Chasing Neverland Is Not How We Grow Up Successfully

As an independent consultant and founder of an NGO, my work is with getting to the center of individuals, brands, missions, and systems. I sift through legacy-to-new-to-big ideas and shepherd them toward a heightened state of awareness or initiative for more wholesome purpose and therefore impact to be felt and heard.

This line of work is essence driven and heavily weighted on creating models for behavior (or to inspire new behavior). But in order to inspire, one has to know, or get to know, their core system of values. Sometimes we are blind to ourselves which makes getting to awareness tough. And often times in an organization, the climb to power is too great that taking the time to look within could be felt or seen as a slow-down. When actually could be, and generally is, the strongest force to a thriving culture (or practice).

The more complex or unstructured (or overly structured), the more decentralized those core values tend to get. And observing and working hands on (as a researcher, employee, and consultant) I’ve seen time and time again personal agendas taking the reigns to original missions or organizations or “should and could be’s” (classic fake it til you make it syndrome) that have undermined once incredible strong systems, individuals, and companies. This is a dangerous failure in communication, and generally where I come in as the catalyst to recognizing then introducing big delta change variants in order to get back to the the original (or updated) intent, strategy, or identity to growth and compete healthily.

This aspect of coming into awareness helps to determine behavior of customers and employees while also building new models for clients or big personal projects. Part of this method is rooted in creating core systems of values, so in order to be the practicing what I preach with clients, I had to get really in touch with myself and understand me.

Because I work across so many different industries and dive into their hearts in order to get to the core of their mission(s) then identify ways and methods for them to innovate or create change internally, to then finally build upon those wants, I had to dive deeply into myself and see how it was exactly that I do what I’ve been able to accomplish as an individual. It was actually imperative to my own personal survival to take the time to start understanding my observations and processes by which and to which I experience the world.

So, here is a bit of a rewind of how I learned how to communicate with myself in order to communicate to the whole.

Thank you for reading as must as you have. Let’s now pause for a moment and take a few breaths together. Yes, while you’re reading on. I’ll hold on for a second though…

1….breathe in…hold…breathe out. Repeat 2 more times.

Centering our breathe is important because then, even through the web, I know that we shared a moment of connectivity and being present. And connection is important, especially because I am feeling the need to voice some vulnerabilities. I am feeling the need to express places where my fears get overturned by determination. I am feeling a need to showcase where my resilience & divine feminine enters. I am feeling the need to get some of this off my chest. It’s heavy. And for twenty some odd years, I feel like I haven’t been able to breathe in fresh air and let my light out without a fore of anxiety in my exhale.

How far would you go to try to be understood (or to find Truth)?

What makes me who I am is a constellation of many issues?—?experiences?—?exposures?—?trials?—?teachings. They all lead to what myself finds to be True. Or did. These past truths arrive from a place of insatiable curiosity and a big heart that wants to connect deeply with others and many things in order to, what I believe, feel and see what living is.

It was from a developing, yet, untamed and hungry mind. One that was never settled because it could always go deeper, learn more completely, andlayer on layer the many data points that it had to get to new rabbit holes.

An untamed hungry mind that was never influenced to grasp structure(s) and therefore it adapted to having no limits or boundaries. This mind relied on individual learning and became reliant on constant exploration & discovery. This mind happened to be part of systems, but that was just happenstance rather than a model for a table of contents for security.

This untamed hungry mind was one that never received feedback or training of structures, whether it be an attention to these differences observed at home, at school, or over the years by influencers (once mentors were made). This mind was a special one?—?one that functioned a little bit differently than the rest. And sadly, this mind did not get to learn or become aware of it’s core processing system until in maturity of needing to function within constructed environments and wondered what kept failing in each of them even though it was doing it’s best. This resulted in many years of not knowing how it best understood concepts or why it was able to learn such distinct and specialized things. This mind was always up to the individual. And because of this self reliance, fundamentals of systematic way of living became a big challenge as it got older and made it nearly impossible to be an effective collaborator.

This lack of fundamentals as to how systems of communication worked created a being that was fleeting like a shooting star instead of constant like gravity as a force of nature. This being was bright, in the moment?—?a spectacle?—?then gone.

I’ve learned and practiced new languages, customs, traditions, cultures, and industries to their height. I’ve eaten foods from all of them, then, created new ones based off their flavors. I’ve sampled behaviors, styles, cadence, selves. I started identifying patterns in things, putting pieces of puzzles together, correcting flaws, getting to reason, and learning the art of challenge and definitely the struggles that go hand-in-hand with adversity. Having all of these other lenses enabled an opening to the art of dialog…the sharing of real beauty through poetry…being empathetic to the harshness of history, and easily distracted by the escape that discovering offerings. But they were somehow still not being communicated effectively within the collective?—?humanity.

The experiencing had been accepted by these many different things fully because the passion and penchant toward being involved was so high. Yet individually, even through direct immersion, I was still locked in my own glass house of knowledge without the outside world coming in for tea.

There is a kink in that chain…in that I did these subjects and things with real compassion and what I thought was an open heart full of curiosity and an undivided essence. I thought that this compassion and essence was always understood. I did them as me, with others, wholly. But na?veté prevailed when going from learning, to practice, to mastery, to transcendence. Jumping from stages without the proper mind to completing the phases that preceded one-onto-the-next.

These differences and many many things that made me?—?me?—?were so much of many other things that it surmounted to, and what seemed at times, a whole lot of nothing but knowledge or a ton of stored raw data.

My path, thus far, had taken me pretty damn far and that road kept paving itself further and further along the road of life until I was so far away fromcivilization that I almost didn’t know who that self was anymore. I became enigmatic?—?mysterious?—?untold. Closed off by all of the knowledge that I had, models that I had to mimic, communication hooks to cast off into the waters. I was unable to define because context was so visceral to action, and therefore the content of me, my purpose, got lost. Only able to observe?—?question?—?learn rather than process?—?convey?—?influence.

But that is a poor function set if you are unable to practice what you preach or teach all that you have learned.

The tides of my life kept coming in each year with a gravitational fortuity drawing in experience and thrusting out dogma with a lunar strength. Clockwork, nature, motion. It all came in and it came in. Noticed by others, around others, but our feet never were in the same sand feeling that tide come in.

My moon was never satisfied, it belonged to the planet of me, but it’s evolution wasn’t linear and it’s participation, the 45 degree point where the Earth and the Sun aligned to create balance on the planet (with the life systems on the planet), were constantly in miss alignment. The experience of histories were of chasm, not progression. My sun was constant, but was what it really?

I’ve lived in foreign lands, tried new things, worked every job under the sun, humbly and happily. I’ve connected with thousands of people from every walk of life, every profession, socioeconomic tier, every level of government and highest stars in the cavalry to anonymous’ and grey hat and black hats, and white hats…students, youth, sages and practitioners. Doctors, physicists, cryptologists, cartographers….cooks, chefs, directors, executives, consultants, clergymen…I’ve befriended the bold, the successful, the fallen.

What was it for? What was this stewardship for which I was in search? All to be an ambassadors to something? All to best understand people’s gifts and purpose and how they do what they do. I am and will always be an observer and a connector.

But in this wide data set of humanity collected over my entire life, I still managed to get chewed up, spit out, and covered in this sloppy-goopy nasty spit-up slim of society of non-acceptance, at every level of basic to complex “security”, in order to be on this path of acceptance and be full understanding.

So, changes needed to happen. I needed to start coming into awareness. And I’m still on the path, still full of lessons and practicing of the teachings. But the difference now is that I know what I hold to be my disciplines and I’m disciplined with them.

And it’s just starting to come out clean pressed because I can finally understand what these gifts are and how I do them. More importantly, how they can be used toward a One to One Billion people impact Rather than a One to One, because I became too interesting, too different, too non-relatable.

But all these things, these differences, pursuits, interests, satiated curiosities?—?these things?—?were the greater outlook to see the world in which we were and are living. This world, Our world. I am an a student, a prospector, a thinker, a purveyor, and a conceptualist. I now think of things at the purest form of system and approach. That is how I get to the heart, the root, the core and see gaps in places needing fixing, and consult to create the filler for those gaps.

But, before getting to know that this perspective, this way of approaching the world was my approach, I had to go through some proper pain and suffering. My gifts became mystery to others and my being became enigmatic instead of pragmatic. The way that I was communicating my gifts for years was not in the best interest for my survival of the fittest. And, to my argument/position: communication is the key to survival.

But as a polyglot, polymath, and all which other multi-disciplinary things that people classify and put you in buckets of knowing different things, from different times, and from different places, and then putting them together to make decisions as an expert- what does it mean then, simply, if you just at the core of these things that make you you, misunderstood?

For me it meant becoming homeless. For me it meant severe unemployment. And, at the time, I was hardly 26–27?—?and now finally seeing/feeling/owning my resilience at the cusp of 28.

It took me as-so-far as going to the deepest depths of the Intelligence Community of the US to de-tangle the most complex communication systems in order to understand how the world works and peel those layers back to get to the core of me.

So, where does this lead us now? Is it a voice of change? Reason? Voice of being heard? How do we use a metaphor for multi-layered data sets to understand us as humans and the condition of being ourselves in this pursuit for the survival of the fittest?

EQ gets you only so far in purpose whereby IQ needs to step in to balance it out to function.

This part is an open letter to a friend.

Dearest friend,

I had the best memory on a day of tremendous challenge. Remember that cold winter morning we met at the high line hotel? You were looking for a content person to help w marketing, and I reaaaaally needed a job. But the more we spoke the more my dreams started forming into a vision of what I wanted to achieve and the ways I was looking at the time to achieve it. Communicating, representing information technologies of all assortment. It really was our conversation where my mission started, and having a friend like you that accepted me for who I am, and provided the safety to share my wildest passions and curiosities is something I hold really dear. Thank you for being there for me, and every time we’ve hung out.

And thank you you for being at the forefront of some of my mad science, ever since we met really. I spent the last year casting myself off into the abyss of the intelligence community and defense technology network at first to try and get recruited internally, then to be hired externally w a company, but then as I was chasing and embedding myself throughout this world, and as i was starting to expert and to learn the intricacies of the world technological infrastructure and just how protected the geopolitical ties are, I also started going back to the things and experiences that always drove me and started seeing that what I could do was be the voice that stood for the shifts in power, for representation in security and preservation, resolution and unity/collaboration, but more importantly take all that I learned and what I had been trying to say defensively to a super siloed world, use my crazy creative process in how I connect the dots and communicate with others to. strengthen that original vision and convert it into public awareness and an organization that stands for the future of all tech.

#ItStartsWithinMe

The soul searching is turning into definition. Exploration to deduction, and deduction to values, and values to ways of being understood by others. Those explorations and deductions and constellation of issues are now the very basis to a huge shift in the world observed and raison d’etre for the NGO that I’m founding. Because, when we find out the system of the self we can zoom out to see the inner workings of the complex machine to then take the influences and happenstance as constants then find definition for big delta changes needing to be made to keep up with surviving far longer than you ever imagined.

#education #socialjustice #consulting