtual or real. While I wouldn’t suggest that an employee interview involve leveling a character 10 times in Warcraft, I would suggest that if you find people socially in the realms where you play that have the skills you need, consider them as more than just players of a game.

They might be the best addition to your corporate team you’ve ever made.

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HEISEI 21/TSUCHINOTO/USHI DOSHI/KYUSHI KASEI meaning the 21st year of the Heisei reign of current Emperor, 6th of the Ji-Kan 10 Celestial Stems Inner Aspect of Earth, Year of the Ox and a Nine Purple Fire Ki Year.

Year of the Ox, Signifies leadership, strength, power and stability. As for Kyushi Kasei it is the 9th number of the cycle of 9. It is situated in the south position which is at the top or head of the 9-star compass so it implies mental development and intelligence. 9 is the highest number compared to 1. Its color is purple which implies high rank. It is common sense that happiness visits the family who treasures life, ancestors and Kami. It is the sun above your head at noon and implies vigorous ki, especially mental ki. In terms of fortune it is the time to make a plan, to sow, to fertilize and to prepare for the future.

This has the makings of a very exciting, very promising year ahead.

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Ninja grandmaster teacher Stephen K. Hayes:

Learn more from An-Shu Hayes at his web site.

Ninja master teacher Dennis Mahoney:

Learn more about New Hampshire Martial Arts with Dennis at his site.

A room full of ninjas:

Download Matthew Ebel’s Everybody Needs a Ninja song. [disclosure: Amazon paid link]

Watch my International Day of the Ninja video where I teach you how to disappear like a ninja:

Happy International Day of the Ninja!

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I of course couldn’t let the pirates win out over at Chris Brogan’s blog, so without further ado, a followup commentary on the beauty of pirate ships: one shot.

The ninja clans of old were fundamentally a mix of esoteric practitioners of mind sciences mixed with samurai who were on the losing sides of battles and didn’t feel like killing themselves for their overlord’s strategic screw-ups. Many were just young kids – Daisuke Nishina, the founder of the Togakure Ryu lineage, started out life as a ninja at the ripe old age of 16, having been enlisted in an army that lost to a neighboring overlord.

As such, ninja battle strategies focused a lot on influence, stopping problems before they became problems (because you didn’t have the resources to wage all-out war), stealth, espionage, influence and persuasion from afar, using force multipliers, and above all else, an emphasis on the practical. Much of this is still transmitted in the essence of the ninja martial arts taught today by students of Hatsumi sensei’s Bujinkan method, especially those who are students of Stephen K. Hayes.

One of the timeless lessons learned very early on is this:

You will probably only get one shot.

Whatever your strategy is, whatever your goal or game plan is, the world is changing too fast. It’s a moving target. You can’t waver or hesitate, because in the time it takes you to make a decision and stick to it, you’ll get run over by your competition in business, and you’ll lose your life in battle.

Think about it for a second. If you’re facing someone else, both of you have three foot razor blades, and both of you want to go home. In all likelihood, one of you probably won’t. If you’re especially unlucky, neither will. You have just one shot, because in sword fighting, there’s not a whole lot of parrying or dueling. A sword fight between skilled swordsmen lasts a fraction of a second.

So commit. Pick one of the strategies that Chris mentioned, or one of the many other plans or strategies you’ve got out there, set out your battle plan, and then do it. Don’t walk into your office or your boss’ office in a week with completely different plans or whatever the fad of the day is, because that’s the equivalent of trying to change up as your opponent’s blade is headed for your neck. Waver, hesitate, question yourself, fail to commit, and your opponent wins, in swordfighting and in business.

Trivia: did you know there actually were ninja pirates? It’s true.

Shameless plug. If you’re in the Boston area, and want to try your hand at learning actual ninjutsu, visit:

The Boston Martial Arts Center
The Winchendon Martial Arts Center

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Friday nights at the Boston Martial Arts Center are always interesting. It’s the night that black belts get to train and focus on material relevant to them (one of the few nights/evenings exclusively dedicated to advanced training).

This past Friday, we were looking at various choke techniques to put someone’s lights out if need be. I thought I’d point out that this is advanced training so that no one gets the mistaken idea that if you’re interested in trying out martial arts, this sort of stuff won’t happen to you on the first day you show up. Ten years after the first day, maybe, but certainly not day one!

What’s interesting about choke techniques is that when you’re on the receiving end, they bring astonishing clarity to your mind. Everything and anything else going on in your head immediately ceases to be important when you’re running out of air or on the verge of passing out. Even food and water are irrelevant because your body knows it’s in trouble if something doesn’t change real soon. The economy? Not even on the radar. Troubles at home or work? Not important.

Nothing matters because your body senses it’s in mortal danger.

Believe it or not, this is a good thing. This sort of training creates some intense presence of mind, because you can’t be thinking or worrying about anything else. Nothing else matters. It immediately narrows your focus down to the most important things in the world to you – the air supply to your lungs and the blood supply to your brain.

Sometimes it takes a shock like a well-applied choke to put the rest of life in perspective. The economy is a legitimate concern. So is the climate crisis, war, poverty, disease, etc. However, training like this helps you re-prioritize because you can’t afford to focus on anything else. You have to solve the most immediate problem first.

I’m not suggesting that you go out and have someone throttle you if you feel like you’re out of focus, but to the extent that you can have experiences which help you snap out of unfocused anxiety mindsets, you’ll be able to achieve greater clarity.

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Over the weekend, I had the opportunity and privilege to attend New England Warrior Camp (NEWC) 2008, the 11th year of the event. For those not involved in the martial arts, NEWC is a 3 day, 2 night seminar that gets together practitioners of the Bujinkan ninjutsu family for an intense amount of training. This year’s theme was Togakure Ryu ninjutsu, one of the ninja methods for self-protection.

There’s so much to be said about camp that can’t really be put into words. It’s literally training of every kind for 48 hours, sundown Friday to sundown Sunday. You wake up in the morning on Saturday and Sunday and do some fairly intensive fitness methods, from stealth running through a forest (stumbling and falling will really hurt) to hiking up Nobscot Mountain and seeing the Atlantic from 30 miles away. Training is conducted by the master instructors in the New England area, and you’re guaranteed to walk away both full of information and badly confused.

A lot of the training is what Stephen K. Hayes calls “investment training” – stuff that you learn in a very short amount of time, but then literally take years to work on and process, until much later down the path, you finally “get” what that training was about so long ago. This entire camp was a lot of investment training, working on ideas from the Togakure family method of keeping your community safe from harm.

One of the highlights of the weekend was the opportunity to do some tameshigiri, or live sword cutting. Master instructor and swordsmith Matt Venier gave us the opportunity to use live, sharp swords on bundled bamboo mats, which traditionally were used to simulate cutting against an opponent. They’re a diagnostic tool to indicate your level of precision with a sword – a clean cut with no curves or seriously ragged edges is the sign of a minimally competent swordsman. An explosion of bamboo bits all over the floor indicates that lots more practice is needed.

I’m proud to say that I’m minimally competent and have the picture to prove it, though as with everything, lots more practice is needed on my part.

After 11 years of attending these camps, after 15 years of training in this particular method of martial arts, I’m still excited and happy to be practicing, still learning, still finding all sorts of things that I can add to make myself a better practitioner. It’s equally inspiring to look at my teachers and see what’s possible, what lies ahead on the path, and know that with practice, I’ll get there, too.

Many thanks to everyone who made this camp excellent, but most especially camp organizer Ken Savage of the Winchendon Martial Arts Center for creating and organizing the camp year after year. As a fellow organizer of conferences and events, I know just how much stress and duress a community-focused event can be, and I admire him for being able to pull off better and better camps every year. I hope that PodCamp, the event I created with Chris Brogan, will be able to celebrate its 11th birthday.

For those of you considering taking up the martial arts – any martial art – give it a try. Give yourself a month and see how it fits you. Martial arts training isn’t for everyone, but if you never set foot on the path, you’ll definitely never know for sure. And hey, if you’re in the Boston area, there’s always the Boston Martial Arts Center, too, where I train.

11 years on the path and still going…

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Stephen K. Hayes posted an interesting challenge to me for my blog.

“I would enjoy seeing your take on “visionary” and why you feel that the term is used so frequently by others to describe your work.”

To me, vision is being able to see where you’re going, to see what’s up the road ahead, in both literal and figurative senses. It’s being able to see the potholes before you drive the car into them, being able to skillfully navigate.

The problem facing most businesses, to continue the car analogy, is that most people are driving using the rear window to navigate. They’re steering based on where they’ve been, and maybe, just maybe they catch a glimpse out the side windows for what’s happening to them right now. They don’t know where they’re driving, they can’t see the sharp turn in the road ahead, and they believe that past is prologue, that biography is destiny.

Most important, vision is about knowing where you’re going, so that you know if you’re there, and even more vital, knowing if you’re off course and not any closer to your goal.

Take a look at any of the problems facing America today. The mortgage crisis is entirely due to lack of vision, a willful ignorance of the future and the consequences for tomorrow of what you do today. Thousands of Americans bought houses they couldn’t afford, plain and simple. Some were duped, some were scammed, and some were simply desire overriding rational common sense. Thousands of financial experts who should have known better opted to ignore fundamentals, basics, and laws of economics, believing that something really could come out of nothing, and that there would be no consequences.

Really. There’s no mathematically sound way for a clerk making $30,000/year to be able to afford a $900,000 mortgage, but an awful lot of people wanted to believe that lie, wanted to blind themselves from the truth that they could not afford their purchase under any sustainable terms.

That’s lack of vision. Lack of knowing what will happen because you’re in violation of the basics, because you have no idea of where you’re going or how you’re going to get there, you just want it now.

Take a look at China. As much as people rail about China and its human rights policies, the ugly truth is that the United States consumers made China the powerhouse it is today through lack of vision. Through ever greater demands for more stuff, cheaper stuff, stuff at any cost as long as it’s the lowest price, we’ve shipped our manufacturing overseas, exposed consumers to dangerous products, and made a nation-state that isn’t on the friendliest terms with the United States into an economic powerhouse that rivals us. All for want of a cheaper plastic bowl and other consumer goods, and a lack of vision.

Another example is Brian Conley’s arrest and deportation from China. I admire Brian’s work and willingness to speak his mind. However, his arrest in China, while brave, deprived him of his most powerful weapon, the ability to build a network of people locally to create content. By traveling and documenting a Tibetan protest group during China’s Olympics, he was able to highlight the lack of freedom of the press and speech in China… but cut himself off from greater opportunities.

What would a visionary strategy, a sneaky ninja strategy, have been? As distasteful on the surface as it might have been, if a ninja were tasked with trying to highlight the plight of Tibet, they would have made some astonishingly positive and complimentary videos of China, of the progress they’ve made, helping the government showcase its achievements for the Olympics. They would have made sure to promote a positive message that would have gotten them on the right guest lists, invitations to events with Communist Party members… and greater access to the country.

Over a period of years, the sneaky ninja would have created more positive video, building a reputation among Chinese party officials that they were a video blogger worth having around, and even being allowed into “sensitive” areas… like the Tibetan plateau. Over time, they would have developed a small, very quiet network of people to shoot video, as Brian has done in Alive in Baghdad, and then one day down the road, revealed all of the work done at once in what the tabloids would have called “a shocking turn of events”, showing hours of video clandestinely shot in Tibet and other contested areas.

Vision is ultimately about knowing the result you want and being willing to make difficult choices to achieve that result. It means compromising on choices, masking your ideals, exerting inhuman levels of patience, and being able to see what’s in your path so that you can tell the difference between a choice that feels right and a choice that gets you the long term results that you want.

How you develop and cultivate those skills… that’s a post I’ll leave to Stephen K. Hayes.

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One of the keys to being successful in the martial arts is taking good notes, storing away information. In ninjutsu, a secondary key is taking good notes in such a way that your notes are useful only to you. If someone borrows, copies, or steals your notes, they’re functionally useless to them. Yes, you may have possession of the Takagi family’s sacred scrolls, but unless you’ve been initiated into translating them, they’re not terribly helpful.

I was looking over my notes from Tuesday night’s class at the Boston Martial Arts Center, my personal notes for second degree black belt, and realized that in many ways, they’re the antithesis of a good presentation.

In my notes, I have the general prompts I need to recall something from memory, not a step by step outline of exactly what to do. I know what to do because my teacher taught it to me, but if I need to jog my memory about the setup, my notes contain enough detail to make me go, “Oh, yeah, that one!” and I’m ready to go. None of the nuance or subtlety makes its way into the notes because it doesn’t need to be there, and more importantly, can’t easily and quickly be put into words anyway, any more than you can accurately convey what a lychee tastes like in words. If you’ve had a lychee, you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you’ve never had a lychee, that sentence is devoid of context.

This is the danger, the curse of knowledge, that plagues presentations. The presenter knows what’s in their notes, and knows the subject matter, which means they risk leaving out vital pieces of information that surround their presentation, the context. The presentation may have giant gaps in it, but the presenter doesn’t know it because they don’t see their presentation – they see their experiences instead, filling in the gaps in their own head but leaving huge potholes for the audience trying to follow along.

This is why in both the martial arts and in Zen the concept of the beginner’s mind is so important, to be able to see without the past clouding our vision. As a presenter and speaker, seeing your own material with a beginner’s mind is vital but supremely difficult.

Listen carefully to the feedback from your presentations to see whether you’re failing to provide context and details in your presentation. You may find some critical points that, with just a few extra details, could radically improve your presentations.

Besides audience feedback, make sure you review video of yourself presenting, and ask yourself throughout the video if you’re making sense. If you can, have two cameras set up, one to film the audience, so that you can watch the crowd react to what you have to say, catching subtleties that you missed while presenting. It doesn’t have to be elaborate or expensive – a simple Flipcam on a tripod will do the trick. Be on the lookout especially for body language changes en masse, as well as facial expressions – these nonverbal cues can tell you when you’re being impactful – and when you’re missing the point.

As Shunryu Suzuki, a Zen master, said, in the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few. If you want to explore the possibilities of becoming a better speaker, embrace the beginner’s mind and avoid the curse of knowledge.

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One of the things that every senior instructor at my dojo, the Boston Martial Arts Center, constantly emphasizes is the refinement and polishing of our basics. If you punch someone, you want them to stay punched. If you throw someone, you want them to stay thrown. All the fancy moves and movie-like choreography will do you no good whatsoever if the bad guy gets back up and starts griefing you again; conversely, all the fancy moves are completely unnecessary if you get out of harm’s way and deck the guy so hard that his unconceived children feel it.

What does this have to do with marketing? Simple. We forget the basics all too often. In our attention deficit society, in our 90 hour work week system, we’re so easily distracted by flashy toys and tricks that we forget to practice and refine our basics. The ability to send out an effective direct email campaign. The ability to optimize a web page for the basics of search engine optimization. The ability to design a usable interface to our information.

This is a topic I’ll be talking about more at the MarketingProfs Digital Marketing Mixer in October. We’ll explore the levels of marketing basics just like a martial art, showing you what “white belt” skills will always pay off no matter how many grades of black belt you have.

In the end, no matter how fancy your marketing or martial arts, chances are in any real encounter on the street or in your vertical, you’re going to get one shot that will decide whether you make it or don’t. There’s no second place prize. The only way to be confident in that one shot is to have solid basics that you can rely on.

Ask yourself this as a marketer: what are your basics? How reliable are they? How confident are you in the results you can generate with them?

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Who knew?

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I want to share something with you that might be helpful for protecting you from the worst negative influences in your life – the ones that originate in your own head. See, in ninjutsu, there’s a mental framework we use to describe four classes of responses in the basic self-protection curriculum, based on four archetype elements. There is…

… Earth energy. This is the energy of confidence, standing your ground, neither giving way or seizing gains. You protect as an immoveable barrier to whatever seeks to harm you.

… Water energy. This is the energy of distance and time, the scientist who can coolly and calmly assess a situation, unswayed, and then act accordingly.

… Fire energy. This is the energy of inspiration, creativity, and assertiveness, taking the fight to an attacker before they even get a chance to get going.

… Wind energy. This is the energy of compassion and benevolence, like how you’d handle an aggressively drunk loved one or relative, not harming, but subduing.

Historically, these four qualities have been used in ninjutsu as general maps and guides for effective responses to self protection situations. Sometimes you need to stand your ground, sometimes you need to strategically retreat, sometimes you need to take the fight to the opponent, and sometimes you need to shut things down without doing harm.

These archetypes can be extended to more than just physical confrontation. They’re models and frameworks for handling virtually any kind of daily situation in which you need the hero qualities of confidence, calmness, creativity, or compassion.

You may be saying, okay, that’s all well and good, Chris, but how do I use this?

This is the ninja power move. My teacher’s teacher, Stephen K. Hayes, often speaks on the topics of mantras and motivation, how a mantra not only protects your mind from itself, but also that a mantra is a highly charged, highly powered, highly personal way to instantly change your frame of mind.

There’s something besides esoteric Sanskrit phrases (which work incredibly well) that can do this – the music on your playlist.

Let’s get started. I’ll talk about my personal playlist a bit, but this is something that you’ll have to do for yourself. Your music choices will be totally personalized to you. There are songs from your past that are totally unique from an emotional perspective, whether it’s a song from a first boyfriend or girlfriend date, a song you heard on the radio when someone passed away or when someone was born, a song from a first victory in competition – it’s all from your background. Don’t copy my playlist contents, since I didn’t have your background and experiences.

Start by firing up your music player of choice. I use iTunes, so I’ll make reference to iTunes from here out, but you can do this with any media player.

Set up four playlists. Earth, Water, Fire, Wind. For each of these, I want you to pick three songs from your playlist, of relatively short duration, relatively medium duration, and relatively long duration.

In the Earth playlist, comb through your own experiences, backgrounds, favorites, and preferred tunes from your present and past that emphasize the qualities of unshakeable confidence, mountain-like invincibility, command like a general, and complete lack of worry about whatever opposes you. Personally, I love John Ottman’s Superman Returns, Ronan Hardiman’s Warriors, and Kelly Clarkson’s Break Away. For me, the archetype hero who can’t be shaken is Superman. Yeah, there’s all things Kryptonite, but beyond that, good luck steering him off course.

In the Water playlist, comb through your own experiences, backgrounds, favorites, and preferred tunes from your present and past that emphasize the qualities of ocean-like calm, late evening coolness, a sense of necessary detachment, emotional reboot, the comfort that comes from superior knowledge and experience. You’re the scientist or veteran who knows all the tricks, who can step away from a heated situation and bring insight. Personally, I love the Battle Hymn of the Republic, the Imperial March of Emperor Palpatine, so cold and calculating, and the epilogue of Les Miserables.

In the Fire playlist, comb through your own experiences, backgrounds, favorites, and preferred tunes from your present and past that emphasize the qualities of amazing creativity, passionate inspiration, engagement, unstoppable momentum towards your goals, the kind of music that won’t let you sit still, that will kick you in the butt if your momentum flags. Personally, I love Eminem’s Lose Yourself, Journey’s Faithfully, Black Lab’s Mine Again.

In the Wind playlist, comb through your own experiences, backgrounds, favorites, and preferred tunes from your present and past that emphasize the qualities of compassion, of an eager willingness to make a difference, to lend a hand, to reach out and touch the hearts and souls of the people you care about, to make the world a better place, qualities of kindness, love, and service. Personally, I love Matthew Ebel’s I Will Wait For You, Garry Schyman’s Praan, and Kevin Reeves‘ Shine.

Like I said, these songs are highly personal, and likely will have different meanings to you than they do to me. For example, Journey’s Faithfully is the 2008 edition, and it’s on the Fire list not because of the song’s contents, but because of the backstory of Arnel Pineda and his unlikely rise to fame. Hearing him create music and live his passions and dreams is inspirational not because of the music, but because of how I feel when I recall his story. Your own playlist will have radically different contents than mine, and that’s okay.

Once you’ve figured out the three songs for each of the four lists, make sure they sync to whatever devices play your music, and use them specifically for times when you need the qualities of confidence, calmness, creativity, and compassion. If you’re about to head into a meeting with someone who truly needs a kind word, even if they’re a pain in the ass, load your Wind playlist and listen to one, two, or all three songs to change your mood and mind to what you need to be feeling and thinking. If you’re stuck with writer’s block, blast it away with a dose from your Fire playlist. Need a breather from over focus, a heated debate, or frustration? Wash your troubled feelings away with your Water playlist. Need to stand up for yourself when it’d be more convenient to give way? Command yourself with your Earth playlist.

The songs on your playlists can change over time, too, as you have new experiences and new emotions that map to them. Garry Schyman’s Praan is brand new to my personal Wind playlist, but it brings out in me those qualities that I associate with Wind energy very strongly, so in it goes.

Later on, as you gain more mastery of your emotions and mind, these playlists will change roles, but that’s another story entirely. For now, load up your iPod, create your personal mantras of protection and power as playlists, and change your mind when you need it most using the power of your own music.

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In December 2007, I had the privilege and honor of being invited to participate in a search effort for Manessa Donovan, a 15 year old niece of Christopher Wilson, the host of Answers for Freelancers. Manessa went missing just before Thanksgiving, and regular search efforts were not generating results. Chris reached out to his network, and within 5 days had found her.

My part in this epic was small. Almost all of the credit for finding Manessa goes to Chris Wilson, who answered call after call, email after email, and endured torrents of junk and spiteful comments from petty people with nothing better to do than to slag on others.

What happened in my part of Manessa’s recovery was based on an old ninjutsu strategy called joei no jutsu. Chris knew that Manessa had a MySpace account and kept in touch with a lot of her friends there. While other search efforts were underway, I took it upon myself to create a separate MySpace profile just for this campaign, with as many photos and other information on it that I could find from Manessa’s profile, as well as the information Chris had compiled about the people she was with.

The next step, after creating that profile and ensuring the information was clear, with a sense of urgency and obvious call to action, was to start grabbing Manessa’s network. I invited every one of her friends that she was connected to, which was about 300 or so, to the profile.

Chris knew the rough geographic area that Manessa was in, so I recruited folks in her age range in those zip codes as well. Whether or not the people knew her, they had clear images and information if they ran into her in a fast food place or other public location.

The third category I recruited was the media – there were a decent number of media personalities and media outlets in the general geographic region where Manessa was reported to be.

The final category I recruited was anyone who self-identified as a member of law enforcement in the geographic region, sort of an informal, unofficial Amber Alert.

All of this took about 3 hours to do, from start to finish.

Almost immediately, within hours of setting up the profile, information began to flow it rapidly. At this point, I disconnected from the accounts and turned over all the login credentials to Chris so he could manage it directly.

Joei no jutsu is a ninjutsu strategy for managing a network in a time of war. The premise is that during a time of crisis, the enemy will recruit just about any able-bodied person into its armies because they’re short, and in doing so, they relax background checks and other procedures that they’d normally use to find infiltrators.

Ordinarily, on any social network, trying to “infiltrate” a network is difficult because outsiders are not necessarily welcome to a person’s social circle. Joei no jutsu in the age of MySpace means setting up a credible, truthful, informative, and urgent campaign, and then messaging other existing networks rapidly. People are more likely to respond, especially in a missing persons case like this, if you present a clear, unquestionable case. This tendency let me get connected rapidly with folks, get the message out, and encourage network members to spread the word to THEIR friends.

If you’re a parent of a child who participates on social networks like MySpace, you owe it to yourself and your child to learn how to use these networks and how to leverage them in a time of need.

One of the really nice things about the martial art I practice is that each year has a theme, an area of focus that helps practitioners zoom in on a particular way of thinking and set of strategies. This past year, 2007, was the year of Kukishinden Ryu, or the Kukishinden family method of warfare and protection.

2008’s theme is Togakure Ryu, a lineage founded by Daisuke Nishina of Togakure (now Togakushi), in Nagano, sometime in the 12th century. If you remember the 1998 Winter Olympics coverage, Nagano was the prefecture of Japan in which they occurred and from which Togakure Ryu originates.

Togakure Ryu is one of the only surviving ninjutsu lineages around. Its founder, Daisuke Nishina, was on the losing side of a campaign in feudal Japan and as a 16 year old, found himself required by tradition to commit ritual suicide, as his side had lost. Rather than do so, he ran like hell into the mountains and trained with a number of masters over the years in not getting your ass beat while facing overwhelming odds. The practices were codified into the Togakure school of ninjutsu.

Some of the themes in Togakure Ryu are considered “secrets” – not because they’re particularly esoteric, but because they’re so hard to actually do. For example, one of the “secrets” is – only fight battles you can win.

Not much of a secret, huh?

Until you take a step back and look at your life and realize that you take up fights and battles all the time, literal or metaphorical, that you cannot win. Whether it’s office politics, marital relations, or facing an opponent in a dark alley, if you engage in a battle in which you know you can’t win, then you’re either hooked by your ego or you’re an idiot. Instead, your plan had better be to run like hell until you can set things up so that you can win.

What other lessons do the ninja have, nine centuries after the lineage was founded? Lots. Tons. More than enough to fill a lifetime and then some. If you’d like to learn more, go visit my teacher’s teacher, Stephen K. Hayes, or if you’re in the Boston area, visit my teacher, Mark Davis, at the Boston Martial Arts Center.

“Ninjutsu is the way of attaining that which we need while making the world a better place. The skill of the ninja is the art of winning.” – Toshitsugu Takamatsu, 33rd headmaster of the Togakure Ryu

I had an amusing experience on Friday as I was bringing my lunch – Chinese food from the place on the first floor – back up to my office. On the elevator ride up, the guy in the elevator commented, “Man, that smells good. Where ya delivering to?”

He had mistaken me for a delivery service, simply because I was an Asian guy carrying Chinese food.

What I found more interesting was the reaction of folks on Twitter when I made mention of the incident. Seems they were a lot more offended than I was.

Racism, whether explicit or implicit, is harmful, but from my perspective, it’s an important insight into a person, and a very public display of their weakness. Racism is a weakness, a character flaw that a skillful practitioner of ninjutsu can take advantage of. We have an expression – kyojitsu tenkan ho – which roughly translates as “truth as a lie, lie as truth”. Any character weakness can be turned against you, any preconceived notion about a person can be used to distract and divert your mind away from the reality of a situation, ultimately to your detriment.

In the case of this guy, his remarks told me that if I ever needed to infiltrate his office, say as a competitor to steal some confidential information off his computer network, I could show up with a bag of Chinese food and if I ran into him, he’d make a false assumption that I was working as a delivery boy.

If you find yourself the subject of false assumptions – blondes are airheads, blacks are criminals, Jews are stingy, anyone Muslim is a terrorist – ask how you can turn those assumptions to your advantage.

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you’re in the metro Boston area, come celebrate International Day of the Ninja at the Boston Martial Arts Center tonight at 6 PM (event on Facebook) with a free class! If you’re outside of Boston, check out Stephen K. Hayes’ web site, SKHQuest.com, for training opportunities near you.

• An-Shu Stephen K. Hayes
• The Boston Martial Arts Center

Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff coined the slogan “For every light that shines, a shadow falls” as part of his audio drama, Shadow Falls. The reverse is true and worth thinking about. For every shadow, there must be light, else it’d be pure darkness.

This past year was a tumultuous year. Next year promises even more change, some chaos, and economic harbingers that are less than comforting. That said, the coming year can also be the very best year you’ve ever had. We’ve talked about it recently on an episode of Marketing Over Coffee, and I’ve talked about other advance preparations on the Financial Aid Podcast.

Ultimately, when times are bad, when things get ugly, you have three basic choices:

1. Do nothing and hope that the river of life doesn’t send you over a waterfall.

2. Deny that anything’s wrong in the hope that your delusions will become truth.

3. Take positive action to prepare others and yourself for trouble and find ways to leverage the troubling times.

I’m shooting for camp 3. I’ve outlined the dangers ahead – with $3 trillion – $5 trillion possibly at severe risk (bear in mind we are an economy of roughly $14 trillion), you have to prepare for rough times. Cash is king, debt is your enemy, liquidity is an advantage, tied-up assets are not. Mobility is important, as is network reach. Always have a backup plan.

You can also be a source of inspiration and power in your community, whether offline or online.

Now is the time to step up your community involvement if possible. Get out there, be visible, be involved. Have involvement with as many people as possible – as Mitch Joel says, DO talk to strangers, because the ninja method advocates having as many people in your network as possible so you can get different perspectives, have your ear to the ground, and see things coming from very far away.

Be on top of changes – know what’s changing, know who brings the harbingers of change. Subscribe to lots of blogs and read the best quality ones voraciously, because when winds shift, you want to be in front of the change, catching the wind and sailing past danger.

Grow and develop your sphere of personal power. In your community of friends, do you know what their superpowers are? How can they complement you, and more importantly, how can you complement them?

The ninja of old were renowned for their seemingly supernatural powers, chief among them the ability to foretell the future. Most of that wasn’t supernatural – it was having a strong network. You have access to a network that the ninja grandmasters of old would have traded their right arms for – a global, decentralized, instant information network. What does it tell you – and if it isn’t telling you what you need to know to avoid danger and embrace prosperity, how can you change your network to fulfill that function?

For every shadow there must be light.

Are you ready to shine?

Side bar: The Chinese word for crisis, weiji, does not mean “danger and opportunity”. Kennedy screwed that one up, that cliche about the word for crisis meaning danger and opportunity. Weiji means danger and a crucial point. It’s more like the point at which you’re in a barrel approaching the waterfall’s edge. You’re just about to go over. You don’t think about trying to go fishing for opportunity – your goal is not to die.

One of my fondest memories of PodCamp Boston 2 was sitting at lunch on Sunday talking with one of my martial arts instructors, Dennis Mahoney, about profound knowledge and Sisyphus vs. stairs. I’m constantly in search of profound knowledge, which, as Anthony Robbins defines it, is knowledge that once you understand it, makes an immediate impact and difference in your life.

Sisyphus, for those who slept through mythology, was a king punished for trickery by the gods to a hellish fate: push a large rock up a hill, only to have it roll back down, and be forced to repeat that task for eternity.

Most people’s lives can be described as Sisyphean. They wake up, go to work, come home, drink and watch TV, fall asleep, and repeat the next day until one day when they don’t wake up any more. Many activities are the same – working out, for example, is Sisyphean. You benefit as long as you keep pushing, but the moment you stop, the boulder starts to roll down hill.

Stepping up is different. Profound knowledge enables stepping up. Once you understand something, once you grasp profound knowledge, you can’t go back to the person you used to be. You are forever changed, forever better, and nothing except extreme forgetfulness can ever force you to step back.

The example I cite often is the rule of thirds in photography. Look through your camera viewfinder, draw a tic-tac-toe grid on it, and position your subjects at the intersections of the vertical and horizontal lines. Immediately, anyone who doesn’t understand this technique will take better photographs if they practice it. There’s of course still tons to learn, from lighting to composition to aperture, etc. but just this one piece of profound knowledge changes you forever, and you can’t go back.

What are you doing in life that is Sisyphean, and how can you convert more of your life from pushing boulders to stepping up, making breakthroughs? What profound knowledge have you acquired in your life that you can share here in the comments?

I have the good fortune in life to have access to lots of very, very talented people. It’s my pleasure to be able to bring their works together and present them as best as I can. In this case, I present the music of podsafe music superstar Matthew Ebel and the martial talents of Stephen K. Hayes and many of his senior students demonstrating their skills at the SKH Quest Fall Festival in Dayton, OH.

Click To Play

Buy the song Everybody Needs a Ninja in MP3 now!

For more information:

Stephen K. Hayes To-Shin Do martial arts

Matthew Ebel’s new album, Goodbye Planet Earth

To place this on your web site, visit the Blip.TV player page and follow the directions for Share.

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Chi
Jnana Paramita
Realization

As part of my every thought, word, and action, I am inspired by the heroic ideal of spiritual intelligence. I pursue highest knowledge!

The last aspect of the superhero is perhaps the most important, because it makes all the other powers make sense. The power of realization is the power of leaving behind everything that isn’t true, everything that clouds your vision and makes you doubt yourself, your powers, and your ability to make positive change in the world. The power of realization is the garden hose that washes the mud off the windows and lets us see things clearly.

I reflect often on the motto given to Superman’s ultimate quest – a never ending battle for truth and justice. (the American way came later) If all the other powers describe things you’ll need on your heroic quest, the power of realization reveals to you where you’re going – or where you need to go, as well as what holds you back or threatens to steer you off course.

Imagine what a reality of all truth, nothing false would be like. Your GPS would get you to your destination every time. The news would be timely, relevant, and completely accurate. Your thoughts, words, and actions would be in complete sync with reality – and how effortless life would be.

Commit today and every day towards taking steps to achieve a life of all truth, nothing false, beyond the pull of distraction and confusion, knowing exactly where you’re going and how you’re going to get there. Bring all your powers, skills, and friends to your aid as your heroic quest begins.

Thought: Where are you going? Where do you know, deep down inside your heart, that you need to go? Are they different?

Word: Examine what you’ve said about your life. How can you use more accurate, more clear words to describe where you need to go?

Action: Assemble your ten powers of a superhero and put them ALL into action today.

Endnote: The powers themselves are translated by Senior Master Instructor Stephen K. Hayes from the Enlightened Warrior Gyoja Practitioner Recitation Handbook, published by the Kinryuzan Golden Dragon Mountain Kasumi-An Dojo.

- Stephen K. Hayes

Michelle Wolverton pointed out one of many articles about degenerating race relations in America today. Along with severe economic shocks, it’s looking like things are somewhat grim for America entering election year 2008. Foreclosures of homes skyrocketing, tainted imports, collapsing pension funds, pick your poison. What does it all mean?

A piece of wisdom from one of my teachers’ teachers, Stephen K. Hayes, started off this blog post. Simply translated, when the general population of a country is struggling to just get by, living paycheck to paycheck and making no progress, dealing with spikes in crime and a feeling of general malaise, it’s much harder for them to revolt or even realize what’s happening in the true power centers of a nation. Sate their minds with pointless entertainment, get them to care about things that are completely irrelevant (celebrity news comes to mind), and with the skill of a sleight of hand illusionist, you as someone in power get to do pretty much whatever you want to do, because no one’s paying attention. Chaos at the bottom means order at the top.

Reverse the situation. When the people of a nation unify, when the people of a nation have their basic needs met and have access to good information, at the very least they’ll push for progressive change and for overall improvements in their society’s health, wealth, and condition. The downside is that it’s much harder for a few select individuals to consolidate power and wealth in an open, democratic society because the general population will call bullshit on them, and possibly run them out of town. Order at the bottom means chaos at the top.

When you step back and take a look at the many influences acting on society at large, ask yourself which strategy is being pursued by the people of your nation and by its leaders and influencers. Who’s running the show, and who’s benefitting from it?

As part of my every thought, word, and action, I am inspired by the heroic ideal of spiritual power. I allow nothing to stop me!

If effort is the engine of your superhero work, and vow is your intent to get where you’re going, power is the gas. Power is the yellow sun orbiting the earth that gives Superman his abilities, the radioactive spider, the genetic mutations or the adamantium claws. Power is what puts electricity in the computer.

How does a superhero of the modern era build power? Power starts with passion – a passion, a burning desire to accomplish, to investigate, to explore, to improve. No matter what your choice of focus in life, power is what motivates you and keeps you going long after the hobbyist or dabbler quits, long after even the veterans would give up. Passion leads to power, and one of the superhero’s greatest secrets is to find fellow members of the league of superheroes who are equally passionate about their powers. Like may attract like, but like definitely powers like. Even on a mundane level, we understand this – working out at the gym is easier with a buddy than alone.

Commit today and every day to building your personal power, your spiritual power in your thoughts, words, and actions.

Thought: Pause for a moment. Put aside your to-do lists, your must-not-forgets, and your obligations for just a few seconds, and remind yourself of your passion. Reinvigorate yourself by reminding yourself why you do what you do out of love and excitement.

Word: Take a moment today and every day to talk to someone about your passions, about your discoveries and theirs, and share in the excitement of being fellow explorers on the path.

Action: Take a hard look at your schedule and clear a block of time every day, even if for only 15 minutes, when you can indulge your passions. Mark that time as busy, out of the office, non-negotiable, turn off all forms of communications, lock the door, and dive into what your heart demands of you.

Endnote: The powers themselves are translated by Senior Master Instructor Stephen K. Hayes from the Enlightened Warrior Gyoja Practitioner Recitation Handbook, published by the Kinryuzan Golden Dragon Mountain Kasumi-An Dojo.

Gan
Pranidhana Paramita
Vow

As part of my every thought, word, and action, I am inspired by the heroic ideal of focusing unstoppable intent. I direct my aim!

The world, full of distractions, conspires to take you off course, as mentioned in the powers of effort and meditation. Most of the time, those efforts are mass communications tactics such as ads. Sometimes, however, we face more than generic, broad distraction – we face legitimate opposition. Maybe a supervillain manifests themselves in our life, actively working against us. Maybe circumstances give us a concrete opponent to fight as opposed to a diffuse enemy.

The superhero power of vow is a companion to effort – not only do you get things done, but you defuse, disarm, or destroy all obstacles in your path, defeating the efforts of anyone or anything to derail you. Your commitment to upholding the things you believe in – your discipline (power #2) cannot be shaken, no matter how hard enemies try.

Commit today and every day to working for what you believe in the face of adversity with your thoughts, words, and actions.

Thought: Take a moment today to examine your internal enemies, familiar villains like guilt, doubt, and procrastination. How can you knock them out of the fight?

Word: Take a moment today to clean up communications. Delete Internet bookmarks of web sites that are persistent negative influences, and un-friend those online contacts whose diaries are never-ending rivers of pessimism and woe.

Action: Set up your life to make invasion by enemies difficult. A to-do list punishes procrastination. Affirming art, photos, and posters can debilitate doubt. Positive, inspiring music can flood guilt away. Close virtual and real office doors when you need to reaffirm your mission without interference.

Endnote: The powers themselves are translated by Senior Master Instructor Stephen K. Hayes from the Enlightened Warrior Gyoja Practitioner Recitation Handbook, published by the Kinryuzan Golden Dragon Mountain Kasumi-An Dojo.

Catch you on the other side!

Hoben
Upaya Paramita
Skillful Means

As part of my every thought, word, and action, I am inspired by the heroic ideal of finding the best way for success. I effectively encourage results!

“Just do it” is great – momentum more often than not will generate results over inaction, but if effort is the engine, skill is the steering wheel. With your superhero new media powers, you have the ability, the power to make great changes and accomplish great things, but being able to use those powers to accomplish the most with the least effort is the mark of a veteran hero.

How can you accomplish things most efficiently and effectively? We talked earlier about obtaining win-win situations, but how? A superhero power in its own right is knowing humanity. Senior Master Instructor Stephen K. Hayes quotes an old expression, “I know what is going to happen because I know humanity, and I know humanity because I have studied myself.” Learn how you react in situations so that you can anticipate and defuse problems before they even begin.

Commit today and every day to using your thoughts, words, and actions to make your life and the lives around you run smoothly with careful planning and skillful understanding of yours and others’ only too human habits.

Thought: Take a moment today to examine a habit of yours that you know holds you back. Instead of feeling badly about it, what one thing can you do today to change course towards productive ends?

Word: Take a moment today to rewrite something you’ve written in the past and consider what changes and edits you’re making to improve the piece. Make note of them so that you write with them in mind on future first drafts.

Action: Take a moment today to optimize your workplace. Remove old trash, refile things, and clean up so that your ability to accomplish is unhindered by incidental distraction.

Endnote: The powers themselves are translated by Senior Master Instructor Stephen K. Hayes from the Enlightened Warrior Gyoja Practitioner Recitation Handbook, published by the Kinryuzan Golden Dragon Mountain Kasumi-An Dojo.

Hannya
Prajna Paramita
Transcendent Wisdom

As part of my every thought, word, and action, I am inspired by the heroic ideal of knowing highest truth. I keep sight of the big picture!

Have you ever gotten so caught up in the details of an argument that you forgot completely what you were arguing about in the first place? Have you ever had the experience of looking back at an argument days or weeks later and even laughing about it with the person you were arguing with?

The superhero power of “transcendent wisdom” sounds kind of funny, but it’s very authentic. Have you ever sat through a traffic jam and just as you got through the bottleneck, looked backwards to see the huge line of cars and thought, “Wow, I sat through all of that?” Transcendent wisdom is the power of being able to “look back” right now – to know that whatever situation you’re facing, not only will it pass, but it will probably be funny or at least a great story to tell in the times to come.

Commit today and every day to take a step back from the entanglements of details to gain a greater appreciation for just how far you’ve come, and inspire your thoughts, words, and actions to power through whatever temporary frustrations and setbacks you might face, knowing you’ll be able to look back with appreciation later.

Thought: Take a moment today to imagine how this day will look in the future, and what you want to be able to remember about how special it was.

Word: In a conversation or blog post, consider how your words will read or be remembered in the future, and communicate skillfully to create great memories for the future.

Action: Examine your to-do list today and accomplish one thing on the list that you will be able to point to in the future as a significant deed.

Endnote: The powers themselves are translated by Senior Master Instructor Stephen K. Hayes from the Enlightened Warrior Gyoja Practitioner Recitation Handbook, published by the Kinryuzan Golden Dragon Mountain Kasumi-An Dojo.

Zenjo
Dhyana Paramita
Meditation

As part of my every thought, word, and action, I am inspired by the heroic ideal of concentrated awareness. I am in the moment here and now!

Our society conspires against you every moment of every day to take you off course, away from your goals and dreams. Marketers flood you with advertisements, politicians mouth empty promises, and cutting through the fog of noise requires heroic effort unto itself. Every superhero has their retreat, their hidden sanctuary or fortress of solitude where they can go to reflect, recharge, and refocus. The real secret is that your personal fortress of solitude can go wherever you go, because it’s always inside you.

Meditation means more than just sitting down and breathing, although that’s as good a place to start as any. Find what works for you, whether it’s Zen-style seated meditation, playing the piano for an hour, going for a long walk, or whatever it is you need to do to clear your head of distraction.

Commit today and every day to finding something to tune into that is positive, inspiring, and uplifting, then tie that to a special word, gesture, or mental keyword that you can recall at a moment’s notice every time you engage in your meditation-style activity.

Thought: find a memory, dream, or time in your life when you felt as close to perfectly calm and content as you can remember during every meditation-style activity.

Word: with the memory in mind, assign a special word to it that you don’t use conversationally, perhaps in another language. Say it out loud during your meditation-style activity.

Deed: create and assign a special gesture to your memory of contented calmness that you don’t use in daily life, such as dusting off imaginary dirt from your shirt, and make that gesture during your meditation-style activity. When life gets hectic, take a moment to say your special words and perform your special gesture to refocus your mind.

Endnote: The powers themselves are translated by Senior Master Instructor Stephen K. Hayes from the Enlightened Warrior Gyoja Practitioner Recitation Handbook, published by the Kinryuzan Golden Dragon Mountain Kasumi-An Dojo.

Shojin
Virya Paramita
Effort

As part of my every thought, word, and action, I am inspired by the heroic ideal of courageous, diligent effort. I work to make things happen!

The ability to make things happen, to get motivated to jump in and get the job done, the reputation of the person who always generates the results – these are superhero powers in their own right. Having someone who can create results is good – being the person who can create results is great.

Positive momentum starts with the famous sneaker slogan – just do it. There’s an expression attributed to Voltaire – best is often the enemy of good (enough). Once you get rolling, it’s much easier to build momentum, so the very best time to do something is right now. Be the superhero who leaps into action (thoughtfully, of course) and leads from the front.

Responsibility as a word has been tarnished by people unwilling or unable to act – it’s not an obligation, but the ability to respond, to act, to move forward when no one else is willing to step up.

Commit today and every day to taking responsibility for your life and deciding where you will take your life, rather than where life will take you, in your thoughts, words, and actions.

Thought: Take a moment today to create a to do list, but rather than prioritize solely in terms of importance, focus on what you can get done today.

Word: Is there someone you’ve been meaning to call or write? Stop reading this blog post and go do it NOW.

Action: What have you been putting off that you know you must accomplish? Do it now, do it today, and get it done.

Endnote: The powers themselves are translated by Senior Master Instructor Stephen K. Hayes from the Enlightened Warrior Gyoja Practitioner Recitation Handbook, published by the Kinryuzan Golden Dragon Mountain Kasumi-An Dojo.

Ninniku
Kshanti Paramita
Patience

As part of my every thought, word, and action, I am inspired by the heroic ideal of tolerant patience. I do not take opposition personally!

The musician Munk has a striking lyric in one of his songs – for every light that shines, a shadow falls. The world is full of people who aren’t ready to be heroes yet, and may actually resent the idea that others are trying to go past our human frailties towards a life of meaning.

As you awaken your superhero powers, there will be people who will think differently, speak harshly, and perhaps even act contrary to your and their own best interests. What may appear at first to be an enemy may simply be a call for help twisted beyond recognition. Rather than engage them in battle, just remember that every storm must pass. True, there are times when you will need to take a stand against legitimate supervillains, but those are few and far between.

Commit today and every day to being mentally bulletproof by enduring and patiently waiting out battles that you don’t have to fight with focused thoughts, words, and actions.

Thought: Take a moment today and every day when you feel an instinct to lash back at someone to ask yourself: is this a battle I need to fight, or can I just wait this out?

Word: In a conversation today and every day, when you feel the need to react to someone else’s words, ask yourself how you can ignore, redirect, or even create confusion in the conversation rather than deliver a heated reply.

Action: As you move through your daily life today and every day, practice taking a deep, satisfying, long breath with your eyes closed or partially shaded when you feel the physical effects of stress beginning to take hold of you.

Endnote: The powers themselves are translated by Senior Master Instructor Stephen K. Hayes from the Enlightened Warrior Gyoja Practitioner Recitation Handbook, published by the Kinryuzan Golden Dragon Mountain Kasumi-An Dojo.

Jo Kai
Shila Paramita
Discipline

As part of my every thought, word, and action, I am inspired by the heroic ideal of ethical discipline. I live my principles!

Ever wonder why Superman doesn’t just do whatever he wants? After all, he’s invulnerable to just about everything, can fly, shoot fire from his eyes and countless other powers. Why doesn’t he just conquer the world?

It comes down to principles. The character of Superman has principles that are as invulnerable as he is. You have them, too, superhero. You have things you believe in, you know right from wrong, and more importantly, you know when you cross that line, when you stray off the path.

Likewise, you know what a fantastic feeling it is when you and what you believe in are perfectly aligned. Those are the days when everything just works, when you feel like you can accomplish anything, inspire anyone, and are on top of the world.

Commit today and every day to live your beliefs with a focused thought, word, and action.

Thought: Take a moment today and every day to find a principle, ethic, or belief in yourself that, privately, you know needs firming up, and find an emotionally satisfying reason to uphold that belief.

Word: In a conversation you have today and every day, find a moment to reaffirm with a friend or to the world the things you believe in – not to evangelize, but to remind yourself of what’s important to you.

Action: During an activity today and every day in which you know you compromise your beliefs – maybe it’s a cigarette you sneak at lunch – recharge your belief that you are WORTH your commitments to yourself, and shut down the little voice that wants you to compromise.

Endnote: The powers themselves are translated by Senior Master Instructor Stephen K. Hayes from the Enlightened Warrior Gyoja Practitioner Recitation Handbook, published by the Kinryuzan Golden Dragon Mountain Kasumi-An Dojo.

Fu Sei
Dana Paramita
Generosity

As part of my every thought, word, and action, I am inspired by the heroic ideal of generously caring for others. I want to make the world a better place!

The foundation of your superhero powers rests on your desire to make the world around you, from distant cities to your neighborhood, a better place. Even something as simple as picking up a piece of litter makes a change for the better.

Even more powerfully, you can turn what are normally human weaknesses into strengths. Selfishness can be twisted into enlightened self interest, where you work for solutions that benefit you AND benefit the people you work with. Find ways to help everyone win, and in doing so you’ll gain the benefits for yourself as well. The more you can give, the more you can share, the more you’ll earn and grow. Some people call this the Golden Rule, others call it Giver’s Game, but at each opportunity to score a win for both the home team and the visiting team, do so.

Commit today and every day to make the world a better place with a focused thought, word, and action.

Thought: In a situation today and every day when you’re inclined to view a situation as win/lose, find a way to twist the situation to everyone’s advantage.

Word: In a conversation you have today and every day, find a moment to turn harsh words into constructive ones, free of venom but helpful.

Action: In a place today and every day, find a moment to clean up a piece of litter, turn off a leaky faucet, or another small but meaningful gesture that helps make the world a better place immediately.

Endnote: The powers themselves are translated by Senior Master Instructor Stephen K. Hayes from the Enlightened Warrior Gyoja Practitioner Recitation Handbook, published by the Kinryuzan Golden Dragon Mountain Kasumi-An Dojo.

We live in an age starved for heroes. The resurgence of hero movies, hero TV shows, hero stories, and the willingness by the media to label anyone with an ounce of initiative a hero shows how badly we need to find heroes in our society.

But… what if you could have more? What if, instead of fictional characters in tights and capes on a screen, you could find a hero inside yourself? What if you could LIVE the powers of a superhero, brought to life inside your own heart and mind? Would you?

I’m going to publish a series of 10 blog posts on the topic – the 10 qualities of a superhero. The powers themselves are translated by Senior Master Instructor Stephen K. Hayes from the Enlightened Warrior Gyoja Practitioner Recitation Handbook, published by the Kinryuzan Golden Dragon Mountain Kasumi-An Dojo. These have very, very old roots, and the commentary on them is mine alone.

The ten qualities of a superhero aren’t a means to obtain superpowers, because you already have those. Today, from a device the size of a candy bar, you have access to the bulk of humanity’s knowledge. Today, from a telephone in a pocket, you can instantly communicate with the other side of the planet. Today, from any broadband computer with a Web browser, you can see and affect events in far away lands. The abilities technology gives us would have been labeled magical a hundred years ago, and sorcery three hundred years ago. You already have the powers; the qualities of a superhero are to help guide you and put them to use.

Shikin haramitsu daikomyo. Every day could be the day when it all comes together, when everything WORKS, and we begin to bring our potential to life. Get ready to awaken your superhero.

My first read on Q is this – good. Good that it happened, good that the payload was relatively innocuous (so far), good that it demonstrated a flaw in social networking without obliterating the network in the process. I’d still change your password if you’re a current or former Q user on any email account you’ve used it with.

Just how bad could the Q Trust Virus (trustvirus? is that even a word?) have been? Consider this: how many times have you synced your online web mail’s account information with an address book or other utility? I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that if you’re in the social space, you’ve used a tool like Plaxo or LinkedIn or another sync tool that promises to bring together all your data, and you’ve done so.

I’d bet you dollars to doughnuts right now that in your address book on XYZ service as well as on your personal computer, you not only have friends’ email addresses, but their real names, physical world addresses, phone numbers, birthdays, and more.

Imagine a Q-style TrustVirus (it’s officially a word now) that aggregates all of that, but doesn’t tell you, nor does it mass email all of your friends. Instead, it stores it in one large data warehouse, and cross-references people in your network with the same people in other networks, until it develops a comprehensive profile of an individual based on fragments gathered from that individual’s many friends. CC Chapman may not have my birthdate in his address book, but Chris Brogan might. Steve Garfield may know my cell phone number, and Michelle Wolverton might know my work address. Put the sum of my friends’ knowledge about me together, and you’d have enough for a profile of reasonable accuracy.

What to do with such a profile? Well, selling it to an identity theft ring would probably be lucrative and almost impossible to trace. Selling it to marketing data firms, selling it to just about anyone who wants top-notch, qualified personal profiles (three letter government agencies?) would be profitable.

Think about it – not only would a trustvirus gather a lot of information quickly, but it would be highly accurate most of the time, because you’re hijacking trust relationships across networks. Bryan Person trusts me enough to tell me his birthday, and I have no incentive to put inaccurate data in my address book. I trust Anji Bee with my mailing address, and chances are very good she’ll record it accurately. A trustvirus knows this and therefore the data it collects will be highly trustworthy.

What’s the lesson in all this? Think carefully about the information you put online. Think carefully about what you share with whom, even close friends, because they are human and therefore susceptible to trustvirus hijacking. Encourage your friends, if you’re of a sufficiently paranoid mindset, to not record sensitive data that could be used for identity theft (name, SSN, and date of birth is the magic trifecta that unlocks most doors) and be very careful about how you store data about them.

The easiest benchmark of all is to ask yourself this: what don’t you want the world to know about you – and who else knows about it?

Beware the trustvirus.

The thing most people know me for depends on how you know me. As Stephen K. Hayes says, we all wear different titles to different people. You might be Mom to some, but Daughter to another. Chances are you probably know me in a few forms:

- As the producer of the Financial Aid Podcast and Chief Technology Officer of Edvisors, Inc./Student Loan Network.

- As the co-founder of the PodCamp UnConference movement along with the aforementioned brilliant Chris Brogan, and now Executive Director of the PodCamp Foundation along with co-Executive Director Brogan. Also organizer of PodCamp Europe, speaker at Podcamp Toronto, PodCamp Boston, PodCamp NYC, the PESC conference, and more.

- As a New Marketing guy involved in a lot of projects, from Marketing Over Coffee with John Wall of The M Show to a regular at Coffee with Crayon to the producer of Virtual Hot Wings with Michelle Wolverton and C.C. Chapman.

- As this guy who leaves odd comments on your blog or podcast, or makes comments on Twitter directed at you, or adds you as a friend on MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Virb, and other social media sites du jour.

- As a 14 year practitioner of ninjutsu at the Boston Martial Arts Center.

Which is the real me? All of them. None of them. It depends on who you are and the context in which we interact. If any of them are a surprise to you, then welcome to context switch.

The people I associate the most with includes you. Because if you’re reading this, you associate with me.

People who have influenced my life are countless. There’s an expression in my martial art – shikin haramitsu daikomyo – that is recited before and after every class. Loosely translated, it means every experience contains the potential for the enlightenment we seek. This could be it. Everyone has something to teach (even if it’s how NOT to do something) if only we’re paying attention.

My early years, before you probably got to know me were unremarkable.

You might not know this, but I used to be terrified of public speaking, and was TERRIBLE at networking. A few things along the way changed that – necessity, along with the rush of speaking onstage. My junior year of high school was the turning point, when I found that I could influence people reasonably well with my words, and ended up being voted Senior Class President, which was hilarious. Ever since then, being onstage has become a love hate relationship which has evolved to love over the years.

I’m passionate about new media and martial arts. Actually, I’m passionate about a lot of things. I love good music – I wouldn’t have played so much of it on a financial aid radio show if I didn’t love it. I love good food – occasionally, too much. I love the power and reach that new media and the Internet give us that a generation ago would have been impossible to even fathom, much less take advantage of. It’s the project closest to mind right now but it’s also an important one – can you imagine a decade ago a bunch of fans of a musician not only bootlegging concerts, but reselling them on behalf of the musician and directing every dime to the musician?

I love the martial arts because it’s so grounding. In a lot of other areas, your ego can run away on you, get out of check, but when you step into the training hall, if your skills can’t back up your words, you end up getting the crap kicked out of you, and that’s an absolute necessity to stay focused, stay on the path, wherever it leads you. The martial art I practice focuses on winning under nearly impossible conditions, beating the odds so you can get home happy and healthy.

In the next year or two, I hope to meet you.

In ninjutsu, a technique you look at today will look different in a year’s time, in a decade’s time, and when you finally retire from training. One of my teachers compares it to a chalk mark on a wheel. As the wheel rolls, the mark might look like it’s at the same spot again after one rotation, but the wheel has traveled some distance in that time.

One of the worst mistakes to make with any technique is to say you know it, to say you’ve got it, because you effectively close yourself off from learning more about it, from being free to revisit it in a day’s time, a year’s time, or a lifetime. That same technique, as your skills improve, opens up to reveal more and more secrets, like building a staircase on the fly. Every step you build raises you higher and lets you see more, even if the technique of adding one stair on top of another is relatively the same.

Do I know Clarence? Nope. I don’t want to, either. I want to be open to learn more about Clarence. I want to be free to be surprised, amazed, and shocked by the things that I’ll learn about him in the years to come. To say I know him is to imply that he’s told me everything, and not only hasn’t he, but he can’t. There are some things you just can’t explain. I don’t want to know Clarence, but that doesn’t mean I won’t subscribe to his blog or podcast or new media ventures, because I do – and that’s the first step to learning more.

Do YOU know Clarence? As Clarence says, let it marinate.

“What do you feed your brain with?”

Power comes from within you. True, there’s a lot to be said for things like money and Rolodexes, power lunches, etc. but these are outward symbols of what’s going on inside your mind. The conversation got me to thinking about some of the things I fuel my brain with, and that in turn got me thinking about publishing a list of some of my favorite pieces of brain food. All of the food below is free to access!

1. Mitch Joel at PodCamp Toronto – Building your personal brand. This is a 45 minute video that is worth paying for, but amazingly is free. If you finish watching this and your personal sense of identity is not refined, you need to watch it again.

2. Malcolm Gladwell on Spaghetti Sauce – TED conference. A great session that gets you thinking about choice and happiness.

3. Julien Smith discusses SEO – a great primer and refresher on the basics of search optimization. If you have any desire to understand the real power behind monetization and podcasting, then you need to listen to this episode of Canadian Podcast Buffet.

4. Managing the Gray with C.C. Chapman – a great marketing podcast that will get you thinking about new media.

5. New Comm Road with Bryan Person – a far more tactical perspective of the tools of new media, with techniques and specifics for implementation.

6. Tony Robbins at TED – another great video on what makes human beings tick. Tony’s legendary in the human performance community and his stuff is ALWAYS worth watching.

7. Stephen K. Hayes. Master instructor, master practitioner of ninjutsu, just about everything he does and creates is instantly usable and worthwhile. Some stuff will take a decade or so to marinate. His speech, Faces in the Mandala, is a must-read.

My good friend Chel also reminds us that there’s great music to be had all over the place that is a profound source of inspiration as well. That is an entirely different blog post.

Second Life. Was there Second Life at the seminar? No. Second Life is a technology that came along about 600 years after the period we were studying, but Second Life provides something to many people that has not been previously available – the ability to visualize and see visualized other people’s internal mind images on a grand scale. During the guided meditation, we were asked to construct some mental images in our heads about the topics at hand, and I found myself creating imagery with greater ease than ever before, and much of it looked like stuff you’d see in world. Second Life has given me more mental flexibility to do that kind of internal vision work than I thought possible, and that was really eye opening.

Super powers. So many of the “deities” in Buddhism have ascribed attributes. This one on the mandala is the power of healing, this one over here is the power of compassion. In the Buddhist tradition, these things are archetypes – ideals, essences, distillations of the quality, as opposed to being an external entity. You wouldn’t ever go to a church to worship, say, Yoda or Superman, but you might in a time of crisis envision yourself having Yoda’s wisdom or Superman’s strength. The same is true of the Buddhist superheroes painted on these iconic images. One of the takeaways from the weekend for me was not just learning about a particular superhero power or quality, but making use of it, bringing it out of your head and into the world so you can generate results with it.

Think about it this way – how selfish would it be, if you had X-Ray vision or could fly or bullets couldn’t harm you, to simply live a quiet life and not make use of those powers for good? We talked a lot this weekend about the state of the world, about how fast the world is changing, and not necessarily for the better. We in new media have super powers. We can talk to thousands, millions of people with the push of a button. We can gain “telephathic” insights into our friends’ inner thoughts with an RSS reader, know where they are via Twitter and other location-aware devices. We can see life through their eyes via Flickr, YouTube, Blip.tv, and more. In olden times, the ability to see from afar was called remote viewing, or clairvoyance. Now it’s called UStream.tv. The ability to foresee the future like a Jedi or Sith seemed magical 30 years ago when George Lucas put Star Wars on the big screen. Today, you only need aggregate multiple data sources, and patterns emerge that might as well be a map.

YOU are the superhero, or have the potential to be and the tools to do it with, right now. You don’t have to become a black belt in a martial art, or spend decades meditating in a cave somewhere. Just turn on your computer, connect to the Internet, and you have tapped into your power source. You have activated your superpowers. You can save lives with your powers, you can make the world a better place, or you can advance its destruction. Choose wisely.

Human technology. The Internet is the great leveler. It’s the great equalizer, if we let it be. The power of the Internet has made some careers and lives and broken others. Most importantly, it allows us to connect to each other, to organize, to share, to grow, and to be greater than the individual. The power of our network is spectacular when you step back, when you stop letting life’s mundane chores and daily grind blind you to your powers. The same technologies are available to everyone who connects (for the most part). Jewish? RSS works for you. Muslim? RSS works for you, too. American? A blog post by an American has the same technological foundation, broadly speaking, as a blog post by a Russian, Australian, or Kenyan. The Internet isn’t a group’s technology, it’s human technology. It’s all of ours.

One thing that has always stood out to me was an experience I had in 1993, at a Billy Joel concert. The energy of that concert was unbelievable, at Nassau Colliseum, not far from where Joel grew up. At the end of the night, he sang his signature piece, Piano Man, for a crowd of 30,000, and nearly everyone in the audience sang along. 30,000 people unified their thoughts, words, and actions together to sing this one song and the energy and power of that moment was awe-inspiring. I thought to myself afterwards, imagine the potential that humanity has if we could unify like that for longer, on a bigger scale. What would we be capable of?

The same thought repeats in my head now. What could we do together – what heights could we achieve, if we stop thinking of ourselves as small little individuals in a hostile world, and take charge of our experiences of life? What could we BE if we are all together working for good, fully awakened to our powers, fully able to tap into them?

A couple of excerpts:

I’m perpetually aware that I’m in debt, and therefore, it colors my mood quite drastically. At this stage, it’s impossible to tell if I’m frequently depressed because I’m in debt, or if I’m in debt because I’m frequently depressed.

Like attracts like. So, by that rationale — explains The Secret — the way out of debt, depression, boredom or other general dissatisfaction with life is simply to think positive. After all, if we’re endlessly focused on our debt — or that project that’s never done, or that relationship that’s forever on the rocks — all we’re doing is reinforcing our current negative emotions about the situation, and therefore, we shouldn’t be surprised when we encounter more of the same. Subconsciously, “we asked for it.” New Age or Common Sense? Part of me rejects this theory outright. Why? Because, at its base, it seems too easy. Granted, maintaining a positive frame of mind during the most trying of circumstances is anything BUT easy, but if attracting wealth, health and contentment into your life is as easy as wishing for it and then steadfastly sticking to that mindframe… Does anyone else see where my doubts are justified?

And yet… in the bigger picture, it does also seem to make absolute common sense. Let’s say there’s a guy at a party. He’s got great energy, he’s kind, he’s attentive, he listens when you speak and he remembers people’s names. He’s a charmer, but his charm is natural, not falsified: he’s having a good life. No worries. No stress. He’s not bringing you down. Who wouldn’t want to be around that guy? And, because that guy can essentially have his pick of people to associate with — after all, he’s a hot social commodity — wouldn’t he also want to be around people whose association provides him with what he needs? So he surrounds himself with positive people, fellow listeners, people who take action.

My teacher’s teacher in the martial arts, Stephen K. Hayes, has a very well thought out and documented approach to dealing with this kind of situation. Justin’s right to say that positive thinking, while a good first step, is not enough. It’s a start, but it requires more than just thinking happy thoughts and trying to be cheerful, because ultimately, on the inside, if you’re not taking action to address the issues, the cheerfulness is a facade that’s easily penetrated.

The rough plan goes like this. What do you want to achieve? What’s your goal, and how do you measure that goal? For example, if you want to have more money, how much more and by when? Set a goal that’s concrete – “I will have $500,000 net after tax income by December 31, 2008″ – so that the goal is achievable and can be broken into milestones.

Ask yourself this – what things externally might stand in your way or slow you down from achieving your goals? Maybe it’s a lack of resources – if your goal is to produce a great internet TV series, maybe the old clunker PC you have isn’t enough. If your goal is to earn more money, maybe your boss isn’t willing to give you a raise or change your compensation to a performance-based plan.

Next – what things do you need to do externally to achieve those goals? It could be building your personal network or getting a raise at work. If your goal is a happier relationship, it could be programming reminders for anniversaries and other occasions into your calendar so that you don’t ever forget them. What are the workarounds for the external blocks?

After you know what you need to do and what things could stand in your way externally, you have to tackle the internal. What things internally could stop you from achieving your goals? Maybe you procrastinate. Maybe you feel selfish or shy or unworthy of success. Whatever things inside you that stand in your way, catalog them.

What things can you do, what steps can you take, to achieve your goals? If you’re a procrastinator, how can you alter your habits to change into a do-er? If you’re neglectful in a relationship or careless, what things can you do to be more mindful?

Once you know what stands in your way internally and externally, and you’ve got lists of things you can take action on to overcome obstacles and move towards your goal, put together a master plan. Maybe even get out a calendar and start marking down milestones. If your goal is increased income, have dates along the way that will help measure the achievements you want to make, the contacts you need to have, and so forth. If your goal is more productivity at work, mark down on the calendar when things need to be done and give yourself some extra time up front so that you can achieve ahead of schedule.

Then do it.

Achieving your goals – whether it’s to afford a $1.50 cup of coffee or to have a happy marriage, or whatever the case – can be done as long as another human being has done it. At the end of the day, we all have the same human potential for greatness. Stephen K. Hayes said it best: “An average plan vigorously executed is far better than a brilliant plan on which nothing is done. For you to achieve any kind of success, execution is everything. Resolve to do something every single day that moves you toward your goal.”

And Justin, next time you’re in town, the first cup of coffee’s on me.

Challenging class this evening. We examined a lot of material, including pre-conflict indicators. A lot to process, but initial lessons are very promising. What things give away that a fight is about to erupt? What precursors and warning signs are there? One thing I always note in newspaper accounts about any kind of violent crime is that some boob inevitably says, “Oh, but he was such a nice guy. There were no warning signs at all!”, usually accompanied by the equally inevitable, “I can’t believe this happened here. Things like this never happen here.” Tonight’s class was part of addressing how to not be that boob on TV looking so shocked.