Method Initiative – Exercise 1: The Personal Essay
Exercise #1: The Personal Essay
Am I ever going to accomplish something truly significant?
Am I too old now for becoming someone that could change the world, or even a small group of people only 1 degree of separation from me – a.k.a friends and family?
Am I just not good enough to become someone that important? Or that well-known? Or that respected?
Should I just settle for me right now? Is this life, until I retire?
The older I get, the more I feel like these questions sometimes start to creep into my conscious. They’re the kinds of questions that I would just brush off when I was 20 – there’s always more time to succeed later, right? And when you’re 20 with no major responsibilities (kids, spouse, house payments, etc.), it’s more or less true, but you don’t recognize that it doesn’t really get any easier to take chances and try to accomplish something. It gets harder.
Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t to say that I’m not happy with where I am in life. I’ve had an amazing 37 years where I’ve generally done what I wanted, achieved some decent milestones, and experienced plenty of amazing things that are often told in stories or sung in songs – hard work leading to successes, hard work leading to failures, adventures abroad, love and loss, fun and excitement with friends, awful experiences that remain as fun stories to tell to this day, the joys and stresses of having your own children…I have nearly four decades of experiences that I’m grateful for and have made me the person I am today (and not too shabby of a person, if I may say so myself).
But there’s always a part of me that wants to do something big…something that will make me widely remembered or will change the world in a significant way (Doesn’t everyone?). Realistically, I know it’s an experience I will probably never have, as there are very few who have been lucky enough to be able to say they have. Yet sometimes I feel like I have to try, and that I have the potential to have a decent shot at it, too…If only I had a method to get there.
This is what led me to want to give Joshua Spodek’s Initiative methodology a shot. It’s a very proactive methodology that guides you through the self-exploration and advice-seeking necessary to actually achieve something you may have never thought you could. It even helps you to figure out what that is, if you don’t know exactly what that is yet…Safe to say I fit into that category.
My Past Attempt
As I mentioned in my “Exercise 0” post about this, I’ve actually partially done the exercises before, during the COVID pandemic, when I was stuck in Japan without much of a job and looking for good ways of using my time. I do think the exercises really helped me to grow and open my eyes to what is possible, but before I could finish the exercises, I moved back to the USA and life surged back to full-speed in a hurry.
What I Hope to Get Out of Initiative This Time
This time around, I’m in a very different place in life than I was the last time: I now have a house, a job, a baby, and I’m not nearly as active on social media, YouTube, and podcasting as I was. By going through the Initiative exercises a second time, I hope to either move my career in a more sustainability oriented direction or grow from a sustainability leadership perspective. Or, as they’re not necessarily mutually exclusive, both!
My History with Taking Initiative (Not just the Spodek kind)
I’ve always considered to be myself to be a person who’s pretty good at slow and steady work, especially when I’m given a model to follow. Show me how to do something once, and I’ll keep doing it every day and slowly improve on it until I’m better than most others. But I’ve never really been one to innovate from step zero. I think my success has always been built on foundations I borrow from others. So I’m hoping that by going through the Initiative exercises, I will learn how to be a bit more proactive in forging my own path and doing something original that will be useful and help others.
Three Lists
Lastly, to complete exercise #1 in the Initiative methodology, I need to make three lists:
- 3 people closer to your field of interest.
- 3 people with high status or value in your field.
- 3 relevant role models, living or historical.
Role Models
As I think about what kind of a person do I want to grow to be, I try to think of role models – people that I look at and go ‘Yeah, I want to be like this person, or at least a part of who they are’. I think, given enough time, I could come up with many but the ones that come to mind right now are:
- Joshua Spodek – A friend, mentor, and probably one of the most sustainabily living people in the USA. He is, as far as I know, the only person who has come close to living sustainably without doing something like moving to live off the land in the woods complete disconnected from mainstream society. Josh lives in Manhattan, teaches at NYU, and at least on the surface, lives what most Americans would call a “normal” life: has a job, lives in a city, uses computers/smartphones, etc. Certainly a model of sustainability, but also sustainability leadership.
- His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama – Okay, I know I’m going big on this one, but I’ve always had immense respect for people who live a Buddhist lifestyle – one that focuses on reducing suffering of others (human and nonhuman), living with kindness, and accepting logic, reason and science. I love watching videos of him and reading his books. He has so much wisdom and empathy and is a brilliant communicator, able to connect with just about anyone in a way that is joyous and profound.
- Will Smith, and more specifically, his work ethic – As an entertainer, Will Smith has been hit or miss to me. Some of his movies and music I really enjoy, and others I can’t stand. But in an interview, I once heard him say something that always stuck with me: “You might have more talent than me, you might be smarter than me, you might be sexier than me…But if we get on the treadmill together there’s two things – you’re getting off first, or I’m going to die…You’re not going to out work me.” Will Smith’s success has come from relentless work, which has made him successful in every entertainment industry out there. I’ve always envied him for his ability to just work hard until he succeeds.
There have to be a done more, but those are the ones that come immediately to me right now.
3 People Closer to My Field of Interest
The instructions were to keep this one broad – they could be anyone from friends who have a connection to the field of my interest to famous people in your chosen field. So here we go:
- David Attenborough – A fantastic voice for sustainability, both in the literal sense that he has an amazing voice and in that he stands up for the environment and teaches us all about the wonders of nature.
- Emily W. – Fellow TSL colleague that has been making huge strides in sustainable leadership recently. If you’re reading this, Emily, you came to mind pretty quick when I thought of people leading in sustainability that I know personally (other than Josh).
- Rob Greenfield – A popular influencer (YouTube) and sustainable living advocate, Rob Greenfield is one of the most successful sustainabile living advocates in terms of viewership, leading by example, and ability to get the word out about encouraging people to live sustainably.
3 People with High Status or Value in My Field
This is a list I think I could come up with many people in, but I’ll start with ones that come to me right away.
- Kevin S. – The CEO of my company, a construction company, which at this point, does not have anything in the way of sustainability initiatives. As an Initiative project I’m considering leading my company in that direction.
- Jonathan Foley – World-leading environmental scientist, sustainability expert, great at communicating the science and knowing the large-scale solutions.
- Leonardo DiCaprio – Another big name in the world of sustainability. Despite his continuing to fly and pollute just as much as many other celebrities, he has about the highest status one could have, with hundreds of millions of people who listen to him when he speaks.
Ready, Set, Go!
I’ve already mentioned enough about how valuable I think the Initiative methodology is, so for now I’ll just say that I’m excited to jump in and start again. I’m confident that despite how challenging it will be, it will lead me to a life that is more in line with the life I dream of…Even if I’m not exactly sure what that life looks like yet.
