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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Posted by admin on Nov 23, 2016
Men are in many ways under attack in today’s world. We can use the rate of heart attacks among men, suicide, addiction and violence as metrics. I am acutely aware of the challenges that countless individual men face as men these days, and have lost men to these inner and outer battles. But it’s not just the pain I feel that has me passionate about working with and defending the lives of men. There are at least a few men alive today, who thank me for the fact that they are still alive and that their children have loving fathers in their lives. I know if I keep working, there will be more. If you know of my work, you likely know me as a facilitator of co-ed groups, such as my iStands. Or for the work I did for a few years with women in groups and individually. I have a deep passion for understanding and becoming masterful with human dynamics, in particular those related to self-authorship and facilitating myself, others and groups towards peaceful and powerful self-authorship: inner guidance, inner conflict, interpersonal conflict, interpersonal conflict, etc. My greatest passion, however, lies in working with men. And finally, over the last several years, I have been turning a lot of my attention and creative efforts towards men and the challenges and crises that individual men face in today’s world. I grew up in a very religious Mormon family with a very strong sense of my identity and unique responsibility as a man, in particular as a Mormon man in the last days of the world–and just like other Mormon men, a son of the almighty God chosen for the last days of the world. Becoming a man, for me, could have been as simple as faithfully following the traditions for males of my people, the teachings and expectations of my father and mother, the teachings of men of authority in our tribe, and the voice I heard as that of my Heavenly Father. The first big conflicts I faced as a young man in life were about being true to myself in the face of: the temptations of “the devil, the every day challenges of being a man in today’s world, all the religious and spiritual training, conditioning–and love–I’d received from my parents, men of authority in the church and my Heavenly Father. and my own inner guidance. After breaking from the Church and the expectations of my tribe and family,...
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Posted by admin on Sep 30, 2016
One of the many reasons I LOVE Thailand is that life is SO easy here! This Thai man makes the case so clearly and beautifully: I am now leading excursions showing people new to Thailand how EASY life can be here, so that whether they want to live here or return again and again for travels and sabbaticals, it is EASY for...
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Posted by admin on Sep 13, 2016
A few weeks ago I made a new friend in Chiang Rai, Thailand. We connected over how fun and funny it is to speak English with an exaggerated Thai accent. When you do this in a playful way, it not only makes it easier for Thai people to understand you, it’s also a great way to establish an emotional connection through laughter. I’ve decided to offer some fun Cultural Immersion journeys into Thailand, to help people discover and enjoy this magical place, and to experience it in a way that makes it easy to return throughout your life! And how to connect with the locals is one of the things we will learn and practice. (Must be willing to laugh at yourself!) If you’re interested, watch my intro video...
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