Let's Begin Again...
You, Me and Future Possibilities to Create Together
NOTE: This post is 100% human written. No AI. Time Writing: 4 hrs 20 min
Have you ever had an idea that wanted to be born; but like most births, struggled to be born? Maybe you even resisted birthing it? That’s been my experience getting this Substack out consistently… until now. I have struggled and resisted to birth it, because what was being born was my public voice; sharing my perception, my ideas, my views with the wider world. Perfectionism kept getting in the way. And yet, so many people have begged me to use my voice, to let it rip, to be a voice for transformation in the world. I have known since I was a child that my voice is not only powerful, but is the source of my power, and my ability to help bring healing to a hurting world - to MOVE people and the wider society to wholeness through liberation, one person at a time. So, today I am doing what meditation teaches us: to begin again.
Some of you know me, many don’t, but whether we know each other or not, I am grateful to all of you who have subscribed to Source Code; and even more grateful to those who have shared Source Code with those closest to you. Together we can be a source of healing and community building in a world deeply wrestling with unparalleled change, uncertainty, and in many cases desperation to be seen, heard and loved.
Through Source Code I hope to meaningfully connect with you, to move you, to inspire you, to serve you. This is my invitation to you to connect with me through Source Code. Let’s begin a real, raw and relevant conversation about what matters most to you, right now - and how perhaps, together, we can begin again. We can take a breath. Invite space into this moment for connection, reflection and healing that will help us rise to meet this moment together.
For as creators, which is the essence of what it means to be human, we can co-create through each Substack post and subsequent conversation a new possibility in our individual lives that may become a seed of transformation in our community and in the wider society. For you and I are latent catalysts for positive change; each of us a drop in the sea that we call society, “the world”.
It has been my reluctance to get personal and vulnerable that has created the sputtering of this Substack for the past three years. It was this same fear of being seen and heard that had me errantly stop my nascent podcast in 2010 - where I was an early adopter to podcasting, but felt that my voice wasn’t clear enough, powerful enough, necessary enough to make the difference I imagined I could make. My self-doubt overcame me, and I played small, when I have lived anything but a small life behind the scenes. This post is the proverbial line in the sand that declares that period of my life over. What’s holding your voice back?
Because of our limited perception of ourselves and our power, so many of us wrestle to be seen and heard in the world. And it is because of this sinister and nefarious reality, even though what we desire most is to matter and to have impact, we shrink and tuck ourselves away; allowing the most boisterous, egoic, narcissistic voices to dominate. History repeats itself because WE are not bold enough to express that new idea, that new path, that new possibility. So let me encourage you: you are powerful, you are intelligent, you are important, you are creative, you are the future’s possibility - don’t shrink and let it die, and let the sociopaths and narcissists be the loudest voice. We see the ramifications of what’s happening now because this is happening. We need your voice now more than ever, and we need to join our voices to create a chorus, boldly singing for the future we know can exist, so long as we stand together.
As in much of my work, through this Substack I am here to support you, becoming the powerful person you are, and becoming the change agent we need you to be; now more than ever. Someone, somewhere needs to hear your voice, your message, needs to engage with your creativity, your ideas. What I failed to understand for so many years is that when we pull our voice and energy from the world, we become the weakest link, perpetuating the cycle of fear and grievance currently gripping so many, and reinforcing the status quo. We can either be bystanders of the race to the bottom, or catalysts for the creation of a new world of thriving that serves everyone.
I am a stand for that new world. I am the embodiment of Liberation - for a liberated humanity, free to create, to come together and to heal the brokenness that has left so many uninspired, dejected and hopeless. Join me on this journey. Each Sunday, after today, I will post an essay that I want you to share with others who you believe will benefit from my voice, and your alignment with my message. And I encourage you to use your voice, and engage with me through this platform. Together our voices will blend.
If you feel called to support me and my work in the world, I would love to have you as a paid subscriber. I would love it even more if you would share Source Code with those in your life - your friends and family - who you feel would benefit from my perspectives and teachings.
What follows is an introduction to me, not just the professional parts, but also the vulnerable parts, so that you can know, in your body, in your heart that this publication isn’t just another egoic, bloviating, opining talking head adding to the cacophony of noise that defines the current cluttered info-sphere. Instead, it is the seriousness with which I take our engagement and communication through this platform that creates trust and an opportunity for us to truly connect and exchange ideas.
Who “I AM”
I am Liberation. My life’s work is to unbind the soul from societal conditioning; to journey with you to embody the lived Art of Liberation, and through this, guide you back to the wild intelligence within you. It is this wild intelligence, this embodiment that knows how to create, how to feel, how to be spontaneous, how to be instinctive, how to play and how to live free from the societal conditioning that disconnects you from your innate power as a creator of your own life. My work around the Art of Liberation touches every domain: business, career, relationships, wellness, spirituality, sensuality and self-expression. It is the path from merely existing as a “human doing” to thriving as a “human being”.
We’ve all been shaped by systems that have conditioned and trained us to forget who we really are as creators, and I have spent my life breaking apart my conditioning. Destroying it, actually, so that I can connect to my creator-within. Most of the world is swimming in recycled thoughts, borrowed beliefs, numbed-out emotions, and predictable routines that slowly dull their aliveness, their creative essence. This is conditioning; the inherited thoughts, beliefs, emotions, and behaviors we mistake for reality, or “the truth”; and it is the antithesis of our natural creator state. We succumb to merely tolerating a life by-default that we know deep down isn’t who we are, or how we should be living. Our conditioning traps us in a life cycle of almosts, reinforced by our brain’s neurochemical addiction reward system that I call the NearWin™.
I am an international Design-Thinker, business philosopher and strategist, author, speaker and psychonaut, who since 2005 has successfully designed business strategy, and developed powerful leaders through my created body of work I call “reProgramming”; and it has led cultural transformation and leadership development initiatives impacting more than 30,000 leaders from start-ups through to Fortune 100 companies. My “reProgramming” work centers around being-centered human potential, and is focused on creating, designing and delivering on what is possible when human beings are in alignment, empowered and supported to overcome limiting beliefs and perceptions, leading to increases joy, flow, performance and delivering desired outcomes for themselves, their families and the companies they work for. My primary “reProgramming” workshop, known as Whole Life Architecture is offered through my organization, The Most Important Conversations. I also privately offer The Art of Liberation, a personalized one on one version of Whole Life Architecture, and a one on one program called Erotic Living, where erotic refers to embodiment and a reconnection to living a sensual life; from our senses and instincts, reconnecting with nature and including our own nature, versus rejecting it, suppressing it, or trying to optimize it, dominating it.
Now, for the first time, I am coming out from the shadows of executive coaching and private consulting to express my ideas and share my work with the world for those powerful and brave enough to slow down, go deep and liberate themselves from their conditioning to be the creator of their life.
In part, I accomplish my mission of liberating humanity to reconnect to their creator essence as the creator, visionary and co-founder of The Most Important Conversations (TMIC), a ground-breaking transformational community and global movement of changemakers. TMIC transforms minds and methods by convening entrepreneurs, leaders, executives, artists, philosophers, and wisdom holders to engage through creativity and collaboration in the creation of new possibilities for the world, and the communities that constitute it. We do this through our DesignSummits, through championing thought leadership and new ideas being born into new entrepreneurial ventures to serve the needs of an emerging and uncertain world. In this way, TMIC achieves its mission of “facilitating humanity’s self-directed evolution”.
As a creator at my essence, I am immersed in several other creative industries. I serve as Chief Operations Officer for SimWin Sports, an LA-based AI Sports-tech company; I am a founder in a new international entertainment production company producing films, TV and video games; and I help thought leaders communicate their ideas to the world through various programs involving fine art, music and literary publishing.
I am an artist, musician, photographer and poet. I have written and recorded more than 30 songs in my life, and I am a fucking amazing singer and song writer (yes I am owning this) who, despite performing live in front of thousands of people throughout my 20’s, allowed my fear of being seen to regretfully have my music - my love and passion - to be put to the side 20 years ago. Well, that too is being brought back into the light to help move others. I am also an art photographer, using the camera to tell stories and capture moving moments, where meaning is trying to come through if we are perceptive and still enough to receive it.
I am a nomadic traveller. I have travelled extensively, lived in various cities, and built a global network of friends and business colleagues from Los Angeles to New York, from Vegas to Bali to Thailand to China, from Dallas and Austin to San Francisco, from Mexico, to Costa Rica and Europe, and more to come. My contacts are cherished friends, fellow travellers and sojourners on a mutual path of creativity, connection, entrepreneurialism and impact through business and artistic expression. Most recently, I have discovered my love for Asia; its philosophy, culture, spirituality and connection to nature.
I am a lover of people and nature, and have had the joy and pleasure of meeting and working with interesting, powerful, impactful change makers over the last 20 years, whether through producing high profile events, to just hanging out and basking in the company and energy of their brilliance. Additionally, I MUST engage with nature, and I thrive when I have had to fortune to live in or near forests, oceans and mountains. I am an advocate for being a steward of the earth, upon which we depend for our very survival and thriving. I am a social-justice-libertarian; simultaneously advocating for peoples liberation and right to express themselves and to create, without doing harm to others or to nature in the process. I believe we can live on this planet symbiotically and aligned in harmony with all living beings.
I am an architect of transformative business strategies and solutions affecting the areas of business operations, leadership development, cultural transformation and team building, branding, PR and marketing communications (for which I was featured in INC.). My work has included serving such companies/brands as: Coca-Cola, TELUS, Sony Music Latin, Music World, SimWin (AI sports universe), United Way, Shell, Hoffman, the Canfield Group, Bell, Richard Blanco: Poet Laureate to the Obama Administration, co-producing the Sundance Thought Leader Summit, and SANG (which featured leading thinkers and luminaries, including Tony Robbins, Jack Canfield, Peter Guber, Tony Hsieh, and Peter Diamandis, among hundreds of others). I have some big international events to announce that I am producing in the coming months that I am excited to share with you all, especially if you are an artist, aspiring author, or author working on your next book.
I am a Polymath, and an avid student and researcher in the areas of neuropsychology, ontology, perception, meaning-making and choice-making, energetics, sensuality and spirituality. Since 2019 I have been Vajrayanaa (Buddhist Tantra) practitioner, and a Yogi since 2014. I am a meditator, and like many of you, my meditation practice needs a bit of work these days, so that it no longer happens in “fits and starts”. I am also a deep researcher of various spiritual disciplines, including Christianity, Islam, Taoism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, and Zen Buddhism. My other areas of research and expertise supporting his work include game theory, complexity theory, change management, and systems thinking.
Finally, I am married to the love of my life, and have two incredible daughters now entering adulthood, seeking to chart a path of their own, and I am here for all of it; helping them to expand, share their energy and use their voice to have the same powerful impact I hope and aspire to assist you with.
The bottom line: I am committed to helping everyone desiring to live a life of creative aliveness, personal power, success, and joy to liberate themselves from the fear and conditioning keeping them trapped. Perhaps that includes you!
So who are you? What matters most to you? What are you working on that I may be able to help you with? Let’s start a conversation…