We are way past the “information age” as knowledge and information are plentiful on the internet today, and most recently with the advent of ChatGPT and other AI information sources, access to information is without constraint.

Even more importantly, access to curated information is astronomical.  We can search for the information we seek, and if we prompt effectively, we can have this information provided to us with clarity, devoid of filler or wasted content.

We can get to the point, quickly and easily.

However, we still need greater context exposed within this content.  Decision making with wisdom remains a constant of value and importance.

I recently reflected on a story I encountered a number of months back.  I was watching a short documentary on the rise of the group One Direction, specifically how the group was created.

The instigator of my watching was out of an interest in how Niall Horan (one of the groups members and a new judge on my favorite show, the Voice) had come to be a part of the group.

The documentary presented Niall’s audition.

He showed great talent, but also an arrogance not warranted for his age or experience.  He caught the eye of the judges, but when it came time to send him through, the notoriously negative Simon Cowell surprisingly voted yes.  I believe it was Sharon Osborne who also put him through, but a third judge voted no because she felt he’d been too arrogant. 

Katie Perry was the fourth judge. She agreed with Simon’s assessment of his underlying talent, but she also felt he was too cocky…….despite these feelings, she pushed him through.

Segue forward several weeks, and Niall along with all the future members of One Direction had been cut from the talent camp. They didn’t make it as individuals to the final talent show.

However, the show featured both an individual and group program, and the judges decided to create a new group to compete in the group format.

From a palette of images on a desk, the judges collated pictures of each of the former members of the camp who had been cut.  Working their way through, they slowly defined the membership of this new boys group who would compete in the group program.

Niall Horan, Harry Styles, Zyan, Liam Payne, and Louis Tomlinson

Names of five boys who until this moment were headed home to lives of the unknown.  What lies ahead, who knows?

Here was Niall Horan, second time lucky again.  Almost didn’t make it through the audition, and now gone from cut to collected, united with four others who would soon be famous beyond anyone’s imagination.

This ragtag band of unknowns would soon win the show, and go on to being one of the biggest boy bands in the history of music, and each a multi-millionaire.

Why do I tell this story?

Because the decisions made to allow Niall to pass through the audition, the decisions made to put him with the rest of that group of boys, and the consequent decisions by those who voted to see them win the competition, these are context based decisions.

They are the decisions born of experience and intuitive trust. 

Katie Perry just felt something was right about this kid, born of her own trajectory in the business, a feeling, an itch. She sent him through.

Simon Cowell, perhaps loaded with more experience than Katie as a judge of talent just knew he was something special, and pushed him through with no question.

Another judge, for other reasons unknown, just didn’t feel right.

Context matters, and contextual decision making is informed by experience.

I recently asked ChatGPT this question:

Why would you decide to allow your patient who has recently had their ACL ligament repaired ride a road bike or not?

Chat GPT Response:

Deciding whether to allow a patient who has recently had their ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) repaired to ride a road bike depends on several factors, primarily related to the stage of recovery and the specific circumstances of the patient. Here are some considerations:

• Post-Operative Phase: Initially after ACL repair, typically in the first few weeks, the patient may need to restrict activities to allow for healing and to prevent stressing the repaired ligament too soon.

• Rehabilitation Progress: As the patient progresses through rehabilitation, the focus shifts from protection and healing to strengthening and functional recovery. The decision to allow road biking would depend on how well the patient’s knee is responding to rehabilitation exercises, their range of motion, and the stability of the knee joint.

• Doctor’s Advice: The orthopedic surgeon or the physical therapist overseeing the patient’s recovery will provide specific guidelines based on the individual’s progress. They will assess factors such as muscle strength, joint stability, and any residual swelling or pain.

• Type of Road Bike Activity: Road biking is generally low-impact and involves repetitive motion. If the patient is cleared for cycling, they may start with stationary biking and progress to road biking as tolerated. The bike fit and setup should also be appropriate to minimize strain on the knee.

• Risk Factors: Road biking involves potential risks such as falls or sudden movements that could stress the knee joint. The decision to allow road biking will factor in the patient’s overall stability and the likelihood of avoiding such risks during the recovery period.

• Monitoring Symptoms: Throughout the recovery process, it’s crucial to monitor the patient’s symptoms closely. Any increase in pain, swelling, or instability during or after road biking should be reported to the healthcare provider.

In summary, the decision to allow a patient with a recently repaired ACL to ride a road bike hinges on their stage of recovery, rehabilitation progress, and individual factors.

What ChatGPT doesn’t say is how you navigate this information and weigh it. What is more important or less important. How does it dovetail with a current set of timelines and constraints.

How does it change if say, the athlete in question had also suffered a shoulder fracture and was rehabilitating that injury at the same time?

Complex problem decision making is fraught with contextual information that needs to be weighed against a myriad of factors, and this ability is cultivated through time under tension.

Why do I write about this?

If you want to get better at what you are doing, selecting mentors and programs, and information sources that provide context as a backdrop of choice and decision making is key to getting better.

There is much knowledge available, but how you use it is the key to your success.

How you use it is informed by Why and When questions, so keep asking and keep learning.

We just celebrated Father’s Day this past weekend.  Or should I say, many of us did.

Some celebrated their own father’s, others celebrated being a father as well.

My father passed many years ago, and to be honest, my relationship with my Dad was not a strong one.  

My Dad was a great provider, he did his job as the job description was told to him. That’s all he knew.  

But he was a good father just the same.  

I hold no resentment for our relationship, it simply was what it was.

But it also set the table for my own wrestling match with fatherhood. For a long time, it just wasn’t a likely thing.  I went through several relationships and marriages without its contemplation.

I didn’t yearn for the opportunity, I didn’t seek its fulfillment.

When I met my wife at almost 40, something began to change.  I began to feel like it was something I wanted to know about myself, something I should experience, especially with this woman. She was the right partner for this new horizon.

I had no idea what it meant, or what it would mean.  I just knew it was something I could see myself doing.

And then in a moment, from one day to the next, I went from oblivious to engulfed.  I went from nothing to something in a heartbeat.

For a closet control freak, becoming a father was an overwhelming experience.  Welcome to the firehose called life.  

Being a father is the greatest responsibility one could ever imagine.

You have to get up in the middle of the night, there is no option not to do so.  There is no get out of JAIL free card, no chance to do over.  All of a sudden, you realize this is here to stay, and you are in charge of this little being’s life, a life that depends on you.  

No matter how you feel that day, no matter how well slept, no matter how empty of energy, no matter how much money you might not have, you must deliver.

Suddenly you realize, unlike most anything else in your life, you can’t walk away from it, you can’t pretend it doesn’t exist, you can’t forget about it.

But why would you want to anyway?

It’s a responsibility I cherish deeply.  I GET to be a Dad, and it’s the greatest honor and privilege I could have ever imagined.

Becoming a father made me a better man, forced me to change in ways I would not have changed without her influence, and made me think about things differently.

It tugs at your heartstrings, pulls on your strength, and pushes you to the limits sometimes.  But all of this leads to unimaginable growth. If you give way to it, you explore parts of you that you never knew existed. Parts you later lean on for so many other challenges that undoubtedly come along.

You realize when you become a father that you really can do anything, and you really do know nothing.  

It’s humbling indeed.

Most importantly for me, I get to be Gretchen’s Dad. 

My daughter is  an incredible human, and I know I am biased, but she’s a wonderful package of smart, funny, inquisitive, curious, caring, kind, and amazing! She makes me proud every day.

I see life differently since becoming a Dad.  I feel different, I have a wonderful sense of purpose that wasn’t there before her.

And I know there is so much yet to come, so much more she will teach me.

Her mother gave her to me, and I am truly grateful. Thanks for choosing me to be Gretchen’s Dad <3

Happy belated Father’s Day to all the amazing dads out there.

Just back from a big junket to China for the first time in my life.

The more I travel this globe, the more I realize we are all the same, just dealing with the trials and tribulations of life with different strategies.

There is too much made of the political discourse, too much focus on our differences, not enough on our similarities.

I had the same remark fifteen plus years ago now when I did some extended work in Oman in the middle east.  Everyone figuring out how to make a living, how to navigate each day.

Different foods, different cultures, different fashions……but all the same challenges.

China surprised me.  I think the overreaching and constant messaging in western media about the oppressiveness of the regime made me believe I would feel oppression in the air.  

But it was the exact opposite.

The hustle and bustle of every airport, train station, and thorofare. Scooters and bikes buzzing everywhere, mixed in with the new car smell almost everywhere. 

Roads that didn’t give me a headache from the potholes were a change of pace from back home!

Walking the Houtongs, smelling the food, seeing the people in their day to day.  Everyone just going about their business, being human.

Walking the Great Wall, something I never in a million years thought I would ever do.  That was something special. But still taken by the “touristic” sensation of it all.  People everywhere, not many foreigners, just regular citizens being curious about something they themselves had never seen as well.

Teaching with live simultaneous translation, if you’ve never done it before, is a real exploration in patience.  Someone told me to forget the jokes, and they were right.  Jokes don’t work so well in translation mode.

But the patience in the listener was cool to watch.  People just as attentive having to listen once to something foreign, and listen twice to understand. But they listened, learned, and asked questions just the same.

Is there background noise, most certainly. Is there much I don’t understand, for sure.  I probably received a sanitized version curated for the foreigner. But I couldn’t help watching people simply go about their business each day and they did the same things we do.

They made the best of difficult situations, managed the turbulence of life, ate on the run, laughed, stared at their phones, moved quickly from one place to the next.

Kids are kids, they scream, and they cry, and they laugh and they play.  They are just kids.

We are all just the same, and the more we focus on that, the better off we will all be on this big blue planet.

What has been your cost of success?

I often ask this question to guests on Leave Your Mark.  At what cost has the success you’ve had professionally or personally come?

Most of the time, people answer that they’ve compromised relationships or their health.

Fascinating.

For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been examining this question, “what is the key to a good life?” 

They followed men who entered college in the late 1930s through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age. 

After starting with 724 participants—boys from disadvantaged and troubled families in Boston, and Harvard undergraduates.  The study incorporated the spouses of the original men and, more recently, more than 1,300 descendants of the initial group. 

It is the longest in-depth longitudinal study on human life ever done, and it brought the researchers  to a simple and profound conclusion:

Good relationships lead to health and happiness. 

The trick is that those relationships must be nurtured.

So here we are compromising relationships AND our health to be successful!!!

So many people say this, and in some ways quite cavalierly, like it’s a reasonable cost associated with being good or great at something, or having success as our sociological influences would describe it.

Having things, doing things, being things that people look up to or admire.  That is success in the mind’s eye.  

And yet, near the end of life, the lament is always, I should have spent more time with my family, I wish I’d taken better care of myself.

I guess there are three questions worth answering here:

1 – Is Success actually about acquiring things, achieving things, or being something or someone others admire or wish to emulate?

2 – Can you have success as described above without compromising your health or relationships?

3 – If you can’t, is there another way to describe or define success?

That’s the key really, what are you using as your compass leading towards success?  What is a complete expression of this truth, not sociologically misguided aspirations.

Aspiring to do things, accomplish things, or create things is absolutely the essence of being human.  But the argument about who is successful does not rest in the end point, or completion of the objective, it rests in the effort and intent to actualize it.

Can you bring quality effort, and intention, yet still reserve some of yourself for the actualizing of love, kindness and contribution for those who mean everything to you?

Does being a good father or mother mean you can’t be a good pilot, or doctor, or construction worker?

Are you successful if you are a good construction worker, teacher, or parent?

Does one leave one’s mark in that which gets noticed and celebrated, or is a mark left when the contribution remains unknown, or simply understood by the few rather than the many?

The fact that something we achieve or do becomes recognized should be an incidental outcome, not a focus of identity or achievement.

Do it because you love it. Be with them because you love them.  Be where your feet are, be present, be connected, and always do your best.

Words to live by.

In such effort can most certainly reside the actualization of a dream living in the presence of friendship and love.

When I became a father, my brother, who is a teacher, recommended a book called, “Hold on to Your Kids”. Written by Gabor Mate a renown MD, and Gordon Neufled an Doctor of Psychology, in it the two try to tackle one of the most disturbing trends we see today: children increasingly looking to their peers for direction, their values, identity, and codes of behavior.

They describe a primary form of attachment that all human beings first explore with their parents. This natural and innate form of attachment ensures that they will be well stewarded and directed by they parents who, in general, naturally seek their children’s best interest.

They describe over the course of the last 30+ years an erosion of the family nucleus resulting in an earlier peer orientation and eventual peer attachment that undermines family cohesion, interferes with healthy development, and fosters a hostile, and sexualized youth culture.

As the authors explain in the book, children end up becoming overly conformist, desensitized, and alienated; being “cool” matters more to them than anything else.

The authors explain the causes of this crucial breakdown of parental influence—and demonstrate ways to “reattach” to sons and daughters, establish the proper hierarchy in the home, make kids feel safe and understood, and earn back their children’s loyalty and love.

One of the things they ascribe to is the concept of traditions and forms of structure that children can anchor to and remain attached to even in the most challenging time of their development.

When I first read the book, I was truly drawn to this concept of anchoring through traditions. I recognized right away that in any of the successful group dynamics I have witnessed in my career and life, the structures and the traditions create anchor points from which one can push off and land each time one takes a risk, reaches higher, tries something new, or just gets after it!

Wether you are a parent dealing with the changes and growith of your child, or you are simply leading or supporting others in the successful execution of a plan or a strategy, the concept of establishing anchors and traditions can be a game changer.

Of course, everyone needs differing amounts of “flux” or “flow” in their life so that they feel alive. The same thing day after day becomes mundane and empty, so we inject moments of opportunity, change, and adrenaline rush into our lives, and everyone has a different threshold for how challenging or off the hook these experiences need to be to keep life stimulating.

But we all need a grounding point, a foundation from which to fly and these grounding points rest in the type of structures and traditions that we hold true and honour in our lives regularly.

Whether its beginning the day with a walk or a workout, checking your social media, waking up to a hot cup of coffee or a tea, finishing the day by journaling or a great conversation with your partner, these structures provide us with rest stops and points to ponder or simply be empty of thought. These structures create points of debarkation for the next adventure of the day.

Traditions like bringing the entire family together for Sunday dinner, booking a vacation in the same location each year on the same dates, talking on the phone once a week with distant loved ones, or gathering the clan for Thanksgiving are strong anchors that keep the family and those we care about close and connected.

Its important to determine which structures and traditions in your life bring you, and those you lead or support, a sense of foundation. If the opportunity to sit for dinner with your partner and children (if you have them) allows you to feel better connected to them, then ensure this part of your life remains steadfast.

If journaling on a daily basis creates clarity for you, then make this a sacred past time. The better you understand your fundamental foundation for success, the more you will thrive when you know its solid.

However, when structures and traditions in your life are interrupted, don’t panic! Realize that this too is part of life, there will be moments when our foundation elements must be re-patterned or revised, go with it, not against it. Experience it, evaluate it, and see if there is anything that comes of your new day that perhaps might be incorporated in your program.

Experimentation creates reflection, learning and revision. That’s how we get better and better.

Whatever your traditions, identify them and honour them as they will anchor you, and provide you with the foundation from which to fly!

Best,

Scotty

I lost my mother this past week…….94 years young.  

She passed peacefully with the care of her nurses, PSW’s, and doctor. Thank you.

By her side were some wonderful friends from her church who hovered over her these past many months, and made sure she was safe and warm. Thank you.

Time can be cruel sometimes, and I missed being with her in her last moments.  Perhaps fortuitous, as I would rather remember her as I experienced on the last visit I made shortly before her 94th birthday.

I made her laugh.  

Perhaps my most favorite thing to do, and more important my favorite memory.  My mom loved to laugh, she loved a good joke, or a good comedy.

Her laugh and smile, and ability to laugh about her own foibles was perhaps, among many, her most endearing quality.  

She made you feel heard. 

She had a great humility.

It’s been hard. Hard to watch her become less able.  This rock of life who I always knew had more strength in her left pinky than I had in my whole body.

Born in the depression, a part of the so called “Silent Generation”, they spent young adulthood in a post-war period. This group is known for accepting rather than speaking out, and accepting modest means with little complaint.

My mom was a victim of numerous lifethreatening diseases, and a lifetime of challenge and loss.  Through it all, she always smiled, never complained, always made the best of the difficult situation.

Her friends always remarked to me, how she would never complain.  She would speak up if she felt there was an injustice or incogruency in life, but she never complained about her circumstances.

My mom was a ROCK.

I think the thing my mother was most proud of was the boys she chose to raise. Brad and I were both adopted by this wonderful soul.

She didn’t have to choose us, we got pretty lucky I’d say!

She always revelled in knowing what things we’d been up to, what new worlds we were experiencing.  

She always listened, and a great pride would rise in her face as she saw our passion and our growth expressed in our stories.

Our stories told, just like most mothers do, she would ask us if everything was ok, as though she would swoop in and fix all that wasn’t right if and when she had to, but she never had to.  

Ok, maybe a few times when were were young 😉 LOL

We were her greatest pride until one day her wonderful grand-daughter Gretchen was born.  We were no match for this little package.  Lois was especially proud to be Grandma.

My only regret is she only got her wish to be Grandma after she had turned 78, and she didn’t get to spend the time I know she would have loved simply because it was just too much.

Time was passing, like it does for all of us.

Slowly, the water and the winds of time eroded the rock, and the rock became a pebble, and the pebble became a grain of sand, and now that grain of sand has blown away, never to be seen or heard again.

But the sand will find it’s resting place, she is now a part of us, oh how we miss her so.

Her friends at her church say she is now in paradise.  I just know she is safe, and that’s all that matters to me.

On mother’s day, I celebrate this soul who for a moment, blessed us with her love, kindness, and protection.  

I miss you mom XO.

Scotty

These days, it would seem that it’s even more important to connect with quality life principles.  

Everywhere I look there seems to be a fracture in the foundation of human nature.  We’ve always looked toward our sociological leaders to provide examples of how to treat one another, but this just isn’t the case anymore, they are too consumed with what has become the “strategy” for having influence.

Being bombastic, controversial, or an absolutist sells, so why not join the wave.

We need to double down on a moral compass.  Be examples of what it is to be a partner in society, not a destroyer of society.

The first principle I believe in is to work without complaint. Most people these days perceive that a job, or even better, a career is a right. 

Unfortunately for a great deal of the population of this world, a job that pays them a reasonable and sustainable wage is something they might only dream of, not expect. 

So if you have one, understand that it is a privilege and that the person you work for, or the person who buys your services has provided you with the privilege of serving them. Do it with all you have, and do it like you know it might not be there tomorrow.

The second principle; be gracious and thankful to your parents for bringing you into this world and providing you with a home (that is if they did so, for all those of you who lived tortured lives at home, this one might not be applicable). If your parents brought you up with whatever semblance of structure and provision, and they loved you as best they could, you owe them everything you have to honor their effort. They did the best they could as you are, or may likely do with your own children. Any parent knows it is not an easy task, and it doesn’t come with a playbook!

The third principle is to mentor someone else. We all get to summit our own mountain in life not by the sheer effort of ourselves, but by embracing the support and guidance of so many along the way. Without mentorship, we would likely make too many mistakes to ever achieve our summit. As such, it is our responsibility to mentor others so they may likely summit as well.

The fourth principle is to learn and grow throughout your life. Never stop learning, never stop challenging your thought processes, your habits, or your biases. Those who rest easy, those who take the easy route and do the same thing, do not earn the right to prosper or succeed. 

This life we have been given is a blank canvas and we can paint the picture, we can revise the picture, we can add to it and modify it until such time as we pass away so we should never be satisfied with its composition.

The fifth principle is own your contribution to this world. When you give, you grow, when you take, you self limit. Our life on this planet is about our contribution, it is all we can leave, and it is all that can represent what we have accomplished.

There will be people who take advantage of our contributions. There will be those who do not appreciate what we bring. That is not the point. We cannot live through another’s state of mind; we can only be in charge of our own state of mind which must be driven from a sense of giving, not receiving.

The last principle is to be a lighthouse.  Exemplify something, inspire something, make others believe in something.  Not in judgment but in expression.  Whatever you choose to be or do, do it so that it raises other people up.  If we have more lighthouses, we’ll have a greater feeling of connection and compassion in society as a whole.  

Bring meaning to your life.

Wake up every day and earn this life you have been given.

There is nothing trivial about the blessing of our life, never rest easy that it has been earned.

I had this epiphany recently that the lynchpin for successful organizations or teams is the absence, or removal of doubt.

If you’ve ever had the chance to watch the Academy Award winning movie, “Saving Private Ryan”. This concept is on full display in this movie. (Spoiler alert, should you wish to watch it still, you might want to stop reading now)

Shortly after the movie begins and you’ve been introduced to the raison-d’etre for saving private Ryan, you find yourself watching the D-Day landing.  

It’s possibly 20 minutes of the most intense movie reality ever created, but the essence is that this band of brothers is brought together during a beach landing on the coast of France, and the indiscriminate human attrition caused by unrelenting German machine gun fire.

From this carnage is selected a Captain (played by Tom Hanks) and a small group of disparate soldiers to find the last of four brothers who is possibly alive somewhere in Europe, and bring him home to his grieving mother.

From the beginning of this quest the seeds of doubt are palpable.  

Some of the men see the mission as admirable and important, others believe it to be a mistake, a misuse of their purpose.  They are, after all,  there to beat the Germans, not to save one soldier.  They all have mothers, why is this kid’s mother any more important?

Doubt creates micro-fractures in the mission of the team.

In the background of the new found comradery of the group is the familiarity of some of the soldiers with their Captain, Miller.  They believe in him.  

They also have a running bet on discovering what the Captain’s identity was as a civilian, almost as if he is an enigma, born not of the normal man, but as this special warrior with whom their confidence rests.

As the mission progresses, doubt becomes more prevalent. Close calls, and finally the loss of a brother in a seemingly flawed moment of heroics leaves the group further questioning the senselessness of the mission.

This dissonance rises and bubbles within the squad, finally reaching a crescendo in a seemingly senseless side mission to take out an errant Nazi artillery bunker that results in the loss of their company medic.

The stench of doubt permeates the air around the men, distracted by their own physical altercations, each contemplating their next steps, none clearly focused on the task at hand. The mission to save private Ryan rests perilously on the edge of a cliff.

Recognizing that he must clear the air of doubt and redouble the belief of his men, Captain Miller calls the bet.  “How much is the pool up to……$300?”, he exclaims. 

Then, for everyone to hear, he professes that he was a simple grade school teacher, English composition……..not the single minded killing machine he has been crafted to assume. He is no different than they, no less fearful of the result.

He just knows he can not doubt the purpose, their fate rests upon the confidence in this belief.

In this single expression, this moment of vulnerability, he reinvents their belief, and dispenses with their doubt.  They may be scared and confused, but they have no doubt about their purpose.  They are singularly connected in the mission to find and save private Ryan.

The rest of the movie finds them in a chance encounter with Ryan, who will not leave his company.  He will not abandon his brothers.  They are once again faced with the reinvention of their mission, and the complete immersion in their faith.

This new band of brothers responds to the leadership and belief of the Captain, and an intense and complete commitment through the loss of many of their lives, to protect an important bridge, and to see Ryan reunited with his mother.

They give their lives for the mission to beat the Nazis, saving Private Ryan in turn so he may live his.  

Captain Miller’s final words on the brink of his own passing are, “James, earn this……”

Each man has overcome the doubt, and realized the fate of their circumstances. The mission has been achieved.

Doubt is the rust that slowly erodes the strength of even the most solid structures.

In a sports team environment, at the beginning of a season, if athletes arrive with a sense of doubt, and that doubt is not extinguished with the confidence of the organization, coaches, and other athletes, doubt will slowly unravel the fabric of the mission.

In a corporate environment, team members who aren’t on board, and don’t believe in the direction or the mission will fan the flames of doubt.  

The only solution is the expression of both confidence and vulnerability in a shared leadership that is necessary for all to realize that there are no guarantees, but there is clearly one direction.

If you lead, coach,  or manage teams, understanding where doubt begins and ends will be the silent secret of your success or failure.

Look for it, and overturn it through your own faith, confidence, and vulnerability.

We are fast becoming a head down, disconnected, distracted, and overwhelmed humanity.

These amazing Apps designed to serve many purposes, often referred to as social media because the intent of their design is for the subscriber to be more connected to their social community, have resulted in the opposite effect. 

Un-social media!

People struggle with the concept these days of actually having undistracted conversation with one another. We are less deeply and personally connected than we have ever been, and we seem to grow more disconnected by the day.

Communication has always been one of our weaknesses as a whole, because we tend to come into communication with all sorts of bias filters that define our perspective in conversation (and thus our reactions good or bad), and we also love to talk about ourselves or hear ourselves more than we like to hear the person across from us. 

So now that we don’t have to talk to one another face to face, we are choosing more and more not to talk to one another at all!

We are fast becoming textologists, tweeters, Instagramaholics, snapchatters, and Facebookies to name a few. Swipe right, swipe left. Imogi, bitmoji and x-mojis are consuming our lives.

There is plenty of new research out on the effects of social media on our physiology. The reactions of our hormonal system making tweets and texts and all that instant messaging like an addictive drug to our system, creating the similar dopamine responses as seen with the use of the likes of sugar or cocaine! 

We are fast becoming addicted to this un-social media and it seems we are paralyzed, even socialized away from stopping it.

So what should we do?

Here are a few strategies for the use of social media that might possibly help it serve YOU rather than control YOU!

Make a business of social media. 

Use social media in every, and any form to create and deliver business strategies. If you are going to be using it regularly you might as well have it serve you in a way that it provides or results in revenue. There are a myriad of ways to use social media to drive your business ventures and using it in this manner makes a great deal of sense. Make it work for you, not against you.

Plan social media. 

Create your daily schedule for using social media. Instead of reacting to it, or allowing yourself to be attached to it constantly throughout your day, decide what times of the day make sense for you to check it and respond to it. Train your friends and colleagues to expect your responses within that schedule, and not immediately upon their text or message to you.

Social media is unfortunately self perpetuating, you send a text, you expect one back, your friend expects another response and on and on, the less immediately forthcoming the less expectations are brought to bear, and the less anchored you are by those expectations.

Even when you are using it for the practicality of organization or planning, when you’ve completed the task, or connected with the person you are meeting with face to face, then put it away. Focus on the human connection, not the digital connection.

Don’t check social media when you wake up or before you go to bed. 

When you wake up, do things that help you prepare for your day. Breath, stretch, meditate, journal, script your day, make a good breakfast, connect with family, whatever it is, stay away from your social media until your day is well on its way. 

When you do connect with it, respond to the necessary notes and move on with your day. Don’t get linked into useless conversations from the day before that are likely not productive, or valuable.

When you are working your way  towards sleeping, shut your media off long before bedtime. 

A good rule of thumb would be an hour before you plan to sleep. Take the time to wind down, disconnect with all media, read a book, breath, meditate, or journal about the positive things you experienced in your day.

Turn your phone off in meetings. 

If you are having a meeting with someone, actively shut your phone down or put it in a place, like a briefcase, purse, or backpack so it is out of sight and out of mind. Don’t leave it on the table as that just tells the person you are meeting with that the phone could be more important than them. Take the time to listen intentionally to the party you are meeting with, you’ll be surprised how valuable and productive your meetings become when you are not distracted.

Keep your phone in your pocket when you’re out for dinner with a friend or family member. 

Take the time to really connect with the people you are out with, after all, if you are constantly on your phone all you are saying to the person you are with is that whoever you are chatting with on the phone is more important than them, and that shouldn’t be the case, right?

Post less about things you are doing that are awesome, and more about things that might contribute to the growth or happiness of others. 

Use social media to serve others, not yourself, and you will be surprised how good you feel inside. Life is about your self-discovery and your contribution to others, the more you make your social media use serve this purpose, the more it will be a vehicle of value rather than a vehicle of ego.

This wonderful influx of technology that has allowed us to be connected to one another 24/7 needs to be shaped into our lives and defined by its purpose through our definition, not the definition of those who create it. 

We must be the gatekeepers of our time, and the time we have to connect to others in a real and personal manner must become more sacred and less disposable. 

Put un-social media in its place!

I once heard this great saying, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”

Not that I advocate for eating elephants, we most assuredly need to protect these wonderful beasts.

But the idea of eating an elephant seems impossible, yet the only way to start, and to accomplish the feat is to dose it down to the simplest of terms. 

One bite at a time.

The feeling that something is insurmountable, or impossible, or just too much to accomplish stops so many of us.  We let the gravity of the accomplishment weigh us down, and so we do nothing instead of something.

That something is one thing.

One step, one action, one motion, one task, followed by another, and another, and another, and eventually the thing that seemed impossible is an image in your rearview mirror.

Someone shared a coaching approach they took with a client once to help them see past the impossibility of running a half marathon.

He said to his client, “I know you feel like running 21 Km’s is a big deal, how about you think of it this way, can you run one kilometer 21 times?”

The client looked at him curiously, and then exclaimed, “I can do that!”

Fait accomplice.

Sometimes you need to look back to recognize what you can accomplish.  

This past weekend I went back to my Alma Mater, Concordia University, specifically the Recreation and Athletics Department where my career really began.  

We were teaching our Reconditioning R1 Foundations course for the first time at Concordia since we began teaching the approach.

In 1990 I began working there as an Assistant Athletic Therapist and Lead Strength and Conditioning Coach.  At the time, I believe I was the first S+C coach hired full time at a major university in Canada.

It was just me and the head therapist, Ron Rappel.  We, along with a great group of students, covered and supported all the varsity athletes injuries and training.

We had an 800 square foot gym with limited equipment. 

Every year, because I had no budget, I ran two beer bashes we called the “Pump You Up Bash”, affectionately named after the Hanz and Franz skit on SNL drawn from the caricature of Arnold Schwarzeneggar and the Terminator.

The Terminator with a beer bottle in his hand instead of a gun would become the Pump You Up brand image, LOL.

Each bash would net me around $1500 and I would use that money to buy strength training equipment for the varsity program. By the time I left in 2009, we had a pretty loaded, but still small gym.

It was not only the first time university athletes were getting professional coaching, but very much the first time female athletes were getting introduced to off-court, off-ice, and off-field training.   Women’s sports were just beginning to legitimize their preparation.

Most certainly it was different in the States, but they were still way behind the men….the arms race for professionalization was beginning.

In the 90s I really witnessed the birth of women’s sports from women who simply played sports, to women who trained and lived sports. Women who aspired to create future leagues of their own.

This past week was so remarkable for so many reasons for me.  I watched the NCAA women’s basketball semi-final and final games shatter viewership records of some serious men’s sports events.  And watching them play was incredibly inspiring.

Then I watched the Canadian Women’s National Team win the World Championships in ice hockey witnessing an incredible escalation in the skills and physical abilities of these athletes.  I still remember the first women’s world championship, and the first Canadian women’s university championship events being inaugurated.  

Now to see and recognize that many of these women are playing in the Professional Women’s Hockey League! And the basketball women have been playing in their own pro league since 1997 which was the year before I left ConU to begin my career in the NHL.  And the women’s football/soccer world cup?! What  an incredible event!

Such incredible growth and change.

Segue back to teaching this past weekend. Here we were, standing in a room that used to be the gym, and now was a large varsity clinic, with a team of Athletic Therapists six strong, and one S+C coach who is part of a staff of four.  We were two, they are ten! Five of whom are women!!

The Lead S+C Coach is a former ConU women’s hockey team member, and a woman I introduced to strength training back in the mid-90s. So cool to see.

And there were three ATs from a clinic group in Montreal who’s founders were ATs and Reconditioning grads.  Made me think of all the great therapy and performance spaces operating here, and elsewhere who have been influenced by the practice of Reconditioning.

Had you told me 34 years ago as I began my career at Concordia, that this is what I would have to accomplish, and would be accomplished by so many others, I would not have believed it.

So inspiring!

But that’s how you eat an elephant……one bite at a time.

Don’t let the possible seem impossible.