Digging Through Darkness

Miners have figured out that in order to bore a tunnel, firing all detonators simultaneously doesn’t work. If they all fire at once, the rocks have nowhere to move, sending vibrations throughout the mine.

Delay blasting allows for the slabs to crumble onto themselves. First blast the center, then its periphery a split second later, then its periphery a split second after that. Create the initial void for the crumbles to fall into. It’s safer, cheaper, more effective, and leaves the tunnel intact.

The health care system needs to transform while remaining intact. First take aim at the central greed, then clear the periphery. The same process again and again for miles and miles.

One clean sweep won’t get us there, neither will just clearing the periphery. Miners figured out how to dig through darkness decades ago.

Now

A year from now you may wish you had started today.

Talk. Then Listen, Listen, Listen

I’ll say something moving, then move on. It was you that I came to listen to anyways.

If we don’t hold space for them to reflect, who will? If they don’t get the chance to think it through, they’ll just rearrange their prejudices.

Read

Powerful ideas change the world.

Cultivating powerful ideas is like consuming enough protein in a vegetarian diet: it can be done, only if you’re intentional.

All leaders are readers; all readers are not leaders.

New Beginning

If you wanted a new beginning, you just got it.

Every morning you get it. Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

Experiment

Take it for a spin. What’s the worst that can happen? What’s the best that can happen? Are you willing to bet on it?

Many times, the right idea is sitting right behind a couple of wrong ones. Get comfortable being uncomfortable.

No Need to Waste

Amnesty relieves us of the baggage, allowing us to continue fighting forward.

Don’t fight back, fight forward. We’ve been rewarded the opportunity of lifetimes. Can’t waste it, like we can’t waste good food and good weather.

Working on Ourselves

To solve the health care crisis, we need to rebuild every single sector on a national scale.

The only way to solve the crisis at the necessary scale is to tackle its root cause: outlook.

Most of us are convinced that we have nothing to contribute. We confront the daily dissonance between what we truly value and what we spend our time and talents on.

The solution is simple, but hardly straightforward. Our outlook must evolve from ‘I have to do it’ to ‘I get to do it,’ from ‘they did this to me’ to ‘they did this for me,’ from ‘the other’ to ‘my divine brother.’ This change in outlook extends beyond the faces in the frontline, to those who call the shots from behind the curtain.

Human ingenuity is boundless. There is nothing we can’t solve when we focus on the right problems.

Why Me

The Universe is generous by relentlessly serving us what we need the most. It’ll keep serving it until we’re able to get out of our own way.

It didn’t happen to me; it happened for me.

The Hook

They’re humans, too.

Working for an organization small enough that every opportunity for cost-savings/effectiveness counts.

Reporting to a boss and on the hook for metrics.

What do they need to hear from you?

Knowing this just made your job easy. Matching their needs with your product’s value yields a worthwhile story.