I would rather examine life and figure out why things are the way they are than be a sheep. Ive always been the scientist in some sense and I don’t think I can ever just be content pretending like things don’t matter. I will probably use this as an excuse to keep testing people to find the answers I am looking for. In life you are either looking for answers or being tested for them. What category do you fall into? Are you searching for reasons, trends, and understanding, or are you the one being studied? Like I said I’m no sheep. The more you test the boundaries of what is possible, the more boundaries of possibility you will break.

Every day for the past month I have walked past the tree above. I’ve watched the fiery red leaves fall off gradually over this period of time, every day waiting for the last one to be gone. Today was that day. I get subtle wake up calls every so often to how amazing nature really is.

Every year this tree sheds what it doesn’t need in order to survive through the long winters. It sends a chemical message to all the leaves basically letting them know its time to leave.

Think about this process applied to your life or your business. Are you forcing the dying pieces of what you are doing to leave when its naturally time, or are you cutting off entire dead limbs later to compensate? How can you setup your own natural fall season?

Recently we had the Leonid meteor shower pass over North America and Asia. Being a bit of an astronomy nerd, things like this have always fascinated me. Most of the time its hard to find friends that want to drive off to the middle of nowhere in the early hours of the morning to see some shooting stars.

This year I’m in NYC and the light pollution here is horrible. I’ve barely seen a star here.
Some new friends and I decide to go out and at least try and look for something. After a while I started noticing one here, one there. No one else there was seeing anything.

At this point I asked them where they were looking. They all started pointing up as if I was stupid for asking. I told them to be specific about where they were looking. I got responses like “by that bright star” or “next to the moon”.

From years of doing it wrong in the past I knew what the problem was. They weren’t allowing their eyes to adjust to the light. They were looking at the brightest objects causing them to miss the dimly lit shooting stars. I had them all refocus and look at the sky as a whole. I told them to focus on the darkness. One by one they all started noticing one here, one there.

A lot of times people want to see the big picture but they remain so focussed on the bright details that it blinds them from seeing whats going on at large.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone and a special Happy Birthday to my younger brother Nick. His birthday and thanksgiving overlap at times and it sorta gets overlooked.

Happy everyone!

Every waking moment that I am outside of my apartment in NYC, I am constantly asked at every corner, subway stop, and on every train for some change. I normally don’t carry any cash or change so its very easy to avoid any awkwardness.

I’ve lived here for just over a month and every day the same thing, “change?” over and over again. That is until a few days ago. An obviously homeless man walked up and asked me for twenty dollars. I was shocked but instantly compelled to pull out my wallet and give him my only twenty.

In an instant this man had done something to me that led me down that path. He stood out from the crowd by asking for what he really wanted. He started an internal dialogue inside of me “should I do it? twenty bucks is a lot of money! but I’ve had those times when twenty bucks would seemingly fix almost anything”.

I handed over the cash and he said “thank you kindly” and then he walked over to the a deli and ordered a sandwich.

In reality the story at hand isn’t about him or me for that matter. It’s about you. How many times have you asked for less than you really wanted and gotten exactly that. As a designer under bidding a project, or for a birthday asking for a sweater when you really want a pony. Chances are if you ask for a sweater you won’t be getting a pony so why set yourself up for failure. Ask for a pony and you never know what may happen.

It’s amazing to me the number of ideas I dream up which stem from a “meaningless” tweet. A few short weeks ago I tweeted out “if you are doing it right it isn’t a grind, its a glide“. It took about five minutes before the gears started turning and I was in full thinking mode.

I started thinking a lot about glider pilots, and how much I really wanted to be one. I thought about the similarities between great business people and these pilots, and was blown away.

Glider pilots are risk takers, but they are the right kind of risk takers : calculated risk takers. They step into the cockpit with full knowledge that they are going to be falling back to earth with no engine, but have trained themselves to best handle any situation which may occur, therefore maximizing potential and minimizing risk.

When problems do occur or they start to veer off course, they fix these problems by making minor corrections. They realize that the slightest turn of the stick can correct a tremendous amount over a long distance. Large sporadic movements cause you to lose elevation and become unstable.

They are also journeyman, or people who are more focussed on the fun they have flying than on their final destination. They live the moment which allows them to enjoy and react faster and more precisely.

Glider pilots also do something very unique. They take advantage of updrafts to gain altitude which allows them to travel longer distances. It’s a reactionary tactic which allows you to capitalize on opportunity.

Above all I think glider pilots are innovators. They have taken the dream of many; to fly, and turned it into something that almost feels organic. They have managed to suspend themselves in a self created heaven with just enough time to enjoy the ride without dying.

For my money there isn’t a cooler job. But here is what I want to know. What’s your job title, what do you do, and what sounds like the coolest job in the world to you?

I think we can bridge the gap. I’m now a glider pilot. What are you?