All Posts by Darrell Gurney

May 20, 2015, TGIW: Unhumping Hump Day…Freedom to Fail

By Darrell Gurney | Blog

“There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail.” –Erich Fromm

We grow up with the hard-driving, industrial-age mindset burned into us that “failure is not an option.”

What if it were?

When would you create something that you’re not creating?

How would you grow in ways you’re not growing?

Why would you be willing to venture into projects, initiatives and dreams that you’re not venturing?

Where would your freedom be located, in here or out there?

Got freedom to fail?

“The freedom to fail is vital if you’re going to succeed. Most successful people fail from time to time, and it is a measure of their strength that failure merely propels them into some new attempt at success.” –Michael Korda

May 13, 2015, TGIW: Unhumping Hump Day…Write to Life

By Darrell Gurney | Blog

“I write about the power of trying, because I want to be okay with failing. I write about generosity because I battle selfishness. I write about joy because I know sorrow. I write about faith because I almost lost mine, and I know what it is to be broken and in need of redemption. I write about gratitude because I am thankful – for all of it.” –Kristin Armstrong

What are we “writing” about life today?

Is it a regurgitation of yesterday, spitting out complaints of what the world did to us, or have we learned of new areas to grow ourselves into?

Is it a recitation of old stories that remind us and others of who we are and who they are, or is today’s a creative writing class, where we get to make it up the way we want it to be.

We’re always writing the annals of our life experience. Are we being particular — or evenanal — about what goes into our annals?

Got creative writing?

“Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.” –Octavia E. Butler

May 6, 2015, TGIW: Unhumping Hump Day…and Re-Creation

By Darrell Gurney | Blog

“Leave all the afternoon for exercise and recreation, which are as necessary as reading. I will rather say more necessary because health is worth more than learning.” –Thomas Jefferson

Perhaps the world is a lot more complicated and busy than when a Continental Congressman and then President of the United States could espouse the benefits of stepping away from the machine/desk/pile/to-dos for the sake of refreshment…and yet how much of our creativity gets jammed because of jamming too much in?

We can look at the word “recreation” beyond the typical definition of a pastime, diversion, exercise, or other resource affording relaxation and enjoyment (e.g., a morning run, softball on the weekend, the company sailing society, etc.).

A broader meaning comes from breaking the word into its parts: RE-CREATE, creating anew. Think of that: creating ANEW!

Therefore, recreation is not only possible but critical for nurturing new creativity.

In one’s day, that may be a mid-day walk in the park, quieting the mind.

In one’s career, that may be mid-career considerations of true passions and callings.

In one’s overall life, that may be a mid-life discovery of Self, playfulness and purpose beyond who we’ve known ourselves to be or known life to afford.

Nobody will ever force our re-creation upon us…and rarely will our boss advocate it. (And if you’re the boss of you, fat chance!)

But, whose life and creativity are we living anyway?

Like the old Fram oil filter commercial used to say, “You can pay me now, or you can pay me later.”

Got re-creation?

“People who cannot find time for recreation are obliged sooner or later to find time for illness.” –John Wanamaker

April 29, 2015, TGIW: Unhumping Hump Day…and a Problem

By Darrell Gurney | Blog

“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” –Albert Einstein

If we have a dream, vision or ideal that we are reaching for — in our career, our life, our purpose — then we inherently have a problem because it’s still out there and we haven’t reached it yet.

To overcome that problem and accomplish that ideal, something has to change…and that something is us. We can’t go on doing and being the same way and achieve a different result. No growth, no goodies.

Embracing the “problem” of growth is the rub. There is clearly a gap between where we are now and where we want to be. The question is whether we can be empowered by the gap vs. disempowered. That’s a shift in being.

Seeing ourselves as enough even as we learn all that we don’t know, and giving ourselves compassion even as we fail forward fast: both may be tall orders.

Yet did any youth player ever make it to the big leagues without that recipe?

Where might you give your internal little leaguer an encouraging pat on the back today?

Got a problem?

“The highest levels of performance come to people who are centered, intuitive, creative, and reflective – people who know to see a problem as an opportunity.” –Deepak Chopra

April 22, 2015, TGIW: Unhumping Hump Day…and Simplicity!

By Darrell Gurney | Blog

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” –Leonardo da Vinci

Keep it simple stupid.

Extremely complicated and difficult to accomplish when it all seems so important…much less how we, ourselves, seem so important.

What tiny little attitude adjustment can support you to simplify?

Maybe gratitude for this next breath?

And this one?

Got KISS?

“That’s been one of my mantras — focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.” –Steve Jobs

April 15, 2015, TGIW: Unhumping Tax Day…and Growth

By Darrell Gurney | Blog

“Growth demands a temporary surrender of security. It may mean giving up familiar but limiting patterns, safe but unrewarding work, values no longer believed in, and relationships that have lost their meaning.” –John C. Maxwell

It’s easy to pay lip service to growth and expansion.

But when push comes to shove, many of us push ourselves out of the way of the oncoming train of growth.

Growth sounds lofty and noble in theory. In practice, it can be sweaty, grueling, messy, disorienting, and exhausting.

In growth mode, we don’t always behave as we usually have because we’ve departed our comfort zones…leaving our thresholds of doubt, frustration and fear lower and more quickly reached.

Therefore, many talk but few walk the path of growth.

Nazareth had a hit song in 1975, “Love Hurts.” Similarly, growth hurts.

Bodybuilders know that, in throwing heavy weights around, they’re not building muscle tissue but, rather, tearing it down. It’s in the tearing down process (along with proper diet and rest) that new, stronger muscle tissue grows.

What dream, idea, or possibility of yours is worth surrendering the safe and enduring the growth?

Got growth?

“Go ahead, light your candles and burn your incense and ring your bells and call out to God, but watch out, because God will come, and He will put you on His anvil and fire up His forge and beat you and beat you until He turns brass into pure gold.” –Saint Keshavadas

April 8, 2015, TGIW: Unhumping Hump Day…and Freeing Up!

By Darrell Gurney | Blog

“Never walk away from failure. On the contrary, study it carefully and imaginatively for its hidden assets.” –Michael Korda

When moving forward in our career — much less dreams or our “work of life” — it’s easy to see in hindsight what we coulda, shoulda, and woulda (had we known better) done instead of what we did. That doesn’t take great skill or intelligence.

However, to assess and render every last bit of value out of every moment that has passed before us, to leave no stone unturned to determine the “everything-happens-for-a-reason” for every bump, bruise, blowup, or bewilderment we encounter…now that takes creativity.

Some may call it rationalization, or putting icing on a poop cake. Yet, in each life event, would we rather mine it for perfection, or subject our mind to the infection of living life by mistakes?

There are no mistakes if learning ensues. Think about it: is there any way someone could actually live life always doing the “right” thing the “right” way at the “right” time? “Right” only occurs looking backward. We live our lives forward.

Early in my career, a wise person said “You can never make a bad decision. You can only make a decision a bad one.”

Wouldn’t we all let a load off if we absolve ourselves from everything prior to now, knowing that we always did and do the best we can with what we know now? And now? And now?

Got absolution?

“It would kill the past, and when that was dead, he would be free.”  –Oscar Wilde

April 1, 2015, TGIW: Unhumping Hump Day…….and Becoming Foolproof!

By Darrell Gurney | Blog

“Before God we are all equally wise – and equally foolish.”–Albert Einstein

On this fun and often mischievous day, it might be worthwhile to look at how often we play tricks on ourselves.

One common way this occurs is turning only to our own “best thinking” when making movements toward or away from our dreams.

The concept of “best thinking” pertains to the internal circle of wisdom we have gained from personal experience.

Yet, the fact that we consider it wisdom or earned knowledge doesn’t necessarily make it so. It’s just the amalgamated meanings we’ve taken from our interpretations of life as it has occurred thus far (i.e., lessons learned).

One of the wisest, and often toughest, decisions we get to make throughout life is whether we’re going to rely on that circular, self-referential voice in the head — telling us what’s so, how it “really is”, and the indubitable best way to handle something — or, rather, open up for external voices to insert a disconnect in that patterned thinking.

Though life gives no guarantees, the odds of having dreams fulfilled beyond where they are now is magnified by being coachable.

Where can you open up your own wise knowing of “what’s so” to someone else’s perhaps contrary input today…and really consider it, or (BONUS TIME) even act upon it?

No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.” –Hunter S. Thompson

March 25, 2015, TGIW: Unhumping Hump Day…it’s Urgent!

By Darrell Gurney | Blog

“I think that the problem is that people fear so many things and they don’t live life to its fullest. And for me as an artist, if God should want me to come this Wednesday to the end of my life, so be it.” –Criss Angel

What if there is safe, and there is playing, but there is no playing safe?

If you choose playing vs. safe, what dream, initiative or someday-I’m-gonna action would you take today? But really!! In the next hour, what would you do differently?

Unshaken-up life can seduce us into believing that there will be time for this or that down the road, or that we just can’t fit it in right now, or that we ought to plan it more or better to “guarantee” success.

Yet, haven’t we all noticed that large or small “emergencies” make time for themselves anyway, and that the longer we wait to take action on this or that the more it simply never happens?

A friend recently made an emergency visit back to her hometown for her grandmother’s unexpected funeral. This also happened to me a couple years ago for a cousin’s surprise passing.

At these events — that we somehow made the time to include in our busy lives — the conversation always turns to how good it is to see everyone yet “wouldn’t it be better if it wasn’t under these conditions?”

There’s such a thing as invented vs. justifiable urgency, and we all have this inventive power. Are we using it?

God knows, we all have so much cooking…and yet, are we moving to the front burner what REALLY matters most if we were to be out of here tomorrow?

Got urgency?

“Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows.” –Pope Paul VI

March 18, 2018, TGIW: Unhumping Hump Day……and Connecting!

By Darrell Gurney | Blog

“A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books.” –Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

First, let’s include women in the above quote, as well as ten years mere study of the internet?

One of the many principles I teach in my book “Never Apply for a Job Again: Break the Rules, Cut the Line, Beat the Rest” is to connect with others anywhere and everywhere because you never know who is around you, what they know and who they know.

In a very social-media/smart-phone society, it’s easy to get so caught up in the electronic connections in our hand that we don’t hold that same hand out to meet someone sitting right beside us at the coffee shop.

Yet, when we do, we can be amazed at what the Universe brings us: someone in a field in which we needed information; a contact into a company or potential client; a fellow hobby enthusiast; a possible business or life partner; a new friend; etc.

Often, when we finally get clear and set our sites on something we want in life, little do we realize that we actually put out an invisible request into the ethers…to which we get responses in quick and uncanny ways.

The big hump to get over, for some, is how to initiate that social contact when everyone’s head is down into their text, pad or laptop. Yet, if you don’t find a reason to get talking, then they, all they know, and all that they are connected to simply doesn’t get tapped into.

What are they wearing that you notice? What’s a compliment you can give based on their appearance? What’s a state of the environment you can comment on (“Beautiful day, isn’t it?”)? What piece of technology is in their hand that you can ask about (“Is that the new iPhone?”)?

It’s worth it to work the muscle of old-fashioned conversation. You never know who is being put in your way to help make your day.

Got contact?

With synchronicity, all the resources we need are made available for us at the precise moment that is appropriate. The people who come into our lives are the ones we need at that moment in time. Everything is perfect. We only need to recognize this to tune into the flow. Everything happens for a reason and every experience is a learning experience.” –Alex Chu