The Urge for New Adventures

2016 - It's a Whole New Year

Hey Guys, Aloha !

This month’s feature story is about the sensations and the exploration of pushing your personal boundaries into territories unknown. Now hold that groaning, you couch potatoes, I am not talking about scaling Mount Everest, so go ahead and take that breathe, that sigh of relieve. But did you feel that surge of adrenaline, when I first suggested pushing boundaries, enacting some goals for 2016. You know, to start to make a difference, would not take some big effort or a lot of time to achieve something new. You could actually make a significant difference by enacting a small change. that could have a ripple effect. The key is to decide that you are going to do an activity that you’d never done before.  I did not say this activity was perhaps what countless other people have done, and really quite often, I said, do what you have not done before. Well yes, I do have some suggestions, thank you for asking.

TAKE A SELFIE…in various poses, place, OR with people that you have not done it with before….I would suggest ‘Nutscaping’ being the last resort and perhaps reserved for only some of you more adventurous prankers.

DOWNLOADING A SONG ON A TABLET OR PHONE…One that you normally would never download, but you sing in your head all the time.

ASK FOR DIRECTIONS…maybe help from a wife, girlfriend, male friend husband, you decide who.

SMILE AT PEOPLE…yup, even folks you don’t know… Yes, there is no telling what will happen, if you do that.

So here we are - me coming along and challenging you to set your intentions, to come up with things to do, things that will extend your personal boundaries, and take you into territories of your unknown.

You know awhile back, at some Halloween party, I found myself in conversation with this guy, talking about Social Media.  I said: “Well I’m on Facebook.”  He said, “Dude, you need to be on INSTAGRAM, on TUMBLR.”  I just let the conversation die, but a few weeks later in the New York Times, there was this story “Web Poets’ Society: New Breed Succeeds in Taking Verse Viral.”  It was about a guy named Tyler Knott Gregson; he was an amateur poet who became a best-selling poet and celebrity, thanks to his combined 560,000 followers on Instagram and Tumblr. According to that November 2015 Times article, Gregson’s first poetry book, Chasers of the Light, had 120,000 copies in print. That’s outrageous! His next book, All the Words Are Yours, had the first printing of 100,000. That is even more outrageous.  The possibilities reel in my head because I’m writing a book and to think of having that many people waiting to buy my book, wow, cowabunga.

Well enough about me. Ideas to move you along or that might inspire you into action might come to you from the days of the week. Such as in March there are some bizarre and wacky things that have been given days to celebrate.  What better month to take action in than the Man’s action month of March! (Well, you did know March was named after the Roman God "Mars"?)
I have a list by the day of some of my favorite wacky days.

March 2016 Daily Special Wacky Days:

1 National Pig Day
2 Old Stuff Day
3 I Want You to be Happy Day
3 If Pets Had Thumbs Day
4 Holy Experiment Day
4 Hug a GI Day
5 Multiple Personality Day
6 National Frozen Food Day
7 National Crown Roast of Pork Day
8 Be Nasty Day
8 International (Working) Women's Day
9 Panic Day
10 Popcorn Lover's Day second Thursday
11 Worship of Tools Day - guys, you can relate
12 Girl Scouts Day
13 Ear Muff Day
14 National Potato Chip Day
14 National Pi Day- Why today? Because today is 3.14, the value of Pi.
15 Everything You Think is Wrong Day
15 Ides of March –  Et Tu, Brute?
15 Dumbstruck Day
16 Everything You Do is Right Day
16 Freedom of Information Day
17 Submarine Day – be original the hero sandwich or the boat??
17 Saint Patrick's Day
18 Goddess of Fertility Day
18 National Agriculture Day (date varies)
19 Poultry Day
20 International Earth Day
20 Extraterrestrial Abductions Day
20 Proposal Day
21 Fragrance Day
22 National Goof Off Day
23 National Chip and Dip Day
23 Near Miss Day
24 National Chocolate Covered Raisin Day
25 Waffle Day
26 Make Up Your Own Holiday Day
26 National Spinach Day
27 National "Joe" Day
28 Something on a Stick Day
29 National Mom and Pop Business Owners Day
29 Smoke and Mirrors Day
30 I am in Control Day
30 Take a Walk in the Park Day
31 Bunsen Burner Day
31 National Clam on the Half Shell Day

So go ahead, give one of these a shot. It’s all about you finding out something new about yourself in a fun way.  It shouldn’t be terribly tough to do, and like Elbert Hubbard, the early 1900’s writer and artist said: “The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.”
 
Aloha . . .

Expose yourself to a One-Hundred-Year-Old

The year-long party is still going on and you can join in at any time. What party you ask? Why the one the National Park Service is throwing. To join in you may need some new duds like boots and shorts, but don’t let that stop you; you can always come as you are!

You ask who is the party for? Well the National Park Service (NPS) of course, it turned 100-years-old on August 25, 2015. The National Park Service has a lot to see and do if you are willing to expose yourself to nature. You might want to bring a friend.

Now you can join in at any of its locations, to experience a side of yourself which you may not have known before.  There are 58 National Parks in all 50 states, and in American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the US Virgin Islands. California alone has 27 National Parks, 36 National Landmarks, and 144 National Historic Landmarks. This party will have a combined attendance of 37,000,000 visitors to these National Parks and Landmarks. Now that is a RAVE event.

Ok, I get it, you don’t like crowds, looking like you look dressed in those shorts and tee shirt I would not want to be seen by any large crowds either. Here’s the thing, most of the crowds are going to be seen in a short list of favorites spots just a handful of big-name parks, compared with the more than 400 units in the Park System probably ones you’ve never heard about – But If you are considering a short hike or day backpacking trip to commune with nature, you probably are unaware of that extensive list of parks, those other locations that are usually overlooked.

Forget about searching out those high-profile trails with the infinitely Instagrammable vistas, there are often less-showy units that allow you a quieter, more personal interaction with the Park System.  Some allow you to hike through seasonal flower-filled meadows and watch condors soar through rock formations on the hills without the noise of other hikers.  Rather than to have to wait in a long line or cars to enter the high-profile Parks, rather you can spend a full day hiking in some smaller National Park without passing another hiker.

For you newbies, that want to start, and are not interested in extensive trail network, you rather a park that you can consider a quick day-stop on the way to something more substantial like the local bar or fast food places, these can be found too, If you know where to look. So where are these gems found? The National Park Foundation has a helpful list of often-overlooked parks called The Places Nobody Knows.  Designed to help you find those hidden, unthought-of gems along the way – especially if you think you already know what’s happening in the park.

So now’s the time to plan that party, or take that walk, or hike in nature, that big outdoor trip (be it ever so small) that you promised yourself one-day, to do, so experience nature on your terms.

Expose yourself!

Need more inspiration? Find a Park

February 29, 2016 - Leap Year

Hey guys,

Just think about this (especially if you are single): Imagine a day where you could get cards, flowers, condoms, or be asked out for your favorite meal or drink, and even maybe get a whole lot more. Where do I sign up, you ask? Well it’s on the books, 29th of February is the Day, and if you are one of the lucky chosen ones you just might want to be ready. So dress up, smell nice, and wear that big smile. It could be your lucky day.

Hey, you say, February 29 does not come around that often; why that day?  Well, it might be by design. When I was going to Middle and High School this event was sometimes moved to November; the reason will be clear in a moment. February 29 - I remember my parents laughing about the implications of that day, calling it the Jump the Broom Day or It’s Going To Be A Shotgun Proposal Day. In my Junior and Senior High years we celebrated it as part of Sadie Hawkins week, culminating in the Sadie Hawkins Day Dance to celebrate the end of the event. Yet the roots of Leap Year are steeped in history and lore, and its significance has morphed and changed over the decades. The Leap Year event seem veiled in legend and myth. The tales that surround this event are purported to come from 5th Century Ireland when St. Bridget complained to St. Patrick about women having to wait a long time before a man would propose. St. Patrick allegedly said the females could propose on this one day in February during the Leap year. Now this murky story is completely contradicted by the equally murky story of Queen Margaret of Scotland instituting a law fining men who said no to a woman who proposed to them on Leap Day. The substitute month of November, if there is no February 29, is an American adaptation.

The first real documentation of a Leap Year marriage practice dates back to 1288, when Scotland supposedly passed a law that allowed women to propose marriage to the man of their choice in that year. I find it interesting that the tradition didn’t catch on as a practice until the 18th century and really didn’t do much until early 20th century in America.

Which brings me back to the 20th century. We find the American version of this folk event originating off the pages of a comic strip, out of the mind of Al Capp, in the Li'l Abner hillbilly comic strip that ran from 1934–1978. To think I can find a small portion of my life originating from a comic strip! My real-world High School Sadie Hawkins Day and week, when girls sent boys notes and finally asked the boys out to the dance, was all due to Capp's comic strip catching the imagination of high school and college kids across the nation. But what is more telling of changes in American culture is not the Sadie Hawkins dance as much as the story itself.

In the story of Li'l Abner, Sadie Hawkins was the daughter of one of Dogpatch's earliest settlers, Hekzebiah Hawkins. The "homeliest gal in all them hills," she grew frantic waiting for suitors to come a-courtin'. When she reached the age of 35, still a spinster, her father was even more frantic - about Sadie living at home for the rest of her life. In desperation, he called together all the unmarried men of Dogpatch and declared it "Sadie Hawkins Day." A foot race was decreed, with Sadie in hot pursuit of the town's eligible bachelors. She specifically had her eye on a boy who was already in a courtship with a farmer's cute daughter, Theresa. She was the daughter of the area's largest potato farmer, Bill Richmand and, unlike Sadie, had a lot of courtship offers. Stud-muffin Adam Olis was her target, and because the engagement of Miss Theresa and Adam wasn't official he was included in the race. With matrimony as the consequence of losing the foot race, the men of the town were running for their freedom. Turned out Adam Olis was in 4th place out of 10th, leaving John Jonston Sadie's catch of the day. The town spinsters decided that this was such a good idea they made Sadie Hawkins Day a mandatory yearly event, much to the chagrin of Dogpatch bachelors. In the satirical spirit that drove the strip, many sequences revolved around the dreaded Sadie Hawkins Day race. If a woman caught a bachelor and dragged him, kicking and screaming, across the finish line before sundown by law he had to marry her.

By the early 1940s, the comic strip had swept the nation and acquired a life of its own. Outside the pages of the comic strip, the real implications of Sadie Hawkins Day were being explored: issues of equality or, at least, the grappling to understand the feelings and pressures of the other gender through role-reversal. Girls had to take the bold initiative of inviting the boy of their choice out on a date and the boys could only wait and hope to be picked by the girl of his dreams - something almost unheard of before 1937.

In the early 20th century it was common knowledge that women could propose marriage to men during Leap years. Postcards from the 1920s reveal some and negative attitudes about women who proposed to men and of the men who were proposed to.

Dr. Katherine Parkin, a historian at Monmouth University, in her research that entails Twentieth-Century Leap Year Marriage Proposals (published in the Journal of Family History), had found a quantity of cartoonish postcards depicting proposing women as ugly harridans, as fat, unattractive, and domineering - sometimes even violent - and the men they proposed to as scrawny, weak, and emasculated. For example, one of the postcards shows a tiny man squeaking “I surrender” as two gargantuan women, brandishing a total of four deadly weapons, pin him against the wall.

The postcard craze faded by late 1910s, but the misconception of a woman who could propose to man during Leap year lasted until the late 1960s. Fast forward to today and we find that those once strict gender roles have softened and sexual mores loosened; the notion of a proposing woman began to seem less patently ridiculous. And today in America we find ourselves in an era when the likes of both Britney Spears and Halle Berry have proposed marriage to men, showing a marked movement away from the past stereotype that proposing women look like ogres and that their men are weak and spineless.

So, on February 29 be available; be ready for the race, to run that gauntlet, knowing when to hold out, or speed up, or slow down until your version of Britney Spears or Halle Berry beats out all the others and you let her catch you. In America, the egalitarian nature of society now moving towards gender equality brings the knowledge that there are American women of today, women who are bright, attractive and who know who they are and what they want, who will no longer wait up for that ostensibly romantic ritual of the male proposal. As men we need to know that the partner that we want is there and that we won’t have to guess at what we can do to provide for her. Since many a couple does discuss marriage in advance, the progressive women may not wait for her boyfriend to get down on one knee and, in turn, many progressive men feel their right to negotiate a claim for a lasting union before the I dos.

We as a society may be past the point of assuming that man accepts a marriage proposal only at gunpoint, as one postcard from 1908 would have suggested. We’ve seen that Leap Year has been the traditional time that women could express their love passion and drive to be yoked to a man. We will see as we move forward towards equality of the sexes that if a woman chooses to propose to her male lover, she will have an option of not one day in an odd set of years but any of the 365 days of a year to do so, and society will not bat an eye.

Men, until that day drum up some ways to have February 29,2016 - this Leap Year - be a day of unimagined possibilities.

February 29, 2016 - Leap Year

Hey guys, just think about this (especially if you are single): Imagine a day where you could get cards, flowers, condoms, or be asked out for your favorite meal or drink, and even maybe get a whole lot more. Where do I sign up, you ask? Well it’s on the books, 29th of February is the Day, and if you are one of the lucky chosen ones you just might want to be ready. So dress up, smell nice, and wear that big smile. It could be your lucky day.

Hey, you say, February 29 does not come around that often; why that day?  Well, it might be by design. When I was going to Middle and High School this event was sometimes moved to November; the reason will be clear in a moment. February 29 - I remember my parents laughing about the implications of that day, calling it the Jump the Broom Day or It’s Going To Be A Shotgun Proposal Day. In my Junior and Senior High years we celebrated it as part of Sadie Hawkins week, culminating in the Sadie Hawkins Day Dance to celebrate the end of the event. Yet the roots of Leap Year are steeped in history and lore, and its significance has morphed and changed over the decades. The Leap Year event seem veiled in legend and myth. The tales that surround this event are purported to come from 5th Century Ireland when St. Bridget complained to St. Patrick about women having to wait a long time before a man would propose. St. Patrick allegedly said the females could propose on this one day in February during the Leap year. Now this murky story is completely contradicted by the equally murky story of Queen Margaret of Scotland instituting a law fining men who said no to a woman who proposed to them on Leap Day. The substitute month of November, if there is no February 29, is an American adaptation.

The first real documentation of a Leap Year marriage practice dates back to 1288, when Scotland supposedly passed a law that allowed women to propose marriage to the man of their choice in that year. I find it interesting that the tradition didn’t catch on as a practice until the 18th century and really didn’t do much until early 20th century in America.

Which brings me back to the 20th century. We find the American version of this folk event originating off the pages of a comic strip, out of the mind of Al Capp, in the Li'l Abner hillbilly comic strip that ran from 1934–1978. To think I can find a small portion of my life originating from a comic strip! My real-world High School Sadie Hawkins Day and week, when girls sent boys notes and finally asked the boys out to the dance, was all due to Capp's comic strip catching the imagination of high school and college kids across the nation. But what is more telling of changes in American culture is not the Sadie Hawkins dance as much as the story itself.

In the story of Li'l Abner, Sadie Hawkins was the daughter of one of Dogpatch's earliest settlers, Hekzebiah Hawkins. The "homeliest gal in all them hills," she grew frantic waiting for suitors to come a-courtin'. When she reached the age of 35, still a spinster, her father was even more frantic - about Sadie living at home for the rest of her life. In desperation, he called together all the unmarried men of Dogpatch and declared it "Sadie Hawkins Day." A foot race was decreed, with Sadie in hot pursuit of the town's eligible bachelors. She specifically had her eye on a boy who was already in a courtship with a farmer's cute daughter, Theresa. She was the daughter of the area's largest potato farmer, Bill Richmand and, unlike Sadie, had a lot of courtship offers. Stud-muffin Adam Olis was her target, and because the engagement of Miss Theresa and Adam wasn't official he was included in the race. With matrimony as the consequence of losing the foot race, the men of the town were running for their freedom. Turned out Adam Olis was in 4th place out of 10th, leaving John Jonston Sadie's catch of the day. The town spinsters decided that this was such a good idea they made Sadie Hawkins Day a mandatory yearly event, much to the chagrin of Dogpatch bachelors. In the satirical spirit that drove the strip, many sequences revolved around the dreaded Sadie Hawkins Day race. If a woman caught a bachelor and dragged him, kicking and screaming, across the finish line before sundown by law he had to marry her.

By the early 1940s, the comic strip had swept the nation and acquired a life of its own. Outside the pages of the comic strip, the real implications of Sadie Hawkins Day were being explored: issues of equality or, at least, the grappling to understand the feelings and pressures of the other gender through role-reversal. Girls had to take the bold initiative of inviting the boy of their choice out on a date and the boys could only wait and hope to be picked by the girl of his dreams - something almost unheard of before 1937.

In the early 20th century it was common knowledge that women could propose marriage to men during Leap years. Postcards from the 1920s reveal some and negative attitudes about women who proposed to men and of the men who were proposed to.

Dr. Katherine Parkin, a historian at Monmouth University, in her research that entails Twentieth-Century Leap Year Marriage Proposals (published in the Journal of Family History), had found a quantity of cartoonish postcards depicting proposing women as ugly harridans, as fat, unattractive, and domineering - sometimes even violent - and the men they proposed to as scrawny, weak, and emasculated. For example, one of the postcards shows a tiny man squeaking “I surrender” as two gargantuan women, brandishing a total of four deadly weapons, pin him against the wall.

The postcard craze faded by late 1910s, but the misconception of a woman who could propose to man during Leap year lasted until the late 1960s. Fast forward to today and we find that those once strict gender roles have softened and sexual mores loosened; the notion of a proposing woman began to seem less patently ridiculous. And today in America we find ourselves in an era when the likes of both Britney Spears and Halle Berry have proposed marriage to men, showing a marked movement away from the past stereotype that proposing women look like ogres and that their men are weak and spineless.

So, on February 29 be available; be ready for the race, to run that gauntlet, knowing when to hold out, or speed up, or slow down until your version of Britney Spears or Halle Berry beats out all the others and you let her catch you. In America, the egalitarian nature of society now moving towards gender equality brings the knowledge that there are American women of today, women who are bright, attractive and who know who they are and what they want, who will no longer wait up for that ostensibly romantic ritual of the male proposal. As men we need to know that the partner that we want is there and that we won’t have to guess at what we can do to provide for her. Since many a couple does discuss marriage in advance, the progressive women may not wait for her boyfriend to get down on one knee and, in turn, many progressive men feel their right to negotiate a claim for a lasting union before the I dos.

We as a society may be past the point of assuming that man accepts a marriage proposal only at gunpoint, as one postcard from 1908 would have suggested. We’ve seen that Leap Year has been the traditional time that women could express their love passion and drive to be yoked to a man. We will see as we move forward towards equality of the sexes that if a woman chooses to propose to her male lover, she will have an option of not one day in an odd set of years but any of the 365 days of a year to do so, and society will not bat an eye.

Men, until that day drum up some ways to have February 29,2016 - this Leap Year - be a day of unimagined possibilities.

Love vs. Getting Somebody

The New Year has begun. For some, that new year’s resolution is to find Somebody. St Valentine’s Day, February 14, seems to be the kick-off day for couples of all types to express their passion, deepest feelings, and love for each other or at least their Lust. But for others, that set of folks, who are single or almost single, they may decide they need a Somebody and the Hunt is on.

When I was a young child in school, we celebrated Valentine’s Day by making cut-out red hearts using poster board and colored tissue paper for cards. We would share our Valentine cards with our friends in the class room, but we all hoped secretly to be special by getting the most cards from everybody (as if the number of cards determined how loved one was), or by getting special ones from our closest buddies.

Valentine’s Day is a poignant reminder of how far we’ve come today, far removed from that grade school notion of Valentine’s Day. Yet, as a culture at this time of year, we find our heart vulnerable, hoping for that special “other” someone. We want somebody else to recognize us and make us feel whole. Thus for some, the search is on - on the web and in the clubs - for that one special Valentine, that one person that will make their heart race and put a wide smile on their face. But does it ensure love?

I recently found out in idle party conversation that, for online dating companies, this is the most successful time of the year, with growth rates that move upwards to a peak of 60 percent in new clients (January to March of each year). For myself as a Mentor and Life Coach, I find people put themselves through a lot of stress during this time of year, trying to make something happen and / or to get Somebody. I guess it is good that they come to me and want to talk out some of their thinking before going forward. Some folks seem to stumble over performance issues, or being intimidated by feelings of being out of their league, or the need to find somebody in an arousal state to tell them they have sex appeal or that they are worth something. What’s worse is not having a sense of humor about it. There seems to be confusion in people’s mind about the difference between Love vs. Sex. In the back of my mind comes the phase “Sex is really the only interesting thing that some boring people do." And then they want to take the humor out of the equation. Really ???

Did You Know?

Valentine’s day is a pagan festival. February 15, Lupercalia was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus. You can do your own research or trust me on this one. According to legend, all the young women in the city would place their names in a big urn. The city’s bachelors would each choose a name and become paired for the year with his chosen woman. These matches often ended in marriage.

Of course, Americans tone it down a lot, with just the exchanging of hand-made valentines in the 1700s (not as much fun as the Roman lotto). Then came Esther A. Howland in the 1840s, who introduced and sold the first mass-produced Valentine cards in America. Fast forward to today and, according to the Greeting Card Association, an estimated 1 billion cards are sent each year, making Valentine's Day the second most popular card-sending holiday after Christmas.

Yeah, I know the V.D. card isn’t doing it for you. So let’s put aside everything you think you know about this Love-in-bloom day and approach it differently. For some, you are all involved with the motions of what you should be doing to find and express Love, and yet didn’t stop to think what does Love and relationship really mean to you. And then the billion-dollar question, “Can I sustain and have love last”?

So what do we know about the scene now? Well people are into hook-ups, and I’d say from my unscientific method of investigation that about half of young adults have had a one-night stand, and about half of those people were lucky enough to turn that one-night stand into some kind of long-term relationship. Now, that is not to say that young singles of today are any more promiscuous than their parents, maybe just a little more open about what and how they do things. I’ve even found more young men and women ages 21-34 proud to tell you that they are virgins and have never had sex.

Single women for generations were expected to be married young or face dire consequences. As late as 1970, college-educated women earned less, on average, than a male with a high school education. A survey poll of the time found that almost two-thirds of college women said they would consider marrying a man they didn’t love if he met their other criteria, most of which revolved around financial security.

Today, by contrast, women are far less likely to put financial security ahead of love, and they express far less anxiety about the prospect of remaining unmarried if they do not find someone they love and trust. In America, today, women are far more cautious about getting themselves into relationships than men are. It is interesting now that women are more likely than men to want to maintain their personal space, their own bank accounts, and their own interests, including regular nights out with girlfriends and vacations on their own. It raises some interesting questions about today’s man and his ability to create support systems for himself beyond spouse and children.

To choose to be single, well that was a dicey option, and much harder to carve out as a satisfying life back in the 1950s and 1960s, even for those who would want such a life. During that same time period, men who were still unmarried in their early 30s were considered questionable and often denied bank loans or promotions. Unlike today, that choice of bachelorhood was not considered an option.

Fashion, culture, mores: all change; even our words change meaning. "I love you" once implied a serious sexual commitment. It is in wider use today meaning “I care about you,” - “I want or am happy with you in my life” or as an acknowledgement of various relationship with the individuals in your life. In fact, LOVE can have many meanings and be expressed in many ways, to many people. The most important, however, is how it will be expressed and sustained by you in your life. There are various studies that show love can and does last, and it’s not just for a rare and privileged few. Yet it usually takes a change of perspective and some conscious effort to maintain a loving state, especially beyond the euphoria of Lust and Fixation. But it is possible to cut through the confusion, both for you and for the people who are earnestly attempting to connect with you.

Let’s start with the word Love. We have long been told that we must love our selves before we could truly love someone else. Therein is the key. To turn the key, we must narrow the aperture of the word Love, for Love can mean all sorts of things. But by using one of its older forms - Agape - we have a far more potent form of the word Love. The secret knowledge regarding lasting love lies within that word Agape, in achieving the elusive and alluring ideal of Love. Those reporting greatest romantic love and closeness with their partners have somehow stumbled onto using Agape in their life, resulting in the reward of a more revved-up relationship.

To summarize . . .

Sometimes, when people are hurting and feeling rejected it’s often fueled by anxiety and a desire to feel better about themselves given the box they have put themselves in. This results in them not moving towards something positive; rather, they are trying to get away from something painful. When you’re in this emotional place yourself it’s hard to authentically connect with a new person. As much as you want to connect, you just don’t have the emotional stamina. Your heart is still occupied. You must come to a new truth of yourself to be able to declutter and dislodge those feelings of not being worthy. Those feelings of needing the presence of Sombody else for you to be loved. Once you start your examination, you will find you have all sorts of options to have love and be loved.

As you allow yourself to be aware, flexible, and able to express your authentic desire according to circumstance, you gain freedom, insight, and can acknowledge Love in your Life. You see Agape (love’s) multifaceted capability within you for great feats of compassion, empathy, and passion. You are not bound by the expectations of past customs, or cultures, or by what you have been through: you have the ability to change all that within you. You are wired for change. That wiring consists of being conscious, being aware and moving towards the freedom to be yourself - to be love and the desire to share however and with whomever you choose. It all depends on you: your feelings and your truth. Take some time to do the work of releasing your attachments. Then know you are Love, Eros, Agape expressing, rather than having that Somebody stand in for you. Share yourself as Love.

Aloha !

The Prosperos Assembly 2016 - Labor Day Weekend

“A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea.”
~John Ciardi.

2016 for some folks will be a real game changer, in how they view their world and handle momentous events in their lives. Some of those people will be looking for an edge to move their life forward, that’s because they may feel that they are not the smartest or the strongest or the richest of the human species, but they do know they need more out of life than just to survive. They may even come to realize to do that, that they may need a change of perspective, one that is more adaptive and responsive to change than what they are operating with now. Some may find that gaining that perspective is more than they can do on their own.

This fall the Prosperos is offering a platform, they call an Assembly, whereby they are aiming to create through presentations and break-out groups a safe place for you to explore with your fellow companions, the inner issues which are the keys to gaining a broader perspective of your inner growth potential and to be an effective force in adapting and directing your course in the face of a rapidly changing new world. This is key when you consider that changing and actually improving are two quite different skills.

When:  Friday, Sept 02 through Monday, Sept 05, 2016

Where:  Westin Long Beach Hotel, Long Beach, California

Contact:   Send Calvin a message or visit The Prosperos website for more info.

The Man's Guide To Doing 2016 Right

In the weeks leading up to and after each New Year, we talk a lot of Bull, things like, "This is my year," and "I'm finally going to start a gym routine," and "I will get a better job, woman, and / or life" - you fill in the blanks.

So you have your Resolutions. So what do you think is going to happen? In an age of immediate gratification, it would follow that you look to outside things, people and places to validate you to be happier, fit, richer, or more likable. Wouldn't it be cool if on December 31 you stated what you wanted and on January 01 it just happened that way? Oh baby, that would be like your favorite sauce on the meat at the barbecue. Well, that’s what your culture or conditioning will tell you is how you should expect it to happen: It’s like you are making an online mail order purchase and having UPS put it on your doorstep in less than 24 hours.

Yet by just stepping back and looking at that whole idea of Resolution Fulfillment. . . . Well, it does not seem to work that way. You see, our expectation of how it is supposed to work are more in keeping with how we are wired rather than what generally happens. So looking at your habits and / or conditioning, are you really geared up for success?

 In considering making resolutions you may want to start with an inventory of your internal thoughts, feelings, and conversations on getting what you want before we speak one more word about moving towards desired improvement.

Not playing with a conscious deck could be the reason why resolutions evaporate before the end of January. People seem to slip into routines of an automatic coma about living life. A coma from conscious direction, and when something goes wrong, well, they will say, “that’s just how life is.” Your inner critic (sometimes referred to as a conscience) - call it whatever, but at some point, this creep then creeps in and says, “You failed before. Why even bother?" or “It didn’t happen, and, therefore, you’ve failed, again,” and we believe the bullshit. The inner critic says stuff like – “Hey, no one’s helping, they don’t like me because. . . .”, and "Bad things will happen if I try things a different way."

Even though you set the goal or got that gym membership, you can fall into your habitual coma and eventually go back to Computer Gaming, or Netflix marathons, and pizza with beer binges, because it is seemingly easier. But what if you told that internal critic to piss off? What if you stopped listening or changed the conversation entirely? What if you could state your intentions better and have a backup plan for when this inner asshole feels the need to tell you that you suck at life?

Fortunately, all of this is possible if you are willing to do more than just saying what you want and then not doing it. An example of this kind of change would entail you saying you want a better body and then not going straight back to the loving embrace of your couch and beer; instead, you become conscious of diet and do exercise.

I say let’s do something different. I suggest putting down that slice of pizza and going to your keyboard to type this out.  But even better is getting a journal, paper, and pen, and write this down:

“Intentions Are Better Than Resolutions.”

Got that? Good - now, moving on. Below are three steps for you to consider and get busy with. I call it a three step recipe for “Doing It Right In 2016.”

1.  I suggest a recall of the last year, doing an inventory and review – shine a spotlight on last year’s resolutions - your goals, purpose, desires. In reviewing the year, what did you do those last six months to accomplish any of it? Rate your performance. This could include finally achieving a goal you'd been working toward, etc., finding a way to laugh when things got hard, or recognizing an accomplishment you helped another achieve that you are proud of. Was there something that was an eye opener for you, where you took a different approach than you usually would? Did that turn out for the better or worse? Would you use that same strategy next time?

In this list, there could be disappointments; if so keep them limited to only three to five from the past year. Look at anything that you wish would've gone better - whether you had control over it or not. Really think about how you could have approached the situation in a different way or perhaps handled the outcome more constructively. Disappointment is not all bad as long as you learn from it.

Now reviewing last year should give you the knowledge of whether you're all talk, half-assing it, or have been fooling yourself. It is a good idea from time to time to take a look at your list, decide - Are these the things you really want as drivers for your life? Is there something you want to add or subtract from this list? Is there some goal on that list that didn't seem to fit? If the goal does not meet your expectation, ask yourself why and, if it's a "distraction" from the things you really feel strongly about, take action on it, chuck it out, or find someone who can mentor you to the desired result.

2.  In setting your intention, be realistic. Do not make it so unattainable that you set yourself up for failure. If you're unsure of your goals or feeling not up to the challenge of all of them, then pick just three to begin.

Grab that journal now and in it you will write your intentions, one page for each intention, for each one will need its own page. Include on each page a sentence that starts with the phrase - "I intend to _______. And I am worthy of this."

Now on the flip side of each intention page, at the bottom of the page, I want you to write something that may seem like a lot of mumbo jumbo, but go with it, because it is something that can help finalize your intention for you. It could be as simple as saying – ". . . and so it is"; ". . . amen"; or ". . .it is done," etc. - you get the idea.

Here is where intentions are vastly different and way better than resolutions: Ask yourself how it would feel to be, do, or have this result, this new body, a better income. Not how do you feel in six months, but how does it feel right now? Act as if time doesn't exist and it's only here and now.

Put passion into it when you write it, and really feel the words when you finalize it. There is power in having written them in a journal. You have created a reference for yourself. You then can go back at times and remind yourself of how far you've come.

3.  Now forget it. Yup, put that journal away. On a shelf, in a desk - if on a computer, then file it under “stuff I’m not going to obsess over or worry about.” I know I said to keep them, but you do not need to re-read these every day to know that you want this. Focus instead on the conscious challenges that then will present themselves in order for you to obtain your goal, and also focus on your sense of capability. If or when you hear that doubtful voice of your critic, let the negativity come into your thoughts. Now take a breath and ask yourself, are you not more than this crap, more than this nonsense? Be ready, like a prize fighter, to now jab, punch back, and take that right hook with the big guns of conscious intention.

When your inner critic crops up to call you “a lazy fat ass, always been one and always will be,” now you can push back in the chambers of your mind with - "Even though I have struggled with fear and destructive behavior in the past, I am living a Self-directed integrated lifestyle that is healthy now."
If that critic of doubt tells you that you cannot be successful and your ideas are garbage, reply, "My identity is now reframed and focused on being successful and fulfilled."

I am fortunate that with the help of my Teacher and Mentors I came to the revelation that what holds us in a state of stuck-ness or under-achievement, is worry, impatience, fear and distrust. Yes and usually of our self, a mis-seeing of who we are and our potential.

So the intention is to consciously release worry, to be patient and forgiving with ourselves as with others (because we're not perfect), to lean into fear (with courage and a sense of humor), and to trust our ability to achieve (because we are often what stands in our own way). It only makes sense that we will come to know that we are so much more and can accomplish so much more.

When the statistics show that over 90 percent of New Year Resolutions fail, it's hard to imagine why anyone would bother. So . . . don’t. I am urging you to try something a little different, to re-frame your resolutions into conscious intentions. To write down a "Year in Review" - essentially a blueprint of how your past year has worked out: the good things, the rough spots you worked through, the growth that occurred in both yourself and your interactions with your world - to get clarity about what you’d like to work on next.

A "Year in Review" gives me perspective and a solid dose of realism, especially when I feel like not much has happened or when I'm not especially encouraged about my progress during the past twelve months. The problem is that if you don't take the time to sit down and really analyze how things have worked in the past, you're bound to repeat many of your same mistakes. We humans can have a short memory and a long sense of optimism.

So if you're like me and would like to really get a sense of what works for you and what doesn't,  try these three steps to get you started, drop me a line, and let’s talk.

 Get to it - know that you can make it the Best of Years.

Aloha . . . .

Masculine Archetypes

Many thanks to my long-time colleague Richard Hartnett for the following post.

Today a great football coach gave his resignation speech from an organization that he had been a part of for 15 years. At several points in his presentation, he had to stop because he was overwhelmed with emotion.   It was obvious that he loved his job, loved the men who played for him and loved the people he worked for. This moment was a stark contrast from his departure from the previous organization where he coached. When he was fired by that organization it was due in large part because his players hated his “hard ass attitude”. What had changed this man into a sensitive and honorable man?   The shift for this man started when one of his players came up to him and said, “I love you coach”. That simple statement compelled him to reconsider the profound influence of his position.  

It may seem strange to find deep emotions expressed in a game that is essentially a forum for violence. Yet, it starts to make sense when you understand the intention of this coach changed from simply being focused on winning to developing character in each of his players that would not only motivate them to win, it would become the cornerstone of the success in their lives beyond football. Football has always been a place where men are given the opportunity to develop their warrior nature. Like it or not, it is essential that we have a healthy warrior nature. It is one of the four important masculine archetypes.

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Courtesy John Martinez Pavliga, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license

The abuses of our masculine warrior nature have brought forth a significant amount of scorn from those who were previously oppressed and exploited by it.   This persecution of the masculine is understandable. There is still way too much violence caused by men. It is necessary that we challenge our bad behavior, but as is often the case, we assume that we must get rid of masculinity completely rather than master its expression. Masculinity is not the problem; the problem is the distorted expression of masculinity.   Distortion is a consequence of not fully understanding an archetype.  

To begin to understand masculinity must first ask, “What is an archetype?” an archetype is a universal energy that we must all deal with in one form or another. Each archetype has specific characteristics and each offers unique skills and talents to master. Each of the archetypes, challenge us to learn about ourselves, and our place in the greater reality of our universe. In order to be successful in life, one must come to understand these influences if not outright master their use. Working with archetypes is something we all do because archetypes are universal.

There are four key Masculine archetypes. They are: The King, the Warrior, the Magician and the Lover. Each represents an important vehicle for assertive masculine expression. If you want to fully understand these archetypes, I would strongly recommend reading the book, “The King, The Magician, the Warrior and the Lover” by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette.

Archetypes are influences that exist in all cultures but have different images and names associated with them. Rulers are called kings, presidents, sultans, emperors, chiefs, lords, sovereigns, and even potentates. The archetype represents the common elements that all rulers share. All cultures have stories about the qualities and characteristics that rulers have. Each Ruler may be different in how their power is applied but they all share in common that they are the Ruler of their kingdom. The archetype represents the essence of rulership itself. All Rulers will fall short in their application of ruling because they have to deal with the challenges of this limited material world and because our understanding of the archetype of rulership is still evolving. It's important to recognize that no matter how successful any Ruler might be, there will always be more to learn. This is equally true for the warrior archetype as well as the others.

The book, by Moore and Gillette, explains both the appropriate and distorted expressions of each of the archetypes. Now that concept alone makes the book worthwhile. You will find a great deal more in this book that will help you to understand masculinity in all its forms.

One of the key concepts these gentlemen convey is that distortion has two forms of expression. Either we can express too much or too little of an archetype. Each is equally toxic but for opposite reasons. This coach was initially guilty of applying too much masculine aggressive behavior, yet it would be equally dysfunctional for him to apply too little. Somewhere in his transition into the second organization he began to find a healthy balance.

A coach is for all intensive purposes the embodiment of the King archetype.  He rules his players who embody the warrior archetype. One of the functions of a king is to convey a purpose to motivate the warrior. The key difference between an appropriate warrior and an inappropriate mercenary is their motivation. A warrior serves a higher cause, which in this case is the pursuit of excellence. While a mercenary fights for no other cause than to serve himself; whether it’s his desire for fame or money, his behavior is always selfish.  A mercenary has little regard for his opponent, the integrity of the game or even how his behavior affects his teammates.  There is a great deal of mercenary behavior going on in professional sports.  Yet, every once in awhile you hear about someone such as this coach who rises above the limitations of the past and brings forth a new understanding of an archetype. Every man who struggles to find his place in the world needs to understand that these archetypes are always in the background influencing the events of our lives.  It is always in our best interest to study and to master the appropriate expression of an archetype.  To ignore them does not make them go away, to persecute them only drives them underground where their expression ends up coming out in a distorted or perverted way.

This forum is devoted to the exploration of masculinity.   You will find that studying masculinity will transform your life in ways that you cannot imagine.  I encourage all men to read the aforementioned book and to celebrate their manhood by finding the best way to become a man of integrity.  Our greatest hope for the redemption of our society is to find the proper motivation for our masculine expressions.  Yet, we must always remember to honor and respect the feminine in all of its forms while we are expressing our masculinity.  Finding our appropriate motivation by serving a higher purpose than selfish desires, will transform not only our world, it will transform our relation with ourselves.  Let us all find the way to walk forward together as newly evolved men into a brave new world.

Send email to Richard at Quantumspirit@ecentral.com; visit his website atwww.quantumspiritone.com. He produces video lectures on YouTube, and you can find him on Facebook.