Posted by admin on Nov 30, 2016
“Remember what I told you,” the old man calls out to me, as he heads back towards camp with the other horses. I’m 12 years old on a summer trip from the East Coast, visiting my grandfather in Utah. We’ve taken his horses high up into the Rocky Mountains for a week-long camping trip. “Don’t you dare try to ride that horse!” he orders… I look at him. World War II veteran. Multi-millionaire entrepreneur. Patriarch of a very large and growing family. Farmer. Cowboy. Self-made Man. Part of “The Greatest Generation”. I’d told him I wanted to stay at the river a while longer with my horse, and he’d let me. “It’s not a good idea to ride a horse when it has a full belly of water, and that young horse has never been ridden bareback before. So don’t get any funny ideas. Just walk him straight back to camp.” But he knows me. Of all his 25 grandchildren, I’m the troublemaker, the rabble rouser. I’m the one who chases his sheep around the farm in his go-cart, doing my best to lasso them and then ride them. I ain’t no country kid like the rest of his grandkids, and I’m gonna prove I can cowboy up just like the rest of em! (Looking back now, he must have known what I was gonna do! And he still left me alone with that horse. My kind of teacher!) I wait for him to disappear around the bend of the trail, and then I look at this beast. Slowly I place my hand on its ribcage and feel its heart beating through its huge body… Or is it my own heart beating? I’m gonna be the first one to ride this beast bareback, the biggest of the lot! Gramps doesn’t think I can do it. We’ll see about that! I imagine myself taming this beast and riding him back to camp, just like they do in the movies! They’ll see I aint no ‘city slicker.’ I pull the beast over to the largest rock I can find. The horse turns his head to the side and his eye locks with mine–as if to say, What the hell do you think you’re gonna do? I’m gonna ride you! I climb onto the rock, steady the beast, take a deep inhale, and… launch myself onto his back! I’m riding bareback! Hi...
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Posted by admin on Nov 23, 2016
From birth many of us receive heavy religious training, societal conditioning and cultural indoctrination to dissociate from our inner guidance, including our inner most desires in the name of being a “good” boy/girl, son/daughter, student, employee, citizen, etc. There have been several pivotal moments that have awakened me to the power of paying great attention to (or tracking) my desire. One day in the late spring of 2007 was one such moment. I was sitting in my office with white boards spanning the length of each wall, working on my business plans for the future. A brother of mine walked in and asked if he could erase one of my whiteboards, because he had something he wanted to share with me. Scrawled on every inch of these boards were my precious visions, projects and plans for the future. I resisted. But he was immovable. This was an intervention. And I trusted this man. I let him erase one full whiteboard, and then he turned to me and asked, “Michael, what do you want for your life? What do you desire?” Instantly I started talking about my business visions for changing the world, and he interrupted. “No,” he said, placing his hand on my heart. And in a softer voice he asked, “What does Michael want?” I inhaled and my eyes teared up. It’s a question I hadn’t asked myself in a long time. He was making a stand for me and my happiness. Having been raised in a success-oriented culture and a religious-oriented family that so seriously emphasized focusing on the future and being “responsible,” it almost felt sacrilegious to speak the truth of what I most deeply wanted just for myself. For a moment I wondered what the other people in the room would think, people who respected me for my serious mission-based business focused on bringing forth a more beautiful world. “What does Michael want for himself?” The lump in my throat gave way as I began to speak the truth of my desires. As I did, my friend wrote them on the white board, in front of me and two other allies of mine. There was something powerful about speaking my desires, seeing them writ large on the wall, and having them be witnessed by others. There was a common theme among the thing that I found myself saying: world travel. I’d spent a month in Africa the year before–my first deep travel experience abroad. It wasn’t just a dream...
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