Standing in the Eye of the Spiral: Navigating Life's Twists with GT

Adaptation in Motion: A Solstice Return Stress, Stillness, and the Practice of Being Well

WARM UP. Good greetings everyone around the universe! After a couple days of travel during this holiday, I am happy to say I returned rested, recharged and ready to move into the future with good intent. It seems that many would usually avoid traveling so deep into the holiday, it wound up not being all that bad. A couple delays on the way home from jumping from plane to plane, and booking a ride home during peak hours had me testing a discussion topic within my men's group: emotional well-being. Personally it’s considered one's ability to be more aware of your nervous systems stress responses. This is a topic that is often discussed within my professional career, the clients need to become more aware of their internal and external stressors.

This is why it's been the most beneficial practice to have learned and implemented Functional Patterns. At the basis of all human movement, there is a functionality that will be a pattern that your nervous system will adapt to, leading to how you move through space. There is an argument to be made that it goes deeper than just your movement, such as organ function, mental health, and overall health. There have been multiple accounts of people that have reported to me how much the methodology of practicing standing and walking as a priority has changed their overall well being. It seems the more you know how you are adapting to a specific environment, you can prioritize taking the appropriate actions leading to regulating your nervous system as a steady source of energy. One of the more common nervous system responses to stress triggers the fight or flight response. When mental stress is triggered, the bodily stress seems to respond as “you need to fight (throw) or flight (run), to avoid certain death.” The two common bodily positions that a throw or run have is a reciprocity of upper and lower limbs (arm/leg). If you are going to consciously use an external force (or triggering the internal ignorant fight or flight response) to create stress on your nervous system (working out), why would it not be best, to be your best, at mastering these functions of your biology? One of my family members reported that a day's worth of about 20 minutes of practicing foundational principles of my recommended exercise routine improved their pain to about +50% better!

It was nice spending time with my family back in my home state of Michigan.  It was a gift from my sister in law that provided me with a way to travel back to Michigan. It wasn’t our intent to spend any time in the cold & flu season up North, however her generosity was taken and we spent four solid days in The Mitten. Michigan has some of the weirdest weather patterning, which ended up being a central theme for at least one of the 4 days. One whole day it seemed everyone planned around a forecast of frozen, icy pathways, perfect for one of my favorite past times: gaming. Which no, it didn’t happen, however, neither did anything else. It also didn’t help that from sun up to sundown, you weren’t really sure if it was 8 am or 3 pm, the skies were all shades of grey. Those days didn’t deter me from enjoying my time with my family whatsoever. In many ways it has given me deep gratitude for my current choice of living environment.

COOLDOWN.  That reminds me that the return flight had some incredible topography seen from the view of my passenger seat on the plane. The contrast of seeing Tennessee from above vs. Florida (up the Florida keys and through Miami) during sundown, really highlighted the stark difference in population (by clusters of lights seen from above). Perhaps if there is another move for me to make in the future, perhaps a “view from above” of a specific area will be a deciding factor. We just got back from the beach, and while Michigan's cloudy nature is not ideal, it was invigorating to walk around in it for a few days. Now it’s time to get back into my “endless summer” routine with a stored up “winter-water wonderland” life force.

Be well,

G.Turner

Standing in the Eye of the Spiral: Navigating Life's Twists with GT

Winter Solstice Reflections: Chaos, Nature, and Conscious Rebirth

WARM UP. Good greetings everyone and welcome to the blogoverse. I hope everyone's holiday preparations are going well and as smoothly as possible. I’ve had the pleasure of starting this morning nice and slow, feeding the cats, doing some reading, I will eventually get around to making some mushroom coffee and go off on an adventure to a botanical garden. It’s been a busy week with many developments all working in unison.

We are correctly working on a business overhaul, which I acknowledge can mean many different things. Specifically we are redesigning our website, repositioning ourselves in the fitness space, and attempting to streamline our processes for client intake. Those are just some of the specifics. Many entrepreneurs know that the daily tasks of creating and running a business aren’t easily checked off as solo artists. I have been fortunate enough to select good business partners (this second time around) that we delegate and get things done well. We have noticed in the last few weeks an influx of people that are saying “I didn’t even know you all were here,” or “We didn’t even know you did this kind of thing.” Which leaves a door open for us to step into to show our community what exactly we do. So many people deal with pain day to day that can be eliminated, mitigated or improved. Take time this holiday season to observe your loved ones, see the amount of physical pain they are suffering through and perhaps you can give them the gift of pain-free living going into the next holiday season.

My household doesn’t observe holidays the same way traditionalists would. In fact I have done my best to not follow traditions that I do not identify with. My immediate family as well as my partners continue to carry on these traditions so occasionally we find ourselves swept up in sharing holiday cheer. We do have a holiday white elephant gift exchange for our gym community going on during the day today, so that should be fun exchanging some “conscious” gifts. Events like christmas tend to have had a really strong impact on people's childhood, many of them unnecessarily created by expectations that generally aren’t achieved. So many times people want to recreate these past dreams of elation for their own families, or avoid them all together. Currently I am attempting to establish my own rituals/traditions to some degree by observing the Earth's tilts (equinox & solstice). In fact, today is the winter solstice! HAPPY WINTER SOLSTICE sun worshippers!

The sun is of nature in the same way that we are of nature. Part of nature worship should always include the sun, the sea, forest, animals, flowers, insects, anything that has the pleasure of being an Earthling. This week I had the pleasure of reading the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism daily as part of my men’s group accountability. Besides Buddhism's mental framing, nature worship should be at the top of everyone's spiritual belief system, from my perspective. It would seem if you have your belief systems grounded in tangible things, it gives you a baseline to be launched off into the greater sphere of mental universes, rather than the common “big brother is watching you so behave now so you don’t suffer later!” (Weird “Santa Clause is Coming to Town” has that same jargon).

COOLDOWN. It’s funny how those things align themselves in our culture. It’s almost as if it’s planned (no, not “god has a plan,” so jesus “take the wheel” type). It would seem that if we really wanted to plan things out better as a society as a whole, we would make drastically different choices, for our future children. I came from a mental framework of idealism, and was thrown into pessimism as I really got to get a beat on what society is choosing. I am still attempting to pull myself out of the pessimism and am using nature to do so. Mostly because I know the power of nature, it is chaos, it is order. I may say it is chaotically orderly. Chaos only seems disorderly when you are unaware or do not understand the process. With that, I’m off to prep for adventure!

Take Care, 

G$

Standing in the Eye of the Spiral: Navigating Life's Twists with GT

Harvesting the Slow Bloom: Growth, Emotions & Staying Amateur in the Fall Flow

WARM UP. Good greetings to all joining in reading today’s entry. I hope this entry finds you well and I am wishing you a warm welcome into the new fall season. I recollect someone telling me today is the beginning of the fall equinox, so may your spring harvests spring forth for your fall harvest to be bountiful. There have been some solid developments throughout the week, steady progression towards goals seem to keep the engines moving things forward.

The business of the gym steadily continues its snail's pace of growth. Growth is progress, as I keep needing to remind myself, regression is not ideal. So no matter how small or slowly growth seems at this point, I remind myself it is moving in the intended direction. We have an event that we've been promoting via our social media taking place this week which has people excited. We are hosting a partnership with a local chiropractor to invite people to “The Functional Body Workshop.” This is our second collaboration with the Chiro which yielded very sparse attendance the first time, however sparse, it was effective yielding a 50% conversion rate. This event has already surpassed the previous within the early sign up phase, which means more bodies and minds will have access and be given greater insight into the services we offer. As for my role I have only needed to play promoter, as we have a very competent team leading the 90min workshop this time.

Speaking of roles to be played, recently I had to turn down another opportunity to play a role in CDI’s recent feature film production. Besides running the gym, it’s always a pleasure to step into a different role and diversify my skills into other professions. I use the term profession lightly, as there is a statement from an artist that I resonated with, the poet May Sarton said “It is good for a professional to be reminded that his professionalism is only a husk, that the real person must remain an amateur, a lover of the work." So while it’s fanciful to want to be a professional in our current sociological structure, I’ll attempt to remain an amateur. Professional in mannerisms, amateur in my passion for what I’m doing.

In our men’s group last week we discussed the topic “Emotional Well Being,” a topic that most of us in the group typically don’t have to take a lot of time to identify with. As with many men, we are devoid of emotional depth. When I say “we”, I mean I am devoid of emotional depth – haha. This past week I was tested deeply emotionally and found myself unexpectedly doing some self evaluation. It seems my emotions don’t have much diversity. They seem to fall into three categories -- Anger/Frustration, Happiness/Joy, and Sadness/Compassion. The first two listed are the easiest for me to access and seem most commonly expressed, and it seems that the last is often guarded by laughing. Healthy emotional expression seems to be a skill. With any thought, speech or action there tends to be a filter of context and or environment one finds themselves in that dictates the expression.

COOLDOWN. As dinner approaches, it reminds me that I have another men’s group meeting this evening. It also reminds me that throughout the week I would like to allot more time to writing this so I will expound on many of these ideas further. It is rather nice to keep this short and sweet on occasion, however I do have a lot more on my mind than oft I am allowing myself time to fully express. So with that I encourage you all to Live Intentional Authentically Through Excellence of Action.

Take Care, 

G$

Standing in the Eye of the Spiral: Navigating Life's Twists with GT

Forecasts & Forests: Reflections on Expansion, Hobbies, and the Spiritual Path

WARM UP. Good greetings to everyone joining in reading today. Currently I am enjoying some Jet’s Pizza while typing and listening to some heavy rainfall. Florida only has two seasons, rainy season and sunny days. I enjoy the stability of predicting the weather closer to the equator here, if you’ve spent enough time on the internet you have seen the meme videos of how quickly Michigan's weather can change throughout a single day. We got to spend nearly two hours at the sanctuary (beach) this morning, with how much rainfall we are getting now, it must be said we had perfect timing to avoid heavy rains. 

This week we were able to take a tour of a new space for our gym to move into. We are looking to expand into a larger space to facilitate growth. The space we are looking at would take some effort to make it fully operational and could be outfitted very well for the work we do. We have had some major and minor shifts in our group class structures as well as launching a new group class schedule which is a large endeavor to get the entire team onboard. The new space would get us nearly the same amount of space as our previous gym yet at half the price. As I'm eating this Jet’s pepperoni pizza it reminds me of working at my first gym, Powerhouse Gym EL. My roommate and I at the time would take big bong rips and split a large deep dish to satiate the after effects. I hadn’t really ever considered wanting to run and own my own gym as much as he did, funny thing is he and I both are owners of our own gym now. It’s been two years now since owning and operating our current business model, my projected bandwidth for sticking around SoFlo has to be around 2-3 more years. Not that I am displeased with the predictability of the weather here in Florida at all. A projected move is necessary since my confidence for repeatability of this business model in other places around the world/country has grown significantly. I also desire connecting with nature in a couple other habitats.

In Michigan it was easy to connect to nature through the forest. Here in southern Florida the ocean is easy to get into. My feelings inside would like to get back to the forest in some capacity and the idea of experiencing the mountains for a time seems to feel in alignment. I am continuing to attend my weekly online men’s group and we continue to discuss what we’ve labeled “The 10 Life categories.” Last week’s topic was ‘hobbies.’ This is a topic many folks within the group have said they are challenged by. Being creatures of habit and intentionality, our group had an exploratory conversation about what exactly could be considered a hobby and how do we structure our intentional actions throughout a week in order to find a way to practice a hobby. My major hobby is playing pickleball. Playing pickleball has its physical challenges with consistent change of directions and start and stop motions. Often I need physical activity to calm my brain from the weekly cycles of business, life and relating to the world around us. This coming week's conversation topic will be Spirituality.

I personally really enjoy this topic. Not to necessarily share any of my spiritual practice or experiences, rather to hear the others speak on it. Mentally spaciously I have a daily spiritual practice going on. As with Bruce Lee's martial art “The way without a way,” I have used what has been called “syncretism” to find what belief systems seem to work for me, and discard what doesn’t. Top tier belief systems for myself seem to stem from the Taoist tradition of belief around Wu Wei and the Buddhist traditions revolving around the four noble truths. The last few weeks I have been trying to condense the Buddhist four noble truths into a clear modern language without changing the meaning or the words of what is traditionally accepted as the word of the Buddha. As I see it, the first noble truth is to have compassion. The second noble truth is the reason for people having dukkha or having “unease,” which is to have desires. The third noble truth seems to be to train to have a reflective mind on when occurrences of dukkha arise. And lastly it seems the fourth noble truth is the path to mental freedom from this dukkha, which is practiced by following the noble eight fold path. 

COOLDOWN. That will be enough for today. I am looking forward to the adventure that life will present in the week ahead. In the meantime I would like to encourage all of you to Live Intentional Authentically Through Excellence of Action.

Take Care, 

G$

Standing in the Eye of the Spiral: Navigating Life's Twists with GT

Discernment & Distortions: Knowing When to Trust, Listen, and Let Go

WARM UP. Good greetings to all those joining in on reading my writings today. We had a wonderful visit to the sanctuary today and the visit has rejuvenated me of sorts. Last week I was drained of my creative energy and did not get my blog entry done– in fact it was not even started.  So many of life's situations can come at you so unexpectedly fast that occasionally the way you react might just surprise yourself. Lots of the creative force I usually move around with was spent reflecting, assessing, and positively moving forward.

This week has had its ups, downs, round and rounds. The nature of my professional career as a coach and now business co-owner has its ebbs and flows. Where one client comes in, one might go, my intent is always to get one in order to have them recommend my services to another. Our community at the gym we run is also based on a similar principle. Occasionally growth does not seem fast enough for what we offer. What exactly are we offering? We offer tools for people to improve their lives, first off through their health. It is not easy when it comes to helping people improve their health, there are usually so many “inputs” or, as my DJ friend DJ GMoney calls it in his profession, “sound bleed.” So when you say “do this” and there is another that says “do that,” who are you to trust?

I would have a tough time writing the enormous list of accredited professions that people so willingly trust their health to. Whether it be Oprah, the TV doctor, influencer, or old wives tales about how to go about becoming healthier, people seem easily led to believe in the next great sponsored product. In general, as people have been led to more “knowledge” here in the “information age,” it seems that people are seriously lacking an incredible skill taught in Buddhism called “discernment.” Discernment is “the ability to judge well.” I love the online dictionary sentence example of “an astonishing lack of discernment.” Generally in Buddhist teachings it refers to the capacity to recognize and perceive reality accurately, free from the distortions of our mental habits and biases. It's about developing a clear understanding of the true nature of things and acting accordingly.

A similar distortion that many people fall into is false attribution. Attribution is “the action of regarding something as being caused by a person or thing.” When you falsely attribute something you can easily become a hypochondriac, hypocrite, or hostage to your own misunderstanding. It amazes me how many people come into our space looking for help yet have all the answers already. This reminds me of when I ended up nearly dying of appendicitis.

I am in seventh grade and sick to my stomach. We go to our primary care doctor’s office and the primary care doctor is out of office for a vacation. After the preliminary inspections by the resident doc, my mom tells the doc “this is either the flu, or appendicitis.” Now how the hell my mom at the time– what is this, mid nineties? – about appendicitis is beyond me. My mom has always been rather well-read to some degree so perhaps after she reads this (Hi Mom!) Perhaps she will have the answer for me. The doc responds that if it's appendicitis, she will “let us know.” Well I ended up missing six weeks of school and was forced to go. That very day a wonderful teen didn’t believe me that my stomach hurt so they decided to take it upon themselves to punch me in my stomach! As I doubled over in pain, I immediately went to the nurses office and was escorted home. A rush to the doctor's office the next day, followed by an inspection by my primary doctor led to a rush to the hospital. Yes my appendix had burst, and yes, I attribute it to the punch in my stomach.

COOLDOWN. I hear the bottom of a bowl clanking around in the other room, which means my partner has finished her dinner. That means I should probably service this pang in my stomach before hopping into my incoming meeting soon. Today we briefly talked about my encounters with people who seem to have a lack of discernment and tend to falsely attribute ongoing events in their lives. I am fondly looking forward to the week ahead. I have at least three new people I will be able to discuss these topics as well as with my normal client load. I hope this writing motivates you in some way to explore your own capacity for discernment and attribution.

Take Care, 

G$

Standing in the Eye of the Spiral: Navigating Life's Twists with GT

Know Love, No Competition: Reflections on Partnership, Patriotism, and Peace

WARM UP. Good greetings to you today folks. Thank you for joining me in reading today’s blog. We had an earlier arrival to the sanctuary today which had us out in front of some of the ongoing storms we are experiencing. Despite the incoming storms the water was rather calm albeit cooler than even yesterday. The specific beach we went to today was less populated than our more local beach as that beach is being occupied by fans of the yearly “airshow.”

Many of you are likely familiar with airshows and for those who are not, it usually involves military airplanes doing laps around a specified area for patriots, nationalists and children to “Ooo and Ahh” at the wonders of the passing air vehicles. The curmudgeon in me views it simply as a spectacle of loud and obnoxious decadence. Some of my friends in a small circle received a text from me saying something along the lines of “it sounds like our tax dollars are doing laps around in the sky, showering us with jet-fuel tax dollars.” Someone said “the sound of freedom,” only to have me retort “I wish freedom was less noisy so I could take a nap. I guess those we are showcasing our “freedom” to in other countries are getting their dirt naps in…lucky them.” 

Honestly, I cannot help but situate my brain on these occasions to others who aren't hearing these planes as simply as a “show.” Perhaps a show of force, not as a spectacle. I did also forget to mention that this show is only 3 miles from my domicile so these planes are zipping over our neighborhoods, we all experience the crackling, booming sounds of their afterburners. Watching our pets quiver and run for cover is all the reminder I need to know that humans across the globe are having the same reaction, except whereas here it’s for “enjoyment,” while there it is followed up with explosions.

Which leads me into “LOVE WINS,” last week's inspired topic that was only expounded on at the end of the blog briefly. “LOVE WINS” is a statement that people would likely identify with mostly on a surface level. We ask what exactly is “love winning?” Now mind you, this flag was being flown high above a church so let us assume that “love” is overcoming “hate.” I am unsure of others' experiences, however if “LOVE WINS,” then I care to disagree. 

Our men's group this past week addressed our weekly topic which was “intimate relationships.” This could be translated to “romantic relationships” just as easily for those who need more ways to say it. Now my experiences with dating have spanned 25+ years and the amount of people I have told them that “I love” them is innumerable. At different periods in my life I have withheld using the word “love” in relationships for the sole purpose of not using it. To think that a Graham with anything less than the wisdom I presently possess could even fathom what a word like “love” could really mean is laughable.

In my series of “romantic” relationships spanning 25 years I have to sum them up to being one big competition. Think about it. How could a romantic relationship be one big competition? You have his and hers bathrooms, closets, sides of the bed, chores, bank accounts, families, cars, etc etc etc. Think of the split homes, which a significant number of children experience here in America. The relationship between parents and their children quickly becomes “who is the child's favorite parent,” or “who’s side are you on?” Remind yourself of our veterans with PTSD. They were taught that there is a competition for their nation’s well being going on that they must participate in on our forefathers behalf. All of us who have dated before know these situations oh too well, “what’s for dinner?” and “what should we watch on TV?” Many of these situations and decisions have a root in competing. Hell just to keep your mate, are you not in competition for their attention? For their happiness?

I made a decision and had a discussion with my partner that I am not looking for a common label of a girlfriend, fiancé, wife, whatever. In my previous blog, Foundations of Success: Systems, Mentors, and the Collective Journey, I brought up the fact that building in the function into the names branding is something that I find appealing. In the same way I want a brand to have its function built into its name, I would like the label of the relationship to do the same. Now in a world such as ours the common term “partner” has been snatched up in “popular” romantic relationship language as being anything other than straight. However I refer to my “commonly known as a girlfriend" as my partner. What I need in my romantic relationships is a partner, 50/50 as we are both in it, more properly 100/100. Our two 100’s can be added together then divided by two to become1 or one full 100. I don’t need less than your full self, and if you aren’t even sure of what your full self is, perhaps we both can journey together to help us be that full 100 of ourselves, individually, together. Partnership.

A partnership cannot be a competition, it has to be a collaborative effort. To compete is to “strive to gain or win something by defeating or establishing superiority over others who are trying to do the same.” Defeating and establishing superiority over anyone you are in a romantic relationship with is likely going to lead to a prominently unhealthy relationship. Whether you compete to see who is right or wrong, compete to see who can be more successful, or compete to see who can be a better parent, you or they may come out feeling like a winner in any given moment, however your relationship is a loss. Yes of course there are levels and nuances to competition in a grander scope of this discussion, that’s not what this discussion is meant to expand on or explore.

Besides romantic relationships, think of all relationships. Keep in mind all of the people you encounter, near or far to you that are always of this mindset. Look at the misery people are exposing all of earth’s inhabitants for their competitions. Should we really be as fellow Earthlings in a competition to survive against…one another in this day in age? In a competition for resources? Hasn’t our collective access to intelligence shown us that “we are in this together?” You may live on another piece of rock somewhere else located on this planet but it does not mean that any of us need to compete to survive, humans are collectively too well equipped to continuously live in a scarcity mindset.

COOLDOWN.  As I begin to wind down I would like to invite you to join me in reading a book by Alfie Kohn– you can find that here (No Contest). It is a book advocating for more collaborative efforts as humans on a systemic level of operating. Saying that “love wins” feels more like wishful thinking than a probable feat. If you are using love as an action, it cannot be in competition to something, it simply cannot. That goes against what love as an action is. Because love is not a word, it is an action, that is the only thing that love is. You can use words to describe an action, but it is not the action, that is a simple fact. So if you have the ability to know this action of love, go out, do it. If you don’t know the action of love, take a few moments daily to see if you can gain some mental clarity on the subject. Get yourself acquainted with the thought of “KNOW LOVE.”

Peace, 

G$

Standing in the Eye of the Spiral: Navigating Life's Twists with GT

Mirrors of the Mind: How Environment Shapes the Spiral Within

WARM UP. Good greetings to all the readers joining me today near and far. Apologies if you have been on the lookout for the latest entry since yesterday. My aim is to release each new blog at least on Sunday, occasionally plans change. This is the second week in a row for me to release it a day later than expected and that is motivating me to create an announcement via one of my social pages to alert readers to potential changes to the release dates. This weekend I was across the state getting in some much needed family time. Though it tends to feel like too short of time, when you love being around your family there generally isn’t enough time. I realize I am one of very few people in the world that tends to “get along” with my entire family. It was nice to get out of my home environment for a time and visit the other side of the coast line. While the environment was clearly different for me, it is distinctly different from what their family experienced coming from Michigan.

Often I am in a position to educate people on how their environment tends to drive their behavior, and vice versa. When I discuss this matter I have to have them consider both their internal environment as well as their external. The internal comes from the mental schema, nutrition, light, and water, generally. The external comes from all things in the environment, be it from the air, sounds, radiation, or human relating, generally. Scientists such as Dr. Robert Sapolsky and Jacques Fresco have spoken and written at length about how the environment determines outcomes of behavior. Both of them being behavioral biologists as well as in Fresco’s part of being an engineer, the environment was of incredible interest to both of their studies. Fresco said "Human behavior is subject to the same laws as any other natural phenomenon. Our customs, behaviors, and values are byproducts of our culture. No one is born with greed, prejudice, bigotry, patriotism, and hatred; these are all learned behavior patterns. If the environment is unaltered, similar behavior will reoccur." And clearly just because he said it, doesn’t it make it true. If you are of a mature mind you would ask “well, is it true?” Now if you go further into exploration of your own behaviors, customs, or values that you have, you may find that they are all reflections of your culture indeed. 

When I recall many of my past behaviors, values, and customs it has me reflect back on my middle school years. I don’t recall many of those years as being positively productive to my well being in the future. I also have to think that it has something to do with being in public schooling in a low to upper middle income household school district. Going to school with what seemed to be a very high percentage of impoverished kids, a lot of impoverished behavior permeated the hallways and classrooms. This likely made it really difficult to concentrate on learning or being a teacher trying to teach. Middle school was when I would get comfortable with emergency evacuations, or hearing about expulsions and suspensions from students bringing a knife or gun to school. I recall regularly seeing graffiti gang symbols in random school announcement boards, books or inside lockers. G’s up, hoe’s (Bloods) down. See, it’s still with me! No, don’t get things misunderstood, I did not belong to a gang. Bloods and Crypts, red vs blue. That must have leaked over from hip hop music? The impoverished behavior didn’t just permeate the hallways and classrooms, it clearly motivated my behaviors and decisions to some degree. Like the time I thought it would be cool to own a BB gun that clearly resembled a 9mm handgun. As I recall it, it was definitely one of those style BB guns that have kids “mistakenly” being shot and killed by police officers. It’s unfortunate that anyone has had to lose their lives over a misidentification in that manner. 

COOLDOWN. Writing that just sent me into a stream of “idealist” thoughts and “optimism.” I’ll spare you the “this could be so much better if…” A discussion I had with several people today was that they don’t know what they can do to change society. Recently I saw someone say online “There's only one thing humans believe in. It's called power concentration. All the shit they talk about is just a distraction from the actual intent. If you have the power, the people mirror your sentiments. Doesn't matter how based or unhinged they are. This is law.” -Naudi Aguilar. While it’s an extreme statement, it speaks to why many people in the commons and therefore not in power, feel like they can’t do anything to change society. Take a moment and reflect on your own behaviors, your very own thoughts right now. How many of your recent thoughts, speech or actions were free from mirroring a sentiment of society completely? To be free from your greater culture system it seems your only option would be to build your own within the system, and build it in such a way it makes the other system obsolete. So even in building out a new cultural system, there still wouldn’t likely be an action free from the influences of culture completely. Or could there be such an action?

Take Care, 

G$

Standing in the Eye of the Spiral: Navigating Life's Twists with GT

Pots, Wings, and Real Things: On Family, Focus, and Finding Growth

WARM UP. Good greetings or riddance :) to all you joining in reading today! We recently returned from the sanctuary and we were treated to another day of rather large waves. Unlike last week, it was a beautiful sunny day and the spring breakers were out in full effect. As a permanent resident I know why both residing residents are annoyed by the crowds and why it is a spring break destination. This coming week I have family coming down to visit on the other side of the state. I am excited to spend some time with my family and have a birthday celebration or two. It’s been a good productive week as we have begun “funneling” client leads through a new system. It’s early in the month and our aim is to grow by 20% each month. We hit our mark last month rather early and with the new stream of interest in our gym, we could hit that mark early again. We have been having a lot of success this month paying our way into networking events. We have two on the docket which hopefully in the future will lead to more networking opportunities. Building a strong community is at the heart of our organization, reaching out into greater audiences is sure to bring in some quality partnerships and members. It will also bring us some less than ideal folks I’m sure as well, we will weed through them, or they will eventually weed themselves out. It’s inevitable to not please everyone. We live in a society that has had their dopamine circuits hijacked by instant gratification products at every turn. It takes great care to protect yourself and others, especially if you are raising children, to avoid having your dopamine circuits hijacked. I am constantly having to question and challenge myself to rewire my own dopamine circuits on the daily. A member of my men's group set us up with what I feel is a great new way of exploring topics within our own lives. This coming week's topic is on family.

As you can imagine, this one is personal. In fact, all the topics are meant to be personal and last week’s topic was on “health.” This was clarified as mental + physical. I graded myself an 8 and on further thought I would downgrade that to a 6. We offer one another the option of accountability measures or “stretches” each week. We don’t tend to directly hold one accountable or have consequences, however if there is ever a case where you aren’t keeping your word, we might eventually put your “word” into question. We all aim not to be disrespectful and are all rather mature, so I feel like our “word” is our word and people will stand by it. I have made my fair share of excuses and shared those reasons for not hitting some of my stretches before. I have also danced the line of being called out as well since I tend to REALLY stretch myself. I often stretch in about 3-4 different accountability actions. I wrote in my previous blog “Cracks of Gold: Spring Renewal and the Power of Wabi Sabi” about Wabi Sabi itself. Generally I don’t mind not being perfect, as long as I give my best effort. Any one of my friends that read this should know that if I do end up failing, be sure I will own up to it and I gave my best effort. And if it honestly isn’t my best effort, I will be direct in telling you so. Not too long ago my mom was making fun of my early bed time and referred to it as an “old person” thing to do. Being direct and owning up to mistakes is another “old person” practice I have chosen to do before becoming an aged person.

Once about five years ago I used to think I couldn’t be away from my family. You know, same city, same state as them. I would have described myself as “close to my family” when I lived in Michigan. Distance is the only reason that I would not be hanging with any one of my immediate family members at least once weekly. Family is familiar, which is safe for me. I acknowledge that family isn’t safe for everyone. It wasn’t always that way for me growing up, and family wasn’t “safe” for anyone in 2020. It was those eight months that taught me “Oh, I can be on my own.” Technically I am not on my own right now, nor was I when I moved away from my home state. It would be better stated that those eight months taught me “I can be away from my family because I was forced to do so by them.” I made my own personal statement by not participating in virtual gatherings, etc. All I starved for was the real thing. If you are telling me that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, or that I am going to contract a deadly virus, I might as well begin that trip to hell with my family. I felt the same way about my friends as well. You could say groups of my friends are extensions of my family. In fact I have friends as old as some of my siblings! Sitting where I am now with my life, the experience of moving away from the comfort of my own circles of influence has been great.

COOLDOWN. I have a view of many of us being potted plants, specifically men. Women tend to be more like a caterpillar. I came up with this concept when I was looking for content for a best man’s speech I was going to deliver. I cannot remember the specific poem I was going to read, which I didn’t, however I will leave you with the following analogy:

Men are like potted plants. Men have their space, they get rooted, and all it takes are a few minimal things to tend to and they’re generally happy. Their lives become difficult when they have to be uprooted and moved into another pot. If you change their soil, it’s equally disruptive to their comforts. Change anything in their environments, their routines, you’re going to find many men have a difficult time adjusting. They will adjust eventually, either they grow to the new pot, or slowly die.

Women in this analogy are like caterpillars. They have a relationship with the potted flower, however they are on their own journey. A caterpillar slinks about, looking for nutritious plants to feed off of (? that wasn’t planned, yet…). They find their resources, nestle up, and go through their process of changing. The woman goes from a child to a student. The student graduates and becomes a career woman. The career woman becomes a mother. You see how this process of change could continually go on and on. While you may read this and go “well men go through the same damned thing G,” and you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. It just seems that women don’t get potted, each transition leads them to a new metamorphosis and leads to so many more dynamic and beautiful things in this world.

Men will stay in their pot. They might die off, plant a seed and grow again. Women seem to go through an entire metamorphosis, spreading her wings and willing to fly to new orchards in order to start the process of growth all over again. We all get stuck in our ways. We all tend to keep coming back to the same comforts of “home.” A butterfly has a lot more freedom than the potted plant, so be sure to spread your wings!

Take Care, 

G$

Standing in the Eye of the Spiral: Navigating Life's Twists with GT

WARM UP. Good greetings to everyone joining me today. I got out to the sanctuary today despite a heavy overcast and light rain throughout our trip there. The forecast must have served to deter some of the spring break crowds from the beach today, which was a welcomed reprieve. We went with the intent of gathering some materials for a couple future art projects using some epoxy that was gifted to us. I went out to the waterfront standing in the heavy waves as I so love to do to connect. On my way back to the beach towels, I dug my fat foot across the sand to reveal what ended up being about .5 inches of seashells that were collecting just under the first few layers of sand. This layer of seashells provided all the entertainment we could have wanted for the morning. We must have covered a stretch of about 15-20 yards of sand and slowly looked through thousands of shells, looking for the coveted conch, or spiral seashell. Looking through the seashells reminded me of how it’s said that no two snowflakes are the same. I thought at that moment there must be something similar to that statement pertaining to seashells as well. In a similar way, people also have their own unique journey they will go on through life. Even if everyone who had similar experiences could record every minute detail, then have the 100% accuracy to describe all the variables that were a part of the experience, none would be in totality, the same.

Similar to many others, I too share in the experience of having used stimulants to enhance life. A stimulant is defined as : a substance that raises levels of physiological or nervous activity in the body. My particular favorite has been marijuana. As a comedian once said, its side effects are happy, sleepy and hungry. I would like to add that they ‘forgot’ to mention memory loss. You could be physically doing an action with intent, and be in such an intense mental experience (a mental dialog?), that you quickly could completely forget the physical action you were participating in. Which often leads to you asking yourself “now what was I gonna do?” What many users will tend to remember is their first time “getting high.”

Mine came when I was 16 years old. An older classmate at my high school asked me one day if I ever “smoked weed before.” Now I don’t recall the circumstance that led to this conversation or honestly why I was associated with this older classmate at the time. I knew them from growing up in the neighborhood. They were from the other side of the tracks in section 8 housing growing up as I recall. It was the summer, he came with a pre rolled joint, that he rolled, yes. We smoked, then jumped in his car to grab some munchies. The moment I realized I was high was when I was staring down at my feet while he was driving. Staring at my shoes as I rocked my feet back and forth like windshield wipers and let out an audible “Heh heh.”

I didn't immediately go back into using marijuana just to feel “high.” I found myself having trouble sleeping and I eventually started using it as a sleep aid. My mind would race around with all of the day's troubles, the past troubles and the futures troubles while I was supposed to be winding down for rest. My self prescription went: half a joint, 30 minutes before bed. This was one of the first times I had consciously used a stimulant as a tool.  One of my earliest experiences using this prescription led me organically to a technique I didn’t know was as powerful as it is at the time. It turns out that I experienced “a meditation.” Basically I emptied my mind of all the thoughts I was having by categorizing them, then, “releasing” them. My particular way was by “Hulk Smashing” them into the recesses of my skull. It was quite a vivid image, mentally seeing the categorized thought forming back up like a bubble, only to have it pushed back into darkness. At first the process needed to be repeated a few times over, thoughts would just keep “rising.” Eventually I could visit that quiet space instantly. If you are a person who has trouble getting to sleep, give this technique a try, in your own way. I have had some feedback from others telling me they have used it and have thanked me. Hopefully this tool proves useful to you too. You don’t even need to use a stimulant like I did!

COOLDOWN. I believe many self prescriptions can easily sway into the depths of abuse of using a stimulant. My use of marijuana eventually progressed from being used as a “tool” to use as “abuse.” That story will be told at another time. My seashell story wasn’t completely told either.

We were on the hunt for the precious conch, and We actually  walked away with a much more valuable treasure. I combed up a Pandora bracelet!  Seeing the little diamonds and the “Pandora” imprint quickly had me dreaming of taking a world wide cruise. Funny thing is, when I got there there were two men slowly walking up and down the beach with metal detectors. only about 20 yards from where these guys just were, We had no intention of stumbling on what we did. Turns out the value of the bracelet is minimal. No world wide cruise, QQ. 

I have a plan to go off and travel into a few hours of imagination coming up shortly. I’m looking forward to exercising my imagination for a bit. Getting these reps in writing today nearly didn’t happen. I’m glad that I did it. Get your reps in my friends.

Take Care, 

G$

Standing in the Eye of the Spiral: Navigating Life's Twists with GT

WARM UP. Good greetings to all the readers joining me now. Here we are midweek and I feel a good amount of momentum building up on projects that will keep moving toward completion. Now when I say complete, it’s more a situation of evolving to a final form. As stated in the previous blog I intend to standardize my information gathering for clients to more accurately track or log progressions. If there is a way to sway the health insurance industry to my favor in letting me bill their clients, my patients, I may as well have a protocol in place and set a standard WITHOUT them asking. Taking initiative. It may allow me to start discussions with other health professionals (MDs mainly), to have them send referrals my way. I’m playing the long game with this. There are many already in the field of health coaching that are employing the same system of biomechanics as myself. I trust that in the grand scheme of things there will be enough of us with a collective data pool to change the health insurance industry’s view of the work we do. It’s painfully obvious that the health coaching industry has been captured, regulatory captured specifically. This industry has been writhe with snake oil sales, quick short-term fixes, and basing data off “exceptions to the rules.”

I have been in the health coaching industry for 16 years now. The foundation of my motivations for being a health coach were driven by people like Jack Lalanne. A gentleman who lived until he was 96/97 years old. And for all intent and purposes of his PR, that man thrived. All I knew was this dude was old, was muscular, active and vibrant. You could say he was the exact opposite of what a ‘common’ old person in my limited experience at the time was. He seemed to be a shining beacon of what I would qualify as ‘high quality longevity’ and what it could look like. Somewhere in my life I have adopted a foundational mindset of living my life, choosing my behaviors, and setting up my environments to maximize “high quality longevity.”  The earliest memory I have of how this mindset came to be stems from an art project in the fourth grade. We were asked “what would you like your tombstone to say?” I drew my tombstone and recall writing “died at the age of 111” or slightly older, which seems absurd for a fourth grader to write even to this day. As a side note, in the same fourth grade art project context, we were asked to invent something. I swear to you, I drew up the shoes with roller blades that popped out the bottom! Mine were drawn as hideaway wheels into the sole of the shoe. Not nearly drawn with the same sophistication of the actual wheelies as an engineer would, however, I invented those! Put in on record! Coming back to longevity. I don’t seem to recall why that number came to me or if I even had a concept of what aging really is. Growing up generally athletic, from an athletic father, playing sports was just what we did as friends groups. We had a neighborhood filled with growing families with kids about 2-4 years of age gaps. So staying active wasn’t a problem in or out of school. Being active wasn’t ever considered in my mental processes as “exercise.” Now I exercise, and have for many years.

I recall my first exercise class being in high school as a freshman. All I recall is when we had to hit the weightroom for one of the first times.I hit a set of “tricep pushdowns” and recall my triceps getting that “pump” and hurting so bad! I told myself “why would anyone want to do this?!” Yes, I hated it. I had my share of physical pains that were inflicted upon me by others, why the hell would I want to do this TO MYSELF? Eventually many years later, I didn't mind bringing physical pain to the tissues. You could say I really enjoyed it eventually, in certain places! My foundation for exercise outside of sport and generally being active came in the form of traditional bodybuilding. It was done in the most “bro” way my group of friends could think of “chest and biceps,” as priority. We had a close friend of ours come back for a visit from the military and he showed us a few other exercises to round out the “bro lifts.” It led to me purchasing my first ever piece of study material, a book called “Exercise Anatomy.” My “swole bros” hopefully read this and know exactly what I’m talking about. We consumed an “iron diet” for many years, consistently every other day, three times a week. Monday, “Buckwheezy Wednesday,” and Friday.

COOLDOWN. The stories that remain in our friendships from those days will remain a fond memory between us all. The thing is, I think I am the only one to continue the tradition of exercise. In fact there might have been months or week-long gaps over the years where I didn’t exercise, but I know I am the only one to have not stopped since starting. It does help that I eventually made a career from fitness coaching, that doesn’t change that it is a fact. My views on exercise as it pertains to longevity has changed dramatically since those days. The limited, short-term damage I was able to inflict physically all those years still lingers in my tissues to this day. Calling it limited or short-term might be out of order. I have spent the last several years attempting to rewire connections in my tissues to better suit my longevity mindset. I dare say that today, I may be more athletic than I was 10 years ago. Physical evolution takes time. Adaptation to physical change takes time. As one ages, most humans will see a rapid regression in their athletic ability. Currently our environment externally and internally are rapidly regressing as a society, as a whole. Which could be the cause of such mass rapid regression. I choose to set my life up for progression. My choices are to evolve. Are you evolving? Or do you want to keep on repeating that same old shit?

Take Care, 

G$

Standing in the Eye of the Spiral: Navigating Life's Twists with GT

From Boom Bap to Chamber Music: How Life Opened My Ears

WARM UP. Good greetings to all those joining me today! It's been a partly cloudy day most of the day which was great for pickleball drilling before visiting the sanctuary. This week has turned out to be a productive one. I am taking up the task of streamlining techniques to gather data to track my patients progress. I am using a “physical therapist” approach that allows PTs to charge insurance companies for their service. I figure what I do has already helped no less than 25 people improve their pain, posture and gait, so why not start to prove it through a PTs “lens.” Also this week I got myself into a boxing gym to drill some defensive techniques with a coach.

My first foray into a boxing gym was short-lived. Those of you who know the gym “Crown Boxing” that’s where it started. Those of you who know who “Suga” Rasad Evans from Michigan State wrestling and being a UFC hall of famer was training occasionally at that gym during my short stint. About 2-3 weeks into doing their workouts and bag drills,  I was invited to spar with a 3-4 month vet of the gym. All it took was about 3-4 clean overhand rights over two rounds to land square on my already broken nose, that I SWEAR was coming out of nowhere, to break my warrior spirit at the time. I have been a fan of the UFC since the fifth grade and over all these expanse of years, I have watched, studied, and dreamt. My dreams were always of how terrible that must feel having your body beaten by another human for your paycheck, or even worse, a hobby. Or even beating on someone doesn't feel good at all. Although I will admit to you readers, I am the type that will do what needs to be done, and genuinely cry afterwards, from my own wounds of course, not from compassion! I’m lucky to have the warrior spirit, ‘cause my spirit itself is just plain sappy. So part of my warrior studies has me following a guy @coachbarryrobinson on IG. One of his stories highlighted “The Great Pumpkin Waltz” by Vince Guaraldi. Completely separate and a few days afterwards, we hear some music from one of the shows we are watching recently, and it ended up being by the same artist! These have launched my entire week's worth of music listening and motivated me to write and share my journey into music.

I grew up in a musical household. Meaning, we listened to what seems to be a lot of music consistently. My parents were collectors of the 60s, 70s and 80s disco and pop music. Records, record players and even 8 track players were prevalent at my house. Growing up I recall the radio nearly always being on, my Pop loved listening to music while grading papers. In about the fifth grade I was out trading some of my GI Joe’s to our neighborhood “hustler” (he had a knack for getting the best deals for your best toys at the time). He broke out a case of cassettes that must have been 50+ deep. Flipped MC Hammer “Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em” followed bby N.W.A’s ‘Straight Outta Compton” into his BOOMBOX and I was launched into a world of music (rap music)  I hadn’t ever heard before. “U Can’t Touch This” was “pop” on the radio, except the rest of that album wasn’t that, it was “rap.” It took until Tupac’s peak mainstream popularity to have me strictly listening to Rap, Hip Hop, or R&B at the time, which was about the seventh grade. By the ninth grade I recall being in this senior classmen's backseat riding over to our golf team practice and my mind exploded when Outkast's “ATLiens” disc went into the deck. By my senior year I was thinking about music as it’s either Rap, Hip Hop, or R&B or I’m not listening to it. I wouldn't tolerate anything else. This reminded me of the time my best friend at the time was driving us around in his parents car. This friend of mine had a way of patronizing me with music for his own laughs, which led me to launching his parents' Billy Joel disc from the window of their car. 

Senior year I was signed up for a “blow off” elective class called a “music appreciation.” Listen, imagine sitting and looking at the schedule choices with your buddies and reading “music appreciation.” We signed up and planned to do absolutely nothing in the back of that class for our easy A grade. Well, the teacher let it be anything BUT that. The teacher taught it in such a way that had me immersed. One of the best things he did with his teaching structure was to tell us right at the first class that we would explore music and its evolution from the 20s- current. He also made a clutch move of providing us with a small mix of music from various early periods and genres that I could not get enough of. From big band, swing, jazz, blues, the class opened up an entirely new perspective of music for me. One of my sibs who wasn’t quite as keen of my cassette being in the deck at the time, decided since I wouldn’t let them listen to something else, they would go ahead and start attacking me while I was driving. I mean lunged across the minivan I was driving, clawing at my face while I’m going down the road, endangering both our lives. You know, I guess music can really be serious business, guess ours wouldn’t have been the first lives lost over musical differences I’m sure! Similar to meditation in my life, having this musical intervention in my life is a great gift. Imagine being so narrow minded to have never heard any of your subjectively “favorite” music or songs across genres. Classical, classic rock, jazz, reggae, and the blues are now some of my favorite genres. Honestly there are fewer genres that I dislike or avoid than ones I’m willing to listen to. Now the list of individual artists can be quite lengthy, moving on! Before the intervention there was no way you would ever convince me there was any better music than what I was listening to at the time.

COOLDOWN. This eventually led me to going to musicals and orchestra symphonies. Recently I shed a tear at the beauty of a small ensemble in a “chamber” playing chamber music for us in the church. Being moved by musical resonance is just something else to experience. You have likely seen a conductor leading a symphony at some point. I used to love public television when they showed recordings of symphony orchestras and you had the conductor sweating it out heavily conducting pieces. Those were always my favorite. Perhaps one day I will conduct an orchestra and be that guy. I don’t play or read music so I’m sure that’s requisite so I better hop to it! Speaking of “hopping to it,” I have a few things to do before this evening's gathering and the week ahead. The end of the month is nearly here and we have bounced into a new spring equinox cycle. Take time to see what cycles you got going on, which ones can use some spring tidying, which ones should be stopped, and which ones to begin to spiral into existence.

Take Care, 

G$

Standing in the Eye of the Spiral: Navigating Life's Twists with GT

Cracks of Gold: Spring Renewal and the Power of Wabi Sabi

WARM UP. Good greetings to all readers, here comes a special entry into my blogosphere! I am going to attribute this entry to the official start of spring, perhaps even the real New Year, the Spring Equinox. Long days, shorter nights, a dance, a duality. This reminds me of a conversation with one of my patients today about their individual duality. It was great hearing another critical thinker share their ideas, their thinking around a given subject in a cohesive manner. I often struggle with my own duality internally, so having someone expose their own is refreshing to be around. Listening, it was held as a nice reminder that you ( I am) not alone. I do belong to a weekly men’s group where other guys are welcomed to share feelings. It isn’t quite the same as if we were to sit around and discuss ‘philosophy’ or ‘critical thinking.’ Which have the potential to take you to levels of depth in conversations that you (I) rarely find. There are a handful of my mentors that I really enjoy being around for depth of conversation. There are levels of wisdom and depth to these types of conversations that aren‘t the typical, superficial, mundane type. My patient is a tattoo artist so naturally the conversation steered toward the topic of art.

The reason I started writing again was for this to be a way for me to express myself creatively. Growing up I recall really enjoying writing poetry. I would even go as far to write poetry for girls at school. Quite a few times it was embarrassing. Imagine you have written down all these X’s and O’s and your best friends read it out loud in front of everybody in the school cafeteria. I’m not saying that’s exactly how I experienced it, it 's what it felt like inside to me. Perhaps my favorite thing about poetry is the ability to mean so many things, in so many different ways, with abstract or clear usage of language. Since I’m from the U.S. I speak English as my first language, unfortunately I was only about to apply myself to a 6th grade worth of a “D” grade in Spanish class learning. That would have been handy quite a few times in my life, including presently in southern florida. That would open myself to an entirely expanded demographic. So, experiencing poetry in the English language has amazed me how much fun it was to be able to combine different phrases and words to convey ‘art.’ Some of my favorite artists of all time have been great linguists. Going back to my previous blog, Alan Watts and Joseph Campbell were great linguists. My favorite comedian is George Carlin and what language! It  just blows my mind the level of research he must have been able to do into the language to create his art. I have had some ideas saved for a very long time that are once again being asked to be worked on. I wouldn’t mind telling a story, in some medium. It’s obvious it starts right here! Typing along on a page.

Last week's blog almost did not get published. I got to the end and wasn’t sure that what I had written was what I really wanted to write about. It was a slight moment of crisis inside me. I had highlighted at least ¾ of the piece after completing it, ready to delete, before I stopped myself and decided to “let it fly.” This is a creative outlet for me. I must accept that part of the outlet will sometimes not be well formatted, or even a topic that people find interesting. I was reminded of a Japanese term “wabi sabi” which basically is a philosophical concept that finds beauty in the imperfection, impermanence and incompleteness. A little more common term of this type of philosophy applied to art is called Kintsugi. It’s the broken pottery that highlights the cracks and repairs with gold, silver or platinum. Parts of my own artistic process are often stifled due to the fear of perfection. It’s a style of analysis paralysis. Perhaps I will eventually create and accept more wabi sabi into my own art, almost allowing it to be purposeful, rather than intentional. There’s a duality for you to untangle. Could you imagine the pressure you could be under as a perfectionist and attempting to be a tattoo artist? Forever art, perhaps everything is forever art in some capacity. All it takes is one other person to experience your art and it’s forever art in my book.

COOLDOWN. This new spring awareness might be a great time to not only look after your own wabi sabi, take the time to experience others. There are often hidden gems of humanity in other people’s cracked pottery. A flash picture of a brain just entered my mental space. The human brain seems to be an appropriate depiction of others “cracked pottery.”

Enjoy the rest of your week and I’ll be publishing another blog Sunday.

Take Care, 

G$

Standing in the Eye of the Spiral: Navigating Life's Twists with GT

Small Waves, Big Currents: How Our Lives and Systems Shape the Tribe

WARM UP. Good greetings to all the readers that joined us today. We just recently returned from the sanctuary and there was a lot ‘said’ amongst the waves. I am not here to translate those messages to you, however let us presume they motivate some of the words I write in the proceeding lines. The waves are astounding to me. Years ago I caught myself out on a long pier at the local beach, Lake Lansing, watching the waves. It was one of those moments I went out for a meditation and somehow a thought, moments of thoughts, changed the way I observe for the foreseeable future. So the last few times going to the sanctuary the observations began coming back into view. What came back into focus is the ‘larger’ waves are collections of ‘smaller’ waves. Next time you are near a body of water, look at the surface of the water. Notice that moving water has waves, tiny little ripples, or ‘smaller’ waves throughout. ‘Larger’ waves have an incredible amount of ‘smaller’ waves ripping around through them, as if the ‘larger’ is just simply a collection of the ‘smaller.’ To go deeper, my brain looked across that lake and thought “there are more lives lived throughout history than each individual ‘smaller’ wave that exists in that lake. When I am out at the ocean, it's crazy to fathom there have likely been more human lives lived than the entire oceans worth of waves!

I too have lived many lives. There are many renditions of how my brain tends to operate in given situations which are likened to living different lives. One consistent pattern I have encountered is the need for my brain to be problem solving. Meaning orienting my life around patterns of solving my problems. My most recent problem solving endeavor is my sole-focus in my career. Problem solving is at the core of what I attempt to impart and guide people to begin to do with their health. There have been a handful of times I told people what their ‘doctors’ were going to say and do. Telling them precisely what seems to be the problem, free from high-end scanners and technology, simply off observation and built upon experiences. That’s when I refer to myself as ‘Dr. Turner’ when they confirm what their doctors told them. Oh the position of being an unaccredited amateur. Try not to envy me folks! There was a time I was selling people luggage and business bags. If I had to label a problem being solved at that moment I’d call it ‘travel solutions.’ I then went into shoe sales which I would label as solving a ‘i need to fit in with the current culture without being made fun of’ also ‘I need to fit into the most recent trends in fashion,’ problem. Yes those are exaggerated and certainly not what I was mentally processing at the time. If only I could have been so altruistic!

Now go back to the image of smaller waves making big waves and let us focus on thoughts as smaller waves and bigger waves as leading to action. I am reminded daily of how little greater swathes of society understand the structure of how we have organized ourselves. Our daily lives have revolved around tribalism for nearly as long as humans have existed. Within the tribe you were given a structure of how to behave within the tribe in order to fit in. At one point in documented human history you see that many tribal societies organized themselves around religion. If you used archaeology as a guide to understand this you would see that the largest buildings in these tribes were temples. If you take a look around in current US societies, you see that the largest buildings are banks and corporations. So following this logic you should know where the dominant cultural concerns lie. That is, the tribes are currently structured around the market economics of the banking systems. We have all chosen that this is the best way to progress as humans, progress as a tribe. There is a lot to be said on the topic, I am not in the position to express all my own thoughts on the topic, however it is my observation that the market system we follow seems to work against our own tribal survival. There are more measurable metrics than ever to point to a rapid decline in our internal and external environments. As much as people tend to want to point to exceptions to rules, some outlier ‘reasons,’ for these rapid declines, the answer lies in the system. Every system has outcomes, and it is the inputs into the system that yield the outcomes. It is very dynamic at the same time very simple. Market economics is what rules our everyday decisions. Whether or not you are a problem solver or problem creator, your ability to have food, clothes, shelter, healthcare that is not full of poison depends on what the market economics of today dictate.

COOLDOWN. The idealist in me thinks there has to be a better system put into place. Ditch the propagandized ideas of socialism or Marxism or ‘isms.’ We have been separated for long enough. Think about the waves. There are storied human geniuses that have existed when they ‘came up’ with the next great technological discovery and theory. Most people do not recognize that that same genius is simply working off the generational ideas of others. The concept of “lift yourself up by your bootstraps” is a way of saying “you get what you earn.” Every person that exists in our current tribe owes everything to our predecessors. No matter how hard you think you are working, you did not earn your electricity, you did not earn your computer, you did not earn your vehicle. To earn these things you need to be able to build them. You do not have the slightest clue what it takes to make electricity, build a computer or build the mechanisms and chemistry it takes to have a vehicle. You are born into more or less privileged tribes, not of your choosing. It would behoove us all to learn what the mechanisms of market economics entails so when you are shown propaganda, you can see through it. See through it to the root of it. 

Right now our Earthling crisis lies in the inability to move beyond our conditioned, propagandized system of economics. Critical thinking, communal thinking will lead us to better outcomes within a new organized human tribe. It is time for me to sign off on this. This certainly wasn’t a direction I expected to go, seeing as I write these without expectations it is always a surprise! 

Take Care, 

G$