Below is what I teach with each company I work with.

With,  not for.

$5,000 for six weeks.

Read the material to find out what you get for those 6 weeks.

INTRODUCTION
The Evolutionary Invitation

Innovation begins when one evolves.

As one evolves, one notices things—patterns, fractures, connections—that spark innovation. This noticing is the seed.

This book is a guide, not a “how-to.” There is no ten-step plan here. A plan implies you can command the outcome from where you currently stand. This book operates on a different law: you cannot command a new reality from an old state of mind.

Therefore, this is a guide for evolving the state of mind. For changing the player, so the game itself transforms.

As you read, let the ideas settle. Do not try to memorize them. Let them resonate. You may be surprised at what you begin to see, and where you feel the spark to innovate.

You have already bought this book. That action shows you are interested in more than tips—you are interested in evolution. That is a step most don’t take.

Be proud of yourself for taking it.

But not too proud.

—

PROLOGUE
The Challenge

Every great thing humanity has ever accomplished—every innovation, every leap, every work of enduring value—was born from a challenge.

It had naysayers. It had people crazy enough to stand up and say the experts were wrong, the authorities were mistaken, the “way things are” was not the way they had to be.

There are no stories of great conformists. No legends built on fitting in, blending in, and following the crowd’s every whim. The status quo does not innovate. Conformity does not innovate.

Innovation cannot exist without challenging everything we think we already know.

If you have any desire to lead—to truly innovate—then your work is to use every assumption as a jumping-off point. To scout the paths not taken and see if they are worth exploring. It’s not rebellion for its own sake. It’s exploration for the sake of what’s next.

This is a survival mandate now.
If you work in tech and you’re not reading every piece of new tech news,you’re already behind. If you’re not creating that news, you’re way behind.

In general business leadership, if you’re not looking at intuitives and those given the label Autistic, you’re even further behind than you will ever know until you start hiring them. Among these groups are some of the most gifted, non-linear minds on the planet—minds going underutilized because they don’t fit the old model.

Those who have experienced what a true intuitive can do will tell you: this is not a game. It is a capability that can take a business to whole new levels of innovation faster than you can currently imagine.

So here is the challenge that will frame every page that follows:

Challenge everything you think you know. Every day.
See what you learn.
See where it leads.
This is not optional anymore.
It is the only way forward.

CHAPTER 1
The First Error

Hubris.
Hu·bris/ˈ(h)yo͞obrəs/: excessive pride or self-confidence.

I’m not going to try to redefine the word. It already has a definition. I’m humble enough to work with what is here. It is often hubris that leads us into thinking we should redefine everything for a new generation.

I am not that fool—though I do other foolish things.

One of the reasons I work at being simple and direct is that I understand I am dealing with a worldwide audience. My writing reaches people in at least thirty countries. To get colorful with my speech or to use big words just to show off would be making this about me. As a teacher, it’s about all who might read it. It’s about ensuring they can understand.

Leaders are simple and direct with their communication to ensure they are understood.
Educated people sometimes like to show off the words they learned.Education does not equate to intelligence, and I have dealt with many educated idiots over the years. Some of the most intelligent people I have ever met never made it out of high school.

Education systems often favor those who can regurgitate. Simply because one can repeat something does not mean one understood it. One understands when one can explain the material and the concepts in the simplest speech possible—in their own words.

This is not a new concept. You can dig up a hundred quotes that express the same understanding. It is a universal truth.

And it is often hubris that leads us to think we should be quoted.

I have made posters with some of my own quotes—things I have said. I waited until over a dozen people, over the course of years, asked if they could quote me before I ever quoted myself on a poster. I checked myself for hubris long before I ever allowed myself to “abuse the holy living shit out of Canva.”

If one cannot use oneself as an example when delving into understanding, one does not have a clue what one is talking about.

—

On social media, hubris takes over the moment someone is corrected. We’ve all seen it: the defensive rage, the desperate scramble to discredit the corrector, all to save face and protect the illusion of being the smartest one in the room. In the office, this behavior costs companies a ton of money and costs people their jobs. It is the culture of the fragile self, terrified of being seen.

It is the culture of the leadership industry.

Look around. Most of what is being sold by the coaching and leadership industry is a rewrapping of everything old, pretending it’s new. My peers in this space hate it when they see my name because I find the holes in what they are presenting. I point out the emotional triggers being used to sell instead of to create actual change.

They sell certainty. They sell a “personal truth.” They validate opinion.

But here is the law I work from: Personal truth is a lie.

A truth that is only true for you, that cannot withstand challenge or be applied without harming others, is not truth. It is a story. A fragile, personal story. And building a leadership philosophy—or a life—on a collection of personal stories is building on sand. It is the foundation of the “hubris economy,” where feeling right is more valuable than being right.

Where intent is used as a shield against responsibility.

I meant well is the mantra of this economy. It is the hubristic claim that your good intentions absolve you of the damage caused by your ignorance, your lack of study, your refusal to verify if what you’re saying holds true or just sounds good.

Bullshit.

One’s intent does not remove the responsibility for the results from one’s shoulders. Leaders look at the potential results regardless of their intent to minimize the harm that might be done. Leaders make sure they are correct, or they pose it as “I think,” “I feel,” “in my opinion.” They do this to ensure they do not lead people astray. When it comes to giving guidance that changes lives, the most important thing is to be correct. Anything less is irresponsible and dangerous.

—

So, what does the opposite of hubris look like?

Leaders take pride in a job well done—and then they drop it and move on to the next task. They never rest on their laurels or deeds of the past. They never make themselves bigger than those around them for self-gratification.

And when someone can point out an error?
A leader exercises humility.They accept the correction. They thank the person who offered it.

Leaders never let hubris get in the way of what is best for the sum of us—even if it means being corrected in public.

This is the first error because it is the error that makes all other errors possible. It is the voice that says, I know, when you don’t. It is the wall that blocks new understanding. It is the addiction to being perceived as the smartest, the most enlightened, the most in control.

You cannot evolve from here.
You cannot innovate from here.
You cannot lead from here.

The first step off this path is not a step forward. It is a step back—from the illusion of control, and into the practice of letting go.


CHAPTER 2
Eliminating Control

WordPress recently reminded me that it has been eleven years since I started blogging on this platform. When I saw the notification, it was the last thing I expected.

It was also a perfect data point for the law I live by: I have zero control over anything.

Not over algorithms, not over readers, not over outcomes. I work at managing myself and my efforts. I use the responses of others only as feedback to see the results of my management skills. The outcome itself is never mine to command.

This is not a philosophy of passivity. It is the first and most critical discipline of power.

I learned it through my son.

When he was four, I started attaching behaviors to his nickname. When he would act up, as any child will, I didn’t yell. I didn’t punish. I asked a simple question: “Is that being The Dude?”

It upset him that I didn’t see him as The Dude in that moment. His answer was always no.
Then I asked,“What does it mean to be The Dude?”

He would give me the list we’d built together: kind, strong, helpful, honest.
I would then tell him,“Okay. Go be The Dude.”
And off he went—self-corrected,reminded of his own standard, with no punishment, no resentment, no struggle for control.

By age eleven, wild geese would swim up to him and let him pick up their babies.
By age fourteen,he thanked me for the way I used his nickname and for all the punishment I spared him.

I have no control over my son. I never have. I managed my son well by managing myself first. When I take into account that he now lives four hours away, the idea of ever having controlled him is laughable. But the idea that I helped him learn to manage himself is everything.

—

This is the control paradox: The more you try to control an outcome, the less you control the source of all outcomes—the coherent, willing state of the people involved.

“Control” is the application of force against a system’s own natural spin. It is the attempt to impose your fragmented will onto a coherent field. It creates friction, resistance, and hidden failures.

Leadership does not start with control. It starts with recognizing how one can best serve the person in front of them now, regardless of how one was treated in a similar position. A leader seeks to be what they would have liked to have had. A leader never seeks to control anything or anyone—only to find the solution that works best for the whole based on the variables involved.

At times, that means stepping back and letting another take charge. When you let go of the very idea of control, there is no fear of losing it. You find the freedom to admire the work another can do. You have no fear of losing status by letting another step up.

The idea of control is rooted in the idea of expectations. If you have no rigid expectations, there is nothing for you to try and control.

This is where we must make a crucial distinction: Goals are not expectations.

When you set an expectation, you set strict parameters you are demanding be met. It is a contract for a specific output. When you set a goal, you define a destination but leave the door open for the structure to be built as it flows. You allow for flexibility, for discovery, for the intelligence of the process itself to become part of the solution.

You will never have control over the results.
But you can manage the systems and the people who produce them.You can give them a goal.

Or, you can make that goal an expectation that comes with an “or else.”

We call this second path performance management. It is a mix of goals and threats. It is a structure that brings a brittle, fear-based order to chaos. In it, everyone is perpetually “out of control,” stressed about meeting a rigid demand, coached under duress. Why can’t I make them understand? becomes the mantra of the manager who chose control over clarity.

—

The path of The Dude is the alternative. It is the path of identity-based guidance.

You do not control the behavior. You invoke the identity. You connect the person to their own internal standard—their own “Dude”—and you get out of the way. The alignment comes from within them, not from force applied by you.

This is the first evolution of the leader: the move from external controller to internal cultivator.
FromHow do I get them to do this? to How do I create the conditions where they choose to do their best?

It starts with the hardest person to manage: yourself.

When you eliminate the need to control others, you are left with the only thing you ever truly could manage: your own mind, your own reactions, your own expectations. This is where your real power has been waiting.

The illusion of control is a cage. It keeps you frantic, focused on the wrong levers, and constantly at war with reality.

Letting go of it isn’t losing power.
It’s stepping into the only kind of power that is real:the power to manage your own gyre so well that other gyres begin to spin in harmony with it, by choice.

This is the foundation. Without this, every leadership tactic is just a more sophisticated form of coercion.

With this, everything else becomes possible.


INTERLUDE
The Neutral Gear

Between understanding a principle and living it, there is a gap. This gap is filled with reaction—the old patterns, the emotional triggers, the sudden urge to defend or to prove.

Chapter 2 was about the principle: eliminating the need to control what is outside you. This interlude is about the tool you must build to do that. It is the neutral gear for your mind.

—

One of the most beneficial tools I ever gave myself was training my instinct to have a neutral, investigative reaction. Not a non-reaction, but a neutral one. It inserts a space between stimulus and response. In that space, I have time.

Time to ask myself: Why do I feel this desire to argue?
Time to ask:Why do I want to agree so quickly?

It forces me to stop and investigate instead of reacting blindly. This neutral space has no emotion. It is the observational platform. It is where you find out why you are inclined to feel one way or the other about anything. Sometimes, you don’t feel a thing—and that’s okay. We do not always have to be feeling something. A core purpose of meditation is to find that peace zone, absent of all emotion.

Those who get practiced can learn to tap into an endless sea of bliss from this neutral point.
Those who get skilled can find either state—bliss or pure peace—at will.
Those who gain mastery live from this meditative state andcreate bliss through peace.

If you don’t understand how that’s possible, that’s okay. Most people don’t. The idea is one of energy transmutation.

As an Empath, I am always taking on emotional energy that is not mine, simply by breathing. I decided to see if I could make use of it. The practice is this: to allow being at peace to create an inner process that turns whatever foreign emotion I’ve absorbed into pure, coherent energy—a healing frequency that simply radiates from me and goes where it needs to. This mode of living takes one’s vibration to its peak.

It turns the problem (being an emotional sponge) into the power source.

—

I will not give you a ten-step manual to achieve this. That would be building another dependency. Instead, I will empower you with the same two tools I used to teach myself. They are the seed. You are the soil.

The first is a meditation. A simple process of aligning with your higher self, of asking questions and listening for the answers that come not as words, but as knowings. The end of it can be changed to suit whatever you need to learn.

The second is a Reiki recital. A sequence of intentions to flush and purge your own system, to clear the static so you can hear your own signal.

Adding these two tools to your daily routine will teach you more than I or any book ever could. You will teach yourself. You will become your own master.

The ultimate instruction within them is this: “To breathe without breathing.” To breathe so slowly and deeply that you no longer feel the wind of each breath, only the rise and fall of presence itself. This is the somatic anchor of the neutral gear.

—

This interlude is not a chapter of philosophy. It is a workbench.
The neutral gear is not a metaphor.It is a neural pathway you must carve.

You build it by:

1. Catching the reaction.
2. Shifting to neutral.
3. Investigating the impulse without judgment.
4. Then choosing the response.

Without this gear, the principles in this book are just more mental furniture. With it, they become engineering protocols for your consciousness. You cannot achieve balance, empathy, or patience if you are perpetually in drive or reverse, jerked around by every stimulus.

Shift to neutral.
Investigate.
Thenchoose.

This is how you stop being controlled by the world and start managing your interaction with it. It is the prerequisite for everything that follows.

CHAPTER 3
Balance = Equality

Be

Aware

Looking

Around

Noticing

Contradictions

Everywhere

What you decide to do about what you notice shows how in or out of balance you are with the thing in front of you.

We all have what I call the Three Layers of Darkness. Think of them as the things one might find shameful—the thoughts, desires, or memories we compartmentalize.

The first layer is what we will admit publicly. It’s run-of-the-mill. “I enjoy music.” “I get angry sometimes.” No shame here.

The second layer is what we might tell only one other person, under specific conditions. Our private fantasies or regrets.

The third layer disturbs us that it even exists. These are the thoughts most people would never admit to having, even if they know they would never act on them.

Here is the critical reframe: It is in our darkness that we refine our light.

These layers are not a prison of shame. They are a sacred workshop. When we think of ourselves as ever-changing beings, this darkness becomes the place where we explore what changes we might want to make, and why. To integrate it—not to act it out, but to acknowledge its presence—is to achieve internal coherence. A denied fragment is a point of weakness. An acknowledged fragment can be metabolized into strength.

This is internal balance. And it requires a discipline that every martial artist understands.

—

Self-discipline is the cornerstone of every martial art for a reason. The goal is to create balance within so that one may flow. Tai Chi is not about powerful strikes; it is about the flow of motion and energy. Only in peaceful balance can one flow with the energy—not command it. The sword flows through the master; the master does not force the sword.

When we are at balance within, we are capable of being at our full human potential for as long as we can maintain that equilibrium.

Achieving this balance requires leaving simple biology behind and shifting one’s fundamental view. Each human has both feminine and masculine energy to reconcile. We are emotional creatures, and we will be pulled out of balance by life—that is how we experience its fullness. The practice is in the return to center.

This brings us to the most practical, most challenging application of balance: perception.

—

Recognizing gender identity is a function of sex, of procreation capability. Outside of that, it is opinion—a story built on the most common form of coupling for our species.

They are opinion-based ideas. Old ideas. Ideas in desperate need of an upgrade.

To me, the simplest answer is to take an androgynous view of self and others, unless sex is directly relevant to the relationship (which, in a professional setting, it almost never is). I don’t care who you have sex with. It’s not my business. And unless you’re in a very specific line of work, it’s not your company’s business either.

The hardest part of creating this view is dealing with others who live imbalanced in gender identity as a core part of their identity. Our language constantly reinforces the divide: he, she, him, her.

Why not use their names if known?
Why reduce someone to their biology?

I have a friend. When they come over, they bring their dogs. There is no relevance to their biology in that moment. There is no reason for my imagination to go wild. Yet, a list of excuses runs through my mind—just as it does for most of us. The old program whirrs to life.

Self-discipline must be exercised here. We must focus on not reducing anyone to their biology, unless there is a explicit, necessary reason to discuss it.

This is not social politics. It is cognitive hygiene.

It is the practice of cleaning your lens so you can see the person—the consciousness, the skills, the soul—instead of the costume.

—

Therefore, I offer you not just a concept, but a protocol. A single-day experiment. It is the fastest way to expose your own programming and begin the rewiring.

The Androgynous Day Challenge

For one day, put deliberate effort into not noticing biological differences. Take the ideas of “men” and “women” out of your mind. See only humans.

· Dress in an intentionally androgynous fashion. No makeup, no cologne, no heels, no neckties—nothing culturally coded as exclusively “male” or “female.”
· Listen to your language. Audit your pronouns. Use names.
· When your mind categorizes someone, notice it, and let the category go.

What you will learn about yourself is priceless. What you will notice about others—their mannerisms, their energy, their words, shorn of the gender filter—is equally valuable.

This terrifies many people because we have had it rammed down our throats that a man is this and does this, and a woman is that and does that. These are opinions. To seek actual change, you must stop validating opinion as truth.

“Living in gender is living as an animal driven by instinct,” I wrote once. At work, an environment for collective creation and problem-solving, is the last place for this instinct to be in the driver’s seat. We have seen the decades of sexual harassment, the body-shaming, the suffering that “living in gender” has caused in offices. These are the results of perceptual fragmentation.

There is not one emotional state or capability owned by either sex.
Any human is capable of feeling or behaving in any way.

The androgynous view is the first, necessary evolution of perception. It is the internal balance that makes external equality possible. You cannot build a coherent team, a unified “soul of the company,” if you are perpetually seeing your colleagues through a fragmenting, biological filter.

Balance within creates the potential for equality without.
It starts by seeing the human,not the costume.

CHAPTER 4
The Empathic Instrument

Empathy.
Em·pa·thy/ˈempəTHē/: the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

Share.
Feel it with them.

There is a metric ton of material dedicated to trying to make that definition something more complex, something loftier. I, like millions of others, am an Empath. We live that definition in every breath because we were born this way. Being empathetically connected is our natural state. It takes no effort.

For those who were not born this way, the learning is straightforward: to be more empathetic is to learn to open your heart to the other and feel what they are feeling, even for a moment, so you can better understand and relate. Think of it as monitoring the response your words are creating within the other person.

It is not mind-reading. It is field-reading.

To develop this instrument, you must understand its controls. It has two primary dials: the heart and the mind.

An open mind guided by an open heart will find wisdom.
An open mind with a closed heart will only grasp at wisdom.
An open heart with a closed mind will be led by raw emotion into foolish decisions.
A closed mind and a closed heart is a blind soul, wandering aimlessly.

Your goal is the first state. The open heart ensures you care about the data you’re sensing. The open mind ensures you analyze that data wisely, without being swept away by it. This is why the internal balance from the previous chapter is non-negotiable. Without it, empathy becomes either overwhelming (heart open, mind closed) or manipulative (mind open, heart closed).

—

Now, apply this instrument in the hardest room: the performance management conversation.

This is where empathy is tested, not in comforting a friend. Here, you have a mandate to correct, to redirect, to possibly deliver difficult news. The old model sees this as a transaction of authority. The coherent model sees it as a service of clarity.

Having an open heart and mind here is of great assistance. It allows you to soften the blow not by avoiding truth, but by allowing your heart to guide your words toward the person’s capacity to hear them. This is what it means to become intuitive in your engagement. You open your heart and mind to them, and—as I wrote in my original post—you “put yourself in the slave position to better serve them so they can do better.”

You are not serving their ego. You are serving their potential. You are using empathy to find the most coherent path for your feedback to travel from your intention into their understanding, with minimal defensive fragmentation.

This is empathy in action: not as a passive feeling, but as an active tuning process. You are tuning your message to the frequency of the recipient.

—

There is no one on the planet more qualified to assist people in becoming more empathetic than a Master Empath. Not because we are better, but because for us, it is like describing water to a fish. We have never known another way to be. We can point to the currents you have been swimming past without noticing.

But the goal is not to make everyone a Master Empath. The goal is to give every leader a calibrated empathic instrument.

Start by auditing your own heart and mind dials. In your next interaction, ask:

1. Is my heart open? Am I genuinely willing to feel what this might be like for them, even if it’s uncomfortable for me?
2. Is my mind open? Am I willing to have my assumption about this person or situation changed by what I sense?

If the answer to both is yes, you are in the optimal state to connect, to communicate, and to lead. You are no longer broadcasting a signal at someone. You are engaging in a resonant feedback loop with them.

This is the foundation of trust. And trust is the substrate of all high-performing, innovative teams. You cannot build the “soul of a company” on transactions. You build it on these resonant connections.

Empathy is not a nice-to-have. It is the primary tool for building coherent human systems.

CHAPTER 5
The Algorithm of Understanding

S + L = U

Study
+
Life
=
Understanding

How you decide to view your life determines a lot of what you study. From my view, I feel that now that I have attempted to find some clever new “stupid bullshit” to pander with, I can drop the facade.

I personally find the formula articles and listicles I see too much of to be weak attempts at showing off intellect. Intellect isn’t Let me reinvent everything for you. It’s Let me pick that up where you left off or Did you think of this? It is anything that represents further exploration for deeper understanding and discovery.

I have often said that as a Shaman, I see myself as a spiritual scientist and my own biggest skeptic. This allows me not to be foolish in accepting truth from only one source. It also forces me to see what happens, try it again, and see if I get the same results. If not, why not? What was different?

I question “the ever blue holy living hell” out of myself before I ever sit down to write. That’s part of my Life.

Now for the Study.

Anyone who has ever asked me for reference material on spirituality often gets a few things:
A website that is a repository of dogmatic teachings from across the world.
A free copy of a one-dollar book that is a do-it-yourself guide for building your own path based on your study and your life experience.
The meditation I have been giving away for free for years.
A self-Reiki practice.

I give them everything they need to study what they want and check in with their own higher self—so they don’t need me. When it comes to spiritual growth, I never charge a thing to anyone who is serious.

That’s how I apply what I have studied to my life to show I understand what it means to be a Shaman. This is not even close to scratching the surface of the study I have done.

I am constantly studying something, and have been since I was a child. When one seeks to be a student first, one’s life will provide the lessons for all one desires to understand.

—

This is the algorithm. Understanding is not an opinion. It is not a repackaged quote. It is the finished product that comes out of the continuous loop of formal Study and lived Life experience. One without the other is incomplete.

Study without Life is theoretical, brittle knowledge—the kind that shatters upon contact with a real human problem.
Life without Study is a series of unprocessed experiences,repeating patterns without insight.

But when you bring them together—when you take a concept you’ve studied and deliberately apply it to a situation in your life, or when you bring the confusion of your life to your studies with a specific question—the friction generates something new. That new thing is Understanding. It is wisdom that is yours because you have forged it in the fires of your own existence.

A leader who has not studied the people they desire to lead will never get further than being a boss barking orders. This is as old as our species. If your interest in them is not genuine, you will never have their genuine loyalty.

So you Study them. You listen. You learn their stories, their skills, their unspoken fears (that’s the L data, gathered through the empathy from the last chapter). And you bring your own L—your life experience of what motivates, what discourages, what builds trust. You combine that with the S—the studied frameworks of psychology, systems theory, or even the Gyre Field model. The result is a genuine U—an understanding of what that person, or that team, truly needs to excel.

This “U” is what you lead from. Not from a generic playbook, but from a synthesized, living wisdom.

—

Learning is my passion. It is the thing that drives me to never stop studying and to find new things to understand as I live the lesson.

And as you can see, I cast off the formula I started with—S+L=U—and yet those words kept showing their relation as I wrote. Because they are not a gimmick. They are a law.

They describe how anyone, from a Shaman to a CEO, generates credible insight. You are not a repository of answers. You are a demonstrated practitioner of this algorithm. You show your Study by referencing traditions and models. You show your Life in every story of your son, your clients, your time in the military or corporate world. The Understanding is what appears on the page, or in the room with a client.

It is how you can be both the spiritual scientist and the leadership consultant. The process is the same. The substrate changes.

To lead anyone, or anything, you must first understand. And to understand, you must be both a perpetual student and a committed participant in the messy, beautiful experiment of your own life.

This is the engine. Everything else is output.

CHAPTER 6
The Courage to be Unpopular

There is nothing innovative about following the crowd.

One does not evolve through mediocrity.

You could make an argument—not always true, but often enough—that popularity and mediocrity meet at the same point.

After I wrote the article that became this chapter, I went to another blog to write a run-on sentence using film titles. It’s a silly thing I do on Fridays. It’s something people had never seen before, and it became the highest-viewed content I had written in five years.

I have people, on a somewhat regular basis, send me messages about how something I wrote changed their lives. Yet the silly run-on sentence is what gets the views.

This is not a complaint. It is an observation of results.

The best I have given thus far has been unpopular and changed lives.
Stupid bullshit goofing off draws a crowd.

Look at the results, not the numbers. One life changed changes the lives around them. None of us ever truly knows the ripple effect. I never set out to be the kind of human people tell, “You changed my life.” It just happened while I was busy being me.

I am one of the most hated people on LinkedIn in some circles for being me.
I am one of the most loved people on LinkedIn in some circles for being me.

Both sides will tell you it’s my honesty that is why they either love or hate me. The ones who hate me might also have some creative names for me.

—

A leader who makes enemies by being honest is followed by an army that goes unseen but not unheard.
A leader dares to take an unpopular stand and stands their ground.
A leader is there to lead,not to be popular.

While it is possible to be a leader who is both liked and respected, it’s the times they hate you that are exactly why they respect you. You dared to take the stand that needed taking, the one no one else would take. You stood out front and took the heat, knowing you had no backup, and did it anyway.

It might not ever make you popular. But it will never go unnoticed by all the right people—the ones who will follow you whether you ask them to or not.

If one is to dare to evolve, one has to be willing to be totally different on the other side of that evolutionary step. You cannot cling to the approval of the old world while trying to build a new one.

Escape mediocrity by going against popularity.

—

This courage is not recklessness. It is the opposite. It is the calculated result of the previous chapters.

You have done the internal work (Balance). You can manage your reactions (Neutral Gear). You can feel the room (Empathy). You have synthesized your insight through study and experience (S+L=U). Now you see a truth that the consensus does not see, or does not want to see.

The courage to be unpopular is the willingness to speak that truth when it matters, knowing it will cost you social capital. Knowing you will be labeled arrogant, disruptive, or a “crackpot.” This is where the “hubris” of the un-evolved is separated from the conviction of the coherent.

Hubris speaks to make the self seen.
Conviction speaks to make thetruth seen, regardless of its effect on the self.

This is why the androgynous view, the elimination of control, the empathic instrument—they are all essential training. They clear out the personal, fragile ego that needs to be liked. What remains is a function: a conduit for a understanding that is bigger than your personal reputation.

When you are that conduit, you are free. The boos and the cheers become the same noise—data about the audience’s readiness, not a verdict on your worth.

The goal is not to be hated. The goal is to be indifferent to the verdict, so you can do what is right for the sum, not what is safe for the some.

Popularity is the territory of the crowd.
Impact is the territory of the leader.

You must choose your territory.

CHAPTER 7
The Discipline of Patience

When you most want to speed up is the exact time to slow down.

One who is patient in thought becomes diligent in action and accomplishes great things. My students and clients have heard me say often: Patience exercised is patience cultivated. It is a muscle. The more you use it correctly, the stronger it becomes.

Understanding can breed patience, or it can bring your patience to an end. By “understanding,” I mean looking at the big picture and why you are either choosing to engage patience or toss it aside. There are times when losing your patience is exactly what is needed to create change. Our shared history is littered with transformations born from people who finally lost their patience with an unjust “what is” and took action, often fueled by a healthy rage.

But rage is never healthy—at least, that’s what all the most popular people on social media say.

Repressing healthy anger, however, is a harm you do to yourself. It is the things that piss us off that we become the most motivated to change. The things we have no patience for are often the things doing the most harm, personally or to others.

We are emotional creatures; we will get angry. What we do with that anger tells us how much patience we have. I often recommend taking time alone to vent that anger verbally. Listen to the words as they come out. Once you have purged the raw emotion, repeat to yourself why you became enraged, as if you were hearing the story from a stranger.

This exercise tells you whether you experienced a healthy emotional signal or an overreaction. If it was healthy, you can then calmly look for solutions. Sometimes, those solutions require confrontation. Talking to the person who triggered you, explaining calmly why it was an issue. It is of utmost importance to be calm and reserved during this discussion for it to be productive.

In the work environment? Handle it in private. The worst thing you can do is gossip. If in doubt, talk to HR. But first, talk to your own patience.

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Patience is not inactivity. It is active energy management.

This week, for example, this chapter is my first blog post. Here’s why: I’ve been doing work for a client that shifted my focus from me to them. Some free time opened up today while I wait for their next move—a holding pattern. Instead of chafing at the delay, I used it to write this. I gave myself something productive to do that is part of what convinced the client to hire me in the first place: my writing.

This is a productive pause. It is patience as an active state, using the friction of waiting to polish your own gyre instead of letting it grind you down.

Now, apply this to innovation.

When seeking new innovations, there is often a rush to get them to market. The Motorola RAZR phone is a prime example. T-Mobile USA had the first shot at carrying it exclusively. They passed because the phone did not meet their quality standards.

The RAZR was released anyway. It generated more consumer complaints than any other phone in its time and became the first major dud Motorola sent to the marketplace. Their lack of patience cost them a fortune in replacements and incalculably more in consumer trust and loyalty.

The brutal irony? Motorola was the company that developed Six Sigma, the famed methodology for quality control and process discipline. That result shows two failures: too much patience for a theory proving itself wrong in practice, and a total inability to exercise the humility to change course.

Patience without the courage to pivot based on evidence is just stubbornness.
Action without the patience for quality is just reckless speed.

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Patience breeds quality. It may not be cost-effective in the immediate quarter, but it can save millions—or make billions—over time. It is the discipline that ensures the “courage to be unpopular” is applied to a finished product, not a half-baked idea.

The next time you are in a hurry to bring something to market, to implement a change, or to confront a problem, take a beat. Exercise the discipline of patience.

Make sure you are bringing your best, not just your fastest.

This discipline is what allows you to hold the “comfortably uncomfortable” state long enough for the right action to emerge—not the first one that offers relief.