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Thank you for tuning in for another episode of Life's Best Medicine. Mark King is a new friend from Prescott, AZ. He is a man of great faith with an incredible story. To top it all off, he is a master salsa artisan. In this episode, Dr. Brian and Mark talk about… (00:00) Intro (05:20) The incredible and tragic story of Mark's faith journey (16:20) Trusting God in the good and the bad times (21:43) Mark's faith story continued (23:47) Church (26:28) Mark's faith story continued (31:54) Salsa and ministry (37:30) The story of Mark's heart condition (43:58) Mark's near death experience (01:04:59) The fear of death (01:08:36) Life's Best Medicine according to Mark   For more information, please see the links below. Thank you for listening!   Links:   Dr. Brian Lenzkes:  Arizona Metabolic Health: https://arizonametabolichealth.com/ Low Carb MD Podcast: https://www.lowcarbmd.com/   HLTH Code: HLTH Code Promo Code: METHEALTH • • HLTH Code Website: https://gethlth.com

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com Suntree Retreat 2024: https://theapsocietyorg.wordpress.com/news-and-events/suntree-retreat-2024/ Season 5 - Episode 5 ----more----   Mark: Welcome back to The Wonder, science based paganism. I'm your host, Mark. Yucca: And I'm Yucca. Mark: And today we're going to visit the four core ritual skills. Now, obviously, there are a lot of different things that can be useful in leading rituals and in in participating in them, but these are four clusters of activity. That if you're good at them, you're going to have a lot more success both in leading rituals and in submerging yourself into the ritual trance y state, the flow state where you can really have effective things happen in rituals. Yucca: Great. Mark: that's what we're gonna do today. Yucca: And this is more from the lens of a group ritual than necessarily a private ritual because there's a few things we'll be talking about, like the speech part, which maybe you might do in a private ritual or maybe you don't. But when you're, when you have that interaction between multiple people and what we're going to be talking about, you can apply a lot of that to your private rituals as well, to your solo or individual. Mark: Sure. I know people who are who are pagans and whose solo practice involves a lot of dance, for Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: because they're very movement oriented people and that's, that's what they do even, you know, in the privacy of their solo rituals. Yucca: Right. Mark: so yes and, and beyond that, these are good skills just to have in the world, you know, it's, it's helpful to have these. So why don't we start with public speaking, Yucca: Yeah. So, especially when you are leading the ritual, the words are how we communicate with each other and communicate these really complex ideas. We're gonna communicate other things through our body language, through movement, but when we're trying to communicate nuanced ideas, it's words. Mark: right? And this is the, the whole cluster of things that go into verbal communication, right? So it's not only speaking in coherent sentences and, you know, having an interesting modulation to your voice so that you're not speaking in a monotone. It's engaging. People are, you know, want to listen to it, but also the physical ability just to project your voice out, right? So that people that are in that space can hear what you're saying. All of those things are, are, they're learned skills. All of our speaking abilities are learned skills. I mean, we watch little kids slowly accumulate the ability to communicate about complex Yucca: Right? We start with a half a dozen sounds. Words that are instinctual, that are, I'm hungry, I'm in pain, and that's it. Everything else that, how many thousands of words do we know in each language, right? Each language's vocabulary amazing, Mark: Yeah. Yeah. And clearly, evolution has strongly favored our capacity to do this because a whole lot of brain space is taken up by our capacities to learn language and to speak. And then, of course, the whole separate factor of being able to read and write, which is a different set of skills, right? And a set of skills that we're not really talking about so much today. Yucca: right, Mark: Now, not everybody is a natural. Public speaker. I feel very fortunate that I happen to be gifted in that regard and that I can just sort of improvisationally talk about things that interest me not so much about things that don't interest me, but that's an ADHD thing, I think, Yucca: mhm. And I'm the opposite. Speaking is very difficult. I didn't speak till I was four. This is all learned and hard earned hard, it was difficult to learn to do, and I'm not comfortable with public speaking, despite doing it for a living but it's, if I was to be leading a ritual, it would be something that I would do. be practicing ahead of time. And that's just different ways of being, right? You just kind of need to know yourself that, Mark, it seems like you could just kind of go into it, you know, have a little bit of an idea and be able to know what to say in the moment. I'd have to think about that ahead of time. Mark: yeah, often I can just go into it with kind of a mental outline. If I'm giving a long address, like an hour long, Something. I'll work from a, an outline, but that's usually only a page. So it's just, I don't know, it's, it's something that, that I have an aptitude for and I feel really fortunate for that. And I also don't take any credit for it because it's just a genetic die roll. I happened to, to land that. The, so there are a variety of different techniques that you can use in order to improve your ability. To, to do public speaking, it's, it's very, very difficult for people to remain interested in watching someone read something aloud. Yucca: Right. Mark: That's very challenging. So if you can speak from an outline, like on an index card, that can be A much better way to go, but if you need to, like, write out the first sentence of every paragraph or something to kind of give yourself a launching point to go from there are just some practical things you can do that will make it easier for you to do that in a ritual context. Use a binder, for example. It looks a little more formal, and you don't have to worry about pages shuffling all over the place. You can hold the binder, you know, like people do when they're singing in a choir or something like that, and just refer down to it, and then look up to make eye contact with people in the group so that they feel engaged. That eye contact piece is very important. Yucca: Yeah. And the, and it's a practice thing as well, but the length of eye contact is going to depend on how many people you have in your group. But often Your one to three seconds is kind of that sweet spot where it's, you're acknowledging the person, but not, it doesn't become uncomfortable. You're not, Mark: Right. Yucca: having it feel like they're being examined or peered into. It's There's just that moment of connection. Now, if you've got a group of 20 people, you don't have time to make three second eye contact with every single person there. But if you have a group of four people, then that's a, you know, you just gotta have to judge it in the moment. Mark: Right. In the, in the case of that group of 20 people, you can pick individuals out of the group that you make that eye contact with and then maybe use a different set the next time you look up so that eventually everybody feels kind of included. And the, the trick with eye contact, which I know is very uncomfortable for some people, is that you can look somebody right between the eyes, straight between their eyebrows, and you're not making eye contact with them, and they won't know it. Yucca: And it's, yeah, it still feels like it. Rather than focusing on, you know, when you're making true eye contact, you're really looking at one of the pupils, right? But you don't actually need to do that, yeah. Mark: Just, just that little bit of difference at any kind of distance at all, they're not going to know. In many cases in ritual settings, we're working under low light conditions, so that makes it even a little bit fuzzier. And that's a way that you can keep yourself from becoming as self conscious as you might be by looking someone straight in the eyes. Yucca: Right, because if you are, now this is if you're leading it, you are keeping track of a lot of things. in your mind at that moment. But for the eye contact, being a participant in a ritual, there's the eye contact with the person who is leading it and with the others, and that's just a nice, that's a nice trick to have, just a nice tool, not trick in like a manipulative way, but just a nice tool for your social toolbox. Mark: Sure. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a way to self, save yourself from a feeling of, that you're too exposed. Because that's the thing about eye contact is that it feels very exposing to both of, both people who are, who are meeting their gaze. And so if you fudge a little bit, it, it can make you feel a little bit less exposed and more confident. Yucca: right. Mark: Now I, I, oh, go ahead. Yucca: Oh, I was going to say, and it can be something on just the eye contact is something that can be very powerful when it's consensual, right? Like if some of the most powerful experiences I've had with others is just sitting and having a few minutes of just looking into their eyes. Mark: Yes. Yucca: And it can just be really, really moving just a very powerful experience. But it has to be consensual, right? And that's, that's something that we need to mention about everything with ritual, is that there needs to be consent for whatever is happening in the Mark: Indeed. And that's why it's important to give people an overview at the beginning of a ritual about what we're going to do. Now, that doesn't mean exposing every little detail. It can be fine to have things that are surprising not in a negative way, but you can have, you know, surprises along the way that transformative and go, Oh, wow, look, that's what's happening now. But you do want to make sure that everybody has pretty well signed on to going on this ride with you. That's, Yucca: Especially if there's going to be any physical contact, Mark: Oh, yes. Yucca: right? Like, if people are going to hold hands or, you know, put their hands on someone's shoulder or anything like that, that's, it's really important that people know that that's what they're getting into. Because people have very different experiences with that. They don't owe it to us to explain why they're not comfortable or are comfortable with it. That's their business, right? Mark: Exactly so. Um, and I, I referenced a minute ago something, and I'm, and I'm glad that I reminded myself about this because, okay, so, so you're listening to the things that we're talking about here. You've got your, your outline in a binder, and you're, you know, reading that first sentence or getting the reminder of what that next little statement is supposed to be about, and then looking up and looking at people between the eyes so that you don't have to feel uncomfortable about actually meeting their gaze, and then you realize that you can't see what's on the page because you're in low light conditions, and then you get out your flashlight, and And try to hold it in your mouth and read at the same time. And it doesn't work Yucca: for everyone listening, Mark literally put a flashlight in his mouth in that moment that you just happened to have right next to you. Mark: Yes, there happened to be one on my table here. So what you want to do is you want to have some sort of a light source that will clip to your binder, One of those, you know, little, you know, night, Yucca: lamps so that you don't wake your partner up in bed, sort of thing, or yeah, Mark: Very useful tool for a ritual leader to have. They make a, a little light, they've got a little shade on them so that it isn't blinding to other people. And it really gives you the light that you need without being too obtrusive. Yucca: and you can get them in kind of a, an Amber, reddish light, too, and that's really nice because that doesn't spoil people's dark vision as much as like a bright white or blue light might. Mark: Right. I actually saw a park ranger giving a campfire talk using one of those. Yucca: Mm. Mark: seemed like she was new or something, and, you know, didn't quite have the whole wrap down yet necessarily. She Yucca: memorized the entire thing. Mark: Right. She did a great job, but she had to refer to notes and didn't actually use a binder. She used a clipboard, but, you know, same kind of deal. Yeah, and, and she used that amber color. So that people could look up at the stars because part of her part of what she referenced was was stars. Yucca: Right. It was a nighttime activity that you were doing. You weren't out in, you know, the middle of the day, noon, the baking sun. Not in Mark: right. No, we were around a fire and the fire, of course, made some light, but the, but not. I mean, it's going to, that's, that's right. It's going to cast a shadow towards your face, so that's not going to do any good. And it's flickering to begin with, which just makes it very unreliable for reading. So that's a, you know, a little, a little tip that, you know, will actually do you a lot of good if you're doing public speaking in a, in a dark, Yucca: would really encourage people not to use your phones as your light when you're in a ritual setting because just the presence of a phone or a tablet or something like that can really pull people out of the present moment. And the, there's, we, we have a pretty big issue in our society where, with the what is it called? Fubbing? Where people, when their phone is out? In social situations, and somebody's looking at the phone, and then the person who's interacting with them is getting the social signal of, I'm not interested in what you're saying because I keep looking at the phone and so there's a, a lot of people have a emotional, often unconscious, but emotional response to the other person's got their phone out, they're not interested. Mark: right. Yucca: So when we're dealing with symbology and metaphor that, that can be something that's very triggering for people, is to have that phone out. Mark: Great point. I'm really glad you brought that up. And that's another reason why you don't want to have your notes on your phone or on a tablet. I know it's convenient. I know it means that you can just type everything up without printing anything out, any of that sort of stuff. But removing, removing most forms of digital technology from the ritual circle, It helps, and I'm not entirely sure why it helps, but it does. There's something about that technology that is just so riveting for people, it draws their attention so heavily, it becomes much more difficult to be present, and that, of course, is core to what we work to do in a ritual space. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: Um, I, I'm reminded, I've just started, I've started game mastering a game for the first time in 37 years. Yucca: Oh, wonderful. Mark: had our we're playing Shadow Dark. And we started week before last, I'm gonna run another session this week. And one of the things that I, I, I told them, this is gonna be the most painful thing that you're gonna have to do all evening. I made them stack all their phones on the table. If you touch them, you take damage. Yucca: oh, that's brilliant. Mark: You, you, you Yucca: But yeah, it hurts. It can be really uncomfortable to be separated from it. Mark: Sure, because whenever people are, are distracted or bored or uncomfortable, their go to is to bury themselves in their phones. And it's, you know, we, we had a very lively, good social interaction throughout the game because people were engaged with one another rather than with their phones. So, you know, waiting for their turn. So, yeah, that was a great thing. Yucca: Mm hmm. You know, I think that there's a lot of parallels between game mastering and leading a ritual. Mark: I Yucca: So many overlaps between those skills, because on both, you're, you're, it's, both things are collective storytelling, and as the ritual leader, or as the game master, you're guiding that experience, but you're not controlling that experience. Mark: Yeah, that's absolutely true. And, and that has occurred to me before as well that tabletop fantasy role playing games or, or any genre of tabletop games are, they're a group ritual. They, they are a thing that we do, we get together, they have certain kinds of cultural conventions, like rolling dice and, you know, waiting for your turn and all that kind of stuff. And they are consensual behaviors to create a group experience, which is what a ritual is, right? Yucca: Right. Mark: Yeah. The goal isn't necessarily personal transformation, it's entertainment. Yucca: Yeah. Although sometimes, there's, you can have some pretty emotionally powerful experiences. Mark: yes, absolutely. Yeah, I've had players weeping, I've had players falling off their chairs laughing. There's, there's, there's, there's a lot there. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So, that's, Yucca: Yeah, let's go to our next one, Mark: Yeah, that's public speaking. And the good news about public speaking is that the more you do of it, it will become easier. It won't necessarily become easy, but it will become easier. And that's true of all of these skill sets that we're talking about today. The next one that I want to talk about is singing. Yucca: which shares a lot with much of what we've just been talking about with the speaking, but has, has some additional Elements added onto it. Mark: Right. And it does different things. It taps different parts of the brain, and it's much more accessible to the emotional self than, than linear language. There's something about intoning and making harmony and the kind of poetry that tends to be associated with with the songs that you sing in a ritual state, in a ritual setting, Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: all of which, It's just transformative. It moves you emotionally, and that is, of course, a very important part of what we work to do. Yeah, Yucca: And depending on what the song is, it can still be vocal without being verbal. There's many rituals that I've been to that have just had Just had sounds, like, just vowels with the, with the tune and that, that's a nice thing for those of us who aren't really wordsy people or who find lyrics to be difficult to, to catch on to. Some people are really fast with that, right? You put it, my, my youngest, you put anything in a song and he's got it. He's got the lyrics to it. He's got the words. And like, how are you even singing? You know, we'll listen to songs in languages he doesn't speak, and he's singing along with it, right? So some people's brains work that way, and other people, I can, I can get the melody, but what are the words to that? I don't know. So it's a nice opportunity sometimes to have the songs that are just sounds that people can just join in with if they're comfortable with it or not, right? Mark: right. And that raises two really interesting things for me. The first of which is that I like for it to be a convention in the rituals that I do that if someone just can't get the lyrics or doesn't like the lyrics or whatever it is, they can just ah along, you know, they can just sing the vowel ah and still, still get the melody out there, right? So that they're participating, so that they have a role, and that's a perfectly acceptable role. The other Is that there's this wonderful practice called circle singing. I don't know if you've heard of this.  Yucca: Keep going, because it could mean several different things. Mark: it's a directed, like, like a choral director kind of program where The choral director will sing one line and will teach a group of the participants that line, and they'll sing it over and over and over again, and then the choral director sings another part for another three people that interlocks with that first melody, so what you end up with is this, and you can have, you know, three, four, even five parts if you're really good at this what you end up with is this very intricate, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun. Sort of tapestry of sound the musician Bobby McFerrin does this a lot. He used to do a New Year's Eve singing in the New Year's circle song event at the Glide Cathedral in San Francisco every year. And it's just, it's a cool way for people that aren't going to do lyrics and may only need to You know, seeing a very simple, repeated line to still be fully engaged in participating in making something that's really cool. Yucca: yeah. Just make sure that there's a group of people for each line, that you don't have one person trying to remember and carry that so that when they do so that they can Use the other person as help for when they forget the line or get a little bit confused because they're hearing the other song and, you know, so don't try, don't put one person on the spot for it who's not, you know, the professional singer. Mark: right. You can also do this with round. There are a lot of, of musical rounds that, you know, you teach one line to one group of people and another line to another group of people or you teach the whole thing to everybody and then you start them off set. So one person sing, you know, one group sings the first line, and then the second group starts singing the first line again as the first group continues to do the second line, and you just go around like that. And rounds can be very beautiful and really trance inducing to sing. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So singing, it's, and I know there are a lot of people out there who are like, I'm tone deaf, I can't sing I can't carry a tune. That is true for some people. It is true for some people. And what you may want to do instead is to learn how to use your voice rhythmically. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: So, instead of having to carry tones, you can just bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, kind of along with whatever the, the rhythm of the musical piece is, so that you still have a way to plug in. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: But the other thing is that a lot of people who think that they're tone deaf just haven't tried. They haven't, they haven't practiced. I, I wouldn't, Yucca: And not try, but Mark: try isn't the right word. Yucca: built the skill over that have that it has it doesn't necessarily come natural Mark: Right. Yucca: to build that skill is something that takes time and takes exposure just like we were talking about with the public speaking Mark: Yes. That's, that's, that's what I meant. I didn't like the word try either, so thank you. Yucca: but yeah it may be something that just takes the exposure and time and and really and it's going to take different amounts of time for different people right and we're all coming at it from different emotional experiences Mark: Right, right. Yeah and this actually leads us to our third skill set, which can be something that you can replace singing with. This is rhythm and drumming or percussion of various kinds. Because there are people out there that have a wonderful sense of rhythm and are terrific in a percussive sense and just particularly good at following a tune. And that's okay. That's perfectly alright. Um, the, the evocative nature of rhythm and drumming and what it does in our bodies cannot be overstated. know, a good complex drumming riff almost forces us to move. I'm a very heady person, and I grew up over medicated for ADHD, so I twitched all the time. I had lots of tics. So, you know, my body kind of betrayed me a lot, and I've always had kind of an ambivalent relationship with it because of that. The, but still, when I'm in a ritual circle and there's good drumming going on, I want to move, you know, I, I, I want to go. Yucca: yeah, that's, I share that experience. I'm also very, very much in my head a lot of the time, but it feels like it just pulls my awareness down and into my body and kind of spreads it out to a more body awareness and just brings me down to that connection and I feel much more connected with the ground and the rhythm and the, it's just very powerful. Mark: Yes, very much so, and I've, I have a lot of conjectures about why that might be, most of them having to do with a mother's heartbeat. Yucca: yeah, because we all started out hearing. Hearing it, Mark: yeah, Yucca: her pulse was there. Mark: right, all the time, and it got faster and it got slower and, Yucca: and you got the, some of the, not all of them, but some of the hormones crossing the placenta into you, so you're sharing some of those feelings with her as you're associating what her heart is doing. Mark: right. Yucca: You're also getting to hear all the gurgles of her digesting and all of that stuff too. Mark: Right. That's true. Yucca: But that heart, that ever present heart, Mark: Yes. Yes. And the sort of the, the softening sound of the lungs, breathing in, breathing out. There's probably a little bit of a stretching sound with the diaphragm Yucca: You probably feel that, too, as you're taking up more space. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: And then you probably kicked her in the diaphragm a few times and she went, Right, no Mark: out maybe, maybe not to do that again. Yucca: what your experience later on in life, we all started That way with that very primal experience of being before our minds and brains had really developed the way they are now before, at least I think, I mean, we're human beings, but, you know, even before that, but before we really did. come into being an aware person in the way that we are Mark: sure. Yucca: individuals on the outside, that's, you know, I like thinking about all of that, about thinking about that transition between going from just being a part of her to being our own people, and then, yeah, Mark: And the whole sort of unboxing experience of, you know, turning the lights on in various parts of your brain and, you know, all that kind of stuff. It's really fascinating. Yucca: yeah and just the, I think the development of how we, so this is something, we often talk about you know, growing a baby, right? And as the mothers, we are, sort of, except it's actually the baby that's growing themselves. Their body is telling themselves what to do. We're supplying all, we're supplying the home for that, all of the supplies, but from the moment that, that cell, is following its own instructions and becoming its own person. And it's just amazing the different, you know, what we do know of it and the different steps of, like, when certain things develop. Like, when they start being able to sense light, right? About halfway through, you can shine a light on your belly and they'll start kicking because they can see the light. But a week before, they couldn't see the light. They didn't respond to it because they Physically couldn't see it, and now they can, and I, it's just a, I think it's an amazing process, and we, we've just barely begun to, to scratch the surface of understanding what's, what's happening. And we all went through it. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: Don't consciously remember it, but I think it affects us later on, which Mark: Oh, I agree. Yucca: the rhythm, Mark: Yeah. I absolutely agree. Yucca: it's speculation on our part that our connection to rhythm is connected to that heart, but it seems like, this seems like a logical path to take. Mark: Yeah. And I mean, many babies when they're very young will be responsive to rhythmic music. Yucca: Absolutely. Mark: know, it's like if there's, if there's a strong, steady beat in something, they will move to it. Yucca: Yep. Mark: So that's all to say that it's coded very deeply in us to be responsive to that. You know, to the pulsing of rhythm and the ability to create that, even if it's just a steady beat, like a heartbeat kind of beat. It doesn't have to be Zakir Hussain playing the tablas. I mean, if, if you're, if you have a good sense of rhythm and you're interested in putting in the time that it takes to develop, you know, those wonderful Middle Eastern or African or Indian or Yucca: Or any, yeah, there's Mark: any culture, you know, Amazing repertoires than, you know, do that because we need more of that in the world. But just the ability, you know, I have a good rhythm sense, but I'm, I have ADHD and it's very hard for me to do things that I'm not good at for a long period of time until I become good at them. So I just have a frame drum, a simple, round. Frame drum. And I use that for creating sort of a drone y rhythm, heartbeat sound in rituals. And it makes a big difference. Yucca: mm hmm, Mark: It's a really big difference. So I really encourage all of you that are developing your, your ritual tool set, you know, to get shakers or claves, you know, the wooden things that hit against one another or Or a drum and just start, play around. It's fun. It's fun to do. Yucca: And earlier we were talking about, you know, some of the caution around phones and technology and things like that, but I do think that there can be a place for the recorded music as well especially when it comes to the drumming and keeping a beat and things like that. When you have a group of people. And you have multiple instruments. I mean, to me, that's golden, right? You have the whole group doing it. But if you're in a solo situation, or, you know, your hands are busy doing lots of other things, or whatever it is, you know, there's a lot of great things recordings of, of drumming and rhythm and things like that. Mark: Yeah. And there's been a resurgence or, or a surg I guess, which is sort of the first thing of of groups that do very sort of ritually trancey kind of music groups like Dead Can Dance and Wardruna and ung and you know, some groups like that, that really, you know, they're really exploring that. That way that rhythm can really influence us at a physical level and that stuff can be great ritual music, can be really useful. There's actually a page on my blog that is musical suggestions for ritual, and there's a long list of different possible things that you can choose from for, with different kinds of flavors and styles. Yucca: Mm hmm. Yeah. My suggestion would be, though, listen through to what, to what it is before you use it in your ritual. Because sometimes there can be a little bit of a surprise in there that was like, Ooh, that was not, that was not what I was going Mark: That wasn't what I was looking Yucca: this ritual. Yeah. Mark: Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. Yucca: Yeah. Now that, I think. moves really nicely into our final one, which is movement itself. I have a hard time hearing a rhythm and not moving to it. Mark: Huh. Yucca: Because it's just, as we were talking about, it's just so powerful. There's, I mean, they're so connected. The Venn diagram of, of rhythm and movement to me are, they're not quite a circle, but they're pretty close. Mark: They're pretty close. Yeah. And I, I find rhythm to be such an invitation to movement and because I'm so heady most of the time, my body is really thirsty for that kind of activity. So it's, there's a very, there's a liberating quality. To, you know, moving, like moving in a ritual circle and dancing and, and, you know, interacting with a fire and interacting with other people and just all that. That sense of freedom. It feels like flying in a way. It's, it's, it's a very strong, very free, very, very filled with yourself kind of feeling like you're expressing yourself in a really full way. Yucca: and a couple of things to keep in mind if you are the one designing or leading the ritual with a group of people to have options for different levels of mobility. So some people may need to have a chair or something to be sitting in, and may not necessarily be able to do a big spiral dance around the fire or something like that. And so having natural options for them. To be able to participate is really important. Go ahead. Mark: Yes. And what I was going to say is that when you blend These ritual skills, you can give people opportunities to do things that, that are within their abilities, right, that are consistent with their aptitudes, what they're interested in doing and what they can do. So, you know, you can have some people who are sitting and drumming and other people who are up and dancing and singing, you know, or You know, some combination thereof. I remember I was at a Fire Circle ritual. God, it's gotta be seven years ago now. And there was all, you know, we were, we were in this really high point in the ritual and dancing and, you know, the drums are thundering along, you know, very intricate, super talented drummers. And then suddenly they stopped and everybody slowed down but kept moving. While someone did a spoken word piece, and it was beautiful, it was just this, this, this rapt moment, you know, when you could almost still hear the echoes of the drums because it had been so loud and so fervent and so intense and then suddenly downshift and it all went into this other place, Yucca: someone suddenly starts whispering and everyone has to lean in to listen to what is that whisper? What are they saying? Mark: Exactly. Yucca: wow. Wow. Mark: Which is why I like the, the center portion of a ritual after invocations and creation of a safe container to be somewhat improvisational, you know, that there's room for different people to contribute different things if there's time and if that's the kind of ritual that people want to do. But I've had great experiences with that sort of thing. So movement and yes, people can be very self conscious. I, you know, as I described, I had a difficult relationship with my body and I didn't start dancing until I was in my late twenties. And a low light condition helps. Yucca: Right. Mark: You know, that sense that you're not being watched by other people really helps. Yucca: And a timing in the ritual I think can make a really big difference for people because it is something that is a little bit, can be a little bit uncomfortable that. Most people are not comfortable jumping straight into dancing, right? So, it might be something that needs a little bit of warm up to get to the place where people feel like they can can do that, right? So maybe you, you work towards it with some of the spoken and then moving into the singing and then into the dancing. And just, just kind of know your audience, right? If you're working with a circle that you see every You know, every Mark: Few weeks or Yucca: then you're going to have a, it's going to be a very different relationship than this is the once a year summer solstice celebration that you're doing at the Pagan Pride Festival. Mark: Right, right. Yeah, that's a really good point. You know, obviously, making tailorings and adjustments for for whoever it is that you're going to be working with in a ritual is really key and there is a way to work with people of every level of ability, every level of ability. Of uniqueness, in terms of their aptitudes, their capacities there's, there's stuff that can be done that can help people to come into a ritual space. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: So, it's, it's, but it, having these four tools in your quiver there's a mixed metaphor, having, having these four arrows on your tool belt, Yucca: Yes. Mark: It's a good way to start because then you have the capacity to pull out whatever seems to be the right thing for that group of people at that particular moment. Yucca: Mm hmm. Yeah. And these are things that you can incorporate into your solo practice, and that's where a lot of the practice that we've been talking about. We'll start, Mark: Mm Yucca: right, becoming comfortable with the singing or the dancing I'm saying those ones in particular because those ones are ones that I think are really hard for our culture. We have a very, very sedentary culture. We're very much expected to stay still and seated and especially in social situations. We find, we're very uncomfortable with movement overall. Mark: We're also uncomfortable with sound, to some degree. I mean, this varies from culture to culture, but, I mean, British people will tell you how loud Americans are, but having lived in Spain, Americans aren't that loud. Yucca: No, depending on which part of Spain though, right? Even Mark: Well, yes. Yucca: in Basque country, their opinion of the Andalusians, you know, is wildly different, Mark: Oh yes, Yucca: But yeah, so it depends on, on what cultural context but speaking very, very broadly of, of you know, North American, so American and Canadian, we tend to be compared to say, somebody from the Mediterranean, we tend to be pretty, we tend reserved and I'll, you know, we don't talk with our bodies as much and we don't get up and dance and, you know, that sort of thing is very difficult for us. Mark: right, Yucca: And so it might take some time getting used to doing that on your own and then practicing in a group and the more times you do it, you know, the, the The more practice you have, the more skill that you're going to build up in that. And it's okay if it takes some time, but it's worth it, I think, right? Because I think that those rituals can be really powerful and just very enriching, Mark: yeah, yeah, that's definitely been my experience and I don't claim by any means to have fully mastered any of these things even the ones that I'm naturally good at and so it's a work in progress and that's always great because it's not about getting there, it's not about arriving, it's about the process of evolving over time, which is what we're about. Yucca: right? Mark: For as long as we get, we can evolve. Yucca: Yeah, it's kind of like an evening walk. You don't take the evening walk to get to a place. You take it for the enjoyment of going out and, you know, the birds are singing and changing their tune and the air feels cool and, you know, all of that experience. It's about that. Mark: Right. Exactly. So this has been a cool conversation, Yucca. Thank you so much. Yucca: Yeah. Well, and I look forward to, in just a few short months, doing some rituals with you and the rest of the folks coming to the Sun Tree Retreat. So that's coming up. Mark: We're actually releasing the program for Suntree Retreat this week. Yucca: Mm Mark: there's, you'll if, you know, you're in the community in various ways, you'll see various promotions to, to make sure that people can download that and take a look at all the Rituals and workshops and, and things we're going to be doing. So, and shout out to Michael O'Halloran, Michael O'Halloran of our community who's done a lot of work on that program. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So, Yucca: Yeah. Mark: thanks everybody. We really appreciate your listening to the podcast and welcome your, your input and your questions as always. We'll see you next week.   

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com ----more----   Introduction and Welcome --- Yucca: Welcome back to The Wonder Science Based Paganism. I'm your host, Jekka. Mark: And I'm Mark. Reflecting on the End of the Year --- Yucca: And today we are talking about the end of the year and the beginning of a new year. So once again, here we are at the end of a year, Mark: Yeah, so it's a good time for reflecting on what the, what this round of the cycle has been, and then looking forward into the next year we were saying before we started to record, we're still in that, that kind of held breath in the middle of, of the winter solstice season, at least in the, in the northern hemisphere, where Everything seems to kind of stop for a moment, even though there's this frenzy of activity in your personal life, most, many people are not working. There's just a kind of suspension of ordinariness, and there's this moment of what can be a really reflective still time, as well as a very festive time, Yucca: right? This episode should actually come out Christmas morning. So, early Christmas morning, Mark: always a tranquil and reflective time. Yucca: Yes, very relaxed, there's nothing going on.  Discussing the Timing of the New Year --- Yucca: Before we get into all of that, let's talk about the timing of the New Year. Okay. Because we're talking about the calendar switching New Year, which many people count as the New Year. For me, that's usually what I go with. That's the turning of the calendar. But for some folks, it's actually at Hallow, some people it's the Solstice, some people change at the Equinox, right? When's New Year's for you? Mark: I have two tracks for that, and they're offset by about ten days. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: For me, the beginning of the sacred cycle of the year is at the winter solstice. But then there's the calendar year, which, you know, as we say, when you're dating something, what number do you put at the end of the of, of the date that you're writing, that changes on January 1st, and so January 1st is also a hinge point, a moment when there's a transition, and that gives us the opportunity to do what we're doing today, which is look back, kind of review what that's all been like for the past cycle, and then imagine and dream forward into the new cycle. Yucca: Mm hmm. For me it's very fuzzy because since I don't have, typically I'm not working on the 31st or the 1st. The exact moment there isn't really a switch over, it's just this sort of fuzzy time period where it's like, oh yeah, it's the new year. I think, kinda, now I gotta get used to writing this other date, but it hasn't really happened yet. it Really takes about until February to get used to it being a different year. Mark: Mm. Reflections on the Past Year --- Yucca: So, and some years just don't feel like they happened, especially in the last few years because of how things were so different with COVID, where some years just, like, feel like they're missing. Mark: Yeah, 2020, I mean, when it happened, 2020 felt like the longest year ever. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: And then 2021 was like a continuation of the longest year ever, it was just more of the same. anD when the various Restrictions were relaxed, it almost felt like, it almost felt like that hadn't happened at all.  Impact of COVID-19 on the Perception of Time --- Mark: Like, it was just this sort of separate time when we were all indoors and staying away from everyone but it was outside of history somehow. Yucca: It was almost like we went from 19 to 22. Mark: Mm hmm. Yucca: Like, those, those years, I mean, they're there, but they're not in some ways. It's very, very odd. And this year So much has happened. It's actually quite difficult to keep track of what happened this year and what wasn't this year. Just thinking about what happened within this calendar year. It's, it's been a very full year. Mark: it really has. I mean, everything from floods and earthquakes and volcano eruptions to, you know, political happenings here and there and wars and humanitarian crises, you know, and of course that's what the news feeds us, which is all the bad news, Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: BuT I think it's fair to say that this is a very uncertain time for a lot of people. Yucca: Mm hmm.   Changes in the Work Environment --- Mark: I think about You know, in the, in the business world, in the economy, there's this huge movement of companies that are sort of hanging on by their fingernails to their old model and wanting to go back to 2019, and insisting that their workers come back to the office, and the workers are saying, actually, no, thank you, Yucca: Mm Mark: uh, this works much better for me in my life, and I'm not going. And it's, it's a very interesting standoff, Yucca: hmm. Mark: And it's one that I think the, the labor force, the working force is winning. I, I don't think that this idea about you have to be sitting in a chair in a cubicle in order to do your job is, is gonna succeed over the long term. Yucca: Right. At least within certain sectors. There are certain ones that are in person.  Mark: Oh, service industries, for sure. Yeah, I mean, those people have to be there and doing their thing. I'm thinking specifically of people that were in an office. Yeah, people who were in an office and then were able to leave, which of course is a tremendous privilege.  Challenges of Remote Work --- Mark: I now work fully remotely, and although there are things that are hard about it, like, for example, the fact that you could not register an organization to receive federal funding through, like, a cost sharing agreement or something like that, or a grant with the federal government if you don't have a physical address. Because the Patriot Act regulations consider that dodgy. So I, in order to prove that we really exist, I'm going to have to change the address on our bank account of my employer to my personal address, print out the, the, the bank statement that shows that address, and then change it back to the P. O. box that we have. Because we're a fully remote company and we don't have an office. So, it's just silly. Yucca: Wow. And you're not gonna, you don't have any zoning problems that are gonna come from that? Mark: No, Yucca: Okay. Yeah. Because there's certain areas where you gotta watch out for that, that you're not allowed to have particular businesses Mark: a Yucca: areas and, you know. Mark: I'm sure that that's true, but considering that it's going to last for less than 24 hours I don't really think it's a problem. The primary issue is, I think, they want to know where they can go to find a human being who is working for this company. And has some responsibility if they need to come after us for some reason. And I, there wouldn't be any reason they would need to come after us. I mean, we're a nonprofit organization. We can't even get in trouble with them for taxes. Yucca: Mm hmm. Yeah. But, but they can't go to a P. O. box. So. Mark: right. That's right. So we have to, I'm going to paint a target on my door and, and invite them to come find me. Reflection on Personal and Global Events --- Yucca: So, this year, though, there's things that have been happening on a big scale, Mark: yes, Yucca: and our personal lives, of course, are interwoven with that, right? But at the same time, a lot of what happens in our own lives really doesn't have a lot to do with the outside workings of, you know, what's happening with floods and hurricanes and wars and, you know, life just goes on. for listening. for regular folk.  Looking Back and Looking Forward --- Yucca: And so each of us, you know, us, you and me, Mark, and everyone listening, we've all had our own years, our own lives that have happened, and I, we were talking a lot about this last week, about the, about solstice being this wonderful time for reflection. I think that's a, we can continue that in, and, and think about the whole year. And what has that meant to us, and what are some of the lessons that we have learned? Because we have learned lessons, right? And what are those? Mm Mark: of those lessons are things that have crossed our minds consciously, right? Like, okay, this is a situation that doesn't work for me, this is a situation that does work for me this is an activity that really feeds me and helps me to feel energized and happy. thIs is something that is a total waste of time that I've been doing for my entire life, and I'm gonna stop, you know, those kinds of things. But then there's also the sort of the subconscious part, the, uh, the reflection on what can be called shadow work, you know, where you look at All right, there were certainly challenges this year. I mean, I don't think I know of anyone who didn't have a challenge this year. Did I ride those out, and what did I learn from them, and what did they tell me about myself, Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: right? What do they tell me about who I am? Because I think that one of the things that people are really struggling with right now is that we've been through a bunch of hardship with the pandemic and the Trump years and just a lot of really, Yucca: with the economy, Mark: yes, all that stuff. And you know, people, people still feel kind of beat up in many ways and very uncertain. And so, kind of digging down to find out, well, how do I live with that uncertainty? Am I doing okay? Am I, am I kind of walking, wounded, depressed right now? Not, not in a, in a So much a debilitating sense is just kind of a muffling sense, where you don't feel things as much as you used to, and the kinds of things that you enjoy doing, maybe you don't enjoy doing them quite so much. The Importance of Self-Reflection --- Mark: I think it's a good time for sort of a diagnostic take on, on how our mental health is going, and what in life is really serving us, and what in life is not. Yucca: Right?  Setting Goals and Intentions for the New Year --- Yucca: Yeah, and thinking about that, the choice and intention that we have in that, right? What do we want? What is serving us? And what, what do we want? How do we want to be in this life? Is that something that I choose or you choose to continue to do? Because it is When it comes to how we're responding, it ultimately is a choice, right? It's not a choice whether, to us as individuals, whether who's in office or what wars are happening, right? But, but how am I, how am I going to respond is something that I have some influence over, and this is just a good time to think about that. Yeah. Mark: Yes. How am I going to show up to reality? Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And a perfectly legitimate approach to that, by the way, is a nice dash of escapism. You know, play your Dungeons and Dragons and watch your Netflix. I mean, checking out for a little while is something that can actually help support you at times when things seem a little overwhelming or unbearable. I mean, you probably want to curate those experiences so you're not watching super depressing movies. Maybe that's not the road you want to follow. Yucca: Unless that does it for you, right? My, my partner will look at things that are like, will get on Reddit and, you know, see the, the terrible relationships and the like, am I the asshole threads and go, wow, my life's not that bad. Mark: life is good, yeah! Yucca: that to be very, like, helpful. Now, if I look at that stuff, I just get it. so worked up and it makes it worse for me, but for some people that really does help. So it, so, you know, know yourself on that. Does that help? Does that not help? You know, what are you consuming? And is that, is that leading you in the way that you want to be developing yourself right now or not? Mark: absolutely. Yeah, that's well said. So, I think there's an opportunity, I mean, one thing that I do on New Year's Eve is I have a dark mirror. Which is a piece of, a circular piece of heavily tinted glass, which I then painted black on the back and put in a frame. Actually first I put a piece of cardboard in the frame and then the glass over the top of that so that there would be some, some backing so that it would be less likely to break the mirror, um, but then I also drew various sigils and arcane symbols and stuff on the cardboard before I put the glass on top of it, so they're, they're down in there somewhere. Yucca: So there's these layers. Okay. Mark: You can't see them at all through the glass, but they're there. And what I like to do is to sort of, you know, light a candle and contemplate my face in this dark mirror on New Year's Eve. I've only done it for a couple of years, but it's a cool thing. You can see this shadowy outline of your face. And if you just keep gazing into it, it all sort of dissolves into geometric shapes. And you just Then you find your mind wandering to particular places and things and ideas and thoughts and, and it's a It's an opportunity to check in with the subconscious, to sort of dip in a little bit and find out, well, what's going on down there? So, that's something you could do, I mean, by candlelight, you could do that with a regular mirror.  Yucca: And then you get that lovely flickering with that. Mark: right, yeah. So, something to think about, or some other form of, you know, so called divination, like reading Tarot, or whatever those are. I like the ones, for this kind of work, I like the ones where you work essentially with random imagery and then see what your mind makes out of it, right? Like serumancy, dripping candle wax into water, Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: and it creates shapes as it, you know, cools. And you can see different animals and symbols and all that kind of stuff. Yucca: Yeah? Mark: Yeah. Yucca: Mm hmm. I like the imagery of that. Mm hmm. Mm Mark: So that's looking back. That's, that's the work of reflection, which I think every person who really wants to be happy and wise has to do some of that. You know, you got to look at yourself. You got to look at the world. And there's, uh, you know, there's, there's a level of simply coming to terms and saying, okay, that's real. Yucca: Right. Mark: another level of going. And I'm grateful for all this other stuff that's going on, right? So, you know, the world is a very complex mixture. It's not like thumbs up, thumbs down, and the same is true of ourselves as individuals. And just coming to grips with all of that and having a level of acceptance and gratitude is very helpful, I think. thAt goes back to that thing about the three big lessons that I talk about. The big Okay, the big thank you and the big wow, Yucca: Right, so there's the reflection component there's the looking back and there's also the looking forward. Now I think the looking back, you've got to be able to do that, I think that really does need to come first, or part of it, to be able to look forward to What is it that you want, right? Mark: yeah, Yucca: And as we talked about last time, we're kind of in this dreaming period. We may not really be planting those seeds yet, but we are deciding what are those seeds that we might want to plant. What do we need to do to prepare? Mark: right. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And that goes into the ritual things that people do at the New Year around resolutions and all that kind of stuff, right? Because I mean, A New Year's resolution is rooted in an imagined self that has changed. It's like, okay, I picture myself and I do not drink six cups of coffee a day. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: And that's great. You know, it's great to have a vision for where you want to go as a person, whether it's something minor or something major. Personally, I don't do New Year's resolutions, and the reason that I don't do them is that the popular framing of them is kind of like the little drummer boy game, where it's like once you lose, it's over. Yucca: hmm. Mark: And if you're really trying to do something hard to change yourself, you have to give yourself some slack. If you're trying to get sober, and you do that for a week and then you have a drink, you don't quit trying to get sober, you just start over, right? Yucca: Right, you get back up, dust yourself off, and keep going. Yeah. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: So I think that one of the things that sometimes we are very good at or don't have a lot of practice in is that, that getting back up part and planning in how, what could go wrong and how am I going to respond when it does go wrong. Mark: Good point. Yucca: And I think that If you are incorporating that into your planning, whatever it is, whether you're planning your financial future, or the process of quitting smoking or drinking, or all of those, any of those things, you are, you're being more realistic, first of all, about the world that we live in, because mistakes do happen. You're, you're building in resilience to being able to better achieve whatever that is. So I think that's a really important step that we forget to do. Mark: Yes. And the self compassion step in there as well. Not excuse making, but recognizing that we're all fallible and that any kind of real personal transformation that's the kind of thing that a New Year's resolution might be made about is not easy, right? It's just not easy. And, um, it is remarkable the degree to which our behaviors as humans are. The Power of Habit and Routine --- Mark: Habitual. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: You know, we have routines for our day, we have routines for making our coffee, we have routines for, you know, what we do about lunch, we have just lots and lots of routines, routines, you know, when we're getting ready to go to bed.  Yucca: And there's a very, very practical reason for all of that. So that all of that isn't taking up our space for the other stuff that we need to be doing. For all the other stuff we need to be thinking about. We're not, every time we make our coffee, we aren't going through those steps. We're not giving it the mental energy. Mark: Right. Okay, Yucca: something else. Mark: water. Yucca: Yes, oh wait, when I move my hand, yeah, that's all, that's all just ingrained so that we can do other things and pay attention to the things that might matter more. Now there's today probably not a tiger about to getcha, but we needed the space to be able to be aware for a possible tiger to get to. Now we're thinking about the interaction that we're going to have with our colleague or whatever we're going to tell to our uncle when they say that super offensive thing. But, yeah. Mark: Yeah. And so, because, because so much of what we do is this sort of pre programmed pathway of habit. It can be very hard to reprogram that stuff, because once you start the process, the rest of the steps are automatic. You do this, and then all of those other things just naturally follow. And to be able to be self aware enough in any given moment to say, wait, I'm not going to go any further with this. I'm going to do something else. That is an effort, and it, it requires some real focus, and if you're not able to do it all the time, it requires some real compassion with yourself, so that instead of feeling like a failure or, you know, a moral degenerate, you just feel like someone who is trying to do something hard and is learning how to do it. Yucca: Yeah. And another component is that, that doing those hard things is a skill, um, and sometimes we try to jump to, to a bigger task than we might be ready for, than a bigger change, right? Sometimes we might need to make some smaller changes, get good at practicing. That change before we go to something even bigger. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: And that's just going to depend on whatever it is that you're working on. Mm. Mm Mark: So, having said all that, I'm not a big fan of New Year's resolutions because, as I said, the idea is that it's like a piece of glass. It's like, if it's broken, then it's no longer of any use. And, So, to me, that's just, it's a very, well, frankly, a very Protestant way of looking at things. It's got a lot of judgment folded into it, and it just doesn't really work for me. Setting Themes Instead of Resolutions --- Mark: So what I like to do is to set themes for the new year that are kind of areas that I'm going to pay attention to and work to foster in my life. Yucca: Mm Mark: So, like, last year, My theme this year, actually, my themes were prosperity and security, um, because I hadn't had a job for a year and eight months at that point. I needed to get a job.  Yucca: Hmm. Mark: you know, and I did get a job and now I'm working in it and it's lively. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: It's if, you know, Folks that are listening to the podcast that have been on the Facebook or Discord communities know that I am about to be appointed as the Interim Executive Director of the environmental organization that I work for, and there are crises that we are dealing with that are very challenging, and they're going to land in my lap when the previous Executive Director leaves, which was already planned before the crises happened. So, it's not his fault, but still it's, it's a very lively time, and I'm not getting time off at the holidays that I expected to get because I've got to work through the end of the year when he goes. So, but I got a job, and it's a good job working for The protection of wilderness and, and wild places and biodiversity hotspots. So that's, that's pretty cool work to be doing. Yucca: Yeah, so you like to set themes instead of resolutions. And is that something that you do, um, at the same time as your dark mirror ritual? Or is that a separate thing for you? Mark: That's kind of a separate thing. And it doesn't necessarily have to happen like on New Year's Day. Usually I, I do it in the first week of the year, something like that. Just as things are starting to get rolling again, the, the normality is reasserting itself after the strange, still frenzied window of the holidays. Yucca: Mm Mark: Um, so yeah, that's, that's generally when I do it, and I'm still not clear about what my themes will be for the coming year. Um, but I've started thinking about it. Right? Yucca: hmm. Mm Mark: Uh, I, I do have the, the advantage of not having, I mean, I'm going to my Ritual Circles Yule Gathering today, which is sort of my big social Christmas y, Yule y thing. Um, but, I have no plans on Christmas Day itself, so You know, at least that I get off, uh, and I don't know, I'm, I'm gonna try to pry out some more time next week if I possibly can, but it really just depends on what's going on. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: How about you? What are your New Year's practices? Yucca: It's not particularly formal. I, I do like the resolutions it, as long as it has the what we were built, we were talking about built into it where it isn't like a, oh well, I messed it up and can't try again. But I'm, I'm more of a fan of making choices and resolutions. When I, when it comes up, right? So I think that this is a really important time of year to be doing reflection, but I try and do that throughout the year. aNd I'm a little hesitant about the doing anything where I say, oh, I'll wait till Start it on Monday, or start at the beginning of the month, or start at the beginning of the year, because that stuff actually means you don't really want to do it, right? You're not going to do it. If you're really going to do it, start now. Not tonight, not tomorrow, not Monday, now. So I'm kind of in that camp of just like, if I'm going to do it, yeah, I'm a kind of cold turkey person, right? Or pull the band aid off, where just, I'm just going to do it. But know that sometimes I will slip up. And then I have to be, and I can't do the whole, oh, well, I guess, you know, I slipped up, I'll, you know, I'll just do it again and start better tomorrow. Nope, you just gotta be on it. And that's just my particular personality that I've Mark: Huh. Yucca: Some people are very different with that. But I do like the idea of there being a time where people are reflecting on what they want and actively deciding to make a change. Whether that ends up working out or not is a different thing, but I think that it's really important to have that. So I value that that's something that our culture does. I think we could work on the skills around that. Mark: Yeah, that, that's, that's a good point, too. The, yes, there are skills required to have that kind of discipline and, and self compassion. You know, the other thing I wanted to put a word in for is We tend to think of New Year's resolutions as always being something that's like, you know, taking your medicine. It's some, you know, I'm going to abstain from something or I'm going to Yucca: Well, the classic one is I'm going to go to the gym every Mark: Yes. Yucca: the going to the gym is the classic one, right? Yeah. Or losing that 20 pounds. Mark: Yes. Whereas It's also possible to have resolutions that are about good things that you want to add into your life, right? You know, you, you, you could certainly say to yourself, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna carve out Sunday afternoons and I'm gonna go for a hike every Sunday afternoon. That's what I'm gonna do. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And that's good for you. I mean, that, that, that would be a pleasurable experience that you'd be doing for yourself. You know, something that's additive to your life, you know, it could be I'm going to start having date nights and I'm going to have more sex in my life. It could be I'm going to make sure that I get to that restaurant that I love so much once a month. You know, any of those things. Yucca: And let's, let's take one of those as an example. Let's say it's the going for a hike on Sundays, right?  Planning for Success in the New Year --- Yucca: If that is the thing that you're thinking about, well, you can go, okay, well, What can I do right now to help set that up to be more likely for me to be able to do that? And for me, that would be, I'm going to put it in my calendar right now. It's pretty easy to do that. I have a digital cal I like, I have a physical and a digital, but my digital is my main one, then I copy it onto my physical and go, okay, I'm going to see that on my calendar every day. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: And then I'm going to think about, okay, well, what am I going to do If the weather is XYZ, right? Okay, I'm going to set it up right now that I have the equipment that I need to be able to do it. So if it's raining, I'm not going to go, oh, I guess I can't go out because I don't have a raincoat. I just got myself a raincoat, so I can go out, right? I've looked up places that I can go. So when you're in this, like, I'm, when you're in the moment of deciding that that's what you're going to do, you've got energy around it. Think about how you can set yourself up to succeed in that. Mark: Yeah, I mean, in the hiking example, I think one thing that you can do immediately is go get yourself a pair of hiking boots. Yucca: Yeah, right? Get yourself the hiking boots and figure out some of the places. Maybe find a group, if that's what you want to do. Maybe you don't want to go with a group, but is there a group that That is doing it, that you could, that you could join with and then have the positive peer pressure component to it, right? And we always say peer pressure is like this bad thing, but sometimes it's really helpful, right? Like, we've said it before, if this podcast was just one of us trying to do it, Wouldn't have worked, right? Because each week I know, oh, Mark's gonna be there waiting for me. Okay, I'm gonna do it. Whereas if it was just me by myself, we would have gotten a few episodes in 2020 and that'd be it. Right? Mark: Well, yeah, there is something about being accountable to other people. And creating whatever it is that you're trying to do to build some accountability expectation on the part of other people. I know meetup. com tends to have lots of hiking groups and, you know, people that like to do various outdoor things, so that's a resource that you can look for. Yucca: Right. And of course, whatever your goal is, I just grabbed that one because that was an easy one to talk about, right? But, but the point of it is to think about what's going to help me succeed, what might get in the way, how can I respond when that does happen? Because it, there will be a day that the weather is off. There will be a day that you're feeling sick. There will be, those things will happen. So, what are you going to do when they do? Mm Mark: right. And the good news is that as you start doing the thing and enjoying it, since we're talking about things that are additive, that are, that are, you know, that are pleasurable in your life, Um, it will feel weirder and weirder not to do it, because we are creatures of routine, right? And you can get that routine making pattern on your side if you just build up some consistency. Yucca: hmm. Mark: So starting at least with a social group, and I find that a social group is good for hiking. I mean, I like solo hiking a lot, but One thing that a social group is good for is that interactions with other people will tend to distract you from whether your body is hurting or not. Yucca: Yes. Mark: know, if you're having a conversation on the trail and your legs are starting to hurt, you'll, you'll tend to tamp that down to continue the conversation on the trail. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: So, you know, while you're building strength. Yucca: Right. All right, well, Mark, are there other things that you can think about for this turning of the year? Mark: You know, not really. My birthday is two days after New Year's Day, and so the two of them often, you know, they kind of get mushed together. And So the reflection piece tends to be, for me, it tends to be not just the last year, but also, like, life, Yucca: Right. Mark: What have I done? What am I doing? Where am I going? You know, all those kinds of big questions. So I do like to consider those as well, but I think that's really more of a birthday thing. You could do that at any time of the year, Yucca: Right, Mark: but a birthday is a good opportunity for it. Yucca: yeah, I think all of what we've been talking about is great for birthday whatever time of year your birthday is, Mark: Yeah. Even the resolutions, it's like a gift to yourself, right? You're gonna improve something. Yucca: new year, it's not the calendar's new year, but you're starting again, Mark: Right. Absolutely. Yeah. And yep, and mine actually falls on a Wednesday, like the day I was born this year. Yucca: Oh, I was also born on a Wednesday. Mark: Where are you? We're full of woe! Yucca: Yes. I've always liked Wednesday because when I was little, I learned to spell it as Wed nest day. And so every time I write the word, I say Wed nest day in my mind, even decades later. So I've just always enjoyed that day. Mark: That's great. Yucca: So, just the little things to make. Make things fun and enjoyable, Mark: Sure. Yeah. Closing Thoughts and Farewell --- Yucca: Well, we will see everyone again. I think our next episode will be the first. So we won't see all of you until the 2024. Yes. Wow. That sounds like a sci fi date. That doesn't sound real. Mark: God, it's, it's, well, you know, there's so, Yucca: Shouldn't it be like some Book series, or like, sci fi action should be named 20, 24. Mark: You know, there are times when my partner Nemea and I, we look at some of the technological things that are happening and we just say we're living in the future. You know, we remember what it was like in the 70s when a Texas Instruments TI 30 hand calculator was both expensive and rare and, and incredibly powerful, right? And now, you know, now we're doing custom gene based healthcare for people. Yucca: Yeah, Mark: It's like, it's amazing. Yucca: it's a cool time to be alive, right? That's something we should say, it's been, for all the challenges that are world is facing and that we're facing and the crises and all of that. It's also really, there's a lot of cool stuff Mark: there is, Yucca: and just the things we get to learn and the tools we have to study with and, and the opportunities that just didn't exist before. Mark: Right? Right. Yucca: Yeah, there's a, there's a lot, there's a lot to be really grateful for. Mark: Absolutely, and there's, of course, a lot of improvement that needs to happen on many fronts, and that's our responsibility as people who want a better world, um, but I mean, I've known some activists who have fallen into this terrible hole of everything is awful and they're just cynical about everything because it doesn't meet their perfect dream. I don't remember who said it, but something like inside cynic is a frustrated optimist. aNd, uh, no, a frustrated idealist. That was it, a frustrated idealist. And I really work hard not to have that happen, because I think it's such a narrow view of the world. The world is amazing. Life is an amazing ride. And yes, there are terrible things in it, and that's just how it is. The big okay. Yucca: Yep, Mark: Yeah. Well, Yucca, thank you so much. I wish you a Merry Christmas, um, Yucca: and a happy new Mark: a Happy New Year. Yes whatever your celebrations are over the course of the next week I hope that you enjoy them and spend them loved and warm and cozy. Yucca: and we'll see y'all next year.   

Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com.   S4E27 TRANSCRIPT:   ----more----   Mark: Welcome back to The Wonder, Science Based Paganism. I'm your host, Mark, Yucca: And I'm Yucca. Mark: and today we're talking about truth and reality. Yucca: Yes. So, there's a lot to talk about here. Mark: There is, there is, and that's, that's why we chose this topic, right? Because a lot of the places where we come into friction with other parts of the pagan community, and certainly friction with other religious perspectives other than atheism, is in the question of what is real and what is true, right? Yucca: hmm. Mm Mark: And I think what I want to start out with... The problem is that we have terrible language for this stuff. Yucca: hmm. Mark: Very imprecise language that uses one word to describe a lot of different things. Yucca: Right. I want to start also with with a little story from something my father used to say when I was little. And I don't know where he got it from, but when he would tell a story, and I would ask him, I'd say, Dad, is this a true story? He would say, Yes. The events didn't happen. But this is a true story. Mark: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah, like fables, Yucca: The Mark: Fables that illustrate moral principles. The moral principles may be something that we want to subscribe to, but that doesn't mean that the story about the chicken that was afraid that guy Yucca: sky was falling, or that nobody would help her make bread, or... Oh, there's a lot of chicken ones. Mark: are there? Yucca: Yeah, right? Mark: You would know more than me.  Yucca: But, so, when we say that word true, It can mean so many different things, right? Sometimes we mean it as, is it correct as in, you know, a mathematical problem, right? Is 2 plus 2 equals 5? Is that true or not, right? But we can also mean, is it true in that more, does it have importance, does it have meaning? So, Mark: or even in very broad philosophical senses, like, is it true that supply side trickle down economics benefits everyone in the society? And some people will say yes, that's true. I think the evidence is that it does not, but ultimately it comes down to what you believe and what your, what the underpinnings of that belief are, what your philosophies are, right? So when I see Truth. I used to just mean the objectively factual, the verifiable, right? Yucca: right, so sort of like a positivist approach to truth, right? So what is real can be verified empirically, and the best approach to find it is the scientific method. Right? That would be our positivism, yeah. Mark: that is true of phenomena in the objective universe outside of our skins. The earth is round ish, it's not flat. Doesn't matter what you believe about it, it's still round ish and not flat, right? We have overwhelming evidence that this is the case. And so, it's not 100% sure, because nothing in science is ever 100% sure, but there's so much evidence that it's not considered an open question at this point. It's considered settled science. It's a fact, right? But when you get to truths like... Justice and morality and good. There are truths in there too, but they're much more rooted in the philosophy and belief system of the person that's expressing them in the culture that they grew up in Yucca: Mhm. Mark: than it is about something that can be measured and factually checked. against other alternatives, right? Yucca: Right. And while we're giving things labels that would be more of a constructivist philosophical approach, right? That those beliefs are constructed from the society that you're part of and your experience and your species and that all of those things are building on each other to create reality or to create truth. Mark: Right, right. Your, your familial ideological context, all of those, all of those things accrete to form something that more or less hangs together as a, as a philosophical belief system, right? So, that I think is a part of the reason why it becomes very difficult to talk about what is true. Because as you say, the story, the events, May not have happened, but the story can still be true, and that's why myth is so important to us. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: You know, we are the storytelling apes, as we've said before, and telling stories, even science tells stories, science, you Yucca: Oh, absolutely. That's what it's about. There's very strict rules about how you tell that story, but that's what we're doing. Yeah. Mark: it tells, you know, chronological procedural steps, events that take place, where, you know, something becomes something else, or something comes into being and, and so it's important for us to recognize, I think, The value that storytelling has for us in the abstract, Yucca: hmm. Mark: because just because something is not objectively factual doesn't mean that it can't be emotionally moving morally instructive eye opening in perspective, Yucca: hmm. Mark: You know, broadening your, your understanding of the human condition and the life that we live. So, all of those things are, are true, right? And none of them is, you know, can be subjected to a grass, a gas chromatograph. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: You can't, you, you can't measure those kinds of things. Yucca: Right. Mark: So, I actually made a little Venn diagram using the wrong tool for making Venn diagrams. I used Microsoft Word earlier today. And I've got four circles. I've got objectively verifiable facts. I've got believed truth, cultural truth, and then what overlaps all three of those is personal reality. Yucca: How are you distinguishing between the believed and cultural? Mark: Well, here's a good example. The cultural truth of the United States is Christian. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: It is, you know, that, that is, You know, the cultural truth is what I would call the over culture, Yucca: Mm Mark: whereas the individual's personal reality might vary from that, the believed truth. You know, so we don't subscribe to many of the values or or even cosmological beliefs of the cultural truth. But we do. And so we have our own believed truth. Yucca: Okay, Mark: That make sense? Yucca: does, yeah. So just getting a sense of how you're using those words. Mark: Yeah. And this, once again is where language is just really not very useful. I mean, having to use all these qualifiers for words, words like truth and real and fact and things like that is, it's frustrating. And because I have spoken a couple of other languages, I know that it's not entirely capturing what I'm trying to say. Yucca: right. Mark: We don't have quite the right words in our language to capture what I want to say. Yucca: So I don't know if any language, some might have words that are, that are better fit, but, but language is just something that we're trying to to, to communicate these ideas, but the ideas are, language isn't enough. Right? And so I think that it's helpful for us to try to articulate it anyways, because that forces us to clarify our thinking around it, right? We can't just throw a word on it and say that's, that's what it is, right? We have to really think about what are we trying to actually say. And that's tricky, because we're trying to think about, we're trying to think about our own process of thinking. Mark: Yes. Yucca: more challenging than it sounds like on the surface and then put down, and think about other people's approach to it, and of course we are just these limited, limited beings, right? We don't experience everything, we only get to be around for, exist for a very short period of time, and most of the time that we're existing for, we're not even conscious for. Mark: Right. And our brains constantly edit, massage, invent fill in the blanks. of our perceptual array filter our perceptions in order to create an inner model of the universe that we can interact with, right? And so we can determine that things are true when there's very little evidence that relates to them. Even, even people conclude that things are objectively true, like ghosts and... Spirits and gods and stuff like that with very little evidence, but they will conclude that it's true because they have experiences that are filtered through their own filtration process that will make what appears to be evidence for them. Yucca: Right. Mark: And while I tend to be very, very skeptical about those kinds of processes and skeptical, you know, when I have an experience that strikes me as violating the laws of physics, and I have had a few, Yucca: Mm Mark: um, My immediate question is, okay, you know, what went wrong with my sensorium? You know, how am I, how did I misperceive this and misinterpret what it meant? Others may not do that. Yucca: Mm Mark: And one thing that I also wanted to talk about today is the way that we relativistically value certain kinds of truth relative to other kinds of truth, which is a cultural thing, and I think that, particularly in the West, with with our domination of of science and technology and, you know, the, the kind of linear thinking. What's the word I'm looking for? When you take things apart. Reductionist. That's what I'm looking for. The, we, we tend to, Yucca: reductionism. Mark: yes, Yucca: Yeah. Mark: We tend to place that which can be verified up on kind of a pedestal. As being somehow more important than the other flavors of truth, the other varieties of, of truth Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: that we experience in our lives. And what's weird about that is that in an actual human life, that's not how it works at all. I mean, yes, when you're young, it's useful to be able to determine, you know, what a fire is so you don't burn yourself with it. But as we get older, the questions that we ask ourselves are, what does this feel like? Yucca: Mm Mark: You know, does this feel like the right thing to do? Is this, is this moral? Is this just? Is this kind? Those kinds of questions, and those are things that there is no meter to measure. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mm. Mm Mark: So I think, for example, about, like, take the Lord of the Rings, right? This is a semi sacred text to many people you know, there, there are lots of folks out there who read it every year and are, you know, deeply steeped in the whole lore of, Yucca: My family read it every single year. Mark: Huh. Huh, you know, just immersed in the beauty of and the drama of Tolkien's imaginary world. Now, Middle earth doesn't really, I hate to break this to you, but Middle earth really doesn't exist to our knowledge in any material sense. Yucca: Right. It was, you know, loosely based off of Europe, but not in the sense that of an actual book. You can't go and say, oh, you know, Mount Doom is Vesuvius or something, like it doesn't actually line up. Mark: Right. Yucca: It was meant more to be spirit, right, than in physical body. Mark: Right. Right. Right. But it can be profoundly impactful on us emotionally and even in terms of our thinking about Ethical questions, moral questions, you know, what would Galadriel do? So I think that the discounting of the mythological, the, you know, the fictional, but still containing kernels of, of meaningful human knowledge, narratives that we have, And certainly the the the culturally developed principles like fairness and justice and so forth. I mean, these are very important. And what, even though you can't measure them, they're, it's still very important. And I think that we, especially as atheists, we can get accused of over, overemphasizing the, the material positivist verifiably, Extant stuff Yucca: Right. Mark: relative to the rest. Yucca: I think there has to be a balance, too, though. Because so many times we have seen people's that reality that approach being valued over some of what's objectively happening, right? We think in ecology, right, there was a cultural belief about predators being bad. And we went and got rid of the predators. That did not help the ecosystem, though. Objectively, the predators had to be there. Same thing with the grazers, right? We take the grazers out, we take the predators out, the system falls apart. No matter how much you believe about, oh, the poor little deer, Right? Like, the system still falls apart if you take the predators out. Mark: Absolutely. Yucca: so I think that it's a tricky balance when looking at and trying to, to figure out how to make choices how to balance what knowledge we're looking at, what, how are we approaching the, the cultural versus some of the objective, and not saying that one is better than the other, but that there are places for each of those. Mark: Yeah, that, that's exactly where I'm going with this, because what I'm, what I'm expressing is that I think that we need to elevate the value of the mythic, but that's not an excuse for scientific illiteracy. Yucca: Right. Mark: You know, we having a good story about the nature of reality is not the same thing as having good knowledge about the nature of reality. And, unfortunately, there are an awful lot of people out there who simply choose, okay, I'm gonna go with this story, I'm gonna go with this story about, you know, this resurrection and original sin and virgin births and all that kind of stuff, or I'm gonna go with a story about Odin, or I'm gonna go with a story about, you know, anyway, name, name your divinity of choice, right? Yucca: Well, and I and I would like to say that I don't think it's just within believing in deities or things like that. But people will also do things, stories that don't really line up with current scientific understanding, but is they like their version of, and I see this with a lot of like the really a great aggressive atheists who like they get this idea of like, this is what science says. And it's like, yeah, that's That's like an 18th century understanding, like, science has progressed, you know, significantly since then, but you're going with this one story and you're deciding that that's what it is and not deviating. Like, that's not, that's not how science works. Mark: And similarly, many critics of science will point back to scientific thought and statements from a hundred, a hundred and fifty years ago and say, well, science is just racist. It's a colonialist, racist ideology, and that's all that it is, so you can discount it. Yucca: Yeah. Which is, no, it, the people who were doing science Existed within a cultural context and sometimes abused the tools to their own end yeah. And that's happening today too, right? But our responsibility as informed citizens and as scientists is to not let that happen Mark: Mm hmm. Yucca: we see it, hmm. Mark: Absolutely. And so, as I am so fond of saying, the solution to bad science is more and better science. It's, it's not to throw that whole system out and say, okay, let's just go with the story we made up. That being said, and understanding that You know, deliberately choosing to believe in a world that is populated by invisible beings and has, you know, invisible forces that you can manipulate in order to affect the course of events and stuff like that. I mean, I can understand why that's attractive in some ways. It's very um, romantic. That's exactly the word. But it doesn't really reflect what we understand. And. My paganism, my spirituality, is deeply rooted in the idea that I want to be here. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: I love the stories, I love the movies, I love the, you know, all that stuff, but I want to be connected with the reality of what this life experience is as best I can and to celebrate and be wowed by that. Mm Yucca: Right. And that's something that we've talked about a lot on the podcast, and we should do another Wow and Wonder episode, right, where we share some of that stuff, but that, that our reality is unbelievable. It is amazing. It's whatever scale you look at, it, I mean, just wow. Mark: Mm hmm. Yucca: Right? And you can just go down and down into the single drop of water, and all of the complex, incredible interactions and creatures that exist in that single drop of water, all the way up to the scale of the observable universe. It's just, there's so much, and we could spend every moment of our waking life discovering more and more, and still not even begin to scratch the surface. And it's just... It's incredible. Everything that, every day when I learn a new thing, it's just amazing. It's just, wow, wow, wow. This is, so personally, I don't feel like I need the invisible beings. Like, and if they're, if they're there, that's cool. Like, could, I'd love to discover them. But in the meantime, like, I'm, I'm pretty happy with tardigrades. It's pretty amazing, right? Mark: they sure are. Yeah, I feel, unsurprisingly, I feel the same way. The... If there are, if there is a supernatural dimension to reality, Yucca: Mm Mark: or a dimension in which the kinds of things that theists and believers in magic subscribe to, whether or not it's natural, you know, maybe there are other physical laws that apply in that context or something. There's little enough evidence for it that I can ignore it. I, I will cheerfully pay attention to the stuff for which there is abundant evidence. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: You know, I don't, I don't have time in this life to go sifting through all of that, much less deal with stuff that may or may not be there. So, I mean, it's, it's a, it's a very sort of pragmatic decision to make as well as a, as a philosophical one, right? It's just like, well, you know, I wouldn't want to spend a whole lot of time on something that turned out not to be there. So I'm, I'm. I'm just going to look at this gigantic pile of amazing Yucca: hmm. So, pragmatic critical realism? Is that where we're getting into? Mark: something like... Yeah, something like. But I do want to say that I think, I mean, part of the problem that we have, I think, with religiosity at least certainly in the United States, is that people are subscribing to religion and then, and then turning off any curiosity and, and deliberately resisting any curiosity from a scientific standpoint. You know, how does this work? What makes this that, that way? And they just, they've got this. There's a magical wand that they wave at it that said the gods did it, or God did it, and what that enables them to do then is to fill their, their world perspective with stuff that clashes vehemently with the evidence that we have, like people that are climate change deniers and, you know, flat earth folks and, you know, those kinds of things. Yucca: The second one is the one that always just makes, like, I can understand the first one about the climate change one, right? But the flat earth one, like, like, you, you can see it, Mark: Only if you believe that we've ever launched anything from earth. Yucca: but, like, you can see the horizon. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: Like, that's the, that's the one that I'm like, well, but you can literally see it with your own, like, the climate stuff, you've got to like, you've got to trust that the data that's being collected is, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? But, but you can use your own eyes to verify that the Earth is not flat, that it's not spherical, right? And that's the one that I've just... It gets me. I'm just like, it's just, y'all, this is not, Mark: I, Yucca: that you're saying that you don't want to trust all of these, like, crazy, that we're all in on some huge conspiracy to, like, trick you and make Photoshop documents and stuff, but, like, you can do the trick with a laser and, like, shine it over distance, you can see through the horizon when you're at the sea, like, you can go up in an airplane, like, you know, it's, you can see it. Mark: yeah. I think that what Flat Earthism is about fundamentally is just a rejection of science as a whole. Yucca: Yeah, and getting attention. Mark: yes. Yes. The whole idea of expertise, right? Like, I'm not going to believe those people. I'm going to do my own research, and my own research involves, you know, digging two pages deep on Google as opposed to spending years studying meticulously the, the, the data and the analysis that's been applied by people who are very knowledgeable in these subjects Yucca: For thousands of years, by the way, Mark: For thousands of years, yes. I mean, not, not just in the context of Western laboratories and stuff, but I mean, indigenous people know how all the plants work because they did trial and error and experimented and figured it out, Yucca: yeah, Mark: you know, it's, the, the idea that the scientific method is something that doesn't belong to all people just doesn't hold up very well in my, Yucca: no, the scientific method is a, is based on human, the way that humans instinctually, all humans think, right? It is, it is grown out of that and there are, there's a specific Western tradition, right? But that is one tradition. Out of the thousands, right, that led to, that just gave names, right, like, okay, we've got some Greek names that we're using, but it's not like, you know, here in the Americas, we weren't using those same methods, right? Mark: right, right. And, mm hmm. Now, now we get into the trouble about, well, what do we mean by science? Do we mean the scientific method? Do we mean the accumulated body of knowledge that has, that has been accreted by the scientific method? Or do we mean institutions that that are scientific? And the institutions certainly have been, they, they've had their problems. Yucca: absolutely, Mark: they, they've been informed by cultural biases and, Yucca: And they still are, Mark: And they still are. And in some cases, they've been influenced by where their funding comes from Yucca: yes, Mark: which is another problem. And, you know, I think it's important for all of us to acknowledge that and to apply critical thinking and skepticism to what we see. But critical thinking and skepticism doesn't mean I reject the opinion of all experts, Yucca: yeah, yeah, Mark: or I'm going to find experts who confirm what I already wanted to believe. What it means is Having knowledge about how methodology works, understanding what actually, being able to parse out whether a conclusion that's drawn in a paper or a statement actually has any meaning. Coherence with the, The findings? Yucca: you would be really surprised at how often they don't. Mark: I wouldn't. Yucca: Well you get, Mark: But, but I think many would. Yeah, Yucca: many, and there's certain fields that it's more of an issue in than others, but you read the conclusion, then you look at the data and you go, that's not no If you were my student, I'd fail you. How did you get published? Mark: you didn't, you didn't prove that. And then usually there's a sort of clickbaity headline in the title of the paper or certainly the press release that is sent out about the paper that then further distorts the conclusion that was drawn by the paper. Yucca: So yeah, , the science journalism is an area with some real challenges. Right now and there's so much that goes out there. It's just like, that's just not, it's, they're just falsehoods. This is not what was said in that paper, first of all and, you know, just, so I, I, I understand where some of the frustration with the science as the institution is coming from. But then it just gets, and I think that the way that social media is structured right now doesn't help it because it will, people kind of get wrapped up in this, these groups that are forming identities around objecting to science or othering some particular group or some, you know, kind of extreme position or You know, things that are just not supported by the science or are being represented as science, which really aren't scientific, get incorporated into the mainstream. And people go along with these beliefs about, oh, this is what the science says, and it's not. Mark: Right. Yucca: me a single paper. Nope, you Mark: Well, and, and you, you, you complicate and extrapolate that when you have leaders who are hucksters, who, who articulate these falsehoods, like from the pulpit, Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: and encourage everybody to disbelieve in anthropogenic climate change, encourage people to, you know, not to believe science, not to believe in evolution, these kinds of things. Yucca: And then you have got folks using a lot of that for whatever their particular platform is. When it's not, you know, where they're making certain claims or exaggerations that isn't really supported by the science.  Mark: Well, one thing that, one thing that I have thought about recently is that we really need to make a distinction between skepticism, which is a process of inquiry, and cynicism, which is just the desire to tear everything down that isn't consistent with what you wanted to believe in the first place. Yucca: Hmm. Mark: And there's an awful lot of people out there including in the atheist community, many of them, who call themselves skeptics, and what they really are is just cynics. You know, they're, they're not even trying to have an open minded inquiry into what's likely to be true, so much as they are just trying to tear down everything that, that they don't like. In our lives. In our, you know, in our entertainments, in our in our politics, in our in our religious rituals, we, we do something that we often call suspension of disbelief. But I think what it is more is suspension of skepticism. We choose to turn off that analytical lens that says, like, have you ever sat next to somebody in a movie and they're like, no, the, that light angle isn't right, this was done with CGI. You know, they're, they're constantly, like, breaking the, the spell. Of the movie? Very frustrating.  Yucca: My partner won't watch sci fi with me for that reason. Mark: oh, Yucca: I have to keep my mouth shut. I'm like, nope! Gravity doesn't work like that! Stop it! Mark: I, I mean, Yucca: not to do it in a movie theater, though. Mark: okay, well, good, good. Then we can still be friends.  Yucca: My lip, but... Mark: all right. So, suspen suspension of skepticism. I do that when I do my, my atheopagan rituals. I certainly do that, you know. In that moment, I, Who am I? You know, I'm a wizard. I'm a, I'm a manipulator of grand forces in the world, you know, who's making, you know, who's expressing wonder and awe and gratitude for this amazing life and putting out that I hope that these things will happen in the world. And that doesn't have to be undercut by all the little niggling voices that might try to cynically suck all the juice out of that moment, right? You know, I don't go to the Grand Canyon and think, well, it's only a hole in the ground. Yucca: Huh. Mm Mark: That doesn't, it doesn't feed me in any substantive way. And so I think that the, the excessive elevation of the technological and the scientific in certain circles anyway I mean, it may not be quite as bad as the elevation of uninformed religiosity, but it's still. Generally, you know, reason, rationality science are, generally in our society, they're viewed by important people, by the, the people that are, that are in the newspaper and are telling us the news and all that kind of stuff as being important. the mythic, and the mythic is not given that as much. Yucca: Right. I think there's irony in that, though, that I think that there's overall very poor scientific literacy within our culture, Mark: Yes, Yucca: right, and so we do elevate that, you know, the science and the rationality, but that I think that we do so in a way that puts it more in that, like, Mark: mythic? Yucca: in the mythic box, right, Mark: Yeah, because we don't understand how it works. Yucca: Yeah, so we just like, you know, switched what the particular thing is that we're being told to believe. And said, oh, it's because it's science, right? But without really understanding, without understanding science in any of the three ways that we just used the term, right? Mark: yes. And certainly there is little effort to foster scientific literacy in the United States, certainly. I think that's less true in some other places. And so we're kind of forced to treat science as this magical black box that answers questions for us and that technologies fall out of that we then get to use and buy and enjoy. Yucca: fonts and colors associated with it, and yes, and you know, beep boops and sounds like that, right? Mark: Huh. Yeah, absolutely. And we insist on that, right? We, there's a particular kind of look and feel to a computer that will sell a computer, and there's a look and feel that will not sell a computer, and the people that make computers know very well what the difference is. Yucca: Right? And if you are... If you're a college kid going into one of those fields, you are expected to look and behave a certain way and, Mark: Right, Yucca: Not another way, right? And that gets taught to us from when we're itty bitty. Mark: Yeah. Yep. Well, and, and this is part of the challenge, because we have accumulated enough knowledge now that no one can Encompass all of it. Yucca: Mm Mark: It's just not possible within a lifetime in one human brain. So you kind of have to specialize, especially if you're really going to go into a subject, you have to specialize. But for a general scientific literacy, it's... It's a work of many years. It's a work of a lifetime, honestly. I mean, you, because there's always new stuff being discovered. So, you know, I'm always reading sciencedailyandnature. com and scientificamerican. com just to kind of keep up with the very tiny crust on the surface of all the stuff that's being done out there. Yucca: Hmm. This is actually the subject that, assuming that they approve it, that I'm doing my dissertation in for my doctorate in STEM education is... Scientific literacy, public literacy, yeah. Mark: cool. Yucca: So there's not as much research in the area as you would think there would be. Mark: Huh. Yucca: When I started looking into it, I was like, oh, this is, this is gonna be a saturated field. But it's not. There's very little. Mark: Well, new paths to scientific literacy would certainly be welcome. I mean, I know that you're a very strong critic of the traditional American education system. I am too. But the question is, how then do people absorb Yucca: Right. And I'm definitely looking at it from the... Mark: Ah. Yucca: So, because we do most of our learning as adults, Mark: Mm hmm. Yucca: right? Certainly, most kids in this country go through a school system, and there's a lot of people working on that, and, you know, we could do a whole episode on that. critiques that I have of the system of school itself and how we've confused that with education and, you know, what the purpose of it is, but as a, as a scientist, I learned a few things in school, right? I learned some, how to do some processes and things like that, but the vast majority of what I know happened just because I was interested in the topic and just continued to learn it. And I think that most people learn. That way as well. Mark: Yes. Yeah, that's certainly true for me. I mean, you know, it's all been about deep dives into stuff that I, that I'm curious about. I mean, one of the atheopagan principles is curiosity, understanding that there's always more to be learned, right? And learning is a wonderful process. It's a pleasurable process. It's not only that it informs you more, but yeah. It's, it's joyful. Yucca: yeah. Mark: And joyful things are things we're in favor of. So, Yucca: Right. Mark: go out and learn something today. Yucca: Well, learning is something that we continue to do no matter what. We are humans and that's part of what we do, but we can be intentional about it or unintentional about it, right? So Mark: Yeah. So, talking about truth and reality Yucca: you did, before we started recording, you did, we were talking a little bit about quantum mechanics and you said you wanted to touch on the idea that measurement Mark: oh yes, yes, this is, Yucca: how we, I don't know how to tie this in Mark: You can hear the exasperation in my voice as, you know, when this comes up because there are so many people. There are people in the pagan community, people in the New Age community, people in in, you know, various other kind of religious communities for whom quantum mechanics, which they usually call quantum physics, is a Yucca: in for magic? Mark: Yes, yes, it's a, you know, you, you wave your hands vaguely in a gesture at this, and what you mean is we don't understand it and therefore it is the cause of the thing I want to believe in. And one of the, one of the experiments and findings in quantum mechanics that is most misinterpreted is the idea that an observation affects The, the, the decoherence of a superposition particle, particle, wavicle phenomenon, Yucca: Mm Mark: um, and that's not what observation means in physics. What an observation means in physics is a measurement, and a measurement necessarily requires an interaction, and that's what causes decoherence. That's what causes A quantum body to be affected is interaction with its environment. So it's not that your consciousness is changing anything in the quantum world. We have no evidence ever that that is true. It's that in the act of trying to figure out what one of those particles is doing, you have to interact with it. Soon as you interact with it, it decoheres. Yucca: right. Mark: then, you can take a measurement, but You're not measuring the thing that you originally were reaching towards with your measuring stick, you're measuring what it became after the interaction. Yucca: So let me give a kind of an analogy on a larger scale. So I want to know, I want to see where something is, right? Well, in order for me to see it, Light has to bounce off of it, and that has to go into my eye. So it had to interact, that photon had to interact with it in order for me to be able to see it, right? So that's on a bigger scale, but that's going to apply on our small scale as well. Mark: Exactly, exactly. And unfortunately, there was quite a lot of gobbledygook published about quantum mechanics early in its history, which has sort of, Mucked up the waters and created a lot more of this sense of, wow, quantum mechanics is very weird and mysterious. Well, it is weird and mysterious, but it's not nearly as weird and mysterious as a lot of people seem to think it is. We've, you know, we've learned a good bit about it. The big mystery, of course, is where's the theory of everything? How do you get classical physics, you know, relativistic physics, to, to work with quantum mechanics because they clash? Yucca: right. Mark: So, that's the big mystery. There's a lot of very smart people working on it, and maybe someday we'll know the answer to that. Yucca: It's delightful because each of those different approaches are very very good at explaining specific Phenomena, but completely fall apart when trying to explain other ones, so we know they're both wrong, Mark: Yeah, Yucca: right? And that's delightful, that's really fun to think Mark: We know that both of those systems are flawed, and to the degree that we understand them at all, we understand that they don't mesh. Very well, they contradict one another. Yucca: But they are still useful, Mark: Oh yeah, Yucca: right? And this happens in physics all over the place, you know, we're going to calculate the path of the baseball that I throw, and I'm not, like, I'm not including all of the different Little pieces of information. I'm not going to get it exactly, but I'm going to get it close enough to what I need for it to be useful, and I'm just going to use, do what I need for it to be useful, right? Mark: So Yucca: I was going to say, Mark: oh go ahead, Yucca: what you were saying with the, you know, a lot of the gobbledygook that's been published about it, there's also a lot of things That, that I come across, especially when teaching, where there's a lot of confusion between what are some really cool ideas, like when people talk about like multiverses or things like that, that, like those are very interesting ideas, but they're not science. Right? And there's a, you know, and do we know whether string theory is correct, or things like, you know, or a few months ago, you know, the, speaking about the bad reporting, saying that, you know, oh, scientists created a black hole, and it could, like, no, they didn't. There was a computer program that they ran with, conditions that were slightly different than our universe, in which they were able to simulate and show that a black hole would... form under these conditions. Right, like, so, there's a lot of stuff out there that is science fiction that may one day become science, right? But it's not science until it's falsifiable, right? Can't falsify, but it's not science right now, and it gets treated like it is, right? And it's and it, it can be so, so confusing. Mark: yeah, exactly, and when you have a population of people who, to begin with, aren't very scientifically literate, but are looking for an answer. Kind of mysterious forces that might serve as an explanation for things that they choose to believe in. Well, quantum mechanics is a pretty good candidate because it has a little weirdness about it. And it's, it's at a scale that's invisible to us with the naked eye, so we don't actually have to deal with it at all. We can just sort of use it as this placeholder for the magic thing that I wish existed. Yucca: And there are a few things that, when you hear about, they kind of do sound a little... Magick y, you know, quantum tunneling sounds pretty magick y to me, right, when you think about it, or you're like, okay, yeah entanglement, that sounds pretty Mark: yeah, Bell's theorem you know, the, the simultaneous snapping into identical spin of particles that are separated by parsecs, right? So, yes, I mean, there are things that are, that are mysterious and weird, and they, they point in the direction of new learning that we need to do, Yucca: yeah. Mark: If the data's good, because it's possible that our instruments are not perfect, too, Yucca: Or that we're, that we're missing something, that we're really, we're interpreting something in the wrong way, Mark: Ah  Yucca: is always possible. So, something that I think a lot about is are you familiar with the idea of the ether? It's luminiferous aether. Okay, so we used to think, it was quite common to think that there had to be some sort of substance that light was traveling through, because all the other waves that we knew of went through something, right? Sound goes through the air, ocean waves go through the water, so what's light going through? So there was this assumption that there was this something permeating. And I'm trying to remember the names of the two gentlemen who set this up, I'm going to look this up real quick so that I get the name of it right. So, okay. The Michelson Morley experiment. Right? So, it was trying to measure the relative motion of the Earth in the aether. And they did it over and over again, and they kept not finding the aether, because we don't think it exists today. Right? And they said, okay, maybe we need to make it bigger and bigger and bigger, maybe, you know, it's just too small. That experiment is... The setup for it is almost identical to how LIGO works, which is the gravitational wave observatory. So, if we had somehow been able to make it large enough, that it would have been able to pick up gravitational waves, we would have interpreted the gravitational waves at the time as being evidence for the Mark: Or the ether. Yucca: So, who knows, today, what we've found that we're interpreting as being evidence for one thing, which is, is something completely different. And we're just, we're going off in some direction, and we're totally wrong about it. You know, science is a self correcting process, so at some point, hopefully, we'll circle back around and correct it, but I personally suspect that most of what we think we know we're wrong about, but we don't really have a way of knowing that yet, so. But that particular example just delights me that, you know, if we had been able to make it four kilometers long, we would have detected gravitational waves instead of ether, Mark: Huh. Yucca: so. Mark: On a completely unrelated note ether is a very useful trope in steampunk Yucca: It Mark: design and fiction and all that kind of stuff. My partner and I did a an etheric explorer's ball party, Yucca: Ooh, Mark: party that was so much fun. This must be 10, 12 years ago now, but oh, God, what a good time. Yucca: I think I've seen some photos of you in your outfit Mark: Oh yes, Commander Basterton, Yucca: Yes, oh, that's a great name. Mark: conquered Mars for the Empire. Yucca: Mmm, Mark: Yeah, Raleigh Houghton Basterton whose men call him Really Rotten Basterton. Yucca: that's great. Mark: Yeah, pretty fun. I have, I still have some of the business cards. You know, Commander of Her Majesty's Imperial Ship Improbable. Yucca: Mmm, that's a good one. Yeah, well there's a lot of, there's a lot of good material for sci fi out of all this stuff. Mark: Yeah, yeah. And once again, that's the mythic. I mean, one of the things that's great about speculative fiction generally, science fiction and fantasy, is that it, it speculates, right? It it reaches out into the future or into alternate realities that. Put human or human like figures into different contexts and and then conjectures about well, what would it be like? What, what would happen? What, you know, what, where would we go? And those are wonderful rides to take and they're often very illuminating. When you, when you take those rides and you learn something more about humanity itself by seeing it reflected in that kind of a mirror. Yucca: mm hmm, mm hmm. Mark: So I guess, you know, because we've been talking for a while now I guess to sum up, I both feel that we need a lot more emphasis on the verifiably, factually, objectively true in the way of increasing scientific literacy and curiosity, but we also need to elevate the mythic and the emotional and the passionate, you know, there's so much discounting of, I mean, you know, arguably the rudest thing you can say to someone is you're just being emotional, right? Yeah, I'm being emotional, I'm angry! Yucca: yes, which is so interesting when we, because it's one of the things that And of course, other animals, turning out, seem to share most of the, the closer they are to us, the more things they seem to share with us but that's one of the things that we pride ourselves about, oh, that's being so human, right? And then, oh, look at you, shame on you for being so human Mark: yeah, Yucca: but I, I think that we, that it would really benefit us to focus more on thinking about thinking. Mark: yes. Yucca: Whether that, whichever type of thinking or the purpose, but just being more conscious of, what our beliefs are, why we have those, and, you know, learning to reflect upon those. Mark: Well, yes I mean, Socrates, right? Know thyself. Self inquiry is, for one thing, it's an amazing journey. Because each of us really is unique and you will discover unique and amazing things about yourself, right? And since we don't come with an operating manual, it can be very helpful to know what your predilections are, what your prejudices are, what your confirmation biases are and to work Yucca: that you want to change them, You've got to know what they are to be able to make those, to direct the change of them. They may change over time, they probably will, but if you want to influence where they go, you need to be aware of them. Mark: need to know what they are. Yeah, it's, it's the full denial of inquiry that I think is the... Really the pernicious problem that we contend with, and it's not just among, say, fundamentalist, you know, evangelical Christians. It's, it's among some in the pagan community as well, you know, who know what they know and are not asking questions anymore. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: I'm, I don't know, I can't stop asking questions. I'm just too curious. Yucca: Yep. Well, this is fun. I think this is a topic we should circle back around to in the future. And I think it'll, it, it's related to so many things we talk about, but it's important to think about, you know, what is, what do we mean when we say real and true and reality and, and what's all that stuff? Mark: Yeah. Because it's, it's at the core of everything, right? I mean, we act based on what we believe is real. You know, what we believe is likely to be the, the truth of the outcome that we project. We, we get ourselves scrambled and confused most when we do something and we get a completely random response that we can't provide. Doesn't fit our projection of what we thought was going to happen, Yucca: Right, Mark: So knowing what we believe and knowing why we came to believe it becomes very important. Yucca: right. And if we want to change it, Mark: Yes. Yucca: how do we, knowing that it's there so that we can, we can choose and have that, that agency in our own lives, and not just be, you know, being blown along. The path. All Mark: It's a, it's a choose your own adventure, either that or you can just be washed around. Yucca: Just trademarked, by Mark: Is it? Yucca: the way. They yeah, the company goes after people for using that. So it has to be choose your own story, or write your own adventure. So. Mark: Oh, man. Let's not get started Yucca: All right. Well, Mark, this was fun. Mark: that's a whole other topic. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Alright, well, it's great spending time with you as always, folks. It's great spending time with you, Yucca. And we'll see you next week. Yeah.    

The Re-Enchantment of Life: https://thewonderpodcast.podbean.com/e/re-enchantment-of-life/ The Inner Critic: https://thewonderpodcast.podbean.com/e/the-inner-critic-1612153312/   Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com. S4E10 TRANSCRIPT:----more----   Mark: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-based Paganism. I'm your host, mark, Yucca: and I'm Yucca, Mark: and today we are going to talk about paganism and imagination. Yucca: right? And this is a, this is a really important and key topic in a lot of different ways and it gets approached From many different directions in, again, different ways, but we don't always, we don't always talk about what it it really is, and that that's what we're doing. Mark: Yeah. And particularly in kind of mainstream pagan circles, we. Because what is imagined and what is more likely to be true based on evidence often gets all jumbled together. We, we don't actually acknowledge that we're working with the imagination Yucca: And there's a negative connotation to it too. Like, oh, you're just imagining Mark: right. Yucca: right? Like if you suggest that, that, that's almost, that's an insult, right? Oh, that's just your imagination. Mark: right? Yeah. We say it's just your imagination, right? But when you think about it, why just imagination is amazing. Imagination is arguably the thing that makes humans different than any other creatures that we're aware of. Our, our ability to. Envision the abstract Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: to to have ideation that that innovates, you know, that comes up with novel stories, novel inventions, novel concepts, novel philosophies, all of those things. That's all imaginations. Yucca: Right, and even though things might be imagination, they can still be very, very meaningful to us. , think about your favorite movie or book that you knew that those characters didn't exist. Those things never happened, and yet it's really meaningful and impactful to you, and it had a, as a, a very real response in your body and your mind. Mark: Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, there have been a couple of times in my life when I have actually fallen in love with a movie character. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: And it's been painful for, you know, two, three days until it wears off. Because I really wanted to know that person. I wanted to see that person, and they don't exist. So, and, and you know, this was when I was younger mostly, but now that I'm old and cynical, it doesn't happen so much. , but You know, that's the same physiological response that happens in response to a real person. Yucca: right. Mark: And that, I think, goes to this question of why we can confuse the imaginary with the real because our, our minds are not very good at distinguishing. Between what's imaginary and what's real. We, we react in exactly the same ways our brains fire in exactly the same ways in response to stories or ideas that they do in response to real world events. Yucca: Right. And we rewrite memories, Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: And each person's interpretation of the same event can be very different, Mark: and it will get more different over time as they reinforce their take over and over again. Every time they recall that memory, they rewrite it and it get e evolves a little bit. Yucca: It's telephone, but that, did you ever play that game as a kid? Right. You one person whispers and then it whispers to the next person and next person and see how it changes by the time it gets to the last person. And sometimes they're close, and sometimes, well, sometimes one of the kids will purposely put something fake in there, but sometimes it transforms, right? Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: And our, our minds do that. Our imagination does that. Mark: They certainly do. Yeah. So, one of the things that we do, especially as adults to try to distinguish these things is that we, we identify the times when we are doing what's called suspension of disbelief, Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: right? So we go into a movie, we suspend our disbelief for a couple of hours, and we submerge ourselves into the story that's happening on the. And our awareness leaves the fact that we're sitting in a cushion chair in a dark room, looking at a screen and listening to soundtrack it, immerses in the events of the movie as if they're happening to us and. Then when the movie's over, then we stop suspending our disbelief and we leave. And our experience of the movie, in terms of its quality is often a function of how deeply we were affected by that suspension of disbelief. Right? And this is something that is really an issue for those of us who are atheopagan or other non feist pagans. Naturalistic pagans, right? Because for folks that are entering our community from the atheistic side, all this imaginary stuff can be very uncomfortable. Yucca: right. Mark: You know, the we're looking for evidence, right? We're, we're looking for proof that whatever it is that we're talking about actually exists or it's not worth talking about is the, the culture. Yucca: assumption. Mark: Many, many atheistic circles, and I'm here to say, first of all, it is worth talking about because it's core to the nature of humanity that we are these imagining creatures and there's a lot of value that we can have out of our. Experiences and, and in our lives by cultivating imagination and using it appropriately to have experiences like in rituals. Yucca: Right. so there's, it really is something that we can very consciously use, right? And it could be in a ritual, but it can also be there's, we, you know, we did an episode a few years back about bringing the magic into everyday. Mark: Yeah. Enchanting the world. Yucca: exactly. There we go. We'll, I'll put a link to that in the show notes. Because that's definitely one of the ways that we can use imagination that really serves us right. When we're careful, when we're not careful. Sometimes our imagination can be harmful to us. Right? We imagine something that, you know, that that person is mad at us and they, they were just tired. Right? Or we imagine. That the shadow, you know, when we're little, that those shadows are actually monsters that are gonna come and get us. But then we can also use it for okay, ritual. We can use it to bring a little bit of enchantment to our life. We can really enrich ourselves. Mark: Yes. Yes. And so for those of us that are naturalistic pagans, a lot of what we're doing is walking this careful line. Where we're not falling over the edge into worlds of imagination and fantasy and thinking that they're real. And I know that there are gonna be people that are gonna be mad at me about saying that, but you know, the evidence at least would suggest that God's an instrumental magic and ghosts and spirits and stuff like that aren't Yucca: realm of ferry or. Mark: Yeah. That they aren't really. They're wonderful stories. And they're tremendous flights of imagination that we can work with, we can do cool things with. But they don't exist in the same sense that rock exists. And so here we are as naturalistic pagans, carefully walking that edge where we say, all right, we value evidence. Right. We value what's provable. That said, we are the storytelling ape homos, right? Some wonderful anthropologist, I don't remember the name. Called us The Storytelling Ape Yucca: I like that better than Sapien sap. Mark: yeah, me too. Yucca: Oh Mark: Yeah, we're super wise, wise, twice. Yucca: Yes. We're wise, wise, we're so wise. Really believe us. Seriously. Mark: Judging by our works, maybe not so much. But we are definitely storytelling creatures and it is essential to the culture making of every society that we tell stories and that we have narratives that inform our values and our worldviews. So Yucca: Well, and we even do that in science, right? That's how we understand. That's and it's just what, where are we getting the information for the story? But we're still telling it all the same and we're still putting in We're still putting in metaphor and poetry and things to help us understand and try and imagine what happened 13.8 billion years ago or something like that. Mark: Right. Right. And we use. We often have used the cultural narratives that dominate our societies, especially in the past. You know, the Newtonian physics, for example. The kind of clockwork universe of everything, you know, working in, you know, neatly meshing little systems that all follow these laws. And a lot of that was true and useful. But it turns out it was a little more complicated than. Yucca: And we do that today when we talk about how our brains are wired, right? We talk about them as, and we talk about long-term short-term memory. You know, we talk about things as if they're computers now. So, and we're just taking those that. Narrative and, and applying it in a way that is useful. But as you're saying, it may not be completely accurate, but it serves the purpose. And we do that with you wanna describe the motion of a ball through the air? Well, you're never gonna be able to actually perfectly describe it, but you can get close enough and that still serves a purpose, Mark: right. A model is a story. Ultimately, a model is a, a narration of. Activity over time, which is what a story is. And so, you know, we, when, when we're talking about what we believe to be true, we use stories that are supported by evidence. But when we're talking about expressing our inner realities, our inner self, our personalities, When we're talking about developing culture or artistic expression, or working with our psychology to transform ourselves in some way, whether it's to transform our emotions or to heal our wounds, or to, you know, do any of those powerful things, the world of imagination and storytelling becomes this powerful. Built-in system that is encoded into the way our human organisms are constructed that we can use to powerful effect. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: And that's what we believe as naturalistic pagans right now. It's a little bit different in the mainstream pagan community where all that stuff may be tossed together and you have people that believe that they're elves. There's a lot of wishful think. In the mainstream pagan community, people who believe in things because they really want them to be true, which isn't a criterion that naturalistic pagans use for determining what we believe to be true. Yucca: Right. Mark: and I mean, there's pros and cons to that. I mean, there's, there can certainly be a lot of wonder and magic and enchantment and. You know, fascination about believing in, you know, that kind of fantasy stuff. But I've also seen people really get on the wrong side of it with a lot of fear and paranoia about, you know, hexes and psychic attacks and stuff like that, that they need to do wards against. And, you know, it creates anxiety at the least. And I've seen that actually cross over into real paranoia. You know, kind of textbook paranoia, including the the delusions of grandeur of thinking that somebody, that you're so important that somebody's gonna go to the trouble to try to hex you . But you know, if that's the world people wanna live in and that's, that's the way they decide that they want to navigate their life, then great. More power to. It's just not the way we do it. Yucca: Sounds exhausting to me. Person. Mark: Yeah, so much. So much uncertainty. So much. Always, you know, there, there could always be something mysterious out there that's about to get ya. I, I wouldn't wanna live that way myself. So talking about imagination and we, we implement imagination in our rituals. Many of our rituals are, are keyed to stories, right? Like a healing ritual. Okay? This thing happened to me. I'm wounded by it. Or it embedded something in me. Right. You know, faith healers do that whole thing about removing things from the body. Or traditional indigenous practitioners sometimes will remove darts or other sort of spirit things from the body in order to take the harm away from the patient. Right. Yucca: Right. We can I share real quick an example of one that we did last night? We so we have a wood stove and we still chilly enough that we're using it. And so we took the log that was gonna go in and spat on it. So there was a particular emotion that we were trying to like release, and so we spat on it. So it was something physically, visually coming from our body, and then we wrote on the wood what it was and put it into the fire. So that we could transform that into the heat that was going to support the family and take care of us during the winter. Right. And that was our story of we're taking this thing out of our body, putting it in and using it and transforming it into something else, Mark: Sure, and and I would imagine that that felt great that it worked, Yucca: At least for my part, I feel pretty good about it. ? Yeah. Mark: Whereas if you are like, you know, an atheist coming brand new into our community, you might look at that and go, wow, that's super weird. Yucca: Oh yeah. Go spit on some firewood. What are you doing Mark: What are you doing? But the answer is what you're doing is you're working with your consciousness, you know, and. You know, our consciousness works very well with metaphors and similes. It works very well with the concept of correspondences where, okay, I am going to establish a connection between myself and this piece of firewood by expelling something from myself that is inherent, that is of my body onto this firewood, which means that now we're connected, right? And I'm gonna write a purpose, a goal, an outcome on the firewood. We're gonna put it in the fire to undergo a transformational process, which will radiate energy that I can feel, and that's going to cause a transformation in my psychology. That is actually a pretty logical story. It doesn't have evidential support in the way. You know, the story of general Relativity has evidential support, but it has a coherence which can totally work with our, with, with the human mind. That makes a lot of sense to me. Yucca: Yeah, you just accept your certain premises and then it all logically makes sense from. Mark: mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. , and that's what we, oh, go ahead. Yucca: what we do. Like when we watch a movie you were talking about earlier, we sit down to watch that movie. We go, okay, this is a movie in which there are dragons and magic, and there's the like, and we accept that there are dragons and therefore if there are dragons, oh well it would make sense that people would ride on their backs or whatever happens, right? We just, it all makes sense based on those starting assumptions. But we're gonna make up some, we're gonna. In that case, I decided to imagine that there was a connection between me and that wood. Right. And I, there was a conscious choice to imagine that, but it still worked to imagine it. It still had the impact. Right. Even though, okay. Yeah. Literal there. I'm not literally putting an emotion. An emotion isn't a thing that you can put on a piece of wood. Mark: No, an emotion is, but an emotion is a psychological process. And psychological processes are real. They aren't real the way rocks are real, but they're real within the, the ongoing network of activity that's happening in our brains. Right. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: And. You know, this may be a whole other episode about what do we mean when we talk about what's real, right? Because the imagined has a reality to it. It's just not, it, it's a, it's a belief reality rather than a factual reality that's there, there's a difference there. You know what I say to folks that are new to the podcast or new to our communities who are coming from atheistic scientific backgrounds you know, rational evidence-based perspectives on the world. This is, this is the tricky, well, there are two things. There's, there are two, there are two tricky parts to get your mind around. The first one. That the use of these imagination tools can have real world impacts for yourself and your life. The second is getting comfortable with using them, because typically what happens is there's a critic voice in your head, which begins to yammer about how stupid it all is, and it really undermines. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Your your confidence in using these tools at first, but that voice can be worked with. We, we did an episode a while back on the critic voice that I really encourage people to go listen to. Yucca: We'll link that in the notes as well. Mark: Great, great. And over time and with experience, you will find that that voice fades and you become. Much more confident as a practitioner, as a magician, as a, whatever you want to call it. As someone who uses these psychological tools to benefit themselves and to benefit others. Yucca: Yeah. Frankly, I think that's pretty inspiring. I think that's a pretty kind of hopeful way of approaching. Mark: Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I mean, as when I, when I stepped away from the Pagan community, after I had some really bad experiences it wasn't very long before I started realizing how impoverished my life had become because it lost all that inspiring stuff. It all of that, all of those practices, all of those rituals, all of those. School witchy things, all of those psychological helps to myself had been removed and they, and they'd not only been removed from me, but they'd been removed from people that I used to do stuff with as well. So, it was good to realize that, that none of that was necessary. It was just a matter of kind of figuring out what your terms are. Yucca: When you say none of that, you're referring to the Mark: to the departure. Yucca: okay. Mark: Yeah, the, none of, none of that. Leaving it all behind was necessary. I had, I had thrown the baby out with the bathwater and what I needed to do was to go and recover the baby and, you know, dry off the bathwater, Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So, do we want to give some more examples of kind of differences between the, the imaginal and the Yucca: Yeah. Well, I think, I mean when we talk about ritual, that's what we're doing. We're imagining, Mark: mm-hmm. Yucca: right? But what about, are there some places outside of ritual that you think that is helpful in. Mark: I think there are lots of little techniques that people use that are kind of like mini rituals. You know, they may not go through a set of formal steps, but certainly affirmations, you know, those just, just simple messaging to yourself in encouraging ways. You know, whether it's before, like I have a job interview next week, I have two job interviews next week, in fact, and, you know, I will kind of psych myself up you know, before those meetings. You know, I'm competent. I know what I'm doing, I'm likable, I'm happy. I'm you know, those things that will make me appealing as a job prospect. As a job candidate. I think there are lots of things that people do that are small that give them benefit. In my initial essay, I write about athletes with Lucky Jerseys or. Yucca: TED bands or whatever. Mark: Shoes or you know, a lucky way to tie their shoe laces or, you know, whatever those things are. And you can look at that, you know, from a strictly dry scientific standpoint and say, well that doesn't make any sense. You know, the way you tie your shoes is gonna make you run any faster. But studies, numerous studies have shown, actually it. Because it increases your level of confidence in your capacity Yucca: Right. Mark: and confidence is such a huge arbiter of success or failure. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: when you're talking about fractions of a second in speed, making the difference between somebody qualifying for the Olympics or not, every little bit matters. Yucca: Yeah. Every fraction of a second. Cause that adds up. Mm. Mark: So, yeah, I, I think there's lots of things that people do and they don't even really realize. Many of them don't even really realize that what they're doing is a, a use of imagination in order to give themselves a boost. Yucca: Hmm. There's another one that I thought of while you were talking about that, and that's daydreaming. That's something that I think most of us do. Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: Some more to other than others, but that, that we're imagining, we're telling stories in our head, and I know for me that the, what narratives I'm telling when I'm daydreaming have a big impact on how I feel throughout the day. Right. If I do a day, if I'm daydreaming and I'm, you know, kind of doing it, something that's like an argument or a conflict or daydreaming about, you know, how am I gonna handle some disaster or something, I don't. Feel the same as when I'm daydreaming about something that feels a little bit more empowering or in which I'm behaving in my daydream in a, in a the way that I want to be. And so there is a lot of influence we have in directing those daydreams to influence what it just feels like to be us as we're going through our day. Mark: For sure. That's a great example. And actually, regular dreams, while sleeping can be very similar. I mean, how many times do we wake up feeling sad or anxious or happy or, you know, just depending on what the, Yucca: What the dream Mark: what the dream was. Yeah.  Yucca: That's a topic we should do soon. I don't think we've ever done a Mark: When I'm dreaming. No, we haven't. We Yucca: really do that. Mark: We should. Yeah. Yeah, let's, let's write that down somewhere. Yucca: Yeah. I think I could just cut you off there. What were you saying? Mark: oh, I, I don't know. Nothing important. The, I think that this topic right here, About differentiating between the imaginal and the literal and being able to walk the line that incorporates both so that your feet are on the ground in a realistic manner, and you're not spinning off into fantasies about stuff that may not exist, but at the same time plunging ourselves into the imaginal within. Within a container that we choose to make changes and improve the quality of our lives. This is really the central operating principle of naturalistic paganism more, more than anything else, I think. Even reverence for the earth. I mean, reverence for the Earth is what makes us pagan as opposed to say Buddhist, you know, working with our psychology. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: But what differentiates us from mainstream paganism is this, I would say, Yucca: Yeah. I see. It's a lot to think about Mark: It is, it is. I, I was talking about this before we started recording. I wrote a blog post about cursing in hexes this last month, which you can find at atheopagan dot org. Yucca: Mm-hmm. , we talked a little bit about it last episode too. Mark: We did. Yeah. I, I think that's what inspired me to write the blog post. But this, this whole question of the imaginary versus the literal and factual comes up again and again and again. And it's definitely the friction point between, you know, literal theists and naturalists. And I think that some of that may have to do with some degree of misunderstanding about what the naturalistic position really is. It's not that we're discounting all of those experiences. Those experiences are really valuable. It's just that we're not, we're not populating our cosmology with these. Figures that appear to arise from the imagination. Yucca: Right. We're, we're framing our understanding of it in a very different way. Mark: Yes. Yucca: Yep. Mark: So I encourage our listeners to kind of kick this around in your own heads and, you know, where, where does imagination play a role in your practice, in your. Kind of day-to-day operations. And where, where does a more evidence-based approach figure? The, because I think coming to be comfortable with this idea of kind of code switching between, between, you know, the world of imagination and fantasy and storytelling and. Metaphor and symbol and myth, all of that incredibly rich, multiple worlds of amazing stuff, and yet remaining tethered to the ground in a, in a factual and evidentiary based way. It. That's really kind of the core of the art in the naturalistic world, I think. Yucca: Yeah. Well this has been a really interesting one. Thanks, mark. Mark: Yeah. Thank you, Yucca. I think it's interesting too, and the, the more I think about it, the more interesting it gets . I, I love talking about this kind of thing, so thank you. Yucca: Yeah, and we really appreciate all of you being here with us, and look forward to seeing you next week. Mark: Yeah. Remember, you can always reach us at The Wonder Podcast Qs or the Wonder Podcast queues short for questions@gmail.com. Yucca: Okay, see you next Mark: you next week.      

Mark - For you to suffer for Christ, see the glory of Christ which He reveals to you in His Word.

Mark -- For you to suffer for Christ, see the glory of Christ which He reveals to you in His Word.

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   S3E33 TRANSCRIPT: ----more----   Mark: Welcome back to The Wonder: Science-Based Paganism. I'm your host, Mark. Yucca: And I'm the other one, Yucca. Mark: And today we are going to talk about cults. Yucca: right. Mark: Of the things that when people choose an alternative spiritual path, one of the things that their friends and family will sometimes start to get really worried about is, oh dear, have they entered some kind of a cult? So we're gonna talk about what cults are and about what naturalistic paganism generally is. And atheopaganism specifically, and then talk about why, what we're doing does not really meet those, those criteria for what a cult is. Yucca: right. Mark: This, we, we were talking about this before the recording. If you have a family member that is really concerned that you've gone off the deep end into some terrible culty situation, you could consider having them listen to this episode. Yucca: Right. Yeah. And at the end, we're also gonna talk a little bit about recovering from some of those kind of religious traumas that, that can come along with having been in a cult situation or things that have happened in, in mainstream religions that we wouldn't necessarily think of as a cult, but still might have some of those really abusive behaviors. Mark: That's right. One thing that you'll notice when we go over the indicators that a group of any kind has attributes of a cult is that many of them apply squarely to various denominations of mainstream religions. So you know, the word cult gets Bandi about to U be used for little splinter groups or for new religious movements, but that's not really fair. The kinds of. The kinds of problematic behaviors and factors that go into Colt behavior really also include some very large institutions that have been around for a very long time. Yucca: Right. And these are things that can come along with groups that aren't necessarily just religious groups. Right? These are any time that you have. A structure in which you can have somebody who has power over dominating over somebody else. A lot of these, these risks come up. So, Mark: There are PTA associations that are dominated by, you know, one or a handful of people who cannot be questioned and run the show. And they're cult-like. Yucca: Yeah. Well, we're gonna get ahead of ourselves a little bit. Why don't we start off with, so, you know, what do we do? What is this? Atheopagan what's naturalistic, paganism or paganism in general, Mark: Sure. Sure. Well, naturalistic paganism is the big category, right? And athe paganism is a single denomination within that big category. So if you think about it, like there's Christianity, which is a whole big, huge thing. And then down underneath that there's Catholicism and Mormonism and all the various Protestant religions and so forth. So that's kind of a similar sort of, you know, taxonomic relationship between naturalistic, paganism and Ethiopia paganism. So that leads us to ask the question. All right, then. Well, what is naturalism? What is naturalistic paganism? So we'll start with naturalism. Naturalism is a philosophical position. It is the position that all things in the universe are made of matter and energy and that they follow physical laws. And there is nothing supernatural. Yucca: right. Everything is natural. Mark: Yes, Yucca: This is all nature, Mark: all nature. And it all follows physical laws and nobody gets to break the physical laws. Now we may. Yucca: of it. Mark: That's right. We may not understand all of the physical laws right now, but to our knowledge, nothing out there is able to break physical laws. And what that does is it excludes certain kinds of supernatural beliefs like beliefs in gods and ghosts, souls, and spirits, those kinds of things. They just really don't hold up in an evidential based evidentiary based critically thinking way of looking at the world, which is what naturalism is. Yucca: Right. Mark: So you were going to say, Yucca: Oh, I was gonna say, well, then we have the pagan side of that. Right. And the pagan side that, that Contras up a lot of different kinds of images. And for some people it brings up the idea of the, you know, gods and deities and you know, all of that. That isn't not all pagans are going to be doing that. And we're not in that group of pagans that believes in God's and deities, because that's not fitting with the naturalist part. Mark: Right. But what we do that is that we have in common with other pagan groups is we have a lot in common in the way that we practice our Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: Um, we celebrate the solstice and equinoxes and the points between them, for example. So a solar cycle of Of holidays. We tend to celebrate our rituals in a circle rather than in kind of an audience and performer format. We Revere the natural world. We hold that out as, as sacred. And so, the primary players in arranging for our creation and survival, like the sun and the earth and the moon become very sacred for us. Right. And this is true of Pagan's largely universally. The, the truth is that paganism is so diverse and such a catchall term that the only thing that every single pagan has in common is that they self identify as pagans. Yucca: Yes, Mark: That's that's the only Yucca: that, that we call ourselves that. Yeah. But there are themes. Like you're talking about that we, we tend to be earth based. We tend to do ritual and celebrate the, the cycle of the seasons and things like that. Mark: Right. Right. And we understand ritual practices as being at the very minimum, personally, beneficial. Some pagans believe many pagans believe that rituals can actually enact magical forces in the world to change the course of events or you know, what's happening in, in the world. We don't believe that because naturalism doesn't really allow for spooky action at a distance. If new evidence comes along, we may change that opinion because part of the nature of being a naturalist is that you have to be open to new evidence all the time. So 100% certainty is not a thing in naturalistic worldview. We could be 99.9% sure that the sun is going to rise tomorrow morning, but. There's always the possibility that for some reason it doesn't. And then we have to reconsider all of our thinking about the nature of the world. Yucca: Right. Okay. So that's the umbrella naturalistic paganism. And then we also have atheopagan, which is one form of naturalistic paganism. Mark: Right. Think of atheopagan as kind of like Methodism in relation to Christianity, right? Christianity is the big umbrella. Methodism is a particular movement that was created by particular people with particular values and practices and principles atheopagan is a, a path that I created. In the early two thousands, which is built around some basic presets and naturalism is one of them, but also naturalism and critical thinking are among them, but also reverence for the earth and a set of four sacred pillars and 13 principles, which we've recorded about before, which are ethical principles for how to conduct our lives and not all pagans subscribe to those, not all naturalistic pagans, subscribe to those, but those that are, that are, are practicing athe paganism do follow those. Yucca: right. And something very important to say right up front is that, although mark, you created. The atheopagan you are a founder, you're not the leader. Right. We have a large community of people who each person makes decisions for themselves. We also have the atheopagan society council, which deals with things like putting together events and the nonprofit side of everything. And you are very much involved in the community, but just because mark says something doesn't mean that that's the law. Mark: right. Yucca: And plenty of times people disagree. And one of the things that I really value about the community is that overall people are very respectful about those disagreements, right? Mark: yeah, I mean, fundamentally. It is not really consistent with Ethiopianism to tell other people what to do. The principles are guidelines for how to live a life that is kind and conscientious and a life of integrity and a life that will help you to be happy. Yucca: Right. Mark: If you don't want to be kind and conscientious or happy, you can make other choices, but you, you know, you probably aren't practicing athe paganism at that point, you're doing something else. Yucca: Yeah. Which is fine. Right. We're you know, we, aren't out here to say join, you know, join us and we're not out there, you know, evangelizing or anything like that. Mark: right. We're we're not proselytizing people come to us cuz they want to join. And. We're very clear that everybody has their own spiritual path and they need to define that for themselves. And that's why we encourage people for example, to create their own meanings around the wheel of the year celebrations, because people live in different climates and different things, maybe happening in nature. I, you know, Yucca, you and I have talked many times about how we live in different climbs. And so our understanding of when spring starts, for example, is radically Yucca: This many months different. And then what spring actually is for each of us is quite different. Right. Mark: Yes, exactly. Yucca: And, and also just to say that many of the people who listen to this podcast, we know many of you do consider yourself a pagans and many of you don't right. And that's again, that's also fine, right? Yeah. Mark: absolutely great. And that's why, you know, we've been very careful over time to talk about athe paganism and naturalistic paganism, you know, not to assume that everybody that's listening to this is necessarily practicing atheopagan as a path. Yucca: right. Mark: But, Yucca: real quick say what the, what the pillars and principles are? Mark: Sure. But I'm going to have to pull them up. The, the, the pillars, the pillars, I know by heart, the pillars are love Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: beauty truth and life. Yucca: right, Mark: are the things that we hold sacred. And by beauty, we don't mean individual sort of cultural definitions of a person's beauty. We mean the beauty of nature, Yucca: right. Mark: right? The, the, the way that the natural world can move us Yucca: that? Wow. That wonder, Mark: Yes the wonder. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So those are the four pillars. And I should say, you know, we can find lots of you can find lots of additional information about this at both the atheopagan society website and at the and at the atheopagan blog, which is atheopagan.org. Yucca: Mm-hmm . And also in this podcast, if you just go back through our archives E we've gone, we've done an episode on each one of these topics and we've been doing it a few years. So there's, we've covered some of these multiple times as well. Yeah. Mark: Yeah. There's. Yucca: back through, Mark: There's a lot out there. So the 13 principles and it was kind of an accident that there were 13, but I was tickled by that because there are 13 cycles of the moon in the year. And for many pagans, 13 is a really special number. Yucca: it's just a fun number. Mark: a, a sacred number. Yeah. And of course it's prime and all that. So the 13 principles are number one, and these are not in a priority order, I should say. So they're think of them as bullet points rather than as a numbered list. Yucca: Mm-hmm, sort of like the seasons, right? You don't there isn't really a first season. They just come after the, and before the other ones. Mark: Right. So skepticism and critical thinking. , which is the ability to tell the difference between the literal and the metaphorical, because we work with both in our pagan practices, right. You know, we work with symbolic enactments of things, many times in our rituals, but we understand at the same time that to some degree we're playing, let's pretend we're not, you know, literally talking to an invisible being there or whatever. You know, when we, when we throw our, when we throw our, our fears into the fire, we understand that's a metaphorical behavior. That's not a literal behavior. Yucca: but it still is empowering. Right? It's play, but play is meaningful, right? You can still, you can read a book or watch a show and still be moved to tears in the same way, our ritual. We can still feel those feelings and have that impact us. Mark: Sure. Very psychologically impactful rituals. So the second is reverence for the earth. We are a living part of the earth and and reverence for that source and kin that the fabric of life is to us is really important. Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: The third is gratitude for the amazing gifts of life. The fourth is humility, understanding that all humans are fundamentally equal and that nobody, you know, is entitled to Lord and above anybody else, perspective and humor, having kind of a big picture understanding of the world and being able to laugh at ourselves laugh at our religion, laugh at even the tragedies in the world, you know, just in order to stay sane and to maintain perspective you know, it's It's amazing what humor people will find in really terrible, terrible situations. The sixth is practice, which is in enacting regular ritual as a part of the practice of Ethiopia paganism. So a paganism, isn't just a philosophy where it's got a worldview and a set of values. It's also got a practice and that makes it a religion. The seventh is inclusiveness, celebrating diversity and being respectful of difference and and embracing the, the vast diversity of humanity. The eighth is legacy recognizing and embracing our responsibility to future generations, both of humans and of non-humans. Yucca: mm-hmm Mark: The ninth is social responsibility, recognizing that our rights are balanced by responsibilities. And this is something that much of the pagan community is often not very good at. People are really amped about their, their personal sovereignty, but they're not so much into their personal accountability. Yucca: Right. Mark: We are very clear that all of the rights that we enjoy are balanced by responsibilities to one another. And that goes into issues like consent. It goes into all kinds of respectfulness requirements on us, including our requirement to participate in our local societies in all ways, from voting to activism, to contributing to the dialogue of the world in a, in a positive way. Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: Uh, the 10th is responsible con responsible sensuality and pleasure positivity. We think pleasure's good for you. We believe pleasure's a good thing. It's nothing to be ashamed of. It's good. Obviously that has to be with people who are consenting. If you're getting pleasure from something you're doing with someone else it has to be with consent. But that consent is there, we say, knock yourself out. We, we don't care what kind of sex you're having. We don't care. You know, what kind of food you're eating, it's entirely up to you. What, what brings you joy? We, we are a, a projo religion which not all religions are honestly many are about shame and original sin and guilt and all that stuff. And that's just not us. Yucca: And the physical isn't bad or dirty or less than below any of those sort. We, we just don't do that. That's Mark: no. In fact, the most sacred thing to us is under our feet. So we, so we don't, you know, we don't have to look up, even though the cosmos is amazing. We don't have to look up to the higher, more spiritual stuff. The higher, more spiritual stuff is right under our feet. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: The 11th is curiosity, understanding that there is always more to be learned and keeping an open mind to learn more about other people, about the nature of the world about our society, about culture, just keeping a lively mind. The 12th is integrity. You know, being true to your word, being, being fulfilling your, your responsibilities and being a trustworthy person Yucca: and honest with yourself too. It not just with others, but with yourself. Mark: absolutely. And then finally the 13th is kindness and compassion. And the little note underneath it says, I practice kindness and compassion with myself and others understanding that I will not always meet the standards of these principles. You know, we all get mad, we all, we all blow it. We all, you know, fail to clear the bar once in a while, you have to be compassionate with yourself, learn from it. So you won't do it again. But we are, we are not believers in constantly flogging yourself for something shameful you did 20 years ago. It's just that doesn't do you or anyone else? Any good? Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So those are the 13 principles of atheopagan. Most of 'em are pretty common sensical. But of course I would think that cuz I developed them. It seems like a lot of other people find them common sensical as well. They're like, oh, you know, this isn't painful. These aren't, you know, these aren't terrible strictures that are gonna require me to jump through all kinds of hoops in order to be a, a good atheopagan pagan. Yucca: Yeah. yeah, no, it's, it's great to have them, you know, written down and spelled out and be like, oh yeah, yeah. I agree with that. Mark: I. Yucca: makes sense. Mark: I think most of them are, can be characterized as generally pagan values. The pleasure positivity the reverence for the earth the social responsibility, the inclusivity, you know, all of those are very common in the pagan community. I wouldn't say universal, but they're very common in the pagan community. And so all that I've done is write 'em down and codify 'em Yucca: Yeah. Mark: you know, Yucca: So this is us, right? This is we talking about what we are. Is there anything you wanna say on that before we go into what a cult is? Mark: No, let's talk about cults. Yucca: Yeah. so we actually have a little bit of a list for this one as well. Some behaviors or things to look out for that really characterize a cult that any one of these would be, would be a real major red flag. Mark: Right. Right. And bear in mind, you know, as we were saying before, with new religious movements or with small splinter groups, people are often very concerned about the idea that these groups are a cult, but very old, very large institutions can also be, can also have these characteristics that are very cult-like. You know, we're gonna talk in a bit about the, the recovery the, the deconstruction of reli of, especially like sort of conservative authoritarian, religion that people experience when they leave those religions to become atheist or agnostic, or to become Ethiopia, pagans, or other naturalistic kinds of folks. Yucca: Right Mark: And many of the people that have those experiences are not coming out of little tiny sects, they're coming out of large institutions. Yes, very wealthy, very powerful institutions. Yucca: Yeah. So let's start the, our first one. Which is one that you definitely see in like the movies and shows and things about this. Is there being usually one or more like a small group of really charismatic leaders who cannot be questioned or challenged, right. That their authority is ultimate, right? Mark: And you see this in a lot of sort of charismatic Christian sex. You see this in in Hindu guru sex, but when you think about it, I mean, the head of the church of latter day saints is considered to be speaking for God and cannot be challenged or questioned. The Pope charismatic leader who cannot be challenged or questioned, same kind of deal. Right. One of the, and, and I put that at the top of the list because I think it's, it it's arguably the most important one, but of course these, you know, there are many others that are, are really important as well. I may be the founder of Ethiopia paganism because I wrote first an essay and then a book kind of laying out the thinking of how I arrived at this position and my ideas for implementation of a path of naturalistic paganism. But I, and you, you can debate about my charisma, but I certainly Yucca: got a pretty high Christmas score, frankly. If, if we were in D and D I think you'd be a bar. Mark: okay. Thank you. That's that's very kind. I like it. But I certainly am not someone who cannot be challenged or questioned within our community. That that is not the case at all. And sometimes I'm wrong. And hopefully when I, you know, when I calm down I admit that I'm wrong. And then, you know, and I apologize and try to make amends and we move forward from there. The, when we created the atheopagan society, the nonprofit organization to help support atheopagan worldwide and help provide resources and networking and events and education for atheopagan. It was important to me that the board of directors, which is called the atheopagan society council not have me as an officer. It was really important to me that, I mean, I'm on the council, but I'm not an officer of the council. I'm not one of the ranking people in the council. And I feel that that's important. There are other people who can make decisions without me, Yucca: Right. Mark: and I think that's great, Yucca: Yeah. And, and I think it's important to distinguish in this, that we're not saying that if, if an organization has a leader or has leaders that that makes it culty, the, the problem is the not being able to be challenged, not being able to be questioned that it's that power over everybody else. That's the, the real issue at hand, right? Mark: Yeah. Awful lot of the rest of this. Is really a function of hierarchy. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: And in atheopagan we strive very much not to be built around hierarchy, to have a very, very flat power structure. Even our ordained clergy who are called clerics that's a, a service role to the community. It's not a status elevation and anybody. Yucca: with the council as well. It's, you know, people volunteer to do a whole bunch of work, basically. That's what it means to be on the council. Is, are you gonna do all this work for free Mark: yeah, exactly. Yucca: yeah, none of, and, and with, within the society, we don't have any paid positions. This is all people doing it because, because we see it as, as service and something we want to be involved in and that we really value. Mark: That's right. That's right now. I wanna say two things about that. The first one is that as fair disclosure, I, as an individual do have a Patreon. And so I have people that make a monthly contribution to me to support my work in Ethiopia, paganism, like the book that I'm writing now. The blog posts that I make, the resources that I create, Yucca: you do get royalties on your, your book sales Mark: I, yes, I do. Yes, I do. So, so I mean, there is some money that changes hands, but it's not the atheopagan so society is an entirely volunteer organization. Yucca: yeah. Mark: The other thing that I wanna say is that and we've mentioned this before. If you want to be an atheopagan cleric, if you can embrace those 13 principles, then you can go to the atheopagan society website, which is the AP society.org. And you can register as a cleric online. And that is a legally binding ordination. You can perform marriages and funerals and other rights of passage, all that kind of stuff. You can do hospice counseling and all that kind of stuff. And you can do that for free. So, we, you know, we really do believe everybody should be the. The director of their own spiritual path. And if they want to perform those services, they should be empowered to do so. Yucca: right. And if we can help, then, you know, we can provide resources and community spaces and things like that. And that's, that's kind of the role that the society's doing. Mark: right. So there's a lot of, you know, there's an introductory guidebook. You can download, you know, that talks about abuse, reporting requirements, how to organize different kinds of rituals. Working with the dying, working with the family of the dying you know, stuff like that, that will be helpful to you. As a cleric. So let's get back to our list. If you've, you've got these charismatic leaders who cannot be challenged or questioned, that's definitely a problem. The next one is deceptive recruitment tactics, Yucca: Right. Mark: and boy, the church of Scientology really specializes in those. I don't know if you've ever been in the situation where someone on a bicycle wheels up to you and asks you the time. But asking you the time to start a conversation is something that was chronic in my hometown. And it was always about trying to get you to come on down to the church of Scientology and sign up for their classes. Yucca: right. And this'll come in a little bit later, but especially kind of going after people in vulnerable positions, Mark: Yes. Yes. It bears saying that prosperity gospel is one of those deceptive recruitment tactics saying if you pray with us at our church and you contribute a bunch of money to our fabulously wealthy charismatic leader, you too will then be blessed with lots of money is a deceptive recruitment tactic. Yucca: Right. Yeah. Mark: The next on the list is exclusivity members are not allowed to belong to other groups or faiths. This is not true of Ethiopia, paganism. You can belong to whatever other faiths you want. Although if, if you belong to other faiths that believe in literal gods as being out there in the world, how you figure that out with your Ethiopia, paganism is a mystery to me, but if you can do it more power to you, if that works for you as a, as a path, Yucca: right. Mark: The, the whole idea of and we'll talk about this later on as well. The whole idea of trying to, to keep you away from people who don't believe the same thing as the group is very problematic. It's a real red flag. Yucca: Yeah. And so in atheopagan, and, and I think most forms of naturalistic paganism in general, you don't belong to anybody. You aren't owned by the group. Right. You're your own. And nobody gets to tell you what you get to believe or not believe or who you get to associate with or any of that that's, that's nobody's business, but yours. So Mark: Many religious traditions put a big value on submission. Yucca: mm-hmm. Mark: Paganism generally. And atheopagan specifically does not, we, we do not believe that submitting or humbling ourselves before some higher power, any of we yeah. You know, fearing the, the supernatural beings. We don't believe any of that. And what that means is that our path is one of spirituality with personal agency, Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: rather than out of submission or fear or domination. Yucca: right. Well, and that leads us to our next one, which is the use of intimidation, fear, shame, isolation that are used to punish somebody for not conforming, not going along. That's, that's something that is. a really classic sign of, of cult behavior, Mark: Yes. Yes. And we in atheopagan we encourage nonconformity in the form of individually tailored holidays and ritual practices. So it's quite the opposite, you know, we, we don't do what I do, do what you do, cuz that makes you feel good. That's that's how we would prefer it to work. Yucca: and we're not telling you that if you don't do it our way that you're gonna be unhappy and go to hell or any of that, it, we're not worried about that. It's okay. You know, you just do you. That's awesome. It works for you. Fantastic. Mark: Yes, exactly. And at that at, at this point, it's probably a good thing to point out that in naturalistic, paganism, generally speaking, we don't believe in an afterlife. So there's this idea of the world as approving ground for some sort of future judgment just doesn't exist. Our life is about this life. It's about how we conduct ourselves in this life. And it's about how much joy we can both celebrate and create in, in the world around us. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So, so it becomes really important that people's practices are individually tailored because the point is for it to work for them, the point is not for it to work for an institution. Yucca: Right. Mark: So the next point is religious dogma. That must be followed and. You know, we all know about those that, you know, they can be, they can be dietary requirements, they can be requirements to go to religious rituals or services a certain number of times a, a day, a week, a year. Yes, dress codes, various kinds of sort of shaming behavior to get people, to, to follow what the expectations of the religion are. And, and a lot of beliefs that you have to subscribe to generally, I mean, in various kinds of fundamentalist Christianity, you are required to literally believe the stories of the Bible. Even though they kind of fly in the face of, of critical thinking. You're expected to believe them literally. And if you don't, then you get intimidation, fear, shame, and isolation from your community. Yucca: right. So another really kind of problematic indicator and in any situation which is sexual abuse or manipulation So, especially when there is that charismatic leader and those leaders are sexually involved with lower status members. And that is expected as some sort of cha like as an exchange or for elevation in the group or you know, to be able to stay part of the group, you're gonna have to do these things. Mark: Right. Right. And and of course we see that kind of abuse in religious traditions all over the world. It is rife. In all cases where you see it, the hierarchy is the issue, the power imbalance, because I, you know, in atheopagan we don't care if two members of our group who are Yucca: or more, Mark: or, or more have sex yeah. Have sex with each other. We don't care about that at all. But we don't have any like insider knowledge or special status or initiation into an inner sanctum. We don't have any of that stuff in our religion. So there's no way to hold those things out as kind of allure to try to get people to have sex with you, non consensually. Yucca: right. Mark: There are there, has there have been problems with sexual abuse in pagan communities? You know, we need to, we need to say that. And they have generally been pagan communities where there are charismatic leaders who cannot be challenged or questioned and it's, and there's a hierarchical power dynamic and people get abused and it's not right. Yucca: And I wanna say this is something that happens outside of religious communities as well. You know, there's been over the last few years, quite a lot of talk about that in Hollywood and in different, you know, businesses and moving up and, and, you know, corporate structures, all of that. So wherever you've got that, that hierarchy of the, the power over, there's a, a risk for that. And it's something that we have to be really careful about. And so the, the way that we structure our communities helps avoid that in the first place. Mark: Right, right. And so far so good. As far as we know we have had, you know, no, to my knowledge, we have had no incidences of, of problems with this.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So that's good. But we are new, of course the, the atheopagan community just celebrated a 10 year anniversary. So we're relatively new and we're far flung. So much of our interaction is online, but We do have, we have had in person gatherings and do have in person gatherings. And so far, those seem to have been respectful and conscientious and we have not had any reports of any kind of, of abuse. Yucca: Right. Mark: So the next, oh, go ahead. Yucca: I was gonna say, and I, and I'm, I'm very confident that if we did have something that we did have conflict like that come up, that I've been very impressed by the, the people involved and think that overall people would really try and do their best to resolve the issue in a very respectful and, you know, With lots of integrity and, and really just be very present with that because that's built into our values. Mark: I agree. I agree. Yeah. Yeah, I, I think I'll leave it there. It One of the things that has been so gratifying to me with a Theo paganism, because I did originally develop it just for myself, is that the people that have gravitated towards it have just been these really remarkable, very grown up, very creative. I mean, everybody's working with their wounds. Right. You know, we, we're all, we're all working on our stuff. It's the nature of things. But just a lot of kindness, lot of open-heartedness just really fine, fine people I've been, I've been just delighted. Yucca: yeah. Mark: So, let's talk about the next point, which is that in a cult or a cult-like institution, there is emphasis placed on recruiting, vulnerable people. Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: So like people that have recently experienced a loss, like a death or a divorce people who are struggling with survival, like maybe homeless people or unhoused people, I should say homeless is not really liked anymore. And you know, or who have health issues, there's, there's a, an emphasis on trying to find people who are in need and then plugging the religious path into whatever need they have in order to claim that it's some kind of an answer. Yucca: right. Mark: And not only is that very cult-like, but I would say it's really shitty. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: That is just truly awful behavior it's predatory. And I just can't imagine. Being a part of anything like that. Yucca: Right now that isn't to say not trying to help people who are vulnerable, but trying to sell them the religion as taking advantage of their situation to try and recruit them into this, whatever your thing is. Mark: Right. I, I think of soup kitchens where people are required to pray for their fed, you know, that's just awful. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: who does that? Well, I, we can name some names, Yucca: that happens. Yeah. Mark: yeah, Yucca: that? You know, the, the example works because that it's so widespread. So yeah. oh, go ahead. Mark: no, go ahead. Yucca: Well, I was gonna say the next one would be kind of this isolating, right? The really encouraging members to only engage with each other. Um right. Even sometimes to the point of excluding and not disowned family members or previous friends just saying, and that no, we've gotta be really insular. Right. It's us. Don't go to an I outside, you know, don't go to a therapist, don't go to anyone else. You know, don't have other friends, so that they're really just wrapped up in this one world view without any outside perspectives. Mark: Right, right. Yeah. That kind of insularity is very widespread in Christianity. I, I would imagine it probably is in Islam and Judaism as well. And I know it is in Scientology as well. But I mean, particularly in conservative branches of Christianity, like, latter day saints, or, you know, some of the evangelical churches, it's like, if you don't belong to our church, we don't want anything to do with you, Yucca: right. Mark: or we're telling you, you shouldn't have anything to do with people that are not a part of our church. And that's just harmful for a lot of reasons, for one things, because it's turning spiritual practitioners into prisoners, Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: which is kind of scary. But for another thing, being exposed to the diversity of humanity is a good thing. Yucca: Right. Mark: One of the reasons why we see such incredible narrow mind and bigotry among evangelical Christians, at least in the United States is because they're not hanging out with anybody other than people like themselves. And it's very easy for them to decide that people that are not like themselves are somehow less or subhuman and that their needs concerns and welfare can safely be ignored. And that's just a dangerous, dangerous path to go down. Yucca: right. Well, and, and when they're isolated, it's harder for someone to challenge that unable leader. Right to know that some of these behaviors are not normal behaviors and that they're not healthy behaviors, that that's not just how it is everywhere. Mark: Right. And it creates a tremendous social cost to leaving. Yucca: right. Mark: If you decide this is not okay, and I've gotta go. And what that means is that your entire social circle disappears and, or your family disowns you Yucca: maybe your survival, right. Not just at an emotional level, but the, that that may be you're survival net. Mark: that's right, Yucca: How are you going to feed yourself? How are you going? What are you gonna do when you know, you've gotta go to the hospital and someone needs to take you. And all of those things just evaporate, Mark: right, Yucca: right? Your childhood friend, your dog, your, you know, your kids, all of that stuff. Mark: Yeah, it's some of the stories are just terrible. I mean, it's just as bad where people get ejected because they're gay or they're trans, or they're just different in some way. And they get ejected from the group because the group doesn't approve of who they are and suddenly they have no social resources. It's just terrible. So the next one is pretty obvious, but it needs to be on the list. And that is financial exploitation of members, Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: um, requiring tithing constantly strong arming people to be paying for, you know, the, the church fund or the, whatever it is, you know, constantly, you know, pressing on people to be giving money. It's exploitative. It doesn't take into consideration the varying levels of resources that people have available. And honestly, it doesn't let them make their own decision about where they wanna invest their money. Yucca: Right. Well, and, and you could make the argument, oh, they're choosing to, but when this is in the context of all of this other behavior, it can be really difficult to not do that. Right. And they, you know, the suggestion may not just be a suggestion, Mark: Exactly. Because the word will get around that you did not that you're not tithing. Right. Everybody else is tithing, but you're not tithing. And so judgements begin to be made and decisions get start being made about where you sit in the hierarchy. Yucca: Yeah. And finally, we can say the lack of transparency, right? So in, in an organization like this, the decisions may be made in secret, Mark: Mm-hmm Yucca: People don't even know what the decisions are made especially when it comes to finances, but not just finances, social decisions, all of that sort of stuff that there's not a way to track it. There's not a way to know. And it's just, it just comes down. Right? The decision is made. Mark: Yeah, exactly. And. To me. It's just, it's a part of that whole non-hierarchical approach to things that, I mean, you have it because the way that the laws of the United States are organized, they can't even comprehend the idea of a non-hierarchical organization. So we have to have a board of directors in order to have a non-profit organization. Right. But the idea of that group not aggressively soliciting the input of the broader community and communicating out whatever decisions it makes based on those. Just, it's just appalling the idea, especially that these very wealthy institutions could be doing stuff like that is you know, when, when Joel Ostein needs another private plane, Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: you know, Basically he and his cronies are making that decision on their own without any transparency with the rest of the community. It's just it's wrong. And it's really culty, Yucca: Yeah. Well, and I mean, the, the reason that we're bringing this up is, again, emphasizing this isn't what fits our beliefs and values, right? There's a lot of groups doing activities like this and this particular list, mark, you would put this together out of several different lists, right? And these are the ones that any one of these is a problem where some of the other lists, you found things that are like, eh, kind of iffy, but maybe it's like, okay, but any one of these, these issues is, is really just a huge, huge red flag. Mark: Right when I was doing, oh, go Yucca: I was gonna say, and they usually don't come. Mark: No. Yucca: you've got the unable leader, then you probably also have the dogma and the abuse and the, you know, those things. Usually you're gonna have a lot of them together. Mark: Yeah. When I was researching to, to first write on this the there were some lists that were, you know, if you score four or more, then you, you may have a problem kind of lists. And I, I just, I just took out the, the sort of iffy ones and compiled them, you know, compiled the 10 worst, most egregious concerns into a bullet list. I think it can be said with some confidence that if you don't have any of these things, you're probably not in a cult. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: You know, you're, you're probably in a reasonably health healthy, reasonably open kind of spiritual path. Yucca: right, Mark: So we wanted to talk a little bit about deconstruction and recovery, Yucca: right, Mark: In the atheopagan community. We have an affinity group that meets once a month on zoom of people who are deconstructing from other religions and feel the need for support. You know, people have real horror stories about ways that they've been treated in a religious context. And I really honor those people for their bravery in pursuing a new spirituality, instead of just saying I'm done. I'm, you know, I'm gonna live a life without spirituality because I don't, I just don't trust any of that anymore. Yucca: right. Because the spirituality really can. Can give us so much in our lives. Right. And really can fulfill a very deep instinctual human need that we have. Mark: Yes, and bring so much joy and gratitude and appreciation and such a sense of warm, shared community. I mean the, the danger is that even in very culty kinds of contexts, people still have that sense of community and they will stick around for it. Yucca: Well, that's why they're sticking around. Mark: That's right. Yucca: Right. That's you know an abusive relationship, whether it's abusive relationship with a partner or with. Different family member or larger community or religion, there's still something in there that is feeding you. And that's why it can be one of the reasons it can just be so hard to, to remove yourself from Mark: To let go. Yucca: Right. Because there is that beautiful part. There is that wonderful part. And then there's the not right. Then there is the manipulation and then there's the exploitation and there's all of that. And so, you know, there's, I think that it's, it's really important to have a lot of compassion for people who are in these situations and, and recognize that that it's something that, that we can all relate to on some level or another. Right. Mark: Right. In the, in the development of Ethiopia, paganism as a community and as a, as a. A spiritual tradition rather than just sort of my individual path. One of the things that I remain really cognizant of is that there are people coming into this community who are gonna test because they've been burned before. Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: And so they sort of poke with these questions, right? It's like, well, what about this? You know, what about money? Well, we accept donations to the atheopagan society because we do have some expenses. But you don't have to be a member. We don't have members and you don't have to be a member of it in order to be call yourself an atheopagan and practice the, the, the path. Yucca: and we won't announce if you, you, it's not gonna be an, if you decide to donate, we're not gonna announce and give you special status. And, you know, we'll Mark: We, we will, we will list you on the, on the patrons list. On the website, if you want to be, if you wanna be anonymous, then we won't, Yucca: but you're not gonna get like a badge if you're on the Facebook group that says, you know, I'm, Mark: I'm a donor. Yucca: I'm a donor. Yes. I'm a class, you know, a class supernova donor or something like that, right? Yeah. Mark: that's right. Because people have, you know, at times been you know, very sharp in their interrogation of me, you know, what's your role, you know? Aren't you, the final decision maker of all the things the council does, you know, all, all that kind of stuff and no, I'm, I'm not, and I don't want it that way. What I want is to do this right from the very beginning, my vision has been, what if you did, what if you did an earth based reason based. Spiritual path and you did it, right. You didn't step into any of the pitfalls that have plagued other religious paths. You know, if you are really open and really flat power structure and really transparent open your books to the public so they can see, you know, the money and where the money goes, all that stuff. And that's what we're doing so far. Yucca: Yeah, right. And that's, and you know, that's not just, that's not just Mark's vision, that's the broader vision. Right. And that's, that's part of it. So. Mark: Right. I mean, if you can characterize the atheopagan community At all. It says a group of people who have all kind of come together to say, let's do this really well. Let's do it really well for ourselves and really well for the world. And just, you know, let's do this at a very high level of integrity. Yucca: mm-hmm and just very thoughtful. That's something that just comes up again and again is just how thoughtful people are about all of this. Mark: yeah, I agree. Now there are downsides of that for somebody like me, I'm not making a mint on this. But I'm. I'm so happy with how this is all proceeded. The idea of, you know, having to have this be something that I can leverage for a lot of money, just really doesn't cross my mind. And I, to be honest, I think that if I tried the community would vanish, just, just vanish. Yucca: I don't think they could build this kind of community on that. Right. Certainly communities can be built on those types of principles, but this particular community. I think the reason that we're here, the reason that we, that we're doing all of this is, again, it goes back to what we were talking about before with the principles and the pillars is that we share those things. Right. And those aren't really compatible with the list that we just gave of, of red flags. That's not that isn't compatible with religious dogma and with, you know, deceptive recruitment tactics and things like that. That just doesn't line up with what we're searching for and trying to cultivate and grow. Mark: Right. We don't endorse exploitation. We don't endorse exploitation of the planet. We don't endorse exploitation of one another Yucca: Right. Mark: and a willingness to indulge. Various kinds of exploitation is characteristic of the sorts of organizations that get into trouble with things like that are on this list. You know, people in our community, they're, they're pretty quick to say if they feel like they've been treated unfairly or if they if they don't feel hurt or if their feelings are hurt and we talk about it and To the best degree possible, we make it right. Yucca: Right. Mark: It's just a different approach to things. So there are some resources for people who are deconstructing from religion, who don't necessarily want to be naturalistic pagans or whatever. There is the recovery from religion foundation, Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: um, which is a great organization and they have online groups and a variety of resources for people who are deconstructing from religion. Encourage you to look into that. And Yucca: Whether you're interested in non theos, paganism or not. Right. Mark: Yes, Yucca: so it could be, it could be useful in both cases. Yeah. Mark: There's also the freedom from religion foundation, which is more of an advocacy organization for separation of church and state. But they do also have resources for people who are leaving abusive religious contexts and are are seeking support. So, encourage you to look into both of those, you know, if that's your situation. And also of course, we invite you to, you know, join our community. If you think that these values are things that are consistent with what you wanna do, and you can be a part of that recovery meeting that happens once a month. I think it's the first Tuesday, maybe first, Monday. I'm not sure I'm in a lot of these meetings. Yucca: Yeah. Well, and also some of the stuff that we, you know, we didn't talk too much about it, but the ritual practice and things like that can really help in healing processes. Right. Whatever it is, whether it was a religious trauma or childhood, or those often go hand in hand actually or whatever it is that, that that you're dealing with, you know, part of what we're trying to do is, is. develop lives and practices that support ourselves and develop the tool sets that help us to be able to do those things in whatever way matches us as individuals. Right? Yeah. Mark: For example I know people that have done full. Funerals and burials literal burial in a hole in the ground of their religion, of their, the religion that they've left. And that sounds like it might be kind of silly, but it's not, it's very serious. And they feel really different after it's been done going through those symbolic activities to, you know, psychologically divest yourself of something that has been hanging over you for a long time can be really psychologically impactful. And those are the kinds of practices that we learn how to do in naturalistic, paganism and that we do for one another and that we share. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So if, if this is the first episode of the wonder that you've ever heard, because you're being, you're just joining us or you're A family member or friend said, Hey, you should listen to this because I'm doing this atheopagan thing or naturalistic pagan thing. And I know you're worried about it. So here, check this out. Welcome. And there is plenty more information about atheopagan at the Ethiopia pagan society website, which is the AP society.org or, and, or at the Ethiopia paganism blog that I do, which is Ethiopia, paganism.org. And there's a YouTube channel. There's this podcast. There's a Twitter feed. There's the Facebook group. Yes, there's, there's a lot of different places where you can meet others and talk and ask questions and all that kind of stuff. Yucca: And as we mentioned before, we're, we're pretty young, so we're just growing, but there are some affinity, local affinity groups, which are starting to form, so for different areas of the world or the country. So there might be, you know, people in your local area as well for, you know, face to face conversations and not just over the keyboard. Mark: Right, right. Yeah. So, thank you for this conversation. Yucca. This has been a good one. I feel like.  Yucca: There's a lot here today. Yeah. Mark: yeah, and, you know, there are so many just sort of assumptions that we make about how we're going to do our business that we don't really talk about explicitly. And I think bringing all of those out is really important. So people see, you know, the kind of people we are and the kind of thing that we're trying to build. Yucca: and yeah. Mark: Yeah. Yeah. Yucca: yeah. Well thank you for this conversation. So, and next week, we're, we're gonna be in October already and we have a lot of really fun topics coming up Mark: fun topics like death and decomposition. Yucca: Yes, well, and, and cauldrons and ancestors and all of that good stuff. So, yeah. Mark: It's gonna be great. Yucca: All right. Well, thanks everybody.    .

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   S3E32 TRANSCRIPT:----more----   Yucca: Welcome back to The Wonder: Science Based Paganism. I'm one of your host Yucca. Mark: And I'm the other one, Mark. Yucca: And today we are talking about transitioning into the autumn or the fall. That sort of nesting and collecting of your acorns, metaphoric and, and all of that. Mark: Yeah, because. I mean, if you're like us, the autumn is a, a really lovely time. It's just, it's a time to be enjoyed for so many different reasons. And as pagans who like sort of the products of nature, right. There's a lot of stuff out there. There's leaves and there's. Pine cones and there's late flowers. And of course there's all the stuff pouring out of the gardens. so there's just, there's a lot of opportunity to decorate and celebrate and kind of button things up for winter around our homes. So that's what we're gonna talk about. Yucca: Right. Well, and there's also a lot of those practical things that we're doing that are a wonderful opportunity to invite more meaning and ritual into our lives as we're doing those things anyways. Right. Mark: Yes. Yes. Yucca: So Mark: Yeah. I mean all that food preparation stuff that, I mean, it's practical, right? Because it's food preparation, but it's, it's pretty witchy stuff. When, when you, when you get down to it, you know, the brewing and the pickling and the drying and all that stuff, it's all very witchy. Yucca: Yeah, well, and, and even things also like you're switching out, you're bringing your sweaters out, right. Bringing those out and, and going through and making sure the moths didn't get into them and putting the there's the heavier blankets on the bed and, and all of those sorts of things, you know, there's, there was an episode we did. Few years back at this point about the kind, bringing the magic into things we talked about. Like, you know, when you're putting the shampoo on your head, it's not just shampoo, but it's your, your magical potion of charisma or whatever it is. You know, there's so much of that, that this time of year, I think there's just a opportunity for, Mark: Yeah. There's at, at least in the temperate zone, there's so much of a sense of transition. There's kind of a magic in the air. The weather is changing. The character of the light is changing. It won't be long before. In most places. Daylight savings thing changes. So the whole sense of the length of the day changes and that's just a really ripe canvas for for doing our creative ritual activity around Yucca: Yeah. So last week we did talk about the Equinox. But there, are there any things that you have been doing? Since then in the, in the last week or so, or things that you will be doing that fit in with this transition theme that we're talking about? Mark: Well, one thing that I did was my Northern California atheopagan affinity group, which calls itself the live Oak circle went camping last weekend. And that was really cool to, you know, to do, to do an Equinox ritual in person with people. And we're still getting to know one another and still kind of feeling our way. So, you know, that, that will, that will mature over time, but it's really a lovely group of people. Very diverse, very interesting. And I just, I had a wonderful time And so that was something that I, I did for the Equinox season that I'm really happy about. Go ahead. Yucca: is, is camping during the winter a, a possibility, or is this really your last camp of the, the year? Mark: It's a possibility, but you're gonna get rained on Yucca: Okay. Mark: and I don't mind snow for camping very much because it's dryer. Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: But rain can really be a pain. Yeah. I mean, it's, everything's all muddy and it, it can really be a pain. But that said the I've gone camping in say February, which is the wet month of the year for us. And it's been glorious. It's, I've gone out to the coast. The, the waves are all stormy and there are not many people out there because it's not tourist season. So you can really have a wonderful experience doing that. Yucca: Mm. Nice. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: And I'm sorry. I think I had cut you off. You were starting to say something else as well. Mark: Probably, but I have no idea what it was now. So that's something that I did. And my partner NAIA brought home a an armature for a reef. This made out of grape vines this week that we're going to put seasonal things on and hang on our door. So that's another thing that hasn't been done yet, but will be we have to go out and collect some leaves and pine cones and things like that. Because it's just, the leaves are just starting to turn here. I mean, week before last, we had. We had temperatures from the high nineties to 117 over a space of about seven days. Yucca: so hot. Mark: And so now I think the trees are figuring out that, okay, we're done with that now. It's it's time to start shutting down. Yucca: Right. And some of that is, is cued by the light more than the temperature. It depends on the species, but the, the light can really play a role in, in what they're doing. Mark: Mm-hmm Yucca: Hmm. Well, we don't have a lot of trees that do change in the autumn. We have a few but for the most part, you can still feel it in the air here. But the flowers have really changed. This is the end of our monsoon season. So we had a lot of. Flowers. And this past week, the, the kiddos and I went out and just gathered a whole bunch of flowers. And we had a dear friend with us as well, who showed the kids how to leave the, the flowers and they made flower crowns. And even though that's something that is more associated with spring, On like a larger level for us, it's more of a fall thing because that's when we actually have the flowers, right. We have like some little tiny things in the spring, but they're just, but usually the, the end of winter is very dry for us. Right. When we do get snows, it's more in, in the beginning of win, like more in a January, February time. But by the time we get into March and April, there's not much moisture. So there really isn't a lot in the spring, but in the autumn, we've got these All kinds of MOS and sunflowers and Veria and all of these beautiful things to, to weave in and add. And we were talking about be before we started recording, I was showing mark the, the photos from it. And mark, you suggested, and I love this idea of putting, if you had leaves putting leaves in doing leave crowns. You know, the cone pine cones and, and whatever it is, that's in your environment. That is, that is fall or autumn for you. Mark: Sure. Yeah. I mean, one idea that you could do as a part of your Equinox celebration actually would be to have to crown like an autumn king and an autumn queen or autumn royalty of whatever gender, Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: To kind of oversee the feast. Right. And it'd be really cute if those were kids. Yucca: Yes, Mark: so Yucca: the kids with, with flower crowns and leaf crowns is just cute. Just too cute. Mark: you bet. So that's, that's something else that you could do, theoretically. I. I mean, there's, there's so much that's so aesthetically pleasing about this time of the year to bring it into your house and make it clear that there's less of a division between inside and outside, I think is something that can be really valuable for us. Yucca: yeah. Some of that, depending on how far north or how far cold your climate gets. It is a little bit of a last chance this time of year for some of the outdoor stuff, because when the snows do come, when the bitter cold does come, there's a lot more of that. Just staying nestled inside. So I think of this a lot as like a nesting time getting ready, right? Just like that's what I see the animals outside doing the ones that stay here. We still have a few that have not left. I saw some hummingbirds today and I'm going, Hey. Get going get going. You're not gonna like it here. But the ones that, that stay here, you know, all of our little rodents and the Jays and things they're busy as can be right now, just packing away their cheeks, full the Jays. It's so funny. They can have multiple, we leave sunflower seeds out for. Which they've now planted everywhere. But they can fit multiple ones in their beak at once. So you'll see them going by with like three or four seeds in one beak and then the, all the squirrels and chipmunks with their faces just stuffed full of whatever it is that they can find. Mark: Nice Yucca: and so I, I kind of feel like that, right. Just stuffing, you know, it's time to stuff, things in, but it's a good time also for a fall clean. We have a spring cleaning as a Mark: Mm, Yucca: in the larger culture, but it's a good time to do that. Fall cleaning and clean out all this stuff from summer, that's gone. Right? You're getting rid of that stuff. You don't need that anymore. And bring out, you know, bring out the things that you do. What are your, the boots, if you're in a, I'm sure this is for your environment. You probably have some big boots. The rain boots Mark: nice rubber Wellingtons. Yeah. Yucca: You know, maybe put those flip flops away, bring out the wellies. Mark: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And I, I think of it this way. We're gonna be spending a lot more time indoors now. Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: Uh, going forward for the next six months or so. Right. Because the conditions are going to get more inhospitable outside. So let's make the inside a place we wanna be, you know, let's make it cozy and comfortable and pretty and practical and all those different kinds of dimensions of what makes a real home. Yucca: mm-hmm yeah. Mark: And there are ritual things that we can do that can contribute to that, which is, can be fun. I think, you know, assembling that reef and putting it on the, on the doorstep, I think is gonna be a great thing. I. Also getting dried squashes and pumpkins and so forth to, to decorate the front area just. Yes. We, we were talking about this before we started to record. Yes, it's true. Pumpkins tend to be associated with Halloween and Hallows, but they're available now and they're actually pouring out of the gardens right now. So, you know, grab a few. Yucca: Yeah. And there are some, some really fun ones. If you haven't grown them, that's one of the ones I really encourage you to try. Because squash are pretty forgiving for, for being grown. And you can grow in a five gallon bucket and get one of those. You can, you can grow maybe one plant, but you could do something like one of those, those little Jacky littles. Have you seen those little pumpkins? They're about the size of like your fist? Mark: Oh yeah. Yucca: Yeah, those are a great one. And some of the smaller ones, you could grow a big one, but those are ones that you could do in your window. If you don't have any backyard to put it in, if you do, but you gotta have your big container, right. You can get away with one or so, and then they'll just take over. But the smaller, the smaller, the winter squashes, the more of them you're likely to get. If you're trying to grow one of your, like your huge, like fair winning pumpkin. You're not gonna be able to pull that off indoors or on a balcony, but something little you might be able to. And they're usually pretty easy to save seeds from too. So if you go to the, the farmer's market or even the grocery store, and you see that really weird pumpkin with all the like bumps on it and those strange colors and stuff. Just save one or two of those. Right. And see if the next, next year, maybe you can get that to, to grow in your house or on your porch or, and if it doesn't work, then would you lose Mark: Right. Yeah. Yucca: You're gonna, Mark: You, you, you had the pumpkin anyway, so yeah, it's what you lost was one bite of toasted pumpkin seeds. Yucca: Yeah. So, yeah, so pumpkins And depending on how far along they are in your climate, the dried sunflower heads. Mark: Huh? Yucca: those ones. Mine. They're not in my area. They're not quite ready. We need another, another couple weeks. But for the big, like the mamma sunflowers and they're just so beautiful, you see that spiral pattern of the seeds, assuming you can get to it before the birds. Mark: right, Yucca: Yeah, but if you pick it before the seeds have developed, then you're, they're not gonna develop on the, the head. Right? So if you, if you wanna save one of those, let's say you have several flowers, you can put a paper bag over it, as long as it's still attached to the, the plant, but it won't fully develop. It's not like some of those little grasses and things. If you cut those off early, then they'll just ripen really quick. There's just not enough time for those big sunflowers to do that. Mark: that makes sense. Yucca: So, yeah. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: So. Mark: and of course, you know, we're talking about produce. And so even if you don't have your own garden, this is the time for the fruit stands and the vegetable stands. And, you know, it's, it's a time, even, even if you do most of your shopping at a market, you know, if that's where you get most of your food, do some exploring, find out what the local varieties are of things. You know, play around with some new vegetables, because there are gonna be weird things that you just don't really recognize or understand how to use. And of course you can pick up things for preservation, which is a big part traditionally of this time of year. As people work to save as many calories as they possibly can for the winter, when. When the food systems are not gonna be producing, Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: so, Yucca: And this is a fun time of year to, to try with the pickling and the fermenting. Speaking of those sort of witchy looking and feeling things you'd have those nice jars. That's definitely fun to do. Mark: Yeah, get some local honey and do a quick bead. That'll be ready by hellos. You can do some of that.  Yucca: Yeah. Mead and insiders are really easy. They're not like they're not like beer that is much more finicky and you need more equipment and stuff Mark: and there are so many more steps. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: For for beer. Beer is really actually a pretty complicated chemistry experiment when you get down to it making the, the wart so that the food for the yeast is absolutely perfect to create a particular flavor is really, you know, an art. It is, it's an art and there are people that are very good at it. I'm not one of them because I discovered that. There's all this fantastic beer available for 10 bucks, a six pack and I don't have to learn to be a master. Other people have, have done that for me, Yucca: Right. Mark: but I do like Yucca: gonna be, if it's something you're gonna be consuming a lot of versus something you're making just a small amount for. Just sort of the joy of it, you know, you have different considerations. Mark: right. Yeah. I mean, if you're only doing the five gallon. Car full, then that's a pretty easy project. Yucca: yeah, Mark: So it's something to look into it's and, and there is definitely a sense of pride and accomplishment. When you make a nice beverage like that and people enjoy it and appreciate it, and it gives you an opportunity to be creative about bottle labels and all that kind of stuff. It's fun. Yucca: another one to, to look into if you're interested in making things like that, but you don't want as high of an alcohol content is kombucha. Kombucha is really easy to make. And when you make it at home, it can have a higher content than what you would buy in the store. Still not gonna be very much though. Like if you wanna have an alcoholic kombucha, you've gotta try, you've gotta go out of your way to make it that way. You're not gonna accidentally make it as high content as your CIS or wines, beers, things like that. So you'll get a pretty low amount. That's a really fun one that also, if you're looking for something to feel super witchy with, like it makes this SCOBY on top that it makes is this bizarre, bubbly looking. It's really cool. And if you've got kids, you can, that you can lay on poke it and stuff and it's, it's fun. So,  Mark: another option, which is fully non-alcoholic is to make what are called shrubs. Yucca: mm-hmm. Mark: Shrubs are syrups that you add to sparkling water. They're made with vinegar and sugar and various kinds of herbs and fruits. So like strawberry and basil is, you know, one combination. There's, there's lots of recipes on the internet for making shrubs. I know it's a weird name. I didn't get it either, but that's what they're called. They're called shrubs. And they used to be very popular in the 19th century. They were, they were very, very common. And so you make these concentrated syrups and then you mix it with sparkling water and it, and maybe toss in, you know, another basal leaf or something for some fresh aromatics. And there are these very complex, interesting things to drink, but they don't have any alcohol in them. Yucca: Yeah. That sounds like something I'm sure that somebody is really passionate about and has their, their blog or channel on the boat. Mark: yep. Yeah, absolutely. Yucca: yeah. Well, pivoting away from the kitchen in the home, there's also things that That we might be doing like the buttoning up of the windows. Right. You're making sure that your windows seal properly and that the, the door isn't, isn't letting a draft through or something like that. And so that's, that's really a lovely time to maybe do a, a home. Kind of protection ritual or cleaning ritual or something like that, where maybe you're checking the window for the drafts, but you know, maybe there's something that you wanna be meditating on at while you're doing that or sprinkling some salt as well. Right. You're gonna protect from the drafts, but also, you know, protect on, on just sort of the symbolic level. Mark: Right. And you can be very specific about that sort of thing. I mean, what occurs to me is you can dip your fingertips into some rainwater that you've saved and then sort of flick it at the front door and it doesn't go through. So the, the point being, you know, we're rain proofing the house, we're demonstrating that this. The weather's not going to get inside. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: Putting salt at the corners of the house is of course a traditional protection thing as well. There are lots of various witchy sorts of activities that I think can give us more of a sense of comfort and solidity and security in our, in our homes. Even though, you know, they're just symbolic actions and we know that, but that, that doesn't matter. They still affect us. And there's a good feeling about kind of taking care of yourself that way about going through all of the gestures that are necessary in order to feel like you are in a secure and happy, warm, and cozy place. Yucca: Mm-hmm . Yeah. Hmm. Yeah, this is just, this is just one of my favorite times of year. I just wanna say that, right. just, oh, the chill and the it's still hot in the middle of the day for us, but in the mornings and the evenings, it's got that little brisk and, you know, so there's just so many lovely things. And as always, we really love hearing from all of you. And you tell us about some of the things you do.  Mark: Yes, especially if you're in other climbs because you know, there's a, there's a woman who's on the atheopagan council who comes to the Saturday morning zoom mixers pretty frequently. And she was just saying this morning that it's just barely starting to be tolerably. Cool there now it's still pretty hot and she's in Tampa, Florida. So she's actually in the subtropics. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Which is, it's just, it's a whole other deal, right. You know, the, the dreaded season is not the winter. The dreaded season is the summer. Yucca: right. Mark: it's very hot and very humid and just not very hospitable full of bugs. Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: Um, so Yucca: we're ready for the mosquitoes to take a break. Mark: are Yucca: really ready for them to Mark: I, I see, okay. Yucca: yeah, but I'm sure their mosquitoes are on a different level. Mark: Yeah, well, because of all the moisture everywhere, right? There's just there's enough moisture to support so much growth. So all the plants, all the animals, they really go to town. Yucca: yeah. Mark: What else I'm trying to think of what else? I mean, this is a real season for paying attention, just watching what's happening with the sky. You know, noticing the branches of the trees against the sky as they get more and more naked and lose their leaves.  Yucca: And in some places that's a, that's an overnight. It's amazing how quick things change. Right. And in others, it's a slow, kinda drawn out process that, oh, what are we going through? And it just hap and then others, it just happens. Mark: Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. To me. The the time change is always kind of slamming the door on the remnants of summer and, you know, really, you know, bringing winter on board. But the time leading up to that, you know, the whole spy month of October and, you know, I mean they're Yucca: have some good topics coming up for October. I Mark: oh, we do. Yucca: October. Mark: Yeah, me too. There's just, there's so much to be said about not only our practices as pagans, but just living a life. You know, the, the kinds of considerations that we have at that time of year are so profound thinking about mortality and about ancestry and all those kinds of things. But this is the, this is the onset of that. This, this moment right here is when we slip from summer into this different transitional kind of state. And I, I just really enjoy it. I find myself even more attentive to what's going on outside and around me, because it's so beautiful. Yucca: Yeah. Hmm. Mark: So I hope that wherever you are, you're having a similar experience of Of wonderful arrival of autumn wherever you may be and feel free to drop us a note about how you're experiencing that or what any of your traditions are for the autumn and going into going into that. October season you can reach us as always at the wonder podcast, QS, gmail.com, and we always enjoy hearing from you. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So thanks everybody. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Thanks. Thanks for being with us. We always appreciate so much that you listen.    .

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   S3E22 TRANSCRIPT:----more---- Mark: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-based Paganism. My name is Mark, and I'm one of your hosts. Yucca: And I'm Yucca.  And today we're talking about the upcoming atheopagan or a neo pagan Sabbath, which is mid-summer or the summer solstice which is an important station on the wheel of the year. That's celebrated by many pagans all over. Yucca: Right. And as always, it's amazing that we are here already, right. That also marks the halfway through the year.  Mark: Right, right. And this is the third episode that we've done on the mid summer holidays. So, if you're really hungry for lots more content on. On Midsummer, you can go back into our archives and look for those other episodes as.  Yucca: Right. And will probably echo many of the things that we've said. No, both of us have been doing our practices for a long time. And this is one of the big ones that we're that we have a lot of experience and time in. But of course, every year there's going to be something new. There's going to be something fresh to say as well. So we're going to assume that folks haven't heard the past ones, or if you have fit, whole year has gone by. So we're going to talk about all that again.  Mark: Yeah. Think of it as a refresher, if you've heard the other one. Yucca: Well, that's, one of the lovely things about the wheel of the year is that you get to do it again and again, right. You do it. It's not one. time only. And then that's it, right? It's not like one of these rites of passages where, you become an adult once, that's it,  Mark: Yeah. And you've got to get the ritual, right. That one time, right? A little forgiving. Yucca: But this, this is something that happens again and again, and every year there's things that are similar things that are a little bit different. So let's, let's actually start by talking about what is the solstice and Midsummer and all of that.  Mark: Well, let's start with the word. The word solstice means the sun stops. And what, what that means in this particular context is that from the perspective. Being on the surface of the earth, the sun's movement towards the north,  Yucca: From the Northern hemisphere  Mark: the Northern hemisphere reaches its peak on the summer solstice. It gets as high as it's going to go and it kind of stops there for a couple of days. And then it starts to retreat back to the self on its way towards the winter souls. Yucca: Right. And of course, if you are in the Southern hemisphere, it's going to be, the solstices are going to be reversed from the perspective of the Northern hemisphere. Right.  Mark: Right, but it still moves. It still moves to the north end to the south. It's just that moving to the south actually means rather than  Yucca: Yes. Yeah. Just because of think about the, the equator. And so part of what's happening is the, when we zoom out, right? So that's our explanation from being here on the earth, right. As part of the earth, but, just imagine yourself pulling out the camera, zooming back, and we're looking at earth as this planet. Orbiting around our star and we're orbiting around it on a plane, but that plane doesn't match with the tilt of our planet. And that's where we're getting all of our solstices and equinoxes. And all of that is from the relationship between the two planes from there, the ecliptic and the equatorial plane  Mark: So what ends up in of course, one of the effects of that is seasons  Yucca: Yes.  Mark: because climate is dramatically affected by the amount of sunlight and the intensity of sunlight that reaches the surface of. And of course, the heat conviction from that drives weather. It's a very important part of our evolution as life on earth. It's almost unimaginable. What, how different life on earth would have to be if it, if we didn't have those seasons. Yucca: Right. And it's particularly noticeable for those of us who live in the temperate regions. Right So, In the tropics there's, there's going to be less of a temperature swing. There may still be rainy and dry seasons and all of that. But in the temperate zones, we're going to have these extreme differences between. Summer and winter. And that's something that here where I live I'm, at about 36 north or so, I was just noticing as I was walking outside, I didn't put any shoes on and was going, walking across the the ground, which six months ago. I would be, running cause my feet would be freezing on the ground and it's just a, complete. Different experience to be in the exact same place on the planet. Just six months different. Mark: Right with Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: with a temperature swing that can sometimes be a hundred degrees Fahrenheit or more,  Yucca: Right.  Mark: which is. It's not very much in the cosmic scheme of things in terms of the temperatures of stars and the relative temperatures of the surface of other planetary bodies. But for us, it's a huge shift, requires us to be able to adapt to dramatically different temperatures. It makes perfect sense that over the course of human history, people have recognized this day. As a really important day. We have all of these stone age technology observatories, which we have we've we've observed like Stonehenge, for example, which line up precisely would be the sun on the summer solstice. Yucca: And That's all over the world too. right Stone hinges is one of the most famous of them. But in all of the the populated continents, we see that. Mark: That's right in the Americas, both north and south America in in Europe and Asia and Africa everywhere, we, we find these where rocks have been arranged so that they create. Little Ray of light that comes from the rising sun at the summer solstice, which tells us that marking this moment was really important for those early people. Yucca: Right. Cause that was a lot of work to pill those things to plan them too. And year after year to make those observations. One of the things that, that I think we fall into this trap of in modern society is thinking about our ancestors as though. Weren't sophisticated and not very intelligent. And that's simply not the case. They didn't have access to the internet and steam engines and electric cars and all of those things that we do today, but they were just as much if perhaps thought more clever resourceful and. And really observant, right? They had to have been for, to be able to create these things. And we only see this tiny sliver of what's left because the wind and the rain and the forests and all of that have had washed away and grown over the, the records of, of these people who have our many grandparents who came before.  Mark: Yes. Exactly. So, and among other things we don't tend to recognize. The amount of time that it took to develop the observations that would drive the building of an observatory like that. Because when we think about history, we think, especially as Americans, we think in terms of centuries, right. A century or two, well, it may have taken 15 generations for people to finally figure out precisely that the sun was moving. Yucca: Hm.  Mark: And where it was moving and when it was reaching the peak of its movement and how to arrange some sort of an observatory to capture that, that experience Yucca: And record that for the coming years to get it built in just the right place. I mean, it's a, it's amazing. Mark: it is,  Yucca: that's one of the many things I wish we had a time machine for just to be able to watch that. Right. So many things, it would be great to have that for, so it would be. Yeah. What a field to go into and study. I'm sure. I'm sure some of our listeners, if any of you actually are in that field, we would love to, to bring you on and pick your brains on that kind of stuff.  Mark: Yeah. Yeah. Archeology generally is just really excited.  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: This was an important date. It was important for the people that made these observatories for whatever purposes they had, whether it was marking the migrate that the migration periods of prey animals, or whether it was marking the the planting and growth cycles of crop vegetation. This particular holiday or, or even if it was just, well, this is a really great time because the days are really long. can, we can be a lot more productive because our, Yucca: Right.  Mark: because, enjoying ourselves, we tend to think of as a sort of extraneous human activity because we live under capitalism, which doesn't value it. If it doesn't get painted. But actually just goofing off and having a good time is a fundamental human behavior.  Yucca: And really hits.  Mark: we do it alone. And it's good for us. Yucca: Yeah. And I would argue that that's a primate thing too, right. That, that, that became part of us long before we became human, because we see it in our cousins and all of them. Right. So, Yeah, And so this is, this is a day that, many of us don't live in. Hunting societies anymore, or we don't live where many of us live in an industrial world where we're not participating in the agricultural cycles and all of that, but it's something that. When we are paying attention and that's something that, that we, as atheopagan appreciate doing, right. That's part of our practice is being part of, of the world around us and nature that we're part of, this is something that we can recognize as well. That really helps us to be tuned in with our world because. Mark: Right. Yucca: It's there it's happening. We're part of it, whether we recognize it or not, but we get a lot from the recognition of it and the act of participation in it.  Mark: absolutely. The and this is one of those circumstances, like the winter solstice, those long dark nights. These these bright long days with the, with the lady evenings and the, the, the sort of long golden hours at the end of the day, I think we all recognize how much we value that time. In the temperate zone, when those of us that do experience that whether or not we understand that it's the summer solstice, we know that the days get long in the summer and then it's, it's something that we can really enjoy. So why don't we talk a little bit about what this means symbolically what, how, how we how we apply, meaning to this astronomical phenomenon that happens to us every year. Yucca: So there's of course the. The kind of traditional stuff that many people who are influenced by Gardner and all of those that that's kind of taking up after what's happening in Britain. Right. And then in Britain, it, it is kind of getting into mid stage. Right for where I live. This is the beginning of summer. This is our first summer. It really didn't feel like summer here until last week really is when it, it felt like it shifted. Sometimes it'll shift a little earlier. It'll will shift in mid may, sometimes the by June. Yeah, it's summer, but it's certainly not the middle of summer. But in our practice, we look around it, Hey, what's happening in the world? What's happening in our ecosystem and this is the time where insects have just really. Just woken up. And we have cicadas here and they are cicadas have different sounds in different places. But here they, they sound like the Dalek from doctor who, right. Th they're not shouting exterminate, they're shouting, like Sam made with me. It's just really It's quite entertaining. And then the whole night is the crickets and the bees are out and just life is just, it's bloomed and it's amazing. So they, they definitely play this really central role for us. I know a lot of people use like sunflowers and symbology like that. Those aren't ready, where I live. Right. Sunflowers are not until later on in July and August. And, and, and we were talking about before about, this is kind of like a calm before the storm of, before the harvest starts for us. It's finishing, getting everything planted because our last frost isn't until mid may. Right? So now we can finally, everything's getting in and it's, it is kind of a busy time, but there's also that. Stretched out long laziness, not just appreciation of the laziness.  Mark: Yeah, that's really one of the main things that I associate with Midsummer is the it's, it's a, it's a leisurely time in many ways. The gardens are mostly in, around here. Sunflower is still haven't bloomed though. They won't bloom until, late July, something like that. This, this is the time of year when people go to the beach and have a barbecue kind of, it's just, the days are long and it's, it's. It's a time when it's very tempting to play hooky and just go and do something enjoyable. Lots of sitting around on decks and patios, drinking wine and visiting with friends and just, just enjoying life. And so I've sometimes called this holiday, the Sabbath of leisure because it, it really feels like that to me in the agricultural cycle. Around here and to some degree in the British Isles as well. This is the time when all the planting is done and it's not, nothing is ready to harvest. So it's mostly just kind of waiting around, and, and enjoying the early fruit, the peaches and plums and apricots and cherries and things like that. We have a lot of that going on right now. But from a meaning standpoint, I also associate the wheel of the year with the life cycle of a person. From conception to full composting. So the, the whole, the whole life cycle, not just the time when we're alive and I consider this to be the holiday of adult vigor, maybe in the thirties or so. Thirties to early forties, not middle-aged yet really kind of at the height of your powers before your body starts to hurt. And  Yucca: You're getting lots of stuff done in your life, whether it's the career family or both, all that stuff.  Mark: yeah, there's, there are plans being executed and you're really kind of on top of your game. So I, I consider this a time to celebrate those spokes in the same way that Mayday or belting is a time to celebrate young adulthood. This is the sort of full adulthood holiday. And then dimming or summer's end at the beginning of August is the time to celebrate the middle east. Yucca: Okay.  Mark: when we're starting to tip down towards elderly men. So it's a good time to do rites of passage into, out of young adulthood and into full adulthood. If that's something that's meaningful to you. And also a time just to celebrate pleasure to celebrate the, the, the joy of just being leisurely and. Enjoying these long golden days. Yucca: Mm.  Mark: So, let's talk about some projects that we can do that help with celebrating these holidays. I know that you decorate your house. What, what sorts of things do you put around your house? Yucca: We do. So we do a lot of insect and arthropod themed things. And we have a solstice, the summer solstice Garland that we put up that is like honeycomb and bees, the bees that we put up. So that really makes the it's very playful. And they, the kids So this year, we're going to try and make some big kind of like papier-mache ones. But in the past, we've just had like big paper, just like cut out and have them color it in and learn about the different parts in lifecycle and all of that. So we'll do that kind of thing. And then we also do do gifts for similar solstice as well. And it's very cute this year. My oldest is really into it and has been making the gifts, but they're not, we might buy a couple things like a book or something like that, but it really is about making gifts for people. And so she's. Everyone that she couldn't think of in her life that she's sick know, she's like, I'm going to make it and wrap it. And, and and then she wants to hang it with the Garland and all of that. So that's a a big part for us and then bringing in the plants and things that we're finding in nature. So yeah. Mark: That's really great. Is there an equivalent to hanging up a stocking for the summer solstice,  Yucca: Well, that's  Mark: in 10. Yucca: the, yeah, we don't, I mean, that's a good idea. I like that. We've definitely been, I mean, we've been hanging things from the, the honeycomb with the bees. But I, maybe we should make something a little bit more formal because I think in the feature it's gonna start to get a little bit heavy as they add different kinds of things. And. Maybe hats. Yeah. Ooh, that would be good. Right? Like the big, because we were the, the big straw hats, because we are We don't have a lot of melanin. We have very little, and we live at 7,000 feet with a UV index of about 10 every day. So yeah, there's, we've got hats all over, but maybe that's a great idea. Well, have we, maybe we need our special solstice hats or straw hats. So, yeah.  Mark: Was just thinking something at the opposite end of the body from the toes. Yucca: Right. Well, and that might be able to fit something, but then not encourage you to have too big of a thing. Some stockings to people have are good fit. My whole body practically in those stockings are impressive. So.  Mark: Yeah, that's true. People do get carried away with that sort of thing.  Yucca: Well, and that's actually, one of the reasons we wanted to do presence at solstice is to take a little bit of the commercial power away from the winter of the Christmas. right. And go, yeah. So this is a sort of the, it's not all about that. There's other times of year. And then it works out quite lovely that birthdays and our family are all spread out on like each season has a birthday. So Mark: Oh, Yucca: Yeah. So we try and kind of spread that and make it just smaller things and try and make them a little bit more meaningful rather than just like all the presents you can get, still working on the grandparents, like getting that it's hard for the grandparents to, to accept that. But yeah. So what about any house or are you doing particular decorations or themes that you have. Mark: Not so much decorations. We have a little altar space. I mean, I have my personal focus, which I decorate for the seasons. And so I'll put a. Kind of seasonal things, sun symbols and stuff like that on my personal focus. Sometimes we have a reef on our front doors sometimes not I don't know whether it will do that or not this year. I, I have a ritual tool that I up date every year at summer solstice, which is my son broom. Which starts with a, a piece of Oak branch that I found at a local state park. And then it has long strands of wild ride that I've cut down bound around it to make a big shaky sort of brew. And what I do every year is I cut down some new strands and add those to the brew and then retire everything. So it's got all this accumulated summer souls to see by magic woowoo stuff in it associated in my mind. And I leave it out in the sun all day on the summer solstice and it becomes my son.  Yucca: Hm.  Mark: I can use, like at the height of winter, when things are feeling really sort of dismal and cold and dark, I can wave that around, inside my house to bring some of the vibe of the warm days back. And it works, it works it's it it's, it's one of those wonderful spicy psychology things that we do. And so, that is a tool that I have always put on the focus for Midsummer celebrations as well as, seasonal fruits and other sorts of symbols of just this leisure time. We're doing a, the, the affinity group, the atheopagan affinity group for Northern California, that I'm a part of is meeting in person to do a mid summer ritual next weekend. And we are going to scope the, the maximum point of, of the sun to the north. And market market with chalk on the ground. And then also do the minimal point all the way, all the way to the south, which is where the winter solstice would be, so that we can see the difference, mark them on the ground with chalk so that we can see the difference. And then what we're doing is we are all bringing water from our homes and we're going to pour all of those integrated. And then dance a circle, dance, and sing a chant around that, and then use that water to water the garden. Yucca: That's beautiful. Wow.  Mark: So, it's, it's definitely the time of year when you need to water the garden. It was a hundred degrees here yesterday.  Yucca: Oh,  Mark: So it's it's time to be taking care of our plants in that. Yucca: yeah. Mulch  Mark: Yeah. Yucca: That nice protective cover mulches kind of like the. You can in the summer it's that, sweet, cool relief. Although I don't know how cool it gets for you during the summer when we, if you have your a hundred degrees, how much does it drop at night?  Mark: Typically into the fifties last night, it dropped into the high sixties. Yucca: Okay, so you have a nice, a nice swing there cools down. You might need to bring a sweater with you,  Mark: we don't have a lot of, of humidity, although to you, it would probably seem like we do.  Yucca: Yes.  Mark: And I got back from the century retreat that the air was not only like syrup, because it was so dense here at sea level, but also because it smelled, everything smelled like water. There was water. And even though we're in this Mediterranean climate, but that's not the same thing as being up at Alpine elevation in the desert west. Yucca: I've been in your area twice, but it's both times has been during your wet season. That was in February, March kind of. And I remember it feeling very wet.  Mark: it was very, very, very wet in February. Yucca: yes. In fact, I remember the, the afternoon rains, which were scheduled to be getting ours here. When I was a child, June was the beginning of the monsoon season. But that has been changing our monsoon season as being, compressing and pressing. So, hopefully we'll get something, but you're what you were talking about with the. Reminded me of was that idea. My oldest had, who likes to make up holidays, I think a few weeks back, I told you about the sneak holiday and all of that. But she wants to do the first rain, which I think is such a beautiful idea of, we could go out and catch some from the first monsoon rain and have like a special bottle. And the two of them could pick out their bottles to store it in. And of course we, we live on rainwater, right. We don't have a well or anything like that. So we're drinking rainwater all the time, but just the act of catching it and having it be like the special thing Mark: I do that. Yucca: season.  Mark: I do that with big storms.  Yucca: Hmm.  Mark: We have a really big storm that pours six or seven inches of rain on us. I could put out a basin to collect it, and then I pour it into a fancy bottle and keep it.  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: And the reason that I do that is that in the fall at Hallo. One of the things that I like to do is to pour water from a big storm, into a dry Creek bed to call the ringback,  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: Which sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't like all of those things, but it makes me feel better that I'm something in quotes about our, our drought situation. Yucca: Well, and it gives you something to emotionally touch in with, right. And that's what these items, that's for us, that's what the decorating the house is about. It's what the wood, all of that is for is. The state of mind, the emotional state that I feel and the family feels and the whole house, when we see those things just for a moment, right. We see the, the oversized, child drawn be on the wall and that means something right. And that pebble that we picked up outside and, it just brings us back and just keeps us. Grounded as part of this planet, not just on this planet, not just living off of it, but part of this system,  Mark: Sure. Sure. Yeah. And there's also this very childlike sense of wonder that comes with it. Like, oh, it's that time again? And there's, there's always something special. W with a new holiday and that's, I mean, to me, the, the way that we can enrich our lives just by celebrating these, these passing seasons is so important. It just, it helps us to be happier,  Yucca: Right.  Mark: being happy, a good. Yucca: And it's. Helps to slow things down just a little bit. So if you remember when you were a kid a year lasted forever, right. And part of that was because your life experience was so short, right. From seven to eight, that was a huge chunk of your life. But as we get older, things become more and more the same every day. And one of, and, This realization was distressing me several years back. And so I did a lot of research on it and found that one of the leading ideas is that it's because of the lack of nuance that when we add new things in, we add those new experiences that helps slow down our perception of, of how quickly the years are just flying by. And that's something that I've intentionally tried to add into my life. And. It feels like it's working, right. I mean, it's kind of, it's a back and forth. It's sort of like, there's the, the clumping of the galaxies and yet the expansion of the universe, gravity and dark energy fighting each other. So it's like, I think I'm making progress, but maybe not, I'm not sure. That's one of the things that our, that our practice can help do is bring some of that novelty. And so bringing that back to the holiday. So this is a point in the year that we come back to every year and there's going to be those things that are similar every year, but there is the opportunity for the, oh this year, I'm going to go on a walk and I'm going to notice, the particular. Mosses that are every mosque that I can find on my walk and celebrate that. Or every, can I find a new insect that I have no idea what insect it is, let alone what family or order it even comes from. Right. Just do things like that. I think that that, that can add a lot to, you're gonna have a tradition of doing new things, right.  Mark: Yep. That's very well said. That is certainly consistent with the reason why I do this practice. It lends a sense of meaning and a sense of joy and playfulness to my life. And all of those are, are good things. And then in. In the broader sense with the atheopagan community. It also gives me a sense of community, a feeling of belonging, and of being a part of a group of people who are of generally like-mind and values and who like one another and like spending time together. So that's a cool thing. I'm still thinking a lot about the century retreat. And I was on the Saturday morning mixer that we do on zoom. Every Saturday morning and three, I think four, four of the people, five of the people that were on that call were people that had been at the century retreat. And all of us were talking still about how we're integrating that. And particularly the feeling of. Not having as deeper connection with people in our day-to-day lives and wanting more of that. And how do we build how we find friendships and, build them, develop them.  Yucca: Right,  Mark: So that may be something that we'll talk about in a future episode. Yucca: right. Yeah. And we also did for future episodes let's get some really wonderful suggestions through the email. So we really, we really love that and we'll, we will be talking about some of those and appreciate when you reach out to us about that. So thank you everyone. Yeah.  Mark: Right. And if you haven't heard it before, way to reboot is the wonder podcast. Q S. gmail.com. So the wonder podcast queues@gmail.com and we really enjoy getting your feedback and your topic suggestions. It's very helpful to us. So happy Midsummer, Yucca. Yucca: Likewise, mark. Happy summer happy first summer have MOUs myths. What else people call it litho sometimes, right? Yeah, there's another one of those. There's a bunch of names for it. But at least it's one of the ones that, has the astronomical name that we could say. And everybody knows what we're talking about. Solstice. Yeah. So, and Dawn is very early. This time of year, right? This is this next few weeks. It's going to be the earliest of the year where I live. It's five 30. But if you do do some sort of ritual where you wake up to greet the Dawn the visible planets are in the morning sky right now, and it is it's so beautiful there, like Juul is hanging in the sky and definitely worth worse. Getting up for. If you can manage, or some people might find it easier to stay up for depending on your personality. But that could be a lovely idea for, For the solstice, right. Greeting the sun in the morning. And then in the evening, bidding at farewell for the solstice. Mark: For sure.  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: All right. Well, thanks everyone. And we will see you next week on the wonder science-based paganism.

Here's the link to the blog post: https://atheopaganism.wordpress.com/2022/05/21/reintegration/   Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   S3E19 TRANSCRIPT:----more---- Yucca: Welcome back to the wonder science-based paganism. I'm one of your hosts Yucca.  Mark: And I'm the other one, mark. Yucca: And this week we're talking about reintegrating. With normal life after you've had some kind of experience like a retreat, which we're going to be talking about. The one we were just on or a really impactful ritual or something like that. Mark: There's a lot that happens in our brains when we go through these transformational peak experiences. And there are things that we can do to kind of smooth our transition back into the ordinary routines of our life and to make that emotional transition easier. So we're going to talk about that stuff today.  Yucca: And to be bringing some of that with us too, right. To not just be closing the door and saying that was one experience. Now, now I'm back to my other one, but being able to bring, bring the things with us that we want from that while still not living in that space all the time. Because as, as much as we want to. That's not what every day life isn't. It probably wouldn't be very good for us if that was the case anyways, to be in that open and raw and kind of heightened of experience. Mark: Yes. And I mean, it can be dangerous. One of the things that happens when we're really kind of blown open that way is that we tend to be really focused on our internal experience. and we can make clumsy mistakes.  Yucca: Merging into a lane that has somebody in  Mark: has somebody in it. Exactly. So operating heavy machinery is not advisable immediately after going through some kind of impactful experience like that. So we're going to talk about all that, but let's start with a little reporting about the century retreat that happened last weekend, that we were both at it. was. A very powerful experience for me. The people were so kind and so open and so growth-oriented, and so no nonsense in the sense of critical thinking and science orientation. It was really, I, I, I saw this group of people. Gathered. And it was exactly the same as the picture in my mind of the non theist paganism community that I have always hoped for.  Yucca: yeah. It was pretty amazing. It was it was just so interesting. All of the different types of people and yet the things that many of us had in common. I personally really appreciated being around other pagan parents. And talking about just the kind of, you know, the one that, just the connection, the human connection, but also having those same kinds of themes and talking about, you know, how these were the things that we were balancing or in our families and considerate and family considerations. Because that's something that I don't find as much discussion of that in the online spaces, because there's so many different kinds of people, right. But the family orientation, isn't usually the main focus that I find in pagan spaces. Mark: That's really true. And I think it's especially true in in physical in-person gathered spaces because pretends to be a lot of focus on adult activity And you know, just adults playing the way adults like to play.  Yucca: There's practical reasons for that, right? Yeah. Mark: For sure. That said If this is going to be a multi-generational movement, you have to incorporate the next generations. Right. And so there has to be a place for children and there has to be things for them to do. And the, the rituals, the symbolic activities need to be comprehensible. To children, there needs to be some reason why they would participate. So I was super glad that we had a, a workshop. Building a wheel of the year with your family. For example, John Cleveland hosts workshop. And there were fun activities like body painting and things like that, that you know, face painting and all that good stuff that would make a lot of sense to a little kid.  Yucca: Yeah, well, and one of my kiddos was there and she was just delighted and is still, you know, it's still high off the experience of it. And everyone, I was just blown away at how incredible the whole community was just so welcoming with her. And I think she wanted to drop to adopt everyone.  Mark: Okay.  Yucca: So they were just amazing. Mark: Well, she wasn't alone. I mean, I kind of feel like I want to do adopt everyone too. And that is, I mean, honestly, that is really what we're talking about in this podcast is that, that deep connected sense and this sort of longing and loss that happens when you separate and go your, your diverse ways. There's a reason why we feel that. And it's because when we have. That deep human contact. And we feel, we feel a kinship with other people. There's a hormone called oxytocin that gets released into our brains and oxytocin is about pair bonding and hyper-focus and it has. It has a number of different functions, but particularly it's the love hormone. It's the thing that gets released a lot. When you feel a deep affinity with another person.  Yucca: Right. It's it's that mammalian connection.  Mark: Yes.  Yucca: I think that the oxytocin is in non mammals as well, but it plays different roles in different kinds of creatures, but, and mammals, that's the, that's our bonding. Right. You know? Mark: Yeah. And by the time century retreat ended and it was only three days I felt really bonded with the people in this group. You know? we had shared common struggles. We had  Yucca: How old is the moon. Mark: how, how old are they at the eclipsing  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And shared this experience together of doing these workshops, doing these rituals, sharing meals together. The whole thing was really quite an adventure. And so now the challenge is how do you integrate. What you've learned and experienced from that into your daily life, but also really get your feet back on the ground in your daily life.  Yucca: Right. And there's, I mean, there's different approaches that I think are all important, but one of the first ones is remembering that we are our bodies and then. When we go through experiences like that, or again, maybe like a, just a really intense ritual or something like that, that we need to take care of ourselves on that really practical level. Something like a longer experience like that I personally was quite sleep deprived. I think Marcie stayed up quite, quite a bit later than I did.  Mark: I did. I stayed up til about three o'clock in the morning on both Saturday and Sunday nights.  Yucca: and then. Breakfast at eight.  Mark: Breakfast at eight 30. Yeah. I didn't feel sleep deprived in the moment.  Yucca: And then, Mark: I'm sure, because of all the sort of neuro-transmitter hormonal stuff going on. But once we started driving home, which was two and a half days for me and the,  Yucca: yeah. Mark: guys that I drove home with I was dozing in the car and slept really hard the first night because I was so sleep deprived, but sleep deprivation is actually something that contributes to that vulnerable emotional state.  Yucca: Right. But once you come out on the other side, There may be some catching up to do, right. Really take a look at that sleep hygiene. All of those things that, that are important on an everyday basis, but especially when you're coming out of that vulnerable state, you're going to really want to. If you can try and protect that time. Nope. This is the time for the sleeping and whatever it is that you do to help yourself with that, the sleep masks or dark rooms or the temperature, all of those, you know, turning off the screens and that sort of thing.  Mark: And at the same time, be aware that sleep deprivation can significantly impairs our response times, our eye, hand coordination, a lot of different physical attributes. So it's important, you know, maybe the day after you get back from something like this, maybe you don't get behind the wheel of a car  Yucca: If possible. Yeah.  Mark: And  Yucca: of those things we don't, we don't see it in ourselves. The studies are really clear that our self perception versus the outside objective. Perception of, of us is very different when it comes to sleep deprivation.  Mark: Yes.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Yes. So it's easy to tell yourself. Oh, I'm fine. You're not fine. And it's important to just, you know, go with your knowledge that you're not fine, even if it feels as though you're fine and take care of yourself do what you can to be safe. And, and I would say that that's true at two levels. It's true at the level of your body is health, but it's also true of your heart of your, of your emotions because. When you come out of an experience like that, you can be very tender and very vulnerable and you can get hurt easily. And it takes a while to kind of put back up the ordinary callouses that we have to protect ourselves from little things that might affect us otherwise. It's, it's really a strange experience for me this week because I haven't had this kind of experience for quite a while. I mean, I've been to other sort of festivals where I had. Some of this experience, but I've never been to an event where I felt such complete kinship with the people. You know, that we're, we're self-selected to be people who are non theist pagans, and being surrounded by a big crowd of those folks was really profound to me. And so I miss it now. Right. But I have to keep marching on in my life and doing light life things and it ebbs day by day. And so a part of the way that I have approached this is besides just trying to take care of my physical self is to be in touch over social media as best I can with the people who were there. And I also wrote a blog post about reintegration to sort of walk through my own experience of this because I suspected that many of the rest of us were having the same kind of experience.  Yucca: Right. Yeah. So we'll put the link for that. If people want to check that out, the blog post cap. Mark: Yeah. So, as, as Yucca said, this is, you know, it's, doesn't have to be a big multi-day festival that affects you this way. It can be a really heavy therapy session. You know, where something really shifts or you realize that something has been really stirred up. The same kinds of self-care activities are really important to do at this time. Anything that really goes to your deep emotions and stirs up your limbic system in that, in that intense kind of way. These are the same things we need to do for ourselves. When we go through a breakup.  Yucca: Great. Mark: If it's a breakup that we didn't want or a break up that still causes a lot of loss and regret for us, not the kind of breakup where you're like. Thanks, bye. Just go away now.  Yucca: I mean, I know those exist. I've heard about them, but I have never experienced it that way.  Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Yucca: but that's something that ritual can help with.  Mark: Yes.  Yucca: If, well, it's really great if all the parties involved but even if it's just you and you want to have a ritual about that, that's something that, that can be very helpful. Mark: Yeah, I have conducted a dissolution ritual and it was really pretty powerful, you know, the separate, the symbolic separation of the lives of the two people so that they could go off in opposite directions. It was, it was a powerful thing to do. And of course the trick there is to see whether all the participating parties will actually show up to do the thing. And you know, in some cases, one or both of them are one or, or more of them are mad. And so they won't do what the other person wants them to do, even if it would be good for them. But it's, it's something, you know, if, if a disillusion is coming in your life, it is something to consider whether you do it for yourself or whether you do it with the, the people that you're splitting up with. So, Yeah. the, this is re this really goes to kind of the care and feeding of the tender parts of ourselves and. You know, we live in a world that can be pretty harsh at times. I mean, certainly just turning on the news can be just like, oh, ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And so it's very important, especially if we've done some significant emotional, psychological work to care for ourselves in all those different ways. And that can also mean connecting with other people that are in our ordinary lives. You know, getting some of that, that bonding feeling with people that were already connected to.  Yucca: Right. And that's also for folks who have. Who live with non-human animals, like our cats and dogs and, and creatures like that, that we definitely share these really deep connections with you know, your, your good cuddle per session can definitely assist in kind of, you know, easing out of that experience. Mark: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So it's, it's funny while I was gone, our cat was apparently extremely needy and, and cuddly with pneumonia. And now that I'm back, she's extremely needy and cuddly with both of us in a way that she wasn't before. But she. Her initial response. When I came back, was this sort of outreach, Meow, like where have you been? So that was, that was good.  Yucca: That's good. I'm glad you didn't get the the I'm mad at you. Snub cats do sometimes like, oh the, to you, I wasn't hurt or mad that you left.  Mark: Right,  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And the other thing you can do is you can, without being obsessive about it, you can, you know, create some reminders for yourself about that experience and what you loved about it. My desktop image Right. now is the group photo that we took at the end of century retreat, just so that I can see those faces and remember. You know, the many great interactions that I had over the course of that weekend, particularly the rites of passage section, which was just a really moving, moving set of rituals and ended with a wedding, which is always upbeat and happy. And that was good.  Yucca: Yeah. that we, we took a few items. There were, you know, gifts that people had, but we also picked up, we just took a few pine cones  Mark: I took a pine cone to.  Yucca: and we live somewhere with a lot of pine cones, but these pine cones got to go in a special spot. And so, you know, there to. That's who experienced it. We know what those pine cones are. Those specific ones have a important meaning to us. But if someone else was to walk into the house it's oh, there's there's pine cone over there and there's 20 more over there. But no, but these ones, you know, there's they still have that feeling right. When we look at them like, Ooh. Yeah, right. Okay. That whole thing that's that's real right. That's part, that's part of us. Hmm. Mark: And it's great to do that too, because that's a part of teaching your kids about ritual creation, Right. I mean, these, these pine cones became sacred objects because they're symbolic of a particular experience. And. That's a great thing to teach kids because then they can choose their own, make their own, start to develop a ritual practice. Yucca: Right. So let's touch on a couple of other specific things that people might want to keep in mind. We talked about the sleep they're talking about also, maybe not just related to the sleep, but if you can avoid getting behind. Car the wheel of a car or heavy machinery, things like that. But you might also be a little bit more mindful with making sure that you're getting a meal that is going to be, you know, not be spiking, your blood sugar really high and making you super hyper and, you know, taking care of getting whatever the food is. That really feels good and grounding to you, you know, be mindful about, okay, maybe that's going to be more appropriate than.  Mark: Right.  Yucca: Going through your fast food or whatever it is. Mark: and the impulse may be because there's this sort of longing to get back to this high place. The impulse may be to go for sugar or caffeine or energy drinks or whatever those things are.  Yucca: try and fill it in.  Mark: Yeah. And that's, you know, that is an impulse that honestly should be resisted. It's, it's much better to get something that's solid and wavy and grounding into you. So that you can. Get get your head straight again in a way that balances the experience that you've had with the life theater in. And then there are creative things that you can do, like writing or songwriting or you know, even spoken word just into a tape recorder about what your experience was like, what you learned, how that. Can impact your life going forward. I really feel that the people who went to this event were changed. I know I was, and now I'm exploring how was I changed?  Yucca: Right. Yeah. I certainly know that was the case for me coming home and, and, you know, greeted my, greeted my land coming back and, you know, went inside wherever. Partner and, and youngest child were, and, and cat who was very happy to see us. But I, you know, I remember sitting back down on, on the, the sitting down on the couch and just thinking about some of the things that had really come up for me and re and about the way that people treated each other was just so. Amazing and refreshing and welcoming and, and kind right. And  Mark: kind.  Yucca: tenfold like, like they really paid attention. Right. And that was something I remember sitting down and going, okay. I, that felt good. That felt feeding. How do I make sure that that's something that I continue to have in my life because wow. That was really. That helped. Right. I'm an introvert. I don't spend time around a lot of people, but, and so on one level, it was that that whole weekend was incredibly exhausting for me just to be around people. But it also was very interesting to go, wow, human interaction can be feeding. How do you know, how do I do this? How do I make sure that this continues in my life? And so there's this whole period of, of, of. Evaluation and reflection after an experience like that. Mark: Right. Right. And that's an essential part of the reintegration, honestly, because you don't want to lose the. The lesson content from the experience right? I mean, there's the whole emotional journey that happens with an event like this, but there's also stuff you learn about yourself and about what you want in life. And. Humanity generally and how humans can be. One of the things that was really striking to me from the very beginning, like the first person that. I saw, which was Rachel at the registration table actually it was before the registration table had been set up. It was Rachel and joy and joy I had met before, but everybody was on it about consent immediately.  Yucca: Right. Mark: Everybody asked before hugging. Everybody asked before a handshake and we didn't have to make any kind of announcement about it. That's just what they were doing.  Yucca: Yeah. And that was so refreshing. From as an individual, but as a parent as well that no, buddy, it was so nice. Nobody touched my kid without asking her if that was okay. Right. And of course she was like, yeah. Right. But then also having her be around just seeing everybody do that and that isn't just like what mom is telling her to do. That's just like what everybody is doing, you know, that was so. Wonderful that we weren't, you know, it wasn't like we were fighting to try and like make this the way that it should be. That's just the way it was. Mark: Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, the implications of that to me have a lot to do with what humanity is capable, capable of. You know, it's, it's, it's so easy to be despairing about humanity right now because we've got some people that are really pretty lost and pretty damaged and you know, doing a lot of harm.  Yucca: Yeah, we've got a lot of trauma that we're working through.  Mark: we do. And part of what was so powerful about this event was that people came with their trauma and they were unapologetic about it, and they were really open about it. The ritual that I did after my workshop the absolution ritual, which you were not involved with you, you weren't in that workshop.  Yucca: No that I so since I had my kiddo with me, we did need to step aside sometimes to do some naps and just do some breathing. Right. Because please for us, that being there was like being in the middle of the civilization. It's very strange how different people feelings were about it, but it was like being surrounded by people. And we were like, whoa, lots of people let's go breathe for a minute. And that's the part that's also part of taking care of yourself is recognizing that like, You know, this is this an open raw, so there were some things that I've missed a lot of the rites of passage and those kinds of Brits rules, but the, from what I've heard, I mean, people were just so much to say about them. Mark: Yeah. The, there were just a number of times when. You know, given, given an inflection point, given a moment when they could either step forward in their human imperfect wounded glory, or step back and protect themselves and be defensive, they chose the first over and over and over again. And this ritual that I did at the end of my. My workshop on how to create an atheopagan ritual is called the absolution. And I've done it several times before. And in a nutshell, what it's about is we have people imagined, just focus and think about the most cringe-worthy moment of their life. So the moment that they feel the most shame, the most embarrassment about, and just hold that in their mind, and then. Ritually one at a time, absolve them of that, make it go away. Have it, have it have its power and its weight. Fade away from their body. It's very simple, but I mean, people have tears streaming down their face and I was, you know, fighting not to cry because there was so much emotion in the room. It was, it was just remarkable. And I mean, I know that for the people that went through that ritual, there was a, there was a real change in them. And to me, that's just like, okay, all of this stuff, all of this non theist, paganism, atheopagan ism, all this stuff that I'm doing is absolutely worth it for that moment. For the moment of realizing that you've, you've lightened the load for your fellow humans, it, it felt. Well, I wouldn't say this. It's not that it felt like a community. It was a community Yucca: Is, Yeah. Mark: Is, a community. Almost none of us had ever seen one another in person before, because we came from all over. We had people from Canada, we had someone from Mexico. We had people from all over the United States and,  Yucca: impressed how far some folks came. Yeah. Mark: People were ready for this. They were, they were, you know, the people that, that came. to this event were like, Yeah. this is, this is the direction I'm going. And I'm going to, I'm going to jump in with both feet.  Yucca: Yeah. And a few folks told me that, and this was just so heartwarming to hear that the podcast actually helped them like that. That was kind of the thing that got them to, to, you know, take the chance and, and come. And it was just. That was just so wonderful to hear. Mark: Yes. Yes. I think we were talking about one person that you're going to get together with their kids and your kids.  Yucca: Oh yeah. Mark: I'm pretty sure that person had first encountered you on YouTube and then heard about the podcast and from the podcast came into the atheopagan community.  Yucca: Yeah. I think I'll have to check with them, but I think that. That's the case. Yeah. And so that's something nice to a lot of a lot of us who are kind of close to each other. Now that person, I we're about six hours apart, but we figured three hours driving each way. Does it sound so bad? Right. But there's people in the, in the areas are already talking about, well, what we can do in the meantime, right? Cause we're not going to do another full one until 20, 24. But we could still get together on, you know, smaller groups and that sort of thing.  Mark: Right. Well, we, you know, we have that affinity group program. Many of which are regional groups, and I know that the Colorado group is really focused on getting together and doing things together now. So, that's, that's exciting. One thing that was the. There was a brainstorm in the car while we were driving home is the possibility that we could pick a weekend that would be kind of atheopagan affinity group gathering weekend.  Yucca: Oh, I see where you're going with this. I like this. Okay. Mark: And I mean, we could have t-shirts made right. You know, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. And so it would be the same weekend, but the groups would gather like, you know, my local affinity group, which is called the live Oak circle is the Northern California affinity group. We could gather on that weekend at a local park and do a ritual.  Yucca: And I'm sure folks from a little bit further away would be welcome as well if they didn't have. Right. So you might get your Oregon or Washington people who are like, well, this is the closest and I'd love to see. Yeah. Mark: So there's, there's lots of ideas about what could be done in the off year. I speaking from the standpoint of having helped to organize this event, we can't do it every year. It's just too exhausting. I think it would be too much money for people if we ask them to come every year  Yucca: Well, I think every other is now my daughter disagrees, but I think it's a waste. But as an adult, our perception of time is a little bit different than, than when you're a kid. I mean, 20, 24 is for forever away.  Mark: that's right. Yeah. Well, think about it. That's a third of her life, right? I  Yucca: yeah. Mark: that's, that's you know, for me that would be 20 years,  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: so that's a long time. That's a really long time. What else do we have to say about this?  Yucca: Yeah. I think really the, the main thesis is thinking about how to care for yourself as you transition between these two kind of worlds that this, that Eve experienced. They're both real. Right. But. Just thinking about in your own life though, how to be mindful about that. And there might be some little rituals to bring in. One thing we've talked about so much before is the idea of grounding that that's important in everyday life, but especially in points of transition.  Mark: Right,  And. there are, there are little ritual, symbolic things, as you say that we can do, I'm still wearing my registration. Century symbol from the event?  Yucca: And that was a really lovely touch to everybody. Got one of the, the sun tree. It it's burned, right? We're at, yeah,  Mark: Yes, it's  Yucca: Yeah. A little  Mark: wood burned into a, a little wooden. Medallion. Yeah. So we were all wearing those and it was, it was cool. So yes on the one hand, I would not want this. Podcasts to in any way, dissuade people from seeking these kinds of experiences because they enrich our lives so much and they help us to become wiser and kinder and more. More whole, right. The heal, our wounds. So if we've in any way implied that it's a problem that you have this reintegration experience. I, I, I wanna make it clear. That's not what we're saying. It's it, the, the experience of going to this retreat for me was an unequivocal. Good.  Yucca: Right  Now on the, on the other hand, we're also not saying that you have to do something like this, right? That if this is something you do, it's can be amazing and wonderful. But you can still be an atheopagan. You can still be whatever you are, even if the. Even if being able to go to one of these things, just isn't where you're at right now. Cause I know there were a lot of folks who really would have loved to come, but didn't have the means to travel or didn't know the schedule wasn't going to work or whatever. Right.  Mark: Right. Which actually brings me to another idea, which we haven't really, this was a brainstormed idea in the car and we haven't really talked about this at all at the atheopagan council or anything, but a possible. Would be to have a virtual event maybe in January of 2024. I'm sorry, 20, 23. Yeah. We could do workshops. We could have fellowship, all that kind of stuff over zoom. So it would be, you know, possible for people to attend and still get, you know, a little bit of that, that hit of the person that interaction.  Yucca: That's a really lovely idea. Yeah.  Mark: And it'd be a lot easier to organize.  Yucca: yes. A lot less expensive and could allow more people to possibly participate. But yeah, so basically like, a big you know, co conference or webinar kind of style through zoom.  Mark: Yeah, And we, you know, we could have some breakout rooms where people could fo could, could socialize, you know, we'd have big blocks of time available just for people to interact and say hi and introduce themselves and all that good kind of stuff. So I think that. An idea that has some real legs. And I'd like to talk about it at our next atheopagan society council meeting, which happens at the end of June. But we'll see, you know, we'll see what there is the capacity to create. I know the organizers of this event, myself included put in a lot of work and  Yucca: and did an amazing job.  Mark: well, thanks.  Yucca: you know, everything again, I just keep using the word blown away, but that really. That's that's the sense that I'm coming away with is just everything. I was just blown away by the people and the, how well it was organized and the welcomeness and experience and, and the location was an amazing location. Mark: Yeah, with that beautiful view of Pike's peak Right. there. Yucca: Right. Mark: And the food and the kindness of the staff, you know, the accommodation to dietary considerations, they were just so great about all that.  Yucca: And it was, it was, it felt remote. And yet we were like 10 minutes from .  Mark: yeah.  Yucca: Right? Like, and there were a lots of there's so much life there. That was really fun. There were these swirls. I loved watching the squirrels with the really long ears and the Yeah. And just watching them run up these how tall those Ponderosa is worth. Those were tall  Mark: they were.  Yucca: and down these, you know, we have, ponderosas where I am too, but not, not like those ones.  Mark: Yeah, it's pretty, pretty clear. They they get a little more water than where you are, I think.  Yucca: I think they got a lot more water  Mark: Yeah.  Yucca: here. Yeah. And they did the, they did a lovely job. Maintaining the area and there was this huge labyrinth and it was just, yeah. Anyways, that we could, we could just keep going on about like all the wonderful things.  Mark: Yeah. but shout out to love for a retreat center in Colorado Springs because they were wonderful. It's, it's actually owned by the United church of Christ, which is a very liberal Christian denomination and a part of their mission is that they're welcoming to everybody.  Yucca: And it certainly felt that way. Every, you know, every staff member that I had any interaction with or watched interacting with anyone else just, just seemed very kind and, and open and  Mark: Yeah, glad we were there.  Yucca: yeah.  Mark: Yeah. Yeah. And we were too. So I think that's it for this week's episode of the one. Yucca: And we appreciate all of you being here with us and we'll see you next week.

Jesus According to Mark (For or Against) Mark 2:13-22

Join us on Zoom next Saturday for a LIVE recording of THE WONDER! The link is https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85648189246?pwd=a21Wb1RmMXJ3VVFFWG5mZit5cHhLZz09   Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   S3E17 TRANSCRIPT: ----more---- Yucca: Welcome back to the Wonder: Science-Based Paganism. I'm one of your hosts, Yucca.  Mark: And I'm the other one. Yucca: And today we're talking do it yourself, ritual tools. So we've got a pretty big list of fun kinds of things that you can be doing. But before we do that, we actually want to get into the why maybe, why would you want to be making these tools yourself rather than just buying the really gorgeous one that you see? Don Amazon or wherever it is. Mark: Right. The the, the first reason is obviously expense. You know, there are some very beautiful, a cult ritual tools that are made out there and they they cost. If you have that money, then it's fine to spend on those. But beyond that, there's the environmental concern about the. Putting one more thing. That's eventually gonna find its way into a landfill into the, the material stream and all of the associated packaging and shipping and all of those kinds of things. So those are, those are things to be cognizant of, but also there is that when you make something for yourself, you feel more deeply connected to. When we talk about sentimental value, that's what we mean. We mean that something has a personal meaning to us. That's associated with the story, you know, the story of how you made it or where the materials came from or what was happening at that time in your life. All of those kinds of stories that sort of cling to the object and help you to to have a deeper emotional relationship. All of which is. rich material for doing rituals.  Yucca: Right. Yeah. And they, and these are things that can. They can build on each other. Right? So you have the ritual in which you're making the tool and then the first ritual that you use it in. And then the next one, then the next one, and it starts to have this, this long relationship that you have with it that you have that association every time you pick that up, that, Ooh, it brings you back to those right. Mark: Right. Yeah. So. I'm a big believer in this. And maybe some of that is because many times in my life I've been really broke. But. It's also, I mean, I've, I've said this quote before, but it really stuck with me, which is probably why I've said it a bunch a morning. Lori Zell once said to me, you know, if you can't do it with a stick, you picked up on the way to the circle. You can't do it at all. And that may be a little broad, but I do think that rituals that are effective are a function of skills. Just tools, you know, the arrangement of a bunch of physical objects doesn't make for any emotionally powerful ritual. And so the tools that we make, if they're meaningful to us, they can be more impactful and can help us to enact a more, a more compelling, powerful ritual. Yucca: Right. And we should note, you said skills, right? And skills are things that we build through practice. You don't start skilled at anything. Right. Humans start with a few instincts, you know, we can cry and we curl when we fall and we know to, to nurse and, blink, if something's coming our way, that's about it though. Mark: Yeah.  Yucca: The everything else, walking, talking, all, everything. Those are all skills and ritual is skill too.  Mark: Yes.  Yucca: And, and building your tools, creating, crafting those that's a skill as well. And you don't have to be some incredible artist or craftsman for that for you to still be able to build that relationship into your, your items that you're using. Mark: Right. Right. And so. We've talked about the various kind of core ritual skills in podcasts before skills like drumming And movement and public speaking and singing those kinds of things that can be powerful. Movers of emotion in a ritual. Right. That's not really what the focus of this episode is. This is more about, you know, what about the material stuff that you use when you, when you lay out a focus or alter in order to do a particular ritual? Well, what's there and. What does it say to you to see those items there? And one of the things that can help those items to speak more loudly is for them to have a real association with you. So making it yourself can be a really cool thing to do. And in some cases, making it yourself can be as little as peeling the bark off a stick, you know, That's it. That's all that there is, you've got a stick and you like the shape of the stick and you, peel the bark off it and now you've got a want, it doesn't have to be, you don't have to put silver inlay in it. It's, it's just a stick. You like. Yucca: And you, and it can be something that everything is meaningful to you to write in, because if you buy that beautiful silver inlaid one, maybe it has some particular symbols on it, or it's got some runes or something in it that. It doesn't mean anything to you or it does. And it means something very different to you than it meant to the person who made it. And that doesn't quite have the right association, but that stick could be just the right curve for you. it could be the right species, or it just, just felt good in the moment. Right. Or you're designing when you're laying that out. Maybe you've got your cloth in and you can put it the way that is meaningful to you. And it's going to be completely. To someone else, but it gives you that, that freedom that you wouldn't necessarily have, if it wasn't you crafting and creating it yourself. Mark: Right. Right. And I do want to put in a shout out for artists.  Yucca: Absolutely. Mark: You know, it, it, if you want to contract with somebody that, you know, has a lave and turns beautiful WANs and have them do a bespoke wand, that's Exactly. you know, the way that you want it to be out of the materials that you want it to be, you know, more power to you. We, we need to support our local artists. I'm I'm all in favor. But you don't have to have a sort of professionally crafted wand in order to have a wand that will feel good And work in the context of your ritual practice.  Yucca: And you don't really need a wand either. Right. But if you do want one then awesome. Right. So, so don't think that anything we're saying here says you have to do this. You don't have to have a wand. You don't have to have, you don't have to anything. Yeah. Mark: That's that's really kind of core to what our whole practice is about this. It's not science-based paganism is not authoritarian. You know, we, we think of religions very often in that context because the big mainstream religions are authoritarian, but that's not our orientation to things. Our, our spirituality is creative and expressive and so. You know, doing something creative or contracting for something creative that expresses something that you feel that's all to the good now. If you want something that feels good in the hand and you can kind of point, you know, directing energy, it feels like or, you know, March around in a circle, cutting A line between what's inside the circle and what's outside the circle to define a safe space. Then something like a wand can be a really nice thing to do. I have several of them that I use for different purposes. I have one that is just a stick from red, from a Redwood, and it's a very nice stick. I've had it for a long time. And there it is. It's a stick. I have one that is a piece of dried kelp from the. And I mean, you can still kind of sea salt crystals on it and stuff. You know, when I'm, when I'm wanting to invoke that sort of primal power, like the ocean has that, you know, the, just the sheer force and, and power and history and life bringing capability and all those things that we associate with the ocean and with water, then that's generally what I use it for. I have one that's a human feet. That I, that I've used as a wand in in Hallows circles ceremonies. And I have another, that is an Oak branch that has a little silver dragon kind of twisted on to it that I, I put onto it. But it's a very special Oak branch to me because. It was part of a larger piece that I found in a state park and I took it off of that piece and I've seen the rest of it on hikes many times. So it feels like it's connected to the land here. And so you. see me telling these stories about these, these items. You can make items that have stories like that too. So, Something to consider.  Yucca: Right. And just with wherever you are. So ones, aren't something that I do a lot, but I do have one that's actually made from a choice skeleton. So in the Southwest there's, we've got lots of different kinds of cactuses. And one is this one that they often grow these straight long stocks. And then when they die, it leaves behind this hollow wooden tube with holes in them. And they're just, they're just. Beautiful. And we've done all kinds of things with them. One of my favorite things is actually to fill them with a sewage and give it to the birds. So they have a fun time with that. But one of these ones I took and it was a walk that I had done. Well with my, one of the first walks that my daughter was able to do, and she was big enough to do one of those and we brought it back and we boiled it. And when you oil it up, it just becomes just so beautiful. And there are a couple of little spines left to take the mow those off. And so now that has that all of that association of the. The walk and the land and the birds, and then the oil, which was the tallow from one of our cows. And like, that whole thing there. So it's just, it's nice to hear you talk about, redwoods and things that, your experience with that, because we're doing the same thing in very different places. Mark: Right, right. Yeah. That's a wonderful story. And, and that's a great example of, you know, Part of what we always talk about here is paying attention and getting better connected with what's happening in nature. What are the, what are the, the natural artifacts that are sort of characteristic of where you live? You know, what are the trees? What are the. The plants you know, if you're in a coastal area, are there seashells that are particularly characteristic? I have an abalone shell that I've used for many years for offerings, pouring libations, burning, incense, all those kinds of things. And that brings me to the next kind of thing you can make, which is a concavity that will hold a liquid.  Yucca: So a cup or a vessel  Mark: A cup or a vessel of some kind. whether it's a dish or a chalice. Generally speaking, it's, it's very common for people to put something liquid on there. Ritual focus. I mean, it might be a glass of wine. It might be a bowl of water. It might be a it might be a potion that you make, right. That you stir up with herbs and essential oils and, you know, whatever, whatever else needs to go in there in order to. Put all the associations together, you can do that. In, you can do that in a large sense with a cauldron which is another thing that many of us want to have it, unless you're a really good black Smith. I recommend purchasing  Yucca: That particular one. Mark: that, that particular thing rather than making it, but you can also do it in a bowl or in a chalice one freaking. Activity in many pagan rituals is a period of eating and drinking usually after the main working. And it's kind of a, it happens during the time of gratitude when you're, you're enjoying the fruits of the ritual and of being alive. You're sharing, breaking bread with the other people that you're working with, if you are. So there's a very community oriented feeling to that. So having some sort of cup or chalice or wine glass or whatever it is is another thing to have as a ritual tool. I have a chalice from a local Potter that I've used for many years. It has a motif of grape leaves on it for the,  Yucca: What's your region is. Mark: Yes, very famous for so, but you can make your own you know, you can, you can mold it And fire it, or you can Yucca: And if you can dig the clay up too, if you happen to be somewhere. Yeah. We have several bowls that we've made from the clay that we dug up and then fired it. So we pit fired it on our own land as well.  Mark: very nice.  Yucca: Yeah. And so that, but you can also make things now, this won't work for holding liquid, that you can still make clay. You can still dig up clay and just not fire it and use that maybe for, and we should talk about this one as well, for things to hold your fire or your incense or your candles or things like that. Mark: Right, right. And that is another thing that. very frequently goes on a ritual. Altar is some, some form of fire. There's something about adding fire to a ritual alter or focus. Kind of says this is alive. Now it has, it has this active dynamic chemical process happening. It's not just a static arrangement of objects. It's something that is dynamic And alive. Yucca: And what it does with the light, it just makes it look like it's all it's dancing and, and it can, it has that ability to just pull you back. At least to me, it feels like this pull back through time of the thousands and thousands of generations before us of just of us being. Gazing into fires, looking at fires, being around buyers, cooking, it's just, you know, back inside the caves and there's this really powerful, just instantly can transform the feeling. Mark: For sure. Yeah. I, I, I feel the same way. I mean, we've domesticated fire ever since homo erectus, which was well before modern humans and there's just, there's something very. And very we have we have a symbiotic relationship with fire in the same way that we have one with dogs in, in many ways. We would not be where we are now, if it wasn't for our domestication of fire. So bringing that into the ritual space becomes very powerful. And especially if you're doing your ritual after dark, which which I tend to do for personal rituals and Not so much for seasonal observations. I like to do those during the daytime more except for Hallows. And you'll the rest of them. I like to be during the day.  Yucca: Yeah. You know, I share that and I wonder if it's like this for you for me the night, field's a little bit more intimate.  Mark: Hm.  Yucca: a little bit more, I feel a little bit more vulnerable, a little bit more open. And so when I'm doing any personal work the night, just, I just feel more. Present with it. Then during the day, there's so much happening there. So, you know, I'm still able to create the separate space in this, away from it to do a ritual, but there's just something about it at night or at the transitions to the Dawn. And dusk are also time to  Mark: right.  Yucca: I'll do a lot, depending on what the ritual is. Mark: Of course. Yeah. I think that's very well said. I, I feel the same way. There's something about, you know, standing naked in front of my altar with the candles burning and no other light in the room and it's just flickering and there's this sort of other worldly liminal space that gets created Bringing us reeling us back in from that long tangent. That means you need to have a candle. Right. You need to have something. And that can be as simple as a flat stone that you melt wax onto so that then you can stick the candle down onto it, or it can be as elaborate as a candelabra or something like that. But you can make it. It's entirely possible to make your own in, in a bunch of different ways, sometimes people will use like a shot glass and Mount that onto some sort of a base to use as a candle holder. You just have to be careful that you don't let the candle burn down too far, because if it's not Pyrex glass, then, then the glass can break and that's no good.  Yucca: Yeah, which is something that going back to the fire, just as a note if you are having some sort of fire, like a fire circle, something to be aware of is to be careful about putting rocks into your fire or next to the fire.  Mark: Oh, yes.  Yucca: if there's moisture in them, depending on the type of rock they can actually burst and you don't want to get hit by that. So just as like a quick little aside there, that reminds me of it.  Mark: That's a really good point. And my, my experience with doing fire circle festivals has been that yes, you have rocks in the fire, but you let them burn for 24 hours before you have people gather around them. Right? So that if any of that exploding that was going to happen has already happened and you definitely don't want to be pulling. Boulders out of a stream or from a, from a stream bank that's  Yucca: Yeah, right. Cause it could seem like I see it being like a beautiful thing of putting the rock in and then you come and get it the next day. And it's more whatever, but like with all of these things, especially when fire is involved, whether it's on your, your altar inside your bedroom or whether it's out around a circle, you just, just to be. Have that part of your brain still on, that's thinking about, Hey, you know, what's, how is this all connected?  Mark: well, and you can help your, you can help yourself to feel less anxious and focused on that danger question by having the proper equipment to put a fire out. Immediately to hand. So, you know, if, if there's a fire extinguisher in your house, bring it into your room. If that's where your, your altar is and that's where you're going to do your work. Just sit it against a wall somewhere. It doesn't have to do anything.  Yucca: And you can get those little mini fire extinguishers. We actually have one in each room. I'm gonna, you all are listening, but I'm going to hold it up and show mark right here. That was right within here.  Mark: There it is  Yucca: is a little one and they have little not very expensive. I think this was like a $15 thing that, you know, you can hang them in your rooms and they're there. They last for a long time. A lot of these you can get refilled. And if they are starting to go down, then you can save and you can look up some safe things that you can do with them in terms of making dry ice and things like that, which could be very fun for a ritual to have your dry ice to work with. Mark: Yeah, I've used dry ice in rituals before. It's really fun because you, because I mean, you, you put it in sort of a a deep vessel  Yucca: And  Mark: and the fog just. Billows. up.  Yucca: And the way it moves across the floor. Yeah.  Mark: so cool.  Yucca: So you could do some wonderful things with that. Going back to the candles though. Another thing that we've done now, this might not be the, a seasonally appropriate time, but we've done ice candle holders, so you can make ice. And what we've done before is we've taken the. Like the muffin liners that are the silicone ones so that you can get it off really easily. So you fill those with water, you put it on a little trace, that'll then fit in your freezer and then take the, the silver line liners that come around tea candles and put something in them and weight them down so that it is in your. Muffin liner that you filled with water, and then you put that in the freezer  Mark: An ice freezes around.  Yucca: freezes around it. Yeah. And then you bring that out, take the little silver liner out and you put the actual candle in there and then it it's beautiful. The way that the light dances in the ice. And you would, if you're using it on an altar, you're going to want to have a little plate underneath it because it does melt eventually. But if you're having it like in an outdoor they could see people using this for like solstice or for February holiday. Right. And just out with the snow or the cold. And you've got the little tiny light in that vast darkness. And that's a really fun one too. If you've got kiddos and you can freeze things into the ice as well. Mark: Ooh.  Yucca: So that's a good one to do. Mark: nice. I like that idea a lot. That reminds me of another thing that you can do With candles, which doesn't require a candle holder. It just requires a paper bag, which is to make luminaria which can be really kind of dramatic looking. If you make a bunch of them like to line a passageway or a path up to a place where you're doing a ritual you know, you, you put the little team. In the bottom of the paper bag. Wait  Yucca: SIM with sand at the bottom or dirt.  Mark: Yes. Some sand or dirt to weight it down so that you know, a wind doesn't blow it over and then light the bag on fire, all those kinds of things.  Yucca: And those are also known as farolitos. So you might've heard them called either way.  Mark: ah, little lighthouses.  Yucca: Yeah. The Illuminati say like, at least here that's like a Southern term and then in the north we call them  Mark: Ah,  Yucca: so  Mark: I like little lighthouses. That's great. But I lead.  Yucca: yeah. They're the little ones. They're beautiful. So. That's something that might for Christmas Eve, my city does, it's an old tradition and of course it's got all the, like the Christian associations of leading Marianne and all of that, but it's still, it's still really very magical to be in the cold dark. And hopefully that'll start back up over the next few years. It was kind of, it wasn't much of it the last few years.  Mark: Well, I hope so.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So you've got your fire container. Got your liquid container. You've got your pointer slash cutter. And we should talk a little bit about knives because a knife is something that is very commonly used in rituals. Almost always used symbolic. Just as sort of symbolically cutting the connections between two things or between a person and something in their life or something like that. But sometimes you also use the knife to inscribe a symbol in the wax of a candle, for example, or a. Maybe to do a craft project in ritual space where you're carving a piece of wood in the shape of something particularly meaningful. So having a ritual knife is a good thing. I actually have two of them, one of which is my sort of utilitarian knife that I think. Cut things with, and the other of which is a, an obsidian knife with an old candle that I made. And the, the point is sharp, but the edges are not. So it's definitely just a, just a symbolic knife.  Yucca: I've seen someone I know had a, I think it was actually like a little letter Oprah. But it was a fancy, it was like an Excalibur, like repaid, but it's beautiful, you know, it's this little and it's not very sharp. So you could have, your knife could be an actual sharp knife, or it could be something that's just shaped like a knife or a sword or something just kind of in that, that vein, just depending on what your comfort level is with it and your purpose. Right. So I would imagine the two knives that you described, you'd use those in very different circumstances, right? Whether you choose the obsidian versus your, your utilitarian one,  Mark: Right, right. Yeah. The utilitarian one doesn't even live on my focus. It it lives down with the supplies, cause it's just this sort of crappy old life that I use for this stuff. But the but the, the obsidian knife is on my focus and has been for 25 years or something. I don't, I don't remember when I made it. Maybe it's a little bit less than that.  Yucca: Now this isn't in the realm of making, but I could see someone having like a real nice Leatherman on their focus. Right. I can see that as being a real, having a real strong association for them, especially if they were using it for its intended purposes. And then you're also using it like, oh, this is the thing that I used to cut this, or to get it into this can or whatever it is. And when, oh, and the car broke down, I had it. And here it is now I'm bringing all of that with me, into my ritual for this thing that I'm fixing in my life or I'm working on. Mark: Yes. And it, it means I have all the tools available to do what I need to do. Right.  Yucca: Right. And I've invested in. And I've invested in the really good ones, right? Yeah. Mark: Yes. My Leatherman tool is a miniature one. It's about four inches long made by Winchester. Actually, it's the only thing I've ever owned made by Winchester, but it's very well machined as you would expect from a firearms maker. And it's, but it's identical to a Leatherman tool. It has the pliers and all that kind of.  Yucca: Right. Yeah. And just, we are, we have no brand affiliations. We're all sponsored none of that stuff.  Mark: no,  Yucca: So that would be a strange twist.  Mark: that would be a really strange twist. Yeah. Yucca: some other things kind of classics is a broom.  Mark: Yeah.  Yucca: Okay. Mark: I make a. Every summer solstice. I make a sunroom. I go out and I find a place where there's some tall, wild ride rowing and that that can get like five feet high, four, four feet, five feet high. And so I cut it off at the bottom. And then I use, and I, I unwrapped the cord from the existing sunroom and I have a handle that is this kind of natural piece of Oak that I found. And then I use the new. The new rye and bind it with the cord, same cord again, and tie it off. And it makes this broom. I do this on the, on the summer solstice and then it sits out in the sun all day on the longest day. And the rest of the year, it lives in my house. And you know, along about January when it feels like there's never going to be sun again, I can pick it up and wave it around. And. Symbolically bring the feeling of some sunshine into my house.  Yucca: Nice. You have another kind of similar thing. Don't you have a. That you make an burn at you make one time of the year and you  Mark: Yeah. Yeah. I use corn shucks to make a little doll. That's called the rain baby and that the rain baby is born. At river rain, which is the February holiday it's like in bulk or Bridget. But where I live, it's the time when it's raining cats and dogs and will be for a month, or at least when we're not having a drought, it will. And so I make this little figure out of corn shucks, and it sits on the focus for all of the Sabbath. Going forward until we get to Hallows and then it burns in the fire and dies. And then it's time for another one when we come back around to February. So, and people make little corn dough, little dolls or puppets for any of a variety of different kinds of reasons. Some people make them to represent their family, you know, because. Feel really connected to their family and want their family members with them when they do rituals others do them to represent people they don't like, so they can do mean things to them. Just all depends on what you're trying to get done.  Yucca: Yeah, so those are things right. And also going back to the. You know, the broom can be used for sweeping things away in ritual, right. For cleaning up or for breaking the ritual. Let's say you did like opening up the, the circle. Let's say you, you literally put something down like salt or a colored sand or something like that, where you drew in the dirt where you're standing, then you can take the broom and sweep that away. Mark: Sweep it away. Exactly what works really well for that. If you don't have sand, I mean, sand works really well and it's obviously completely benign, so that's a really good choice. But baking soda is it's very, it's it's, it's cheap. It's brilliantly white and it's harmless it. Won't.  Yucca: well, and in this case, if you're working inside and you're on a carpet, then you can vacuum that up. Isn't that supposed to be good for cleaning your carpet?  Mark: it's supposed to be good for the smell for any smells that have soaked into your carpet. It's supposed to be good. yeah. Yucca: So if that happens to be the time that the landlord who should not be coming into your house without asking, but if that, if they are, and they find you sprinkling something on their carpet, you're you're cleaning, right? Yeah. Well, what about other things that you can mark with? Because that's something that you're often going to want to do, right? You're going to be wanting to mark the ground or Mark A. Good candle, or maybe even your skin. Mark: a sigil. Any of those kinds of things. I do have a old fashioned Squibb type pen, you know, with the Stephen. You know, the, that you dip in an inkwell and, and run and rub with. And, and the shaft of it is a bone. I bought it at a Renaissance festival a long, long time ago. And it's really cool. So that's what I use when I'm doing like ritual inscriptions on parchment and stuff like that. I find that just having really. Quality materials makes a difference when I'm doing rituals. So I wouldn't use, you know, a legal pad. Instead I would get some good quality paper from like an art store to do that kind of work. And there's something that's just wonderful about, you know, dipping the pen into the ink and, you know, That's scratching sound on the paper and, yeah, it's great.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: But besides that, like, if you wanted to write something on yourself, for example, first of all, make sure you've got washable Sharpies that you're using.  Yucca: Or Mada. Niemi not a Sharpie. I mean, what's your skin, but think about, you might want to use something like face paint or henna or something like  Mark: Sure  Yucca: Right. Because remember.  Mark: the head is going to stain though.  Yucca: Yeah, that that would be purposeful, right? If you were doing something like a sigil. But yeah, don't, I wouldn't suggest writing you. Your inner most vulnerable thoughts on your arm and then go into work the next day with everybody reading that. But if you could, if you can put that into a single form or put it into, you know, something like that, but face paint is a great option or for a less toxic option, like the children's markers, there's still not  Mark: That's that's what I mean. That's what I mean, the washable. ones.  Yucca: Okay. My  Mark: not a regular  Yucca: like a Sharpie, like a permanent marker, cause that  Mark: no, no, no. That's, that's a really bad idea.  Yucca: yeah.  Mark: I'm glad you clarified that. Thank you.  Yucca: Yeah. but, but some of them, so yeah, your, your kids markers, or you can actually get face paint markers still, they're probably not fantastic to be putting on your skin.  Mark: Probably  Yucca: But then you could also, you might not be able to write very well with these, but if you're thinking about trying to be connecting with your land where you live or the park near you, there's all kinds of plants and things that you can use to make little dyes with. Mark: Yeah. They'd make pigments for sure.  Yucca: And that can be just a fun rabbit hole to go down. Right. It's find out, you know, what are the  Mark: just be sure you got the right? plants. Yucca: right? Yeah. Well, it's better if you're, you know, you want to be careful when you're, if you're consuming any, any of those, but if it's just, if you're going to be staining paper or cloth, that's another one we should mention, right? The fabrics.  Mark: Yeah. Lengths of fabric that you can use to establish the surface for your alter or focus. And those can be a various different kinds of patterns and colors depending on the season or the purpose of the ritual. I have some that are, you know, sort of spiderweb pattern and black others that are, you know, red and colorful and more springy in summary. It just, it depends on what you're working to do, but having those different lengths of fabric is a good thing to sort of stock up on.  Yucca: Yeah. And you can use them in, in so many different ways. You're seeing putting it on the altar, but you could use it in dance or as a symbolic curtain that you're pulling back, or, I mean, all kinds of things. Mark: Right. Right. And they don't have to be super expensive. There are remnants at fabric stores for one thing. And also even. Sarongs for example, can be really affordable cotton sarongs and they have beautiful patterns on them. So that's another direction to look. If you have an international store somewhere near around you,  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Another thing that I have that I really like using is a seashell, an abalone shell because we have abalone that are native to the coastline near here where I live. But also because abalone. Widely treated throughout the Americas. It was very prized by indigenous votes for use in various kinds of decorations. And it's been, you know, Pacific abalone. I'm pretty sure was found in the dig at Cahokia in the St. Louis area, you know, Southern Illinois So obviously it was really prized and really valued. Otherwise why would you transport it over all that distance and, you know,  Yucca: Yeah, you have to carry that, that somebody walked it there. Mark: That's right. That's that's exactly right. So, I, I really enjoy having one of those shells. I can use it to burn herbs in or to burn incense. Abalone actually have little perforations in them, so it's not very good for holding a liquid. There. are little key hole things. In the surface. But other than that, they, because of that opalescent surface that reflects green and blue and all those wonderful colors. They're So pretty. They, they really make a nice thing to have on an altar, but there are lots of different kinds of shells that would also make, you know, really be a nice thing for an altar.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And I find that they are. Symbol of nature. Generally just have the beauty that nature can produce.  Yucca: Yeah. So, are there any other kind of big categories because it's gonna often depend on what kinds of rituals and the purpose and your specific, you know, individual tastes, but are there other big categories that people would be likely to, to want a tool in, Mark: Well, another thing that we talked about that isn't really so much a ritual tool as it is kind of a seasonal marking that we talked about before we started recording is a reef.  Yucca: right. Mark: People often make Reeves on a seasonal basis, maybe for the five stations of the wheel of the year. What I find to be a useful approach to that is to go to an art supply store or a craft store, but not hobby lobby some somewhere  Yucca: We don't go to hobby  Mark: We don't go to hobby  Yucca: We don't go to hobby  Mark: Yeah.  Yucca: We have a Michaels, but. Is there a little bit better, but they're not,  Mark: they're not, they're not  Yucca: they're not actively homophobic. They might actually be, but they're not actively  Mark: They're not pouring money  Yucca: people over. Mark: into hurting LGBT people. So, but back to the  Yucca: Yes. Mark: you can you can buy a Wicker ring. It's a woven ring of Wicker that is serves as the base for a reef. And then you can decorate that wreath with seasonal flowers and with ribbons and with all various kinds of nice things that remind you of the season. And then you can hang it on your door on your front door, or you can hang it up in your room or in. Living room in a prominent place, whatever, whatever seems appropriate to you. But what's nice about that is that it gives you a project to do every season and and it's sort of a declaration in a way, you know, okay. Spring is here,  Yucca: Yeah, but the new one Mark: where I'm putting the new one up It's no longer late spring. It is now summer. So.  Yucca: and you can having that, that pre-made ring is really nice, but you can also. Make your own initial ring, right? So take your, the different trees that are meaningful to you and take some branches and, you know, do whatever that particular tree is going to need to, to treat it and then wrap that with wire and then you just swap out each season, you swap out what you have on it. So you could, you could start with the, with that initial pre-made piece, or you can make it depending on what you were. Finances. And what materials you have,  Mark: right.  Yucca: It might make more sense just to buy it than to buy the wire that you would then need and the Clippers that you would then need and all of that. So, yeah. Mark: And we, we almost forgot the most important thing. Something to sit on.  Yucca: Right. If you're going to be there for awhile, you might want your nice your cushion or your, what was the one who was the name of the. Mark: Oh, the, the. Buddhist meditation cushions are called zafu,  Yucca: Yes  Mark: for sitting Zaza in. Right. And they are very comfortable to sit on there. They're densely packed layers of cotton. As I get older, I find that sitting like cross-legged on the floor is increasingly painful. So I have generally gone to a chair at this point. But it, it is nice if you're, if you're laying something out on the floor, it's nice to be down on that level and with all the stuff that's around you. So, you know, There are so many different ways to do rituals and so many different purposes for rituals that it's hard to generalize about what kinds of tools you might be likely to need. But these are tools. The ones that we've been describing are the kinds of tools that you might come back to again and again, they're, they're they're multipurpose and they, they serve, they serve good uses in a lot of different kinds of rituals.  Yucca: It's like building a kitchen, right? It's you know, your cutting board. You're not going to need your cutting board for every meal. You're not going to need that particular knife for every meal, but Ooh, probably a few times a week. It's going to be real nice to have the one that does the job that you want it to do just right.  Mark: right. I haven't bought or made a ritual tool other than. And a femoral craft. That's going to be destroyed at some point or burned or something like that in many, many years, but there is a real satisfaction in knowing that you have all that stuff so that if you need to, if you feel the need to do a particular kind of ritual, you don't suddenly find yourself. Oh, but. This really requires a special knife and I don't have a special knife.  Yucca: Yeah Mark: That kind of feeling. Oh, I did think of one other thing that you can do with a chalice. There are, I have two, I have two fun things to do with fire. So remember the part of, remember the part about the the fire extinguisher? The first one. And you can do this indoors. You just need to be careful. I, so propyl alcohol, 90% alcohol, not the 60% alcohol, but the 90% alcohol burns beautifully, and it burns at a very low temperature. So if you have a chalice or, you know, something else that can withstand heat, you can. A small amount of that in in that container and light it on fire and flames will leap up and make a beautiful dance until all the alcohol is burned away. It's, it's really pretty dramatic. And especially for banishing work for dispelling things. I've done rituals for other people where they really want something to go away. And boy, you know, you, if you slip the symbol of that into the, the chalice or, or font or whatever it is, pour that alcohol and then light it up and it's all leaping and going, they can really see that it's going away.  Yucca: Oh, that sounds lovely. Mark: Yeah, it's cool. And the second trick, don't do this one indoors. Is the use of a handful of instant coffee creamer like coffee mate, which is basically just fat and sugar in a powdered form. And of course, powders and dusts are highly explosive because they have a lot of surface area. It powders and dust that are made of flammable material are explosive because they have so much surface area. They burn very, very quick. So tossing a handful of coffee creamer into a campfire we'll make these sort of fireball that will burst up from the flames. And, you know, if you're, if you're in the midst of invoking something important and it's time to, you know, here's the climax of the ritual and then boom, you throw this into the fire and Kapow, the giant burst of flame comes up. It's really dramatic. So it's one of my favorite ritual special effects.  Yucca: Yes. Oh, that sounds fun. And again, I just cannot emphasize enough. My, my state is on fire right now and very right next to the. One of the largest fires we've ever had in the history of our state. So I'm just, just remember your fire safety, everybody fire is wonderful and incredible, and it can also just consume everything. So make sure that whatever you're doing, you thought out and you're doing safely. Mark: Right, right. Yeah. And candles candles particularly can be deceptive because the flame is so small, but you don't want to get them too close to anything else. Or the flame gets a lot better.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Right. If you, if, if there's anything hanging over it put your hand. If, if there's anything over, you know, above The candle, put your hand underneath it. If you can't stand the heat. From the candle that you feel coming up, then move the candle because it's too close. There's too much heat coming up. That's a trick you can use to be safe. I usually use chimney candles on my focus because they're stable. They're enclosed inside a glass cylinder. And they burn down and get farther and farther away from the lip of that Yucca: The chimney are those like the St scandals.  Mark: well. It's at these don't have any saints on them. They're just call them columnar  Yucca: but it's the same. I like, you would often find them with saints, but this is, it's the same kind of concept.  Mark: Yes. Just a glass, you know, a tone narrow cylindrical glass filled with wax and the WIC.  Yucca: So one of those was sagging on them once,  Mark: Oh, I know  Yucca: make him roll and roll in his grave. Mark: there's a whole series of saints of science. And you can get other people to you. Can you get Ruth Bader Ginsburg? You can get Martin Luther king. There's a whole bunch of those. And I think that's pretty cool. I wouldn't mind having Ruth Bader Ginsburg on my focus right now.  Yucca: Thank you. Someone gave my kids a little story book about her and they're really into it right now. They want to read, they want to read the Ruth book. So it was like, cool. Awesome. Mark: Nice.  Yucca: So, we didn't, there's so much, there's so much more, we should probably wrap up because we've been gone for a while now, but just thinking about all the different, like types of things that you could use and rituals and things that you can make. And we didn't talk about braiding things and books and all kinds of things. Mark: Yeah. There, there is a lot to talk about. But the. core point of this podcast is, you know, look around and see what are the things that attract you? You know, a lot of times when we're pagans, we collect a lot of natural things, pine cones and bones and all that kind of stuff. Well, what can you make with those? What, what, what might you put together, or maybe you don't need to make them, maybe you just use them as ritual tools by themselves. Like my Redwood stick. But, you know, be, be imagining in a different way, what those things. are. Maybe they're not just decorative. Maybe there's something that can have a symbolic meaning for you as well. So, we need to tell you that next week is a very unusual Episode of the wonder, because we are going to be recording this at the century retreat that Yucca and I are going to next In Herson.  Yucca: we'll only be a few feet away instead of a few thousand miles. Mark: It is, it is hard to imagine, but that's actually going to happen. And  Yucca: of you listening, we know are going to be there as well. So really excited for that. Mark: You can, if, if you're in the atheopagan is on Facebook group, there's an event there for the Saturday mixer, which says, you know, pay attention. There's a different time for this particular week for the, for the 14th of May. And what you'll do is you'll log into the zoom. And you can participate with us as we record the podcast, we're going to do a Q and a session and kind of a report about what's going on at century retreat. But mostly we're going to interact with people who call in and just have a good time. So, and then the audio from that will be posted on Monday as usual, or maybe a little later, because we may not have the ability to do that until after you get home yet.  Yucca: Well, yeah, so it might, it depends on what, I don't know what the technical setup is. You said that there's pretty good wifi there. Mark: There's pretty good wifi in the dining hall. Apparently it's a little spottier in the other buildings.  Yucca: Yeah. So I'll, I'll bring everything and we'll, hopefully we'll get it up at our regular time. But if not, it'll probably be you know, Monday night when I get a drive back home. So it's, it'll be, hopefully it'll be the same time, but we'll, you'll get that. You'll get your little lit pop-up when it comes. So depending on what app you're listening on, so. Mark: All right. Well, I am really excited for that. It's been coming for a long time. We've been talking about it and it's finally upon us.  Yucca: Yeah, you're about to leave too. Aren't you? Cause you've got a ways to drive to get, since it's in Colorado, near in  Mark: In California. Yeah. I leave Wednesday morning early. So I've still got a little bit of time. We're recording this on Saturday as usual. So I've, I've still got a little bit of time, but there's oh, there's just so much to do between now and then it's it's very exciting. I'm just, I can't wait. Okay.  Yucca: thank you so much, everyone. Mark: Yep. Thanks everybody. And hope to see you on this, on the live zoom call next week. We'll post it in the in the podcast notes for this podcast,  Yucca: Cool. Mark: how to join next week.  Yucca: Great. Yeah. So just look at that. It'll be right above the transcripts since as usual. And we look forward to seeing y'all  Mark: Yeah. All right. Have a wonderful week.  

18 We all, with unveiled faces, are looking as in a mirror at, the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory; this is from the Lord who is the Spirit. Mark (For the Group) Prepare the way of the Lord. The baptism and temptation of Jesus. Preaching, and casting…

18 We all, with unveiled faces, are looking as in a mirror at, the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory; this is from the Lord who is the Spirit. Mark (For the Group) Prepare the way of the Lord. The baptism and temptation of Jesus. Preaching, and casting…

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   S3E5 TRANSCRIPT: ----more---- Yucca: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-based Paganism. I'm one of your hosts, Yucca.  Mark: And I'm the other one, Mark.  Yucca: And today we're talking about imagination, fantasy and Richard. Mark: Right?  Yucca: And we thought this was a, a lovely time to talk about it because for many people we're just coming out of are still really in a season of that, that we associate with new beginnings, with planning, with with planting those seeds for the, for the year to come. Mark: Right. Because in many places like yours, Yucca the ground is frozen and there's not a whole lot that you can be doing towards making something new, grow for the rest for the coming year, other than to think about it and imagine the future.  Yucca: And play on it and. Mark: And plan, you know, based on your imagined picture of that future, then you can plan the steps to get there. Right. And that is really the human special trick of all of all. I mean, we talk about our thumbs and they're great. Of all the things that humans are particularly capable of and adept at it's our ability to envision the imagined. And that includes the imagined future. and. what that means is that we have become creatures who are built around storytelling. There was an anthropologist, I don't remember his name, who, who actually called us homo something. I don't remember what it was, which meant the storytelling ape. Yeah.  Yucca: Yeah. I mean, that makes sense. 'cause that's what we do. Whatever, whatever culture you look at, wherever in the world, we're all telling stories. And we start that at a very, very young age, even before we're, we've really figured out the grammar of our mother language. We're telling stories we're playing. And that's, you know, when you look at at mammals mammals, And they play at whatever it is that they need to learn to succeed and survive as an adult. So you look at the low line Cubs and they're wrestling with each other and chasing each other and grabbing each other's tails. Well, humans, yeah, we run around and rough and tumble, but we play make-believe. From very, very early on, you know, we're picking up the sock and, you know, the feather and their characters in our minds, and they have incredible stories and personalities and interactions and, and all of that. And, and so that's what we really do. And that's, that's what that's part of what makes us successful. As a species and as individuals in our species is our ability to tell those stories, imagine, and to share those stories. Mark: Yes, exactly. And what this tells us of course is because this is happening at such an early age, is that this really is baked into us. This is, you know, something that comes in at a very low level of our development. And it's essential to us, you know, our ability to understand the idea of causality of action and consequence is, you know, and that things happen along a timeline, right? That there are, there are actors and those actors do things and those things have consequences. And so there's a result. And that that's the order that things happen. All of those are things that we have to learn, but we get them really early. And one of the things about our capacity for imagination is that our brains are not really built to distinguish the imagined from the. And this is the great paradox with memory, of course, because memories get edited all the time. You know, they, they, every time we retell a story to ourselves things get a little fuzzy around the edges and we just touch them up.  Yucca: Just fill that in.  Mark: Yeah. Just, you know, because we want the memory to be complete. It is not a volitional activity. There's nothing wrong with it. It's not about being dishonest. It's the way our brains work.  Yucca: Yeah. And it's, it's not really a conscious thing that we're doing. That's it's not like you're choosing, usually you're usually not choosing to modify that memory, but. And you're just filling in the details then  Mark: Right, right.  Yucca: it's like with our vision, you, you can actually see this. If you take your finger out, put it all the way to the edge of your vision, your peripheral vision, and slowly move your finger into the, in the front of your vision. You're going to find that you've got some blind spots. But we don't notice those blind spots. Our brain just fills it in for us, unless you're really, really looking for that blind spot. Mark: Right. Yeah. And that of course is caused by the place where the optic nerve connects with the retina. It doesn't have any light sensing cells over it. There's an actual hole in our vision, in our brains. Well, they do two things they fill in that hole to start with. And then they flip the whole thing upside down because our eyes actually project the lens in our eyes projects, an upside down image onto the retina at the back of the eye.  Yucca: Right. Just like a telescope, right? It works the same way. Is there a refractor? Yeah. Mark: Yeah. So. You know, our brains are doing a lot of stuff to massage our experience. Right. And this is something that we talk about a lot in non theists, paganism in terms of understanding supposedly supernatural experiences. Right. Because in every case with every experience we have, there is the, the perception. And then there's the story we developed to explain the perception  Yucca: Right. Mark: and the story. We actually have some choices about the perception. Our brain just does what it does and frequently it's trying to fill in very poor data. So we hear things that. That sound didn't actually come into our ears to create, or we see things that aren't created. My favorite example, I've used this before is when you're driving on the highway and there's a sign for an exit far, far down the road, and you could read it barely. You can see, you know, what road it is that that is the exit for, and as you get about halfway closer, those letters all rearrange themselves into what it actually said. Because your brain was trying to make sense out of the sign and it gave you one determination and the truth is it was something else.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So the, our, our minds are incredibly powerful in how they can develop imagination in order to fill in the holes of what we perceive.  Yucca: Right. Another example is when you, somebody says something to you and you didn't really quite catch it and you hear something that's completely different than what they said. And you know, you have to say, wait, what did you say? Because what I heard.  Mark: Okay.  Yucca: Definitely was not what you said, and then they say it again and he couldn't. Oh, then it makes sense. Right. But we just fill it in. We hear something that's not really there.  Mark: Right. And that, in my opinion is where a lot of experiences of the supernatural come from. It's a. Femoral data that the brain fills in, and then it develops a story that this isn't a supernatural experience. Other people have different opinions about that, but it seems to me given what we know about the brain and about the universe, it's a lot more likely than the supernatural explanations that are often presented by people.  Yucca: Okay. That's what I suspect as well. Yeah.  Mark: So  Yucca: this is, oh.  Mark: Oh, go ahead.  Yucca: I was going to say, this is a little bit about the, so some of the why's we have this powerful imagination. But once we, we know and acknowledge that about ourselves, we can do so much with it and it can be a really empowering and just fun and delightful thing. Mark: Right. Which is why we love to read fiction. It's why we love to watch movies and television presentations and all  Yucca: Play games and yeah. Mark: yeah, we love our stories and we, we love, you know, Waiting to find out what happens at the end because we know that something will happen at the end and we're, we're, we're interested in what that is. So yes, playing with our imaginations become something that we do from a very, very early age. And the only reason. The only real bucket that we have in our minds that helps us to see what is likely not likely to be a fantasy rather than an a reality is that category of things that we see as happening in the future,  Yucca: Hm. Mark: because we know we're not there yet. We know that we can't see the future. Right. Most of us know that we can't see the future. So, There are those imagined outcomes. And then we can plan for those or plan against them depending on what we're imagining.  Yucca: Although, I'm just going to say, when you're driving on the road, And you see something on the side of the road and you don't want to hit it. Don't keep focusing on it because you will drive into it.  Mark: yes.  Yucca: So focus on what he, where you want to go instead of where you don't. And with my experience, you can apply that to planning as well. Instead of trying to plan against something it's often much more effective to plan towards something. Mark: Yes. Yes. When I was first learning to drive the guy who was teaching me said, okay, now look where you want to go and go there.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: That was, it was very simple instruction and it taught me to steer.  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: Look where you want to go and go there.  Yucca: Yep.  Do not look at the pedestrian to not look at the pedestrian. Yes. Mark: Yeah. So we have this powerful imagination and it's so powerful that it can blur the distinction between what our real experiences are, which as we've said, can be heavily massaged and, and changed by our brains. Right.  Yucca: And just filling in that lack of lack of data. Mark: even, even that is somewhat questionable, which is why the scientific method is so powerful because it works to take that subjectivity out of our conclusions about what's real. And then we have the imagined experiences and those can be super vivid and wonderful. And that's why we, once again, like movies and, you know, reading and all that great kind of stuff. We can use this and we're going to talk about this later on. We can use this in our pig and practice in our ritual practice because a ritual can be informed by a story. Right. I'm going to do this and that symbolizes this and I'm going to do that. And it symbolizes that, and then this transformation will take place and it will lead to this result at the end. And either I will be changed or the world will be changed depending on what you believe. And. You can even create rituals that are built around mythological stories, right. I'm going to do the fool's journey I'm going to do per Stephanie's descent or, or a non as descent. Right. And I've, I've been to some rituals that are like that and they can be incredibly powerful. The problem that we get into is where I talked about how we can blur the imagined and the real. Yucca: Right. Mark: And that can lead to lots of problems. I mean, I believe that that's the fundamental issue with theism.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: It involves the, the blurring of reality with imagination in a way that draws erroneous conclusions. That's what I think.  Yucca: Yeah, well, and there's so many different directions to go with this, but one of the places where it can be really harmful as we start to create these narratives about groups, about my group and that group, and you know, everything there. You know, your escape group, scapegoat group where, you know, where you can start demonizing people just through the stories and imagination, you come up with whatever the group is, right? It's the other political party, or it's the, you know, whatever religion or the opposite of your particular food dogma group or that, you know, and you start to, to. Blur between, you know, what, what maybe is real. And what's kind of imagined and, and what may have some seeds of truth that have been been exaggerated. And, and and it's hard for us to know. To peel that back and try and distinguish between them, especially when we start wrapping our own identity and our stories about ourselves and our own worth and to all of that. Mark: right, exactly. So, and that brings us to the wonderful term confirmation bias. Because all of us have a prejudice in favor of our own stories. We, whether they're imaginary or whether they're based in some pretty solid factual information, we still, as we look out into the world, we will look for pieces of data that will reinforce what we already want to believe. And that is. Another piece of fee ism. I believe once you've decided that you're an atheist and you have this idea, you know, I'm a Christian, I'm a Muslim, I'm a, I'm a follower of Zeus. Then you, you start filtering your experience of the world in order to be consistent with what that tells you with what that. is supposed to look like. Right. And it's very tricky. It's subtle stuff because. So much of what happens with our sensorium happens underneath the surface. It's the processing that the mind does And, then shows you something on the screen. Yucca: Right. Mark: Very challenging.  Yucca: and we need to be really clear that this is, this is a human thing, right? This is something that we all do, and we can become more aware of. And be able to make choices about it, but it's, it's completely natural. This is just part of how we work, how we're wired. Mark: Right, right. This, this. What's this concretion of different evolved systems. That is our brain. You know, it wasn't engineered from the bottom up. It's a, it's a series of evolutionary steps that are all glommed onto one another. And this is part of the result is that, you know, we, we are really not very good at subjective. As a single individual person detecting what's likely to be true and what's likely not to be true. We teach ourselves critical thinking in order to try to do a better job of that. But the best system that we've found so far for determining what really is likely to be true is the scientific method with peer review and Ockham's razor Yucca: Yeah. Mark: and oh, go ahead.  Yucca: I was gonna say, I'm, you know, I'm not someone who thinks that we really should be dictating, you know, what peoples, what classes people should take. But you know, if I had one that I could say everybody has to take it would be logic, right? I think that it would make sense. It would help people so much. As long as the. You know, it was a good instructor and understood it just to be aware of the different kinds of fallacies there are. And how do you actually think through, and, and challenge your own beliefs and also how to argue, how to argue on a position that's not yours.  Mark: yeah. Yes. Well, that's why the, the first atheopagan principle is skepticism and critical thinking.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: It's, you know, you start from there that, that, that will help you to understand the world as Well, as a person can. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So we have this imagination. And we have this perceptual system, which gets monkeyed with, by the brain a lot and may not be telling you exactly the truth. And then what you base. Then you base a story on the experience that this brain process delivers you. So, so it's possible for things that are completely imagined to seem very, very real. Whether it's just that you're watching a movie and you're, you know, you're suspended, you're, you're completely submerged into the world of the film. Or it can be something like  Yucca: Your anxiety at two in the morning. Mark: Yes about terrible things that are likely to happen or a memory that I have of flying naked over the golden gate bridge. It was a perfect day. It was sunset. Beautiful. And for some reason, I had no clothes on and I was standing at the bus stop at the golden gate bridge and then rose into the air and flew over the towers, did kind of a back flip. The air was perfectly warm. It was so comfortable. It was a beautiful experience. And it was a lucid dream that I had. But I remember it as absolutely clearly as if it was a real experience. And I have no, there's no context within that. Memory, except for the fact that impossible things happened to tell me that I didn't really have that experience.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So we have this. And that leads me to some of the ways that the pagan community has developed in relation to imagination and fantasy starting really from Gerald Gardner, know, from the 1930s. Because Gardner posited a fantasy story. And the fantasy story was that the witchcraft that he was presenting in his books was part of an unbroken lineage of lore handed down from time and Memorial, at least from the middle ages. And this created a sort of conflation of paganism, middle ages, middle ages, paganism. And in the late 1960s, at least in the United States, what ended up happening was that Renaissance fairs got invented. And a lot of people that were performers and participants in Renaissance fairs were also pagans. And so this sort of aesthetic, and this idea of this golden old age began to arise.  Yucca: Right. And the, the John era of fantasy was really taking off as well.  Mark: we, we have to name, check Lord of the  Yucca: out. Yep. I'm a huge fan here,  Mark: Me too.  Yucca: named from it even, you know, but and, and other, you know, many, many other names and it, it really became. I think not just within the pagan community, but just in the, in the larger community, really a cultural force. Mark: Yes. Very much. So in certainly from an aesthetic standpoint, it took, it really took over in many ways, certainly in the eighties and nineties pigging, where was medieval flash Renaissance, where,  Yucca: yeah, Mark: you know, what, what people wore were, you know, flowing velvets and  Yucca: the long sleeves.  Mark: the, with the long, you know, bill like sleeves  Yucca: And the open V shirts with the little ties across them. And yeah,  Mark: Yeah, exactly. So, and,  Yucca: I adore all of this, you  Mark: well, I do  Yucca: yeah, this is not, don't take this as us being like, oh, this is all terrible. No, we're just talking about it though and saying, you know, where's this from? Yeah. Mark: And so this, this aesthetic of ye all the England D became something that  Yucca: don't mention all the other places, sorry. Mark: Right. Yeah, That's another topic that we could talk about, which is paganism outside of the sphere of England and English speaking countries. Right. Because of. You know, not, not everything is going to be practiced in a Wiccan kind of way.  Yucca: yeah.  Mark: but  Yucca: Anyways, that's another Mark: it's a, it's another topic. either that, or it's going to be the mother of all tangents and we're going to spend the rest of our time on it. So this, this, you know, jolly old England kind of. Idea, which has so much overlap with talking for example, except that talking mixed in habits and elves and dwarves and wizards and all that kind of stuff became very, very popular. And to my mind, unfortunately, what some of what that has done is it has turned, it has turned the imagination into what people want to make re. their paganism, they want to be wizards. They, they want to be elves. In some cases they and you know, aspiration towards a fantasy of something that's imaginary is inherently dissociated from the real world. And what are. Naturalistic paganism is about is the real world. You know, one. of the quibbles that I've always had with the sort of mainstream pagan community in the United States, at least where I'm familiar with it is that it's got this weird kind of dual loyalty. It's like we Revere the earth and then we have these gods  Yucca: Yes, but these higher beings, you know, higher than what you're talking about higher than the earth, you know, they're not. Mark: the gods come from the earth? No. Did the gods create the earth? Maybe? There are all kinds of different stories, which I believe are imagined stories, but the, the question of exactly where does the earth fit into all of that is a real one. I think I'm glad that people are saying that they Revere the earth, whatever that means to them. To me, the earth is central. There's nothing more central because we are it. We are the earth standing up on legs and talking to itself.  Yucca: Right.  Really? I mean, think about that for a moment. We are little pieces of earth that your whole body think about. Where's the carbon in your hands, the oxygen, the nitrogen. Where's all of that from, and where's it going back? Mark: Right. And it's not like there's some amazing border where it's like, you, you know, the carbon presents its passport and says, I'm going to be human. Now it's just carbon. It's just carbon, like any other carbon on earth, right. At least of that ice.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So. This is something that I think is, is problematic in the pagan community. And it's interesting because some different there've been a series of sort of aesthetic layers that have gone along with the pagan community. I saw the, the golf sort of BDSM aesthetic enter the community in the mid nineties. And it's kind of gotten folded into all. well,  Yucca: Yeah. The boundaries between them really blurred between, you know, what is, and even if you go to like a Ren fair that it's all there too,  Mark: right.  Yucca: Even within folks that, that are into that, that aren't pagan, you know, that there's a lot of mixing there. Mark: Yes. And yes, there's a lot of the, the dress-up is still. Reminiscent of some other age. Right. And so, you know, I, I think this is problematic because it pulls us away from earth. I love playing dress up and I'm, I'm happy to play dress up and I have done it in many, I mean, literally dozens of different kinds of ways, because we used to do all these theme parties and blah, blah, blah. And I was a performer at Renaissance fairs for many years as well, and Dickens fairs as well. So I don't have any problem with, you know, playing let's pretend the challenge, I think is when we lose track of the fact that we're playing, let's pretend.  Yucca: Right because there are, I think there are ways that we'll talk about this too, to do it in a way that it is inspiring. It speaks to us in this very you know, deep level, the Indian symbols. But what you're talking about is the, is the losing sight of is this really, really. This is what's really happening versus what are we imagining? And we can, I think that we can definitely w one of the purposes of imagination is that can work towards making that a reality. So we can, some of our imagined things can, can become reality, but there's also a difference between imagining things about other people and about. Past stories, you know, as much as we want. We could, we referenced sort of the rings. So as much as, as Gollum wants to believe that it was his birthday present it, he can believe that. And imagine that as long as he wants, it's not, that's not what happened.  Mark: Right.  Yucca: Right. And. With the old ways, as much as we want to imagine, and really want to believe that there's some unbroken path there. That's very unlikely that that's what happened. And you know, we probably aren't star children put here from aliens and,  Mark: Right.  Yucca: the TAF ELLs and all of that stuff. Mark: Right. And the w where was I going to go with this?  Yucca: The connection between what is real and what is not, and the earth being central. That's where you were at before. Mark: Well, yeah, this is a little different it's about suspension of disbelief. And one of the things that adults learn to do when their brains are developed enough is to try to make a differentiation between the imagined and the. Right. And some people think that's a tragedy, right. That they lose their childish sense of playfulness and imagination and everything can be just super magical. Right. I don't feel that way. I, I think that our brains develop in the way they do for a reason. And when we start having to imagine futures that we need to plan for being able to distinguish between the imaginary that we suspend our disbelief for and the real that we're working towards, even in the ineffectual way that we do because of the way our brains work. It's very important. Yucca: Right. Mark: That way we don't set a goal of becoming an elf,  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: right. Because that's not possible.  Yucca: Yeah.  Now we could think about what are the characteristics that, that embodies that we value and how can we work towards, you know, that sort of thing. But, but you're not actually going to be right.  Mark: right. Or You maybe maybe more, a better example is you're not going to be a wizard. Right. Because in the, in the fantasy sense, what a wizard is, is something that doesn't exist on planet earth. Now You can be buried in the aesthetics of wizardry. You can con you know, Yucca: can be an incredible scholar, right? They're often, you know, very learned individuals and. Mark: And you can make yourself look like a wizard and make all of your environs look like what you imagine a wizard's environs would look like, but you're still not going to snap your fingers and have flame appear, you know? And. To kid ourselves that those kinds of outcomes, the sort of Harry Potter magic, right. That that those outcomes are actually possible in some way is to become further away from engagement with the world. The actual world that we're in here and the kind of paganism that Yucca and I talk about here is really about immersion in this world. Getting to know it better and better, you know, becoming familiar with what our local ecosystems are and really being in love with it because there's so much there to love. Giving getting sidetracked on fantasies. It eats up bandwidth that could be applied to the love for the world. and. that I think is. Critique that I have of a lot of mainstream paganism in the United States is that, and maybe in England too, I don't know. But certainly, or, you know, in other English speaking countries, but certainly in north America Canada and Mexico in the us that's, that seems to be what I'm seeing.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So let's talk a second about. About using our imagination to create those story arcs where we begin as naturalist pagans is with a healthy suspension of disbelief. Right.  Yucca: And with a, with an awareness that that's what word.  Mark: Right,  Yucca: Right, because what you're talking about about the difference between what the children and adult brain and people talking about, oh, the, the what a, a shame it is. I think that some of what they might be talking about is the ability to let go the way kids can let go. Right. And I think that's something that we don't need to leave. Is being able to let go and go into that playful place, but we also have the ability to step back and be very critical and, and see the differences. But when we want to, we can suspend that belief  Mark: Right,  Yucca: disbelief, right? Mark: that's very well said. Because the. The playfulness that you're describing that that is something that our over culture really stomps on for adults. We've got all this conformity expectation around how we dress around how we behave. That's why I love flashmob. I love. I love, you know, people suddenly behave me behaving in really unexpected ways that are delightful and creative and artistic. They're just super fun. Ritual is a way for adults to play well or children to children can be involved in rituals, but but adults, unless it's some formal sport or game. They don't get permission much to just go and play, you know, you take the afternoon off, go and play.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And and rituals enable us to do that around fee Matic storylines, you know, whether it's. Whether it's something from, from a myth, whether it's a story that, or, or simply a story of, I am powerful. Now I am, I am, I am filled with my power. I have created a space where magic can occur and I'm going to go and do this thing. And it's going to help me to be much more effective at X, whatever X.  Yucca: Yeah, well, and even our our, our stories and narratives of the season. Right. That that is a story as well. And we understand it in with the narrative structure. Mark: Yes, it's true because the reality is every year.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Yeah. every year is different. The weather on any given day is not the same as it was last year. Weather is a chaotic system and it's never going to be predictable. And all we can talk about is broad stroke generalizations about what is likely to happen in the month of February, as opposed to the month of August. And we understand some of the drivers of that in terms of the axial tilt and. Climate change and all of those things, but that doesn't make it predictable. So we have a story, a narrative about it instead that kind of guides us through well it's may, so we should be doing this. Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: Yeah.  Yucca: And that's, again, as we were talking about in the beginning, that's just sort of how our, our, our minds are built is to understand things as story as, as a narrative. And then the imagination piece is, well, we get to build that story.  Mark: Right.  Yucca: So in our ritual, we're building those stories and, and it's very convenient in ritual that we do have the blur between what our, what our minds understand as true and not. Mark: Right Because we can invoke an imagined scenario and effect real profound change in ourselves as people. I  Yucca: believe it. And it's okay that we know that we made it up and we're believing it, but then it really makes that change. Mark: I did a ritual at Penn FIA con God, it's gotta be eight years ago now, something like that. And it was, it was specifically in atheopagan ritual that happened after a presentation about atheopagan ism and. What the whole point of this, we, you know, we invoked a circle and we we called qualities that we wanted to be with us of openness and a willingness to change and kindness and compassion. And the, the whole working of the root of the ritual was simply, I had a little. Vial of oil. And I went from person to person anointing their forehead. But what I told them before I did that was now, what I want you to do is to call up that most cringe-worthy a shame, shame, filling moment of your life. You know what it is. We all know  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: right? You, you don't have to say anything about it, but we know what it is. The thing that you really wish you had never done. Right. And hold that forward in your mind. And so all I did was I went from person to person and said, it's forgotten it's over. It's gone  With each person. And people cried  Yucca: right. Yeah.  Mark: story that they had been telling themselves about the bad thing that they done, or the embarrassing thing that they'd done or whatever it was, the story had a new ending, right? The story was given a new ending that absolves them of the feelings of shame or embarrassment or whatever it was. And I mean, I, I didn't realize it was going to be as powerful as it was. But I wanted, I wanted to do something that was very personal work to really illustrate the power of doing ritual like that without invoking God's, without believing in magic. right. And. That's the kind of thing that we can do with rituals and story narratives. People, people are filled with stories. They're filled with stories about themselves and about the world and about humanity and about their families and all that kind of stuff. And we can change those stories in ways that empower people and help them to be happier and help them to be kinder in the world. That's what I'm in this for. Yucca: Yeah  Mark: and so imagination becomes, you know, the primary tool, the, the cloth that you lay down before setting out anything for a focus or an alter imagination is the foundation.  Yucca: I like that even rhymes. Yeah. And again, just to really, really be very clear on this, neither of us are being down on the fantasy genre or B we're both huge fans and bring a D and D nerds and all of that stuff. But we're, we're talking about the, the ways that, you know, what's the purpose of each and where the. Where we can use imagination in a really constructive way and where it's maybe more harmful, right? Mark: Right or just where we may be stuck.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And you know, people do get stuck. That's in cultures get stuck. I think it's a lot easier for a culture that's based in a holy text to get stuck than it is for kind of a fluid subculture, like a pagan. Is to get stuck. But there's nothing shameful about that, except that if you become aware of it, then you can start to evolve again.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And I think that, you know, moving away from the good old days, a lineage of ancient ways. Kind of model and, and sort of Renaissance see sort of aesthetic of paganism. We'll do a couple of things that would be good for the pagan community. One of them is that I think it would make it less of a challenge to bridge the gap to other people that are not pagans because it won't seem quite so fantasied. Right. It, it won't seem. Quite so, frivolous in that way.  Yucca: Well, and, and also more welcoming to the people who don't particularly connect with that aesthetic,  Mark: right, right?  Yucca: Where the, the ideas are interesting, but the aesthetic is is just difficult to get past, right. Mark: For sure. So that's a good thing. And then the other way that I think that it can really benefit the pagan community is that it, it enables it, it would create kind of a vacuum that would enable new stuff to arise. There, and, and I think that some of this is happening because you know, the, the sixties and seventies, generation of pagans is leaving us. Most of, most of them came to it in adulthood. And so by now they're, they're getting elderly. And there there's enough conversation and enough pagan thought happening now that I think that people are starting to reconsider some of those. Good old days, unbroken lineage kind of models. Certainly with Ronald Hutton's book, the triumph of the moon, he pretty well-documented that modern paganism was a modern creation. I think it would be a wonderful thing for modern paganism to stand up and say, yes, we're a modern creation. were informed by modern values, which means we don't have. Holy book that's full of slavery and abuse and misogyny. We, we stand for, for the good stuff that humans have learned about how the dignity of the individual and the ecosystem. And we think that those are value and that good enough,  Yucca: Yeah. And we don't need some, some distant past authority to make it valid. Right. Mark: As as Tim mentioned said I don't believe that just because I ideas are tenacious that they're worthy.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So going back to talking about rituals again one thing that can be helpful when you're planning a ritual is to write out the story. Right. you know, or, or at least speak it out loud, we're going to do this and this and this and this and this, and the result is going to be that. Because what that does is it creates expectation in people's minds. In your own mind if you're working alone or in the group's mind. Oh, okay. Well that's, what's going to happen. And then it's going to result in that cool, magical new thing. That's going to transform us. Great. Sign me up. I'm I'm I'm here  Yucca: can follow that path and follow that. And there you go.  Mark: Yeah.  Yucca: Yeah. So I think this is a, I mean, like so many things that we talk about on this podcast, it, it takes a little bit of awareness, but takes some reflection and just paying attention to. How things work, how you work, how you respond and, and going from there, going, okay, well, how do I get, how do I make this work for me? What's the story that I want. What's the story that I want to live. What's the story that I can tell and imagination is that's what connects the pieces. Mark: Yes. Yes. So I think, I don't know. I could go on and on, but I think, I think we should stop here.  Yucca: I think this is a wonderful  Mark: I think it's a good place to stop.  Yucca: assist the app and to just invite some dreams for the future. Right.  Mark: Right. And this is, as you say, a great time of year to be doing that you know, as, as spring either, you know, is happening with the light, but not with the weather or or maybe it is happening starting to happen as it is where I live. Then you know, imagine a little, imagine. Who do I want to be? What's, what's my highest vision for myself.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: some of that can be circumstantial. Like, you know, what kind of work I want to be doing, or, you know, whatever that is. But some of it is, well, what kind of person do I want to be?  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: You know? Am I impatient? Well, can I work on that? Am I irritable? Can I work on that? Yucca: And that's ultimately the stuff that you really do have control over. Right? The, what. You know what job you have or what kind of world you want to live in. Those are all wonderful things, but ultimately you don't actually have control over that. Right. But you do have control over what kind of person you're going to be and how you're going to respond when certain types of things happen. Mark: Right. Not to say that activism isn't important  Yucca: Right. Exactly. You can definitely.  Mark: You can definitely. advocate and work to bring about improvements to the world that we live in. And it's essential. That is many of us as possible. Do that. So not, not to say that your highest vision of yourself should Trump your vision for the world. But.  Yucca: But you aren't a personal failure. If you aren't the chosen one from the stories that saves the world from global warming and on all of that, you can, you can be part of that solution, but don't, but don't beat yourself up that like, That are that real life doesn't work the same way. Fantasy novelists work. Yeah.  Mark: Yeah. I mean, one of the things, one of the most pernicious things, I think about the children's stories that we tell people is, and they lived happily ever after. I mean, that's a terrible thing to tell people, because the expectation then is okay, you get married and then you lived happily ever after until you have a knock-down, drag-out fight over something super trivial that neither one of you is willing to get off of until a day later, when you finally got all the quarters all out of your system, and you're ready to start actually having a conversation. This is the way the world really works.  Yucca: Yes. Oh, on the poor. Yeah. And when, and when you've been raised on those stories and think that that's how it works, then you suddenly, is this not true? Love  Mark: Right.  Yucca: This is not meant to be. Relationships take work anyways. Now we're going on a tangent.  Mark: we are. Yes.  Yucca: That's a, well, maybe that'll be something to talk about as we get closer to Valentines. Mark: Yeah, That's a good idea of, although we actually have. Next week we have Sarah Lindsay coming. We're going to do an interview with the YouTuber known as the, the skeptical, which and if you haven't seen her channel, I really encourage you to take a look at some of her stuff. She's a PhD candidate in religious studies, and she's very, very interesting to talk with and listen to. So we're going to be doing that interview Next week. I am too. It's going to be great. So. In the meantime, we hope you all have a wonderful week, enjoy the season and be sure to contact us at the email address. We always tell you thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com. If you have comments or suggested topics or any of that. Thanks So much, everybody.  Yucca: Thanks everyone. 

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Use the Try Harder, Luke, published by Eliezer Yudkowsky on the LessWrong. "When there's a will to fail, obstacles can be found." —John McCarthy I first watched Star Wars IV-VI when I was very young. Seven, maybe, or nine? So my memory was dim, but I recalled Luke Skywalker as being, you know, this cool Jedi guy. Imagine my horror and disappointment, when I watched the saga again, years later, and discovered that Luke was a whiny teenager. I mention this because yesterday, I looked up, on Youtube, the source of the Yoda quote: "Do, or do not. There is no try." Oh. My. Cthulhu. Along with the Youtube clip in question, I present to you a little-known outtake from the scene, in which the director and writer, George Lucas, argues with Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker: Luke: All right, I'll give it a try. Yoda: No! Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try. Luke raises his hand, and slowly, the X-wing begins to rise out of the water—Yoda's eyes widen—but then the ship sinks again. Mark Hamill: "Um, George..." George Lucas: "What is it now?" Mark: "So... according to the script, next I say, 'I can't. It's too big'." George: "That's right." Mark: "Shouldn't Luke maybe give it another shot?" George: "No. Luke gives up, and sits down next to Yoda—" Mark: "This is the hero who's going to take down the Empire? Look, it was one thing when he was a whiny teenager at the beginning, but he's in Jedi training now. Last movie he blew up the Death Star. Luke should be showing a little backbone." George: "No. You give up. And then Yoda lectures you for a while, and you say, 'You want the impossible'. Can you remember that?" Mark: "Impossible? What did he do, run a formal calculation to arrive at a mathematical proof? The X-wing was already starting to rise out of the swamp! That's the feasibility demonstration right there! Luke loses it for a second and the ship sinks back—and now he says it's impossible? Not to mention that Yoda, who's got literally eight hundred years of seniority in the field, just told him it should be doable—" George: "And then you walk away." Mark: "It's his friggin' spaceship! If he leaves it in the swamp, he's stuck on Dagobah for the rest of his miserable life! He's not just going to walk away! Look, let's just cut to the next scene with the words 'one month later' and Luke is still raggedly standing in front of the swamp, trying to raise his ship for the thousandth time—" George: "No." Mark: "Fine! We'll show a sunset and a sunrise, as he stands there with his arm out, straining, and then Luke says 'It's impossible'. Though really, he ought to try again when he's fully rested—" George: "No." Mark: "Five goddamned minutes! Five goddamned minutes before he gives up!" George: "I am not halting the story for five minutes while the X-wing bobs in the swamp like a bathtub toy." Mark: "For the love of sweet candied yams! If a pathetic loser like this could master the Force, everyone in the galaxy would be using it! People would become Jedi because it was easier than going to high school." George: "Look, you're the actor. Let me be the storyteller. Just say your lines and try to mean them." Mark: "The audience isn't going to buy it." George: "Trust me, they will." Mark: "They're going to get up and walk out of the theater." George: "They're going to sit there and nod along and not notice anything out of the ordinary. Look, you don't understand human nature. People wouldn't try for five minutes before giving up if the fate of humanity were at stake." Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.

In this episode Brendan Hill talks with a special guest that has something a bit different to offer our SME marketers and businesses. Our guest is pro surfing legend, Mark Matthews.Mark has made a living achieving the unfathomable: crossing the intersection of danger and excitement. He knows all too well the crippling grasp of fear.While in Tasmania, fifteen feet in front of a cliff in cold, shark infested waters, Mark hit a reef and instantly blacked out. Terror engulfed every inch of his being. Neck braced and hospital-ridden, he didn't know if he could ever surf again. At that moment, Mark made a decision never to allow fear to overpower him again.With his presentation business ” Life Beyond Fear”  has him deconstructing, fine-tuning, and personalizing emotional resilience techniques to successfully strengthen one's mindset and sustain long term performance.These techniques have helped him win an unprecedented three consecutive Oakley Big Wave Awards and cement him as one of the best big waves surfers in the world.  In this episode you will learn: How Mark overcomes the fear of surfing 50-foot waves and how you can apply these techniques to areas of your businessHow to get out of your comfort zone to get the experience you need to create that new comfort zone where new opportunities lieHow to build a personal brandHow Mark became a world-class keynote speaker when he couldn't even speak in front of a room of people at the beginningAdvantages of keeping your pitches raw and unpolishedHow to make your business more authentic and attract customersWhy having a high level of authenticity in every aspect of your business increases your chances of successHow to improve your presentation skillsWhy you need to have a plan in place for all business scenariosThe powerful moment that changed Mark's mindset after being told by doctors that he'd never surf againThe importance of building your own audienceHow studying standup comedy can make you a better public speakerResources Mentioned:Mark's Instagram AccountRed Bull Cape Fear (see Mark @ 48 seconds)Pragmatic ThinkingUpworkLinkedIn HelperMasterclassQuotes: When you push yourself through that fear and anxiety, usually the experience, feeling, result or success on the other side feels like that Holy Grail. You get that intrinsic reward and the external rewards that make it feel like a Holy Grail - like life's worth living.Talk to your audience like you're talking to one person, like you're talking to a friend and carry that tone. Match it to how you would just speak to a close friend, because you speak to your closest friends with the most authenticity.When you build your own audience you become like a small marketing agency yourself.There will be people that enjoy watching you do what you do. That's my model. Just stick to what you like. It's too tiring trying to be someone that you're not.What Business would you build on Mars?"It would have to be indoor wave pools. And surfing sells itself. All you got to do is offer a few free surf lessons and when people experience that feeling, what else is there going to be to do on Mars than ride a few waves? It will sell itself."Get in touch with Mark:markmathews.comMark on InstagramMark on LinkedInTranscript:Brendan:Mark, welcome to the show.Mark:Thanks for having me, Brendan.Brendan:You have an amazing LinkedIn profile, that's where I first found out about you. Can you tell us more about big wave surfing?Mark:Big wave surfing, I mean, that's my life. It's been my life for the last 15 years. It was my avenue to build a career out of the sport of surfing, even though I wasn't quite good enough or talented enough to be a competitive or a world champion level surfer.Brendan: Right.Mark:It was just this different avenue that I found that I could manufacture myself a career out of the sport that I loved.Brendan:Wow. When did you come to the realization that you could follow your passion and make that your career?Mark:It happened when I was about 20, so I was working, actually, here in Sydney, down at Darling Harbor, making coffees and cocktails at night. Out of the blue, I got asked to go on a surf trip down to Tasmania to surf a new wave that had been getting talked about in the industry. It was being heralded as one of the biggest and scariest waves that another had ever seen.Brendan: Wow.Mark:And no one had really photographed it at that point in time. And no part of me wanted to go and surf it, because I'd never really surfed big waves and I was absolutely terrified when I got the call. And it was funny because I couldn't figure out why they were calling me because I was kind of a no one in the industry of surfing.Brendan: Right.Mark:I found out down the track they probably called about 30 or 40 other surfers before they got to my name at the bottom of the list. Everyone politely declined because the waves sounded so scary, but I didn't have the chance of saying no. If I had said no, I would never have got my career off the ground because at that point, I didn't have the major sponsorships. Anyway, I went down to Tasmania, one thing lead to another and I ended up surfing waves bigger than I'd ever surfed before in my life.Brendan: Wow.Mark:And the photos and footage of that trip went around the world and I got my first surfing sponsorships and then that basically gave me the blueprint of what I needed to do to make a career, it was travel around the world, chase down the biggest waves I could find, surf them, create content, let that content get in the media and based on the media value, I'd get the sponsorship dollars.Brendan:Wow. So how big are these waves that we're talking about?Mark:Down in Tasmania, that first time, it was in the 15 to 20 foot range, but the way the waves break down there is what makes them so spectacular and dangerous. So super deep water waves breaking on a really shallow rock ledge, which magnifies the power and the spectacular nature of the waves. To me, way more dangerous than say, if I go and surf waves in excess of 50 feet, but break in deep water, while they look and are a whole lot bigger, it's nowhere near as dangerous or spectacular.Brendan:So in terms of taking that first step, I know that one of your mantras is life beyond fear, the other side of fear. So taking that first step. A good example, I just finished watching Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade on Netflix and when he's walking over that invisible gap to get the Holy Grail-Mark:I know the one.Brendan:Yeah, it's that first step. And I can imagine these massive waves passing by and 15, 20 feet, I mean, up to 50 feet, as you say. Can you tell us more about that first step and how to overcome fear? Because I mean, it has parallels in business as well. That first step is always the hardest.Mark:100%. And that's the interesting thing, because as scary as big wave surfing is, and the thought or the reality of maybe drowning, for me, I find public speaking and keynoting that I do now more stressful. I get more anxiety from it, it wears me down more than big wave surfing ever did.Brendan: Wow.Mark:So that's where the corelation is between what action sports people do and what business people do because fear is fear. It doesn't matter whether it's a fear of physical danger or harm or a fear of failure or not being good enough or making mistakes. The way your body reacts is exactly the same. So across the board, I think that's where the relationship is. And then like you said, the Indiana Jones reference is perfect.It's like the steps across the invisible bridge to the Holy Grail, in my head, it's so terrifying to get out of your comfort zone to get the experience you need to create that new comfort zone where the opportunities are, whether in business or in the sport of surfing. But when you do that and you push yourself through that fear and anxiety, usually the experience or the feeling or the result or the success on the other side feels like that Holy Grail. You get that intrinsic reward and the external rewards that make it feel like a Holy Grail, like life's worth living when you push yourself like that.Brendan:Yeah. It's interesting that you say that you get more anxiety now about public speaking than big wave surfing, validating what Jerry Seinfeld always says, "Public speaking is the number one human fear, followed by death at number two." Big wave surfing, I can imagine, wouldn't be far behind these monster swells.Mark:Yeah, I think Jerry is definitely right. For an introvert, anyway, I'm highly introverted, so public speaking is the scariest thing in life for me.Brendan:So what made you jump into public speaking after your career in big wave surfing?Mark:I had a sponsor who sponsored me from when I was in my early twenties, his best friend was in the world of corporate training and had a background climbing mountains and brought that to the business world and then he had said to me, years ago, in my early twenties, that this is the career path that you should look to take while you're still big wave surfing, so that you can build it then and then be able to carry it on down the track when I'm 50, when I can't surf big waves anymore. 60, maybe. I'm pushing for 60.Mark:And at the time, I was like, "There's no way I'm ever doing that" because for me, I couldn't even stand in front of a classroom when I was a kid and read from a book, I would stutter so bad, I'd have so much anxiety, so it took a lot for me to be able to do it. Spent untold amounts of money doing every speaking course under the sun.But eventually, it was exactly like learning to surf big waves, the exposure and the experience just builds up and then you build that new skill set so that it doesn't matter who you stand in front of, who I'm standing in front now, I've got the tools and the skills to dig into my bag and perform on stage and I don't have to feel too anxious about it now but originally, it was tough.Brendan:Yeah. Do you remember your first big keynote speech?Mark:I do. I was in Hawaii and it was for an insurance company and I got offered the talk two weeks before the event and I didn't have a keynote at all.Brendan: Wow.Mark:So I wrote the keynote in the two weeks before. The only person I said it in front of was my mom.Brendan: Wow.Mark:And I did the keynote in front of her and she actually features in the keynote because she's one of my big motivators in life to be successful. And she had a tear in her eye when I told her and that was kind of enough, I was like, "Okay. We'll see how it goes." And if I look back on the delivery of the keynote that I gave, the delivery was very average, but the bed of the keynote has almost stayed exactly the same. That's what I deliver today. And the feedback that I got from the audience was amazing, off that first keynote.Brendan:Right.Mark:I had the bosses say, "This is what you've got to do in life." And they just enjoyed, I think, the fact that I was so raw and real on stage because I had no other choice but to be that way. And it wasn't really too polished.Brendan: Right.Mark:And I've always taken that as I've gone on in keynote speaking, never to become that over-polished speaker that's talking to a track, because I think for the audience, you have to remember that they're seeing you for the first time, they want it to be real. Even though I'm telling the same thing that I've told a thousand times, it needs to feel real in that moment and the connection has to be real with the audience for them to even remotely take in what you're going to say.Brendan:Yeah. It's a interesting point that you touch on there, authenticity. So I guess that's part of your brand, being really authentic and not being too polished. I mean, when we go on social media feeds, like on Instagram, everyone is looking very polished. How can businesses become more authentic and tell their real story and start to, like yourself, really resonate with their audience?Mark:Ah, man, I think it takes courage to do that and it's tricky for businesses. When you have all these insurance factors and regulators and all this stuff hanging over the top of you and then investors, and depending on what size business you're running, to really let people know authentically what's happening within the business, where you're planning to go and all that, it takes courage, but I find that if you looked into some case studies on it, it is worth while to do.And especially small businesses and small business owners needing the motivation to do what they're going to have to do to be successful in small business, which is such a small amount of people pull that off, the authenticity level has to be there where you have to really love what you're doing and believe in it and there has to be deep meaning in what you're doing for you to go that extra level to the extent that you need to to be successful.So this authenticity on both aspects is how you run your business internally, but then how you speak to your customers, I think, both of them take some courage, but worth while.Brendan:And in terms of speaking to customers, you touched on presentation skills. Obviously very important in every day business. People are presenting on the phone, presenting in their content marketing, for example. What sort of tips can you give early stage businesseslistening on at home? Obviously, you had to learn from the ground up with your presentation skills for your keynotes. You did a lot of courses. People just starting now or wanting to improve their presentation skills, where do they start?Mark:I think the best tip that I got as far as tone, when you talk to someone, is that talk to your audience like you're talking to one person, like you're talking to a friend and carry that tone. And you've got to practice it and then watch yourself on video and see if you're carrying that tone because it's really hard to do initially, because when the camera's in front of you or the audience is in front of you, naturally, the anxiety shifts you into a different tone with the way you're speaking to people. But I think if you go back and watch what you look like and then try and match it to how you would just speak to a close friend, because you speak to your closest friends with the most authenticity, you know?Brendan: True. Yeah.Mark:And then if you can keep that tone, I think that helps a lot. And then by far, the most important thing is to be prepared. Unbelievably prepared. Nothing beats the fear of public speaking like preparation. You've going to have, for me, it's the same as surfing. So when I go and surf big waves, I'm ready for every worse case scenario that could possibly happen. I have a really detailed plan put in place.For example, if I blacked out under water and I had to be resuscitated, they had to restart my heart and then I had to call for a helicopter, we have the whole plan in place. So it takes some of that fear and that apprehension that you get in your mind in the lead up to scary moments away because I'm prepared for it. So the same way, if I'm going to do a keynote this afternoon, for WordPress, actually, here in Sydney, everything that could go wrong, I know exactly what to do.The whole power can shut off and I have to do my presentation without any photos or footage or anything like that, but I'm ready to do that.Brendan: Amazing.Mark:Or if my mind goes blank, which it does in front of an audience, if something happens, I've got a line and a story where I can go straight into at any point in my presentations.Brendan:It's a good idea. Yeah.Mark:Yeah. And then give myself the time to get back on track, so overly prepared is the key todealing with that kind of fear.Brendan:And speaking of scary moments, what was the scariest moments in your big wave surfing career?Mark:I've had a recent one where I dislocated my knee surfing down the South Coast of Sydney, five hours South of here. I hit the reef on about a 10 foot wave and completely dislocated my knee, tore every ligament and tendon.Brendan: Wow.Mark:Tore the major artery that runs through my leg. Major nerves. The pain that I experienced when I did that, I knew that something really bad had happened. And then to wake up the following morning in hospital after emergency surgery, and I was basically told that I was going to have a disability where I can't move my foot, I can't lift my foot anymore for the rest of my life.Brendan: Wow.Mark:So it was the doctors telling me, "Your surfing career is over."Brendan: Right.Mark:So that, by far, was the scariest, hearing that news was the scariest thing that I've been through within surfing. But managed to prove them wrong and I'm getting my surfing career back on track. It's taken me about two and a half years, but it's getting there.Brendan:Wow. So can you talk us through that mindset from being told you'll never surf again to rebuilding your career?Mark:I have to admit, the first six weeks to two months when I was stuck in hospital in the big metal frame brace, with my big wounds from the surgery on my leg and I couldn't get out of bed at all in the worst pain I've felt, nerve pain, by far, I've had almost every other injury youcan do, broken bones and stuff, but nothing compares to nerve pain. And yeah, in that two months I got really depressed. Not on the level of depression like suicidal depression, that's something completely different, but depressed in that I didn't want to see anyone. I'd given up hope of surfing again.Brendan: Wow.Mark:I wasn't sleeping because of the pain or they'd give me ridiculous amounts of medication to try and combat the pain, so it was that. All these things just lead to me being so unbelievably unhealthy, physically and mentally. It's interesting because it wasn't until, I'd like to say I just snapped myself out of it, but I didn't.It wasn't until I actually met a young guy in hospital who reached out to me on social media. And he said, "I've been following your career since I was young. Big fan. I'd love to come up and meet you and get a photo." Because he read that I was in Canberra Hospital and he was actually in there. And I didn't want to see anyone, so I didn't even reply. It was my wife who saw the message and wrote back to him and said, "Yeah, no worries, come up and get a photo."Mark:So this kid comes up probably three hours after I'd seen the message. He gets wheeled into my bedroom by his brother, he's a complete quadriplegic and had broken his neck about six months before I hurt myself and the moment that I shook Jason, his name was, hand, and I don't know if you've shook someone's hand who's a quadriplegic, it's confronting. They can't control their arm, anything. And he stuck out his arm with a big grin on his face. And the moment that I shook his hand, it was the craziest shift that I've ever had experienced in my life where my perspective or mindset about what I was dealing with did a complete 180.Mark:So I went from being really angry, full of self-pity for what had happened to me, blaming other people, the victim of this wipeout and this injury and just done with it to just feeling like the luckiest person on Earth because if I'd had hit that reef any other part of my body, I could have so easily been dealing with what he was dealing with. And his injury's a million times worse than mine and he's dealing with it that much better. So I was overcome with gratitude, feeling lucky. And from that moment onwards, it was like that feeling of feeling lucky about my situation was the catalyst to get me back on track. Everything fed on from there.Brendan: Wow.Mark:And now, two years later, after all the rehab, I've figured out how to surf good enough withthe disability that I can get back out into big waves. But I think meeting him and that shift in mindset was the saving grace for me in dealing with that.Brendan:That's an amazing story. So tell us about the first time after this accident that you got back on the surf board.Mark:I surfed a couple of times, probably a year down the track, but I would barely call it surfing, compared to what I've been doing. It was on a longboard, I could only just stand up. I could barely turn the board and at that moment, I was like, "It's nice to be surfing again, but this is ... It's nice to be out in the ocean and the water, but it's not really surfing for me."It took about another eight months after that to where I rode a wave and got my first barrel, say inside the barrel and caught a wave. Not a big wave, just sort of eight foot wave on the Gold Coast and that moment was just a game changer for me. All the hard work paid off because I could surf good enough just to do that, to get barrelled. It wasn't big waves and get my career on track, but that was enough.I was like, "If this is it, then that's fine." But then, my surfing ability just kept getting better and better after that, just up until about six weeks ago, I got to compete in the Red Bull Cap Fear event, a big wave surfing event down in Tasmania at that first wave that went to and I got my first big barrel there and that was the icing on the cake. That's two and a half years of rehab. Yeah, it was a good journey.Brendan:Yeah, amazing journey. And can you speak more on your mom being a major point of motivation in your life?Mark:Yeah. She's just on two different levels, but she's always been the type of person who has that internal reflection and thinks about who she is, what she's like and how she can be better, and she's always had that. She eventually does a lot of meditation and has lived in ashrams around the world and became a yoga teacher, so I think that rubbed off on me.How valuable it is to know yourself. Figure out who you are and try and work on your flaws and be better. So I think that rubbed off on me a lot. And then the other part is that I've just always wanted to, down the track, when she retires, support her, be able to buy her a house one day. It's the image that I always use in my head.Before I'm about to do something scary or when I got to get up early and go to training or when I've got to say no to eating that shit food and eat this boring food. All those things, I've just got this clear picture in my head of the day I get to buy her a house and I can see the excitement and that big smile on her face in those moments. So it's those two parts that she's only inspiring to me.Brendan:Yeah, amazing. So focusing on your business, now. Your brand that you've built for yourself and you mentioned that you went around the world chasing content. So talk us through, Iguess, your content strategy. You got the footage of you surfing the big waves. What did you do next?Mark:Yeah. It was interesting because from the start of my career, it went through the whole digital media revolution.Brendan: Oh, really?Mark:The first surf trip we did was on film, with cameras and photos. And then it was just going out into mainstream newspapers and stuff. And then we just tracked through the whole evolution of digital media in that time. So it's like having one of the first blogs in surfing that people could follow.Brendan: Wow.Mark:Because in my head, I had to make up for a lack of talent as a surfer by having the business smarts and how I could get the exposure and then that would make me as valuable as the other more talented surfers out there. That was what I always had, I was always looking for different things of how I could do that.And the digital media revolution was the game changer because then it wasn't up to the print media and surf magazines who had a stranglehold on the industry on who was successful. When you build your own audience and then you could show them and you've got your own audience, you become like a small marketing agency yourself.Brendan: Yeah.Mark:So by having that business smart, I controlled my destiny a little bit more. And yeah, I think it made that career, I could extend it longer also as well. So yeah, there are so many nuance things within that, how you do it, but it's the same core principle. Just show people what I love about what I do. Show them that and there's that many people out there on social media in the digital world.There will be people that enjoy watching you do what you do. That's what's my model. Just stick to what you like. It's too tiring trying to be someone that you're not. I could have gone down that path and you try and do the things that people like or that the big celebrities are doing, but to me, that seemed exhausting. It's just like, just show what you love about surfing and then see if people like it.Brendan:Yeah. It comes back to your point about talking to your best friends when you're doing your keynote.Mark: Yeah.Brendan:Focusing on that one person.Mark:Exactly. Yeah and then it keeps you authentic in a way.Brendan:And what channels are you using at the moment? Have you gone head first into video content as well? I imagine a lot of GoPro footage and ...Mark: Yeah.Brendan:Is live streaming possible in big wave surfing?Mark:It is. GoPro is a major sponsor of mine. I've always worked with them and that was just about me wanting to use the best cameras for what we did in action sports. I was always so interested in how can I make my audience get as close to this experience as possible as what I get inside the barrelling part of the wave. If you can help them try and experience that. The tiny point of view camera is where you can give that field and then the GoPro Fusion that shoots the 360 and virtual reality type content, they're awesome tools to be able to do that.And then on the live streaming front, when the technology became where it became possible to be able to set up these high production live feeds at the drop of a hat, because the difference in surfing as a sport, in big wave surfing as a sport, compared to say, live streaming a football game is what we do is all weather dependent. So I teamed up with Red Bull in that regard to create Red Bull Cape Fear, a big wave surf event.Brendan: Right.Mark:And it's the only company that, again, has set aside that kind of financial amount on the possibility that we may get big enough waves that year to run an event. I couldn't find, there was no other company out there that would just go, "Yeah, here's this much money" eventhough the event might not happen. You might only have a 50/50 chance of it happening. Yeah, so now we're able to do that in remote locations, so we could do that down in Tasmania, which is in the middle of nowhere where this wave breaks.Brendan: Wow.Mark:And we streamed it live to, I think, the numbers ended up being about 1.5 million people across a live feed and the first replay because it happens just when it happens, so people aren't prepared for it.Brendan: Right.Mark:We give them a 24 hour window.Brendan: Okay.Mark:Because that's when we got to take that the event's going to happen and then we send the production crews in, so yeah, that's been an interesting experience. I think that's been the latest frontier in regard to that digital media revolution and the way to bring surfing and big wave surfing to people.Brendan:Yeah, that's an amazing strategy. And what's next? What problems are you working on now in your business?Mark:For me, because I've been injured for the last couple of years, my main focus is keynote speaking in the corporate training world and establishing myself within there and really researching what companies and their employees and everyone needs to manage that hectic paced life of that corporate world. Because there's that sort of disconnect where companies want so much out of their employees.They want them to work ridiculous hours and the employees are getting burned out because of that but the world's so competitive that if you don't put up with that burnout, you'll lose your job because someone else will put their hand up and try and take it on. And so it's how can I equip those employees to still do the workload or the hours but not be as drained or affected by it? So it's how can you take on that and not have it rule their life where it destroys their relationships and their personal life? And I think that's, at the moment, within the corporate world, the Holy Grail of figuringthat complex web of its meaning for the employees to want to take on all the stress, they have to find that meaning and the company has to align with them to be able to do that. And then the physical aspect of being able to cope with the crazy work hours, so there's that physical element, whether it's diet, exercise, sleep, those parts.Mark:And then the relationship aspect of their work relationships and their personal relationships because that emotional side and that relationship side is the other big part of taxing you as a human. So it's a complex web, but I love it. For me, human performance on any level is amazing.I originally loved the freak performers who were the world champions at a given sport and how they did what they did, but the more you dive into that, it's like, usually once they're best of the best at something, they're freakishly genetically talented, which isn't that interesting to me.And then if they're not really good at one thing and really good at something completely different, then it's like the tools they're using to be good at one thing might not be transferrable to anyone else.Brendan: Right.Mark:Yeah. But when you see people that can go and be the highest level in one aspect of life and another aspect of life and another aspect of life, it's like whatever's working there is then transferrable. And that's what I've tried to find with surfing.I can conquer fear in the world of surfing, but do those same techniques and rules apply to public speaking or to developing business or to just all these other aspects of life? So I've just been testing them and I'm slowly coming up and still tweaking different programs and workshops for corporate.I deliver a keynote which is more on the inspirational side and then a more detailed workshop, where if I can get anywhere from three to six hours with an audience, then you can deep dive into it and make more lasting changes with people than a keynote can.Brendan:Yeah. And how do you find these companies to do the workshops, are they through their keynotes?Mark:Yes. There's lots of work out there for keynote speakers, if you're a half decent keynote speaker, the companies are coming knocking at your door.Brendan: Wow.Mark:And that's been the case, but because it's such a short amount of time, the companies don't mind giving you that little bit of time with the audience, because it's not as big an investment for them. Because the money that they pay you is not the expense, it's the investment of having a hundred employees sit there listening to you and they're not doing whatever other work they're supposed to be doing.So to then ask for three hours or six hours or a multi-tiered program over a year, where you make a radical culture change in a company, that's a big investment, money-wise and time-wise for them. So yeah, you've got to give to get, so it's like, "Here, we'll do it for you like this for a lesser amount and you'll see the results." And then now I've got the testimonials from certain companies, then the other companies can come aboard because they can believe what you're doing.Brendan:Yeah. And can you tell us any stories of the changes in culture and the results that you've seen in some of these companies?Mark:Yeah. To me, the interesting ones or the radical ones are usually the stress reduction ones, that's huge, and where you dive into stress programs. But then, if that's the main set of programs that you're doing, but then the offshoot of managing stress and creating resilience is say, a workshop around how to have tough conversations in an organization.Because that, to me, is probably one of the main relationship emotional factors that drain people in companies because there's animosity being carried around by employees because they're not speaking up and they can't have a tough conversation with their boss or with their peers without rubbing people the wrong way. And then they just live in this world of constant stress and social pressure.Brendan:Yeah, the conflict avoidance.Mark:Yeah. So we built, a company called Pragmatic Thinking, that I work closely with, they've got the best tough conversation program or workshop that I've seen. I can do a keynote, have all this stress reduction stuff and bring them and we'll do a tough conversations piece there.Brendan: Great.Mark:And then you see radical shifts because just that small number of skills, if you can criticize someone without tearing their whole ego apart, there's an amazing ride along effect from that because you can then give criticism without destroying someone. And then that just plays out. And once a whole number of people in your team can do that, the culture change in a year's time and the progression as far as the way the team works shifts hugely.Brendan:Yeah. That's amazing. So speaking of tools now, I like to ask all the guests that come on what marketing tools they use for their business. So what's been the best investment that you've made tool-wise?Mark: Marketing-wise?Brendan:Yeah, marketing-wise.Mark:Outsourcing with Upwork, for me, having a really small business, is amazing. The talent of people out there around the world that you can access at the drop of a hat is phenomenal. So probably that, as an outsourcing tool. I probably shouldn't say this, but I had a LinkedIn helper tool that was phenomenal.Brendan: Oh, yeah.Mark:But I think it might have just got shut down recently, so I have to go back to the old way of running LinkedIn. But yeah, any of those tools that can automate things that you do but automate them in a way that it doesn't seem like things are being automated, then it's super valuable.Brendan:Yeah. And are you a big reader, Mark?Mark:More listen. I like podcasts. I do like to read, but I just recently did an IQ test and my language comprehension skills are so low. It's ridiculous. So reading for me is time consuming whereas I love to listen to different podcasts and especially when you can get two experts debating on something, I find that the most valuable way to learn.Brendan:So more of the longform podcasts?Mark:Definitely longform podcasts or lecture series. A lot of universities and professors out there put their lecture courses online, like on YouTube, so you can access almost anything these days.Brendan: Yeah.Mark:And there's amazing learning platforms, like MasterClass and a whole bunch of other ones. To read is amazing if you're a good reader because it's really good for your imagination as well, but to just be able to have the highest end quality YouTube learning video or MasterClass platform or whatever like that that can just teach you through five different mediums at once, for me, that's way more beneficial. Yeah.Brendan:Yeah, I was on MasterClass yesterday, actually, some amazing courses.Mark:Amazing stuff, yeah. I think I did one of the value ones. I did Steve Martin's comedy one.Brendan: Oh, wow.Mark:Just for public speaking. And when you see the way they break apart jokes in telling jokes, you can then learn to refine the way you would deliver a keynote because the emphasis on how much ... I heard Jerry Seinfeld say this too. He can spend a week on one line.Brendan: Yeah.Mark:Writing and re-writing one line and pausing in different places and it can make or break a joke. So as a keynote speaker, if you can dive into that level of detail on what you deliver, it's interesting. But you just got to be bothered to give it the time.Brendan:Yeah. And I know Seinfeld has another statistic, I think it's one week for every one minute of content.Mark:Oh, that's perfect. Perfect.Brendan:How long does it take you to do one minute of one of your keynote presentations, preparation-wise?Mark:It would depend, it would be in that realm, but I find, for me, the preparation and learning is every time I deliver a keynote, then watching it and then re-structuring some part of it. Yeah, it would be in that realm, I reckon. Probably less. I think comedians, it's so much harder than, I think, any other form of entertainment.Brendan:Well, you have to get a laugh every 15 secs, I think it is.Mark:Yeah. I think that's the hardest version of entertainment there is. They're re-working a minute, compared to what I do with keynote because I can tell a story and there's five or 10 minutes of content and I don't have to spend that much time to get that story, I bet it does make a difference when you get some detail in there and do some work on the delivery.Brendan:And what about online education, is that an area that you've looked at for your workshops, for example?Mark:Yeah. I've built, just recently, for a client, a big software company, a video learning series.Brendan: Right.Mark:The feedback from that's been awesome. Yeah, it was a big investment, so it was just because the client specifically wanted it that I ended up going down that track. I was thinking more in a future plan of what I'm doing, I would do that, but I just ended up doing it because the client wanted it. And they really liked it. And it's matching a simple lesson that works across the board, whether it's in the corporate world or what I do as a surfer to a surf story.Brendan: Right.Mark:So it's just an entertaining way for them to see the same lesson that they're going to see on any other learning platform or internally, they see it all the time, but when you can match a surf story to it and what's going on in the business ecosystem of professional surfing, it just anchors the message a little more. It's a good way to bring a different world to it and then for me, I know it's working with a client is when the staff start using surf examples for what they're doing. It's like, "Ah, this is just like when Mark decided to chase a virtual realityopportunity over going to chase a new market production in China for a new sponsor." It's like these scenarios, so if they're talking in that way, I'm like, "Yes, that's working."Brendan:So Mark, wanted to thank you so much for coming on. Wide ranging conversation. So many inspiring stories and tactics as well.Mark: Thanks.Brendan:But before we go, we like to ask our guests two abstract questions. So are you ready for abstract part of the show?Mark:Yeah, my dumb brain is trying to figure out what abstract means. That's my language problem in the IQ world. But yeah, fire away.Brendan:So the first question, if you could have a billboard, it can be anywhere in the world, what would it say and where would you put it?Mark:What would it say? Oh, man, I had this quote I read on the plane this morning. It's something like, is high performance is more like a cobweb than it is an organizational chart? It's something like that.Brendan: Yeah.Mark:Yeah. And it's just like that complex adaptive systems theory where everything affects everything. And it's the same way companies run, it's the same way your physiology in your body runs, but it's more so intertwined that if you leave out one aspect of performance, then all the others suffer. But if you take an entire system's approach to fixing performance, regardless of what it is, then you get crazy results.Brendan:Yeah, it's awesome.Mark:So it's cobweb versus, I think it was organizational chart or something like that. It'd be a long-winded billboard, that one.Brendan:Yeah. And the final question, you are on the first flight to Mars, with Elon Musk and the first settlers aboard the SpaceX starship Rocket. So what business do you start when you land on Mars and how do you promote it to the new Martians?Mark:It would have to be indoor wave pools, I think.Brendan:The first time I ask-Mark:And surfing sells itself. All you got to do is offer a few free surf lessons and when people experience that feeling, what else is there going to be to do on Mars than ride a few waves? So it will sell itself.Brendan:Definitely. So Mark, once again, really appreciate your time today and the value you've dropped to the audience. Is there anything you'd like to say before we wrap up and how can people get in touch?Mark:Thanks for having me first and thanks to the listeners for listening. If anyone wants to get in contact with me, my website is www.markmathews.com. And Mathews with one T.Brendan: OneT.Mark:Yeah, or on LinkedIn or social media, it's @markmathewssurf, so feel free to reach out and I'd love to work with your company and figure out this whole complex cobweb of performance, stress, energy, all of that stuff.Brendan:Yeah, amazing. We'll put all the links and resources Mark has mentioned in the show notes. And Mark, thanks for such a fantastic conversation. And I'll also put up some of your big wave surfing photos in the show notes because they're absolutely mind-blowing and hard to describe on air.Mark:Yeah. I think when people look at that, they'll be like, "No, we're not listening to this crazy person."Brendan:No, it's an awesome mission that you're out on changing many people's lives. So yeah, I want to thank you for that and thank you for coming in today.Mark:Awesome. Thanks for having me. 

Imagine yourself standing smack in the middle of a busy city. You'd get dizzy just by looking at how fast people go about their daily lives. Everyone is so hyperactive and absorbed in getting things done. Amid all the chaos, we forget to take a pause, be still and breathe.  Remember, we can only evolve into our best selves if we take a moment and be present. And no one knows this more than the ultimate warrior, Mark Divine. He joins us in this episode to share his experiences in the military and how meditation helped him develop inner strength. Mark also teaches us how to use positive internal dialogue in visualising and attracting victory.  If you want to know more about the benefits of meditation through the experience of an ultimate warrior, then this episode is for you.   Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health program, all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to  https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/. You can also join their free live webinar on epigenetics.   Customised Online Coaching for Runners CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer  Without Burnout & Injuries Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles? Do you want to beat last year's time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler? ​​Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, goals, and lifestyle?  Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.   Health Optimisation and Life Coaching If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you. If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity, or want to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health, and more, then contact us at support@lisatamati.com.   Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within three years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless. For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes, chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.   Lisa's Anti-Ageing and Longevity Supplements  NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, an NAD+ precursor Feel Healthier and Younger* Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time. What is NMN? NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that can boost the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life. Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements of the highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third party lab. 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Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility Boost Your NAD+ Levels — Healthy Ageing: Redefined Cellular Health Energy & Focus Bone Density Skin Elasticity DNA Repair Cardiovascular Health Brain Health  Metabolic Health   My  ‘Fierce' Sports Jewellery Collection For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection, 'Fierce', go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.   Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode:  Find out Mark's experience with meditation and how this made him into an ultimate warrior. Discover how a positive internal dialogue can train your brain to be focused. Know about recapitulation and how it can help in dealing with traumas.   Episode Highlights [05:34] Mark's Background Mark's experiences with his father forged his mental toughness and resilience. This laid the foundation for him to be an ultimate warrior. He grew up boating, hiking, and running trails through the mountains. Athletics was his escape, but he wasn't able to think about his future.  When Mark left college, he was fortunate enough to get a job in a big accounting firm; this allowed him to go to a top business school.  Despite school and work, Mark was determined to continue his athletic career. He then became interested in Seido karate. Meditation made him realise that he wasn't following his true path.  [15:13] Becoming an Ultimate Warrior Mark came across a Navy recruitment centre, saw their poster, and applied to be a SEAL. Mark graduated with his entire boat crew. He was number 1 in his class.   Mark credits this achievement to meditation training and the team building activities that compelled you to tame your ego. [19:59] The Importance of Meditation and Yoga Mark meditated and trained in yoga every day in the war zone. He felt stronger and more confident.  Yoga is the oldest science of mental and personal development.  Mark learned that training one's physical, mental, emotional, intuitional, and spiritual aspects mean you can access more of yourself and your potential. Yoga, in a sense, is integration; it is coming back to who we are and being whole.  Listen to the full episode to learn how Mark got into yoga and how this contributed to him becoming an ultimate warrior. [26:33] The Importance of Emotional Strength In SEAL training, most of those who quit were physically strong but lacked the emotional strength to handle extreme moments of crisis and doubt. The person subconsciously created the injury to quit.  Mark tried to be flexible and didn't let anything bother him during SEAL training.  Mark trains SEALs by teaching the Big Four: box breathing, positive internal dialogue, visualisation, and micro-goals.  [35:19] Examining Your Internal Dialogue Meditation is a critical part of examining one's internal dialogue.  How you talk to yourself has an incredible impact on your energy and motivation.  The term 'feeding the fear wolf' means to allow negative dialogue, imagery, and emotions to control and weaken you.  Positive thoughts, or ‘feeding the courage wolf', creates a higher vibration, bringing in more energy and access to creativity.  Controlling your breathing and adding a positive mantra can be very transformative; it helps you develop concentration and increase productivity.  [41:33] Imagining Victory Our belief systems are made out of statements that may or may not be true.  Pay attention to your thoughts and make them positive. Know that you are competent.  Although you may not feel it yet, continue meditating to get rid of that negative side.   When you understand your capabilities, you can project them into the future and have an image of your success.  When positive thoughts overcome negative ones, you can see your true self more clearly, and powerful thoughts start to spread.  [46:10] The Zen Process Meditation is challenging, especially for active people. We have to disconnect from various distractions and be still.  You can't evolve if you are constantly active; the only way to go inward is to slow down and be quiet.  The first step in meditation practice is box breathing. It releases stress and brings brain-body balance.  In the second step, the box pattern turns into concentration practice. The mantra is also added to train concentration and attention.  The third step allows you to put less energy into concentration and observe yourself from a witness perspective.  [53:00] The Importance of Doing Emotional Work Doing emotional work is the foundation of meditation.  Without this, you don't get the full benefits of meditation. Meditation requires patience.  The process is different for everyone.  [55:44] Going into the Witness Perspective In this part of the process, you empty your mind and allow any thought streams to come in. You experience a metacognitive split here.  You see the thoughts that come up from a perspective that's separate from them.  Through this, you realise you're not your thoughts and emotions. And so, you have the power to change your story. When you visualise from the witness perspective, you see what your spirit wants you to see. You realise your true purpose.  If you do this every day, you attract the future that's right for you, and you feel connected to the world. Through this, you eventually gain enlightenment. [01:02:43] How Meditation Can Help Athletes Meditation supports total health. Through it, you'll become more healthy, strong, and motivated. Awakened athletes and warriors who serve the world can change it. Athletes can do so because they are emotionally balanced. [01:05:25] What Is Recapitulation? Recapitulation is where we use imagery to go back into our past, relive traumatic events, recontextualise them, and forgive.  It is to see yourself forgiving your younger self and changing the image and energy associated with your traumas.  Awareness and identification of traumatic events is the first step to the recapitulation.  Recapitulation can be used to go back and overcome big traumas and to make sure you are not dragging past regrets.  Recapitulation then becomes a daily practice of letting go of regrets and resentments. Listen to the full episode and hear some examples of this!  [01:18:28] How to Be a Good Leader Show up as the best version of yourself. Be humble, authentic, trustworthy, courageous, and respectful.  It takes time to develop those qualities and work on them with your team.  Listen to the full episode to know how Mark does leadership training in his programs!   Resources Gain exclusive access and bonuses to Pushing the Limits Podcast by becoming a patron!  Harness the power of NAD and NMN for anti-aging and longevity with NMN Bio.  Listen to other Pushing the Limits episodes: #183: Sirtuins and NAD Supplements for Longevity with Dr Elena Seranova #189: Understanding Autophagy and Increasing Your Longevity with Dr Elena Seranova #199: Episode with Dr Don Wood Connect with Mark: Website | Instagram  The Unbeatable Mind Podcast with Mark Divine Bedros Keulian on Learning How to “Man Up” How to Deal with Trauma with Dr Don Wood Check out these books by Mark Divine!  Staring Down the Wolf  Unbeatable Mind  8 Weeks to SEALFIT The Way of the SEAL  KOKORO Yoga Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda 2021 Unbeatable Challenge   7 Powerful Quotes from This Episode ‘It was about physical, it was about mental, it was about emotional, it was about intuitional and spiritual aspects of our being. In that, I learned that if you train those together, then you will integrate, you'll become whole again.' ‘Human beings have not learned to be whole, and they don't recognise that we're all interconnected. And every one of our thoughts, every one of our emotions, every one of our actions has an implication or impact on the whole.' ‘How you talk to yourself has an incredible impact on your energy and your motivation. Literally, we use the terminology “feeding the courage wolf” versus “feeding the fear wolf.' ‘Understanding your capability as a human being, the potential that you have, the power that we have, you can then project that into the future and say, “What does victory look like for me?”' ‘I think that there's two reasons we're on this planet. One is to evolve to become the best version, highest and best version of yourself in this lifetime. The second is to align with our calling or our purpose.' ‘Ultimately, we create our own reality. It's all basically, it's all experienced with [the] mind. So that's powerful.' ‘You can do anything, one at a time.'   About Mark Mark Divine grew up in Upstate New York. He has a degree in economics from Colgate University and an MBA from NYU. He is a New York Times best-selling author, leadership expert, entrepreneur, motivational speaker.  Mark is also a retired U.S. Navy SEAL Commander. He spent nine years on active duty and 11 as a Reserve. With 20 years in service, he served in over 45 countries. During his time in the military, Mark created a nationwide mentoring program for SEAL trainees. Because of his success, he decided to start SEALFIT. This fitness company aims to prepare civilians for the physical and emotional demands of a SEAL-like lifestyle.  Mark knows the value of emotional strength in transforming lives. With this in mind, he published Unbeatable Mind in 2011, which includes an at-home study program. Mark also has several other entrepreneurial endeavours and books in his name. He's also the host of the Unbeatable Mind podcast. With all these ventures, Mark's ultimate aim is to create more resources to improve the lives of everyone he meets.  If you want to know more about Mark and his work, check out his website and Instagram.     Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can be motivated to be their real selves through meditation. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa   Full Transcript Of The Podcast Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential. With your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Well, hey everyone, Lisa Tamati here. Fantastic to have you back at Pushing the Limits this week. Now I have a wonderful man who I've followed for a number of years. He's one of my heroes, I was a little bit of a fangirl in this interview I have to admit. But it was pretty crazy. I have Commander Mark Divine on the show. Mark is an ex-Navy SEAL. He was a Commander in the Navy Seal. He was there for 20 years, and he was a fantastic leader. He was deployed in over 45 countries around the world. He also trains, trains a lot of the SEALs who are going into BUD/S training. He was number one on his course when he went through BUD/S, and that's saying something. That's nine months of hell on earth, so if you get through that, you've got to be pretty cool, and to be number one in the end of the whole 190 that went on, that's pretty amazing.  He's the author of a number of books: Staring Down the Wolf, Unbeatable Mind, and SEALFIT, and runs a number of multi-million dollar companies. As a leadership consultant, he trains, not only does he train the military, he helps people prepare for SEAL training. He also now runs through his innovative SEALFIT and Unbeatable Mind training systems. Kokoro crucible is one of his programs. He shares the same secrets with entrepreneurs, executives, and teams through his book and through his book, and through his speaking, and through his award-winning podcast. He has his own, and I have the privilege of being on that one shortly. He runs world-renowned leadership and team events. Wonderful man to talk to, someone that I really, really look up to and respect. His discipline that he brings to everything that he does is quite amazing. So I hope you enjoy the show. Before we go, I just want to remind you to check out our epigenetics program, if you haven't already. Head over to lisatamati.com and hit the work with us button, and find out about our Peak Epigenetics program. This is all about understanding your genetics, and how to optimise them for your best performance. So everything from food, to exercise, what types of exercise to do, what times of the day you should be training, what times of the day you should be eating, and how often. What type of diet is right for you, right down to the nitty gritty. You know, eat almonds, don't eat cashew nuts, right specific to your genetics, so to speak. It also looks at your whole mood and behavior, what makes you tick, why do you think the way you do, what areas you may have problems with, your predispositions.  That's not to be all deterministic, and negative, that's all to be like this is what you're dealing with, and this is how we can hit things off at the pass. This is a really life-changing program, and we're really proud to bring it to you. We've been doing it for a number of years now. We've taken hundreds of people through this program, and we work with corporate teams. So if you're out there and you have a corporate team that might be interested in doing either this or our boost camp program, which is all about upgrading and learning all about how to manage stress, how to reduce the effects of stress, and be more resilient and bring a higher performance to your game, then please reach out to us. Go over to lisatamati.com. and check out all the programs that we have here.  Just a reminder too, I have a new book out called Relentless: How a Mother and Daughter Defied the Odds. If you've listened to this podcast for a while, you would hear me harp on about my amazing mum and the journey that we've been on back from a massive aneurysm that left her at the age of 74 with hardly any higher function, and a prognosis that said she would never ever do anything again. And they were very, very wrong. So I want to share this book, I want to share the story, because it's a very empowering story. So if you haven't read the book Relentless, I really encourage you to go and do that. I'm really keen to get this out there because this will empower and change lives, and already has, so make sure you read Relentless. Right, over to the show with Commander Mark Divine. Hi everyone, Lisa Tamati here. I'm super, super excited. I'm jumping out of my skin, I can't sit still. I have one of my great heroes that I've followed for such a long time, so I'm a little bit, being a bit of a fangirl right now. But I'm sure I'll calm down in a minute or two. Commander Mark Divine is with us. He has such a huge history. You are known, really, as the warrior man, Unbeatable Mind, SEALFIT. You've done a heck of a lot in your life. Mark, it's just, I can't wait to share some of your insights, because what you do and what you've done is just absolutely amazing. So, welcome to Pushing the Limits. Can you give us a little bit of background, Mark, on where you come from and what you've done and how you've, just to give us a little bit of, because you, obviously you've been in the SEALs, you're a commander in the SEALs, you're a trained SEAL. So let's start there. Let you come to it. Mark Divine: Oh, my God, where to start? Lisa: Maybe childhood. Mark: I was born at a very young age in a very small town in upstate New York, a province of the United States. I'll try to keep this short because sometimes I have a few run-on sentences. Go like 40 minutes, right? We don't want that to happen. That's when we have a good time. So yeah, I was a pretty normal kid growing up, running around the woods of upstate New York, crazy family, lots of alcohol and anger. The belt would come out pretty much every other night. My brother and I would literally just provoke my father just to do it, because we stopped taking him seriously after a while. In that regard, I feel pretty fortunate that my young spirit was like, ‘You can't break me'. I realise now that we all choose our parents, let's just say, from a spiritual perspective, I certainly believe that. For certain experiences, and for a while I played the victim, woe is me.  But now I look back and thank God, that really forged my mental toughness and resiliency. I had to unpack some crap from that, obviously, but it made me a Navy SEAL warrior, right? When I went through Navy SEAL training, you could not hurt me, because nothing was compared to my dad. Anyway, so that's a little aside. Upstate New York had a really— it's beautiful. I've been to your country in New Zealand. It's just absolutely gorgeous. I feel the same way about America in certain places, the much bigger. New York is one of those areas that, 6 million acres of unfettered, protected land in northern New York called the Adirondack Mountains, and that was my playground. And our summer home was on the west shore of a lake called Lake Placid where the Olympics were, you're probably familiar with that.  Lisa: Yeah.  Mark: There was no road access to my house. There was no TV, no internet. Still, there's finally internet after but no TV, and we would have to take a boat to get there. And so I grew up with boats and I grew up hiking in the Adirondacks and a lot of time alone in the wilderness, which is one of the reasons I became kind of an endurance athlete. I know you're an endurance lady. Because I was comfortable, being alone. I was comfortable running the trails in the mountains, and I used to have a friend, we would run up Whiteface Mountain, which is at the base or the foot of Lake Placid. Not a huge mountain, it's 4,000 feet, but you know it took a couple hours. If you're going to hike up there it takes a few hours. For us to run up there, took us 45 minutes. People used to think we were crazy. When we got to the top we would wrap our ankles and our knees and we would play tag on the way down. The trails are steep and just rocks and ruts and roots. It's amazing we didn't kill ourselves.  So that was my like early childhood upbringing, nature being in the woods and in the water were my solace away from the family dynamics. That led me to be a competitive athlete in high school, 12 varsity letters and then into college, I was recruited for swimming and I became a competitive rower. And then I started triathlon. So, I was an athlete, but the athletics really was my escape and kind of my grounding rod, like it is for so many athletes, right? When I— then I wasn't sure what was going to happen. I didn't really spend a lot of time in my youth thinking about my future, I kind of accepted a lot of the stories for my family that I was going to go back and be part of the family business. That business was really the place that Divines go, you know, we don't go into the military, we don't go into academia, we don't do those things. So anyways, it's as your listeners are hearing this, they're probably like, ‘Yep, check.' Lisa: They may have done that. Mark: That's the norm, right? That's not, I wasn't off, but it's certainly not what I teach today, right? Because, right, I think if we're— if we don't follow our passion and find our calling in life, then we're going to have discomfort later on, and discomfort is going to lead to existential crisis. So I was very fortunate, incredibly fortunate that when I left college, I got a job with a big accounting firm, consulting accounting firm called Coopers and Lybrand, which became accountant, became— Lisa: You were an accountant. I mean, that makes me laugh, really. Mark: I was an accountant. Lisa: I was on the way to being an accountant too. So because of what my dad wanted, and I'm about as far from an accountant, as you can get, you know.  Mark: I was too. Lisa: That's a good story. Mark: But I stuck with it long enough to become a certified public accountant, I had to pass the exam.  Lisa: I didn't. Mark: I got my— I tell you what, I would rather go back to BUD/S Navy SEAL training than try that darn exam again. That told me something right there. But you know, it is a great opportunity. Because here I am, you know, I got a degree from a pretty good university called Colgate. But I didn't really have any skills. And so this job opportunity gave me and sent me to a top business school in the United States called NYU, New York University. So I got my MBA in finance, and I became a certified public accountant for four years. I got to work on a lot of different companies as a consultant and auditor. So I saw a lot. But, so that was kind of formative, in a sense, like, I learned a lot. What was probably more formative, or more substantial for me was, once I got into that suit and tie, and I was working eight hours a day, mind you, they allowed me to work only 8 or 10 hours a day. Most people in those scenarios work 15 to 20. But because they were sponsoring this small group of us to go to business school at night, they had to let us off, and then we would go to school full-time during the summer, and just come in on Fridays. It was a really cool program. So I was working 8 to 10 hours a day, going to school at night. And it's— I was an athlete, right? And I was like, ‘How am I going to, how am I going to stay as an athlete?' Right? Most people don't. Because you know, in the corporate world, and I was like, ‘I've got to, I've got to continue my athletic career.' And so I would get up really early in the morning and go for a six mile run. And then at lunchtime when all my peers would go have a beer or martini and lunch, I would go to the gym and do like this, what I now know is a high intensity functional workout, which back then nobody talked about. Because I had to go fast, and I was wanting to do a lot of different variety, and I had to be in and out of there in 45 minutes. And then after, they let me go at five o'clock in the afternoon, and my first class wasn't till 7:30. So I'm looking at that saying, ‘Look, I got two and a half hours. I could do some training here.' So one night, I wasn't sure what I was going to do. But one night, I was walking down 23rd Street, I was living on 22nd in Manhattan, and I heard these screams coming out of this building. And I stopped and I looked up and I was standing under the flag of the World Seido Karate Headquarters.  ‘Oh, interesting. Maybe it's a martial art.' And I had been intrigued with the martial arts. But in Upstate New York, that just wasn't much. There's nothing as a matter of fact, in my time, and so I didn't really get a chance to study anything. So I went in there and I was floored. I was stunned by what I saw. It was an incredible art. This was the headquarters of a worldwide art called seido, they had three or 400,000 students. And the Grand Master, the founder was on the center of the floor, this Japanese man, 10th degree black belt, looked like a frickin' tank. And he was, his name was Nakamura, and he became my mentor, my first real mentor. Yeah. Now what's interesting, he says it wasn't really the karate that changed me. It was the zen training. And he is one of the few masters who kept the old ways of training the mind and the body and the spirit, and understood that they all had to be in balance, and they all were part of the package of developing these corrupted, these trainees.  I loved the zen part, and there was a zen class we had every Thursday night for an hour, we would sit on that little wooden zazen bench. And honestly, this studio is the headquarter, had well over a thousand students. There were ten of us in this class, most of them black belts, and I was a white belt, and I was like, ‘Where is everyone else?' I didn't get it. And then there wasn't a lot of understanding or talk about meditation back then. But boy, I did this thing to do meditation. I had all the usual kind of resistance to it, and my monkey mind going all over the place and wondering if it really worked. I trusted Nakamura and the way he acted and presented himself as a character, just who he was, was so different than any other human I've ever seen or experienced. And I was like, ‘There's got to be something to this, right?' So I stuck with it. And it literally changed almost every aspect of who I was and how I saw the world and what I perceived to be my calling and my purpose in life. And it was sitting on that bench that I realised that I was going down the wrong path with this MBA, CPA, working in the corporate world. Even if I went back to the family business, it just wasn't what I was meant to do. That was the first time in my life that I allowed myself to examine my core story that said, this is who I am, and to recognise it was built on a lie. Lisa: Yeah. And you weren't following your true path. Mark: I wasn't following my true path. But my true path wasn't exactly laid out for me, in those meditation sessions. It was more like the archetypal energy in the arc of my life was shown to me and that that art was to be a warrior, and then it would lead somewhere else that wasn't quite clear to me, but the warrior part was very strong. And it didn't— I didn't get messages while I was meditating, saying, ‘You're going to be a Navy SEAL.' What I got was ‘warrior' and, ‘You're going down the wrong path with this business stuff.' It was when I finally started to accept that, that I learned about the Navy SEALs, right. Remember, this is 1987, 88, there was no TV shows and movies, no famous names.  Lisa: They weren't famous back then.  Mark: Nobody knew them. In fact, the few people that did know them were like, crazy guys. So I— one day, I was walking home from work, and I came across a Navy recruiting station. I didn't even know it was that but I saw a poster in the window. I took a double take of this poster. I was like, well, the title of that poster was, ‘Be Someone Special'. And it had Navy SEALs doing really cool shit. Jumping out of airplanes, yeah, blocking out little mini submarines, sneaking through the water. It's just so cool for me. I just sat there kind of transfixed, looking at that, and I didn't say anything about the SEALs. They said, US Navy, and I was, ‘Huh, interesting.' So I went back and I talked to the recruiters so what, ‘Who are those people in that poster?' They said, ‘Oh, they're crazy Navy SEALs. You don't want to do that.' I said, ‘Yeah, I do. Tell me more.' So long story short. I started that whole CPA, MBA bullshit, 1985. In November of 1989, I got my black belt, I got my MBA, I got my CPA and I was on a bus. I was on a bus to Officer Candidate School. Lisa: That was the next mission. Mark: On to the next mission. I wandered away from, I walked away from probably what would today's dollars be $200,000 salary to get paid $500 a month?  Lisa: Wow. That takes— Mark: For heading off as a candidate. Lisa: That takes courage. That alone takes courage. Mark: But I didn't question that. You know, I knew it. I knew this is the right path. And when I got to SEAL training, what we called BUD/S, basic underwater demolition SEAL training. Man, I felt like I was home, and there was no way that they were going to get me to quit. I mean, other people said this, but I said this very clearly: ‘You have to kill me to get me out of here.' And I don't think they can legally do that. Although they sure do try. Lisa: It can get pretty close. Mark: It can get pretty close, yeah. I sailed through SEAL training. We had 185 in my class, hardcore, awesome guys. And 19 of us graduated. I graduated number one in my class and my entire team, my boat crew that we trained together from day one, graduated with me.  Lisa: Wow.  Mark: So there's something about that meditation training, Nakamura and the skills, and the values on team building and taking my eyes off myself and putting them on others, the taming of the ego, it really allowed me to help lead my team to success, right? We made it about the team and not about me, and everyone else was about them. And they— the team's, the instructors are, their job is to select the next crop of teammates that they will go to war with.  Lisa: Yeah.  Mark: So what they're looking for is not who's the toughest guy, not who's the best athlete—  Lisa: Not the coolest, yeah.  Mark: Yeah, exactly, not the best looking whatever. It's, ‘Are you a great teammate? Are you gonna have my back?' So that's something that I guess I demonstrated.  Lisa: Wow, that's a brilliant intro into your background. What fascinates me with you too is that you like— you know, because the SEALs are known for being hard asses. I mean, you know they are hard people, they have been through tough stuff, they go through tough stuff every single day that you're out there. But you've got this meditation side, you do a heck of a lot of yoga. You do, you talk about authenticity, and I know you don't like the word vulnerability, but you're quite, you're open about the stuff. That's quite the opposite of most, in the training that you get. I suppose this comes from Nakamura being your master, that he taught you that very early on, they're sort of the both sides of the coin.  I get that question quite a lot, too. When they— when people read what I've done and achieved and so on, they're like, ‘Wow, you must be a super hard ass.' And then they meet you and realise that you're actually very vulnerable or cry a lot. I'm very full of mistakes and problems and stuff that I'm working on at all times. But the difference is, I think, that you embrace both sides. And that you are always in pursuit of excellence, and you're always improving, and you're always developing. And I found that a really interesting combination in someone who's so physically tough and mentally tough to have had both sides. Was that a hard thing in the beginning with the SEALs? Mark: I think you're right. I did learn that initially from Nakamura and so every day, you know, I was so committed. Every day I would stretch and I would do my breathing practices and my visualisation while I was going through SEAL training. Every day in the SEALs, I do some version of that. It was you know, it's difficult for a military operator to keep a daily dedicated practice going if you're up 24 hours a day, and you're in combat. Honestly, when I went to Iraq and combat, I meditated and trained yoga every single day. And it had a profound effect on me, right? In the war zone, all my teammates are just getting frayed at the edges, and I felt strong and confident, and I knew I was going to survive, because I did, I had that vision. I was going to be home with my child, you know, my wife and son.  So it came first from Nakamura, and then I started into yoga. It's not my career, it's important people know, I did plus-20 years in the Navy SEAL, but about nine years active duty and 11 years reserve. So as reserve, so nine years after I joined, even while I was on active duty, I started to get into yoga. But when I got off active duty I had more time. I went full on in, and that was because— actually it is a blessing in disguise. I was living in San Diego and there was no seido karate out here. Otherwise I would have gotten back into seido karate. So first I got into something called goju karate, I got a black belt there. It was very similar to seido but it lacked the spirit and like the mental, the meditation, so I didn't really stick with that. And then I got into ninjutsu, thinking ninjutsu might be a little bit more spiritual. I really liked the teacher but he was a horrible business guy, so right on the cusp of getting my black belt, he shut his school down and ran out of money.  And then I found yoga kind of about the same time as ninjitsu. But I didn't really understand it until I read Patanjali's yoga sutras and also Paramahansa Yogananda's autobiography yoga. And those just absolutely shattered my paradigm of what was possible and what yoga was, as the oldest science of mental and personal development. So I fully went into yoga and I ended up getting 700 hours of certifications and started my own yoga program and wrote a book about it eventually, but, and started teaching it to SEALs. And so all this I was still a SEAL officer. Because I didn't retire from the SEALs in 2011, but I was able to do all this and build a business that started to teach Navy SEALs everything I would have been learning. And that's called SEALFIT. That was the business that everything I've been learning and applying in my own life, right? And this was this integrated model of development. It started with Nakamura where it wasn't just about the physical. It was about physical, it was about mental, it was about emotional, it was about intuitional and spiritual aspects of our being. In that, I learned that if you train those together, then you will integrate, you'll become whole again. What that means is you'll become more, you have access to more of yourself. You have to put more potential. You can maintain peak performance, you can serve more profoundly, you can do more, you've got way more energy, way more enthusiasm, way more motivation, way more peace of mind, way more clarity.  It's extraordinary. In a sense, it's like coming back to who we are. That's why I call it integration. In fact, the word ‘yoga' means union or integration, and so does is zen, believe it or not. Those practices and traditions are really all about becoming whole as a human again, as opposed to fragments and separate, separate from yourself and separated from others. So I stumbled upon this, and created my own path or my own model. And then when I had started to teach it to SEALs and special operators, and other military operators, a ton of people, even from New Zealand, some of your listeners might have been to my training. Then I started to recognise that, ‘Wow, this is necessary in our culture.' Because most Westerners have no connection to this, this way of living of, taking care of the internal while you are working in the external, the yin and the yang, the balance between being and doing, becoming whole again, so you can do your work from a whole perspective as opposed to a fragmented, separated self. Which leads to suboptimal results, at a minimum, in at least a flat out crisis or destruction at the maximum level. And that's, we're seeing that both in from the investment in violence, military build-up, conflict, as well as environmental degradation is because human beings have not learned to be whole, and they don't recognise that we're all interconnected. And every one of our thoughts, every one of our emotions, every one of our actions has an implication or impact on the whole. Lisa: Yep. This is really good. Because I think, we live our lives very much in the doing. We're busy all day, we're busy with a billion million things, we're running businesses, we're— we've got families and so on. And it's really hard to find that stillness. And I know that even as an athlete who, I think for years, I was just headed through the wall, you know, taking— Mark: Most people are, that's how they learn, until they hit the wall, right?  Lisa: Yeah, no, I hit the wall a couple of dozen times before, because I was a bit thick. I didn't wake up, said, ‘Hang on, this stuff isn't working anymore.' And it works when you're 20. And it works when you're 25. And it works when you're 30. And but when you start hitting your 40s, and you're still smashing the crap out of your body, and you're not really not refilling the tank, and you're not re-examining what the hell are you doing, I think that's when the wheel started, when the wheel started to fall off for me. And I'm like, ‘Hang on a minute, this— why isn't my body doing like, it wasn't what it was supposed to do?' And when you've grown up, though, with that expectation of, you have to be tough, you have to be hard. And I grew up different to you. But I had a dad who was very, he was an awesome father, but he was a hard ass. And he expected you to be tough and mentally tough, physically tough. He didn't really tolerate a lot of weakness or sickness or anything like that. And he was an amazing dad, but he pushed really hard. And that sort of makes you think, well, you have to be hard all the time. And then when you break down, then it's you being weak. Instead of looking at the whole picture, and quieting the mind and doing these things like meditation was for me. Yeah, I know, I hear it's really important, but I can't sit still. I need it twice as much. Mark: Yeah, well, there's a reason for that. It'd be fun to talk about. But think about, when I reflect back, and my SEAL training and all these other guys were trying to be hard, and they had the same thinking, because America has a real soft side to it. But there's a lot of freakin' warriors in America. And we have that same kind of what your dad's talking about. Gotta be hard. Like, there's no room for weakness. It's got to be tough. You think about the metaphor, the guys who quit were just bad asses. Yeah, why did they quit? They quit because they didn't— they lacked the emotional strength to understand what was happening to them in their either most extreme moments of crisis or moments of just doubt, right? And then they're like, so they let uncertainty in, let doubt creep in and corrupt their decision making and then, one mistake leads to an injury we call, quinjury. And you've probably seen this in endurance athletes' is when all of a sudden the injury kind of crops up and then the person's out. And then really, reality is they created that injury to quit.  Lisa: Yeah, because they wanted a way out.  Mark: Because they wanted a way out. It's very subconscious. It's not prepared. It's not preparing properly. It's not recovering properly. It's not understanding that this is a long game and getting your ego out of the way. Lisa: It used to prop up for me every— before any big race, that in the week ahead of that race, I would get sick. And I would, I'm sure that that was my subconscious trying to stop me do it. Mark: Yeah, I've given you an out, right. And so— Lisa: You've got a cold, you've got the flu. Mark: Think about the metaphor between, if you got a tsunami coming, like, consider tsunami a metaphor for a crisis, or a big challenge, like BUD/S or a 50 mile or 100 mile race or something like that. There's a tsunami coming. Would you rather be a mighty oak facing that tsunami, or would you rather be like a reed?  Lisa: A reed, definitely. Mark: Yeah, if so, when I went to SEAL training, I tried to be the reed, right? I tried to be really flexible. I didn't let anything bother me. You know, structures would come up and, during Hell Week for us, which week seven back then. But now it's more like week three or four, seven days non-stop training around the clock, no sleep. Everyone's heard about that. Like a day, Thursday, like the day before, we're over it most of it, we're down to 60, 35, maybe 45 or 50, actually, in our class from 185 already. And instructor evil comes over and he's like, ‘Mark, I don't like you, I'm gonna make you quit.' And in my mind, I was like, ‘Good luck.' And I even think I started— Lisa: That confidence! Mark: I don't know, it was just my spiritual strength saying, ‘No, you're not going to get me to quit, you can't.' And so I actually was challenging him in my mind, and it must come through on my face. And he goes, ‘I'm gonna wipe that smirk right out that effing face.' And he just made me start doing 8-count bodybuilders, which are like a burpee, basically. And I remember in my mind thinking, ‘Okay, all right. Let's do this.' Right? All I got to do is one 8-count bodybuilder at a time, until he gets tired. Lisa: Until he gets tired. Mark: Exactly! So that's what I did. I just did one. I just want, did one 8-count bodybuilder. And then I just did one 8-count bodybuilder. And then I just did one 8-count bodybuilder. And when we got up to like— Lisa: You broke him. Mark: 800.  Lisa: Holy heck.  Mark: Which is nothing, right? I did 24 hours of burpees last, a couple of years ago, as part of our challenge. We did, check this out: we did 22 million burpees as a tribe to raise money for veterans. And part of that was to break a world record where our six-person team, you would love this, three men and three women, we did 36,000 burpees in 24 hours, so I did 7,500 or something like that. So 700 is nothing. Back then I didn't know if it was going to be 700 or 7,000 or 70,000. But he got bored, and he walked away at about 700, and I have to say, that worked. That's a good strategy.  Lisa: What about the burning in the muscles and the exhaustion and the running out of glycogen—  Mark: You can do anything, one at a time.  Lisa: Wow.  Mark: It's just like in a race, I'm sure you get to a point where all you have to do all you are saying to yourself is, ‘Just one more step.'  Lisa: One more step. Yep, absolutely.  Mark: Same thing. We call them micro goals. And so we teach— I started teaching these to SEALs, and the best guys already did this. But now we teach it, the SEALs are teaching what I call the Big Four. And they're teaching box breathing for controlling their stress, they're teaching positive internal dialogue, and mantras. And they're teaching visualisation, visualise every event and visualise what the end state looks like for you and then visualise the mission and whatnot. And then micro goals. Like go to BUD/S thinking about eight months of training, you go to BUD/S thinking about, ‘What do I got to do today to win this?' And then when today gets hard, you just collapse. ‘What do I need to do to win this evolution or event that I'm in?' And then when that gets harder, you know, it's like, ‘What do I got to do to get to the next five minutes?' Anytime you quit, or you have the thought, ‘Well, this sucks. I think I want to quit.' You just say, ‘Well, let me just push through to another— let me just push through another five minutes.' Or, ‘Let me just get to that berm up there,' if it's a run, or Log-Pt could go on forever. ‘Let me just finish this evolution, then I'll make a decision.' And so you just keep kicking the can down the road of the pain and the quit decision and the suffering and eventually the suffering goes away, because that's a temporary state. Lisa: And this is like that you just dropped so much golden inside of two minutes. Take a couple of those because these are things that I've took me 20 years to learn. Mark: Play it back in slow motion. Lisa: You know, like this. That's how that's how I break down. You know, every mess of the like, I remember and my listeners have heard me tell the story. But I ran 2,250 kilometers from New Zealand for charity.  Mark: Wow. Good for you. Holy cow.  Lisa: Yeah, no, it's like, but I've been so busy in the build-up doing— I've been at other races around the world, done Badwater in the States, just come back from that, just launched a book and then I'm standing at the start line. I've been so busy in the thing that I actually hadn't thought about actually running the— because I was just like, ‘Yeah, I got everything, sweet.' And then I'm starting at the start line and I just had a panic attack, like the first real big panic attack. And I'm not, because you're staring down the barrel of this—  Mark: Like, holy shit, this is too high to climb. What the heck have I done? Lisa: What the frick was I thinking? And I went home, we had media, we had all my crew and everybody there and I just went away behind the one of the cars and got my mum, my mummy ‘cuz she's my safe place, went to my mummy and I just bawled my eyes out. And said, ‘Mum I can't do this, I don't know what the frick I was thinking. I can't, and there's no way out.' And mum's just like, ‘Hey,' as she hugged me, as mums do. And she said, ‘You don't need to do 2,250 today. All I want you to focus on is that little box up there,' you know, that was a couple of hundred meters up the road. ‘That's what you got to do right now. And then you're going to, you're going to get through to lunchtime, and then you're gonna have lunch. And then we're going to get through to this and that.'  She just broke it down into pieces, and she took all of that load that I was just like, ‘Oh my God, this is huge,' and she broke it into one step at a time, basically. And that was some of the greatest learnings that I've taken away for every event that I've done when— and there have been times when I've broken and I've just crashed on the ground. I don't know how to get up and people have come along and they've got me up and walked me through the next few steps. Or the next— and that has gotten you over that hump, you know? And I just wait, you know, that's so much gold, right there, what you've just said. I think if we can do that in daily life so when we're faced with some big scary thing coming at us, how do I just get through this moment? And we're very— if you can get through these impulses, you know, like there's 30 seconds, through the 30 seconds almost, sometimes you can get to a place where you can cope again. And then you can sort of get back up. Mark: And this goes back to like the internal dialogue. Most people don't examine their internal dialogue. And this is where meditation is so critical. And you can also consider, like running or swimming or biking, endurance sports generally, are also very good for examining internal dialogue, because you're going to meet resistance. How you talk to yourself has an incredible impact on your energy and your motivation. Literally, we use the terminology ‘feeding the courage wolf' versus ‘feeding the fear wolf'. Feeding fear is allowing negative dialogue and negative imagery and negative emotions to kind of run the rule the roost of your psychology, and that weakens you. Negative thoughts demonstrably weaken you as a human being.  Lisa: Yeah, because—  Mark: They're gonna not just weaken your motivation but literally musculature-wise you get weaker, and that's been proven through kinesiology. So positive thoughts create a higher vibration, which bring more energy, more access to more creativity and motivation. And so you got to train positive thoughts. That's what I mean by feeding the courage wolf. And the more you feed the courage wolf by training positive mantras and positive thoughts, then the more you starve the fear wolf until he goes away, until he just doesn't have the food anymore. And those patterns dry up and blow away. So I created a bunch of positive mantras that I would say in the SEAL training, and they're still with me today.  As soon as I start a hard workout, they kick back in. ‘Feeling good, I'm looking good, ought to be in Hollywood. Feeling good, I'm looking good, ought to be in Hollywood. I can get out of me in Hollywood. I've got this easy day, piece of cake. Boo yeah, hey, got this. Easy day, piece of cake. Boo yeah, hey.' And then I'll synchronise that with my breathing. So, hardcore, run three steps and inhale 1, 2, 3, ‘I've got this. Easy day. Piece of cake.' Exhale 1, 2, 3. Right.  Lisa: And the rhythm is good too, hey. Mark: Yeah, exactly. So I was synchronising those before, the big four. The first skill I said, box breathing, it's really breath control. Running, anything you're doing, always breathing through your nose as best as possible, and controlling the breathing and creating a nice rhythmic pattern with the breathing. It's going to be different depending upon what you're doing. If you're lifting weights, gonna be one thing, if you're running another, swimming another. Swimming creates its own little breathing patterns, because head in the water versus out of the water. But just starting there, controlling your breathing and adding a positive mantra, or a positive internal statement that's linked to the breath is transformative. Not only does it keep you in the game athletically or whatever, but when you do this during your regular day, day in and day out, you're training your mind to be really positive and to be very concentrated. So you're developing concentration power. So you're turning your mind from like a scattered floodlight, which is flickering on and off, the monkey mind, to a very, very concentrated laser beam that you can point that laser beam on anything, any task, any project, and it deeply improves your productivity, the ability to get things done, you know, significantly.  Lisa: Wow.  Just interrupting the program briefly to let you know that we have a new Patron program for the podcast. Now, if you enjoy Pushing the Limits, if you get great value out of it, we would love you to come and join our Patron membership program. We've been doing this now for five and a half years and we need your help to keep it on air. It's been a public service free for everybody, and we want to keep it that way. But to do that we need like-minded souls who are on this mission with us to help us out. So if you're interested in becoming a patron for Pushing the Limits podcast, then check out everything on www.patron.lisatamati.com. That's P-A-T-R-O-N dot lisatamati.com. We have two Patron levels to choose from. You can do it for as little as $7 a month, New Zealand, or $15 a month if you really want to support us. So we are grateful if you do. There are so many membership benefits you're going to get if you join us. Everything from workbooks for all the podcasts, the strength guide for runners, the power to vote on future episodes, webinars that we're going to be holding, all of my documentaries and much, much more. So check out all the details: patron.lisatamati.com. And thanks very much for joining us. Mark: And then the imagery, right, the imagery. Well, let me backup. The other thing that that process of paying attention to the quality of your thoughts and changing them to positive thoughts, and increasing your concentration power, as you start to look at the dialogue too, in your head. What is actually going on? And you recognise that typically what's going on in your head is a series of statements that are also based upon belief systems, but it can be framed as questions. When people say, ‘I don't think I can do this,' what they're really saying is, ‘Am I worthy? Am I competent?'  We can begin to recognise that our belief systems are based upon questions and statements that may or may not be true. And so you want to take a look at the ones that are questionable, especially if they have a negative quality, and say, ‘Is that true?' And you realise, ‘It's not true. I am worthy. I am competent.' Now, I may not feel that yet. But the more I tell myself that and the more I can see that in myself, and the more that I meditate and actually feel into my worthiness and my confidence, and the more I work to eradicate the emotional side or shadow that may have, be tied to related to that — for me, it was because of the childhood abuse, I kind of felt a little unworthiness and whatnot, even though I was capable as a SEAL, it's still kind of plagued me for a while, until I had to stare down that wolf of fear and be like, ‘Yeah, that's all bullshit. That's just a story that I'm holding on to and I was able to release all that energy and feel that worthiness now.' Then that leads to a whole nother set of questions, which are extraordinarily empowering, right. So when I— understanding your capability as a human being, the potential that you have, the power that we have, you can then project that into the future and say, ‘What does victory look like for me?' Right? ‘If I'm going to run this 2,000 meter, or 2,000 kilometer race, and I'm going to raise money for charity, what is that for? What's my ‘why'? And what does victory look like?'  You get a clear sense of what victory looks like. And then you can even do that with the micro parts. So you chunked it down into 100 kilometer segments, let's just say. What does victory look like for that segment for the next five days? What does it look like for today? What does it look like— this is, in a sense, what your mom was doing, but she was doing it from the other way around. What does it look like for the next six hours? What does it look like for the next three hours? You get a clear picture because you're asking the right questions, and you're winning in your mind before you step foot into the battlefield. So asking really powerful questions like, what does victory look like? Who is on my team? Who's got my back? Why am I doing this? How is it related to my purpose in my life? These are the questions that we start asking, because now we've drowned out the negative incessant chatter, which is just holding us back and distracting us. We've created this space, and I use the metaphor still water pond. We've taken our mind and we've created it instead of this choppy, you know, bouncing all over the place, turbulent thought stream, largely negative, we've calmed down. And it's now this still water, and on this still water, you can look at it, you can really see a reflection clearly. So that's kind of a nice thing, you get to see your true self more clearly, but also, what you drop into that water in terms of the thought is going to ripple out and affect everything. So you end up dropping thought seeds that are really powerful, instead of chaotic and negative. Lisa: Because there's this whole, these automatic negative thoughts and if we think about how we evolved that was there for our survival. Because we needed to be aware of dangers and things in our environment, so we were always looking for the bad thing that was going to come at us. But in our world now, where we just, we have this constant chatter in our head. And it's, you know, I've certainly dealt with this for a long time, and I and I fought against the whole sitting still thing, and focusing inwards. Because it's very unpleasant, when you having— when you want to move, you just want to move. Give me a hard ass workout, any day, over meditation, you know, because it's just like this energy, this agitation, but that's why I need to do it. So that I can break through that piece of the puzzle. And then you can tap into strengths that you didn't know you had, and quietness, and then you start to really reflect and like, for me, it has only really been, even in the last few months where I've been— My dad passed away, and it was one hell of a battle for his life. And I, yeah, it was a real— I was fighting against the system. And it was a mess of battle. It's all good when you win, but it's also good when you don't win. And so this one, just been— I was a bit of an existential crisis after that, because I'd lost this battle for my dad, who I loved dearly. And it made me go inward. It made me start to really question some of the biggest things because you start realising that life's short, shorter than I think it's gonna be. You want to understand why, and then going inside and doing some deep work and doing some trauma work and doing all that sort of hard stuff has been great. There's always good that comes out of shit. You never ever want to go through things like that, but when you do, you can always turn them into something, a learning curve of some sort. And having that, I was listening to you with Bedros Keulian, who's also is another one that I— Mark: Yeah, he's an awesome guy. Lisa: Yeah, he's just a rock star. in you, when you were talking about how you went through the zen process where you were, for a start, you started meditating, but you're just learning to quiet the mind. And then after a few months, that became then mindfulness. Where you're starting to observe yourself from outside in splitting the mind or somehow you put this and you're actually observing yourself as this higher self, if you like. Can you explain that a little bit? And how does that— Mark: Yeah, so glad you brought that up. Because I wanted to talk about that. Because you're right. It's— meditation is hard, especially for active people, which everybody, everybody listening, everybody in the Western world is pretty much hyperactive. Yep, that's what we're taught; it's reality. Like, ‘Go, go, go. Do, do, do.' We get over-committed. Now we have, you know, constant distraction with our iPhones and social media, and it's just gonna get worse, worse, worse. Wait until we get plugged in with a neural link, you know, like, wow. So we got to push back against that. The only way to push back against that is to disconnect from all that and to sit still, or stand still, or take a walk. But don't do anything, right. Don't do it for a goal. Don't do it to check it off a box. Don't do it to be the best meditator you know. Lisa: Tick that box.  Mark: It doesn't work, right? Lisa: That was what I was going to— Max: There's no goals here. Right? It's about becoming still, getting that clarity and this still water mind back, if you ever had it, but we had it when we were kids, of course, but in a different sense. So that you can evolve. You know, let me start there. I think that there's two reasons we're on this planet. One is to evolve to become the best version, highest and best version of yourself in this lifetime. The second is to align with our calling or our purpose. And those two really kind of go hand-in-hand or hand-in-glove. You can't evolve if you're constantly doing. You actually will stay stuck. You'll keep getting your ass handed to you. You'll keep suffering. You'll keep feeling victimised. And you'll keep looking outward for the solutions. And you'll keep blaming other people, or society, or taxes, or the government, or God. Lisa: A lot of fingers are turned. Mark: The answers lie within, right? And so the only way to go inward is to slow down and just be quiet. Right? So it's imperative. Now, why do most people fail? A) Because everything I've just talked about, they haven't been taught this. And B) because they're body mind, their body brain is very, very agitated. It's amped up because you've been taking all this stress on throughout your life. So what I teach is that the first step in meditation practice isn't mindfulness. It isn't a mantra practice. It's just a box breathe, which is a pattern breathe, five-count in, five-count hold, and five-count out, five-count hold, or four, or three, if you have trouble with that. And just let that nostril breathing in that massaging that the vagus nerve, stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system. And it's bleeding off stress and bringing your body brain back into my balance.  Lisa: Yep.  Mark: When your body brain is back into balance, your brain is going to experience that as a lower frequency rate. Lower frequency means fewer thoughts, right? If you're in gamma, it's like tick-tick, popcorn brain. But if you're in alpha, like listening to beautiful music, classical music, or you're maybe doing some journaling, your mind stops racing. It starts to get into— Lisa: A lovely alpha state of focus.  Mark: Yeah, and so the box breathing practice trains your mind to get back into alpha, trains your body to de-stress, and you do this. It might take you months, usually about three months. I— my clients have this extraordinary calming that comes over them. And they're already changed. But this is, you know, just the preparatory work, right? This also, for those who are working on their physical structure in their health and their weight, this also has enormous benefits because you begin to feel a lot better. And you begin, you know, you're starting to breathe in that life force again. You're getting more oxygen with every breath, and you're retraining the breathing patterns so this becomes your more natural state. If you, let me just pause here, if you train for 20 minutes a day, have a five-count box breath, that's three breaths per minute, over time, and might take a year or more, you're gonna eventually settle into a natural breath pattern of six breaths per minute, which is now proven to the optimal. Lisa: Exactly.  Mark: I've been doing this for years, I never knew that, it just settled out there to where six breaths per minute through the nose was standard for me, or a standard, and that's what will happen to you.  Lisa: Yep.  Mark: Yeah. But those are full breaths, full exhales, getting all the toxins out there.  Lisa: Basically the exhale. Mark: It's enormously beneficial for your body, and everything starts to come back into balance: you start losing weight, you start eating better. Because you want to eat better, you start sleeping b

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com S2E19 TRANSCRIPT: ----more---- [00:00:00] Yucca: Welcome back to the Wonder: Science-based Paganism. I'm one of your hosts Yucca  Mark: and I'm the other one, Mark. Yucca: And this week we are talking about slowing down, centering, paying attention, really valuing that stillness.  Mark: Yes, because if we are, if we, as nature-based pagans are going to build a relationship with the world, we have to be able to see it. We have to pay attention to it so that we're not relating to an idea of the world we're relating to the actual world as it's going on around us. Yucca: Exactly. And when we say, see, we don't just mean sight, we don't just mean physical sight, but experience the real world  Mark: Yes. Yes. Yucca: and in a way that allows us to be present with the biosphere, with what's actually going on around us, but also with the symbolic meaning with poetry and art and all of that richness of existence.  Mark: yes. So I'm going to start out today's podcast with a poem, which is actually called invoking a book. But I'm going to call this Invoking a Podcast today, Bathe with vervain. Walk naked, counting 13 steps, 13 more, Cool feet padding to the circle place. Turn three times around, Place a pinch of dried Oak leaves there on the brazier Soft plumes of sweet autumn scent and the memory of a forest.  A tiny bead of Dragon's blood for mystery, and just perhaps frankincense to call what threadbare gods there may be left. Now the cauldron: odd for such a particular art, no liquid is defined, Only double and bubble and herbs resembling creature bits, but we know: wine. Alchemy of soil and rain and sun Gone stiff and wild in the barrel. Pour it in, brew, fumes rising and stir saying earth, air, water, fire, burn, and cauldron bubble.  And then add the particular things. A twig, a button, salt, and oil of Cedar. Place left hand on your sex. Whisper the wish three times and stir, saying Earth and sky. Let it be so. Let it be so. Let cool.  Tomorrow you will pour into cool dark earth saying it is finished. It is finished. It is magic. It is done Repeat. Yucca: so beautiful.  Mark: Thank you. Thank you. I wrote that because creativity requires a jumpstart sometimes. I do a lot of writing and various other creative things. And sometimes the pump is just definitely not primed. You know, you sit there and you confront the blank screen or the blank page, and then there's nothing there. And so becoming connected. With what's around us becoming present in the moment becomes a process that can lead me to tap my creativity and celebrate those things that I'm feeling in the moment. That's my experience of poetry a lot actually is moments of hyper presence that I then captured with words. So we've been talking about paying attention and we've alluded to this in the podcast before, but we live in a world wherever everything has been speeded up to unnatural rates: the world of the screen, where you get instantaneous gratification after clicking on a mouse. And of course we want faster and faster internet don't we? Yucca: And it's not even mouse anymore for most folks. It's the screen in our pockets.  Mark: yes.  Yucca: Hey, it's your thumb?  Mark: it's just a finger touch. That's all it is. And that can be and that swipe can mean everything from ordering a refrigerator to be delivered to your house. To agreeing to a date, to any of a wide variety of different sorts of things that are now mediated by these screens. And the natural world moves both faster than that and slower than thatt i At its smallest scales, it moves much more quickly. But at the scale that we live at here in the world, There's a cycle and it's about a year long. And every day is only about 3% of that, that long annual cycle that, that passes around. And so it's really incumbent on us to slow ourselves down and do what's called the phonology, which is paying attention to the phenomena around you. Yucca: Yeah. And not just reaching at that first moment of slight discomfort, Mark: Right. Yucca: to get to that place where You can really pay attention, you've got to get. Past that initial. Oh, what am I supposed to be doing?  Mark: Yeah.  Yucca: to get  Mark: I'm impatient. It's not happening quickly enough. So I'll pick up my phone or go to a screen or something like that. That anxiety of not getting instant gratification is something we have to learn to breathe our way past so that we can notice the trail of ants on the sidewalk. We can notice that the Stellar's jays are back. We can notice that the flowers on the fruit tree are mostly gone now, but they've been replaced by little, teeny, teeny tiny fruit. Yucca: The feel of the different pressures of the wind on the different parts of your face, that the wind isn't the same everywhere. It's slightly different from centimeter to centimeter.  Mark: Yes. Yes. And. Learning to develop both the pacing and the sensitivity to be aware of all of those things is a profound in lifelong learning process. In my opinion, is as a pagan, I want to embrace the world as much as I possibly can, even the bad stuff. I want to be, I want to mourn and grieve and be angry about things that deserve mourning and grieving and being angry with the same kind of completeness that I want to embrace. What's beautiful and joyful and creative and moving. Right. Yucca: Yes. Yeah.  Mark: So, Learning to slow down and pay attention becomes really important. And this is not a skill that we are taught in our culture at all. There are other cultures where it is taught in cultures that have more meditative kinds of religious practices. You see a lot more emphasis on calming the chatter in your brain and turning your perspective from parsing out all those internal conversations to being present with what's around you in the moment. But here in the west, we are not encouraged to think that way  Yucca: And in fact, we've been moving even farther away from that, as we've been talking about where it used to have more of a presence in our culture and less as we reach more and more for the screens and that instant gratification and the way that we experienced the world is through what we do over and over again, it's a practice we practice and reinforce the screen instead of practicing and reinforcing the patients and the presence. And we can choose which one. We're feeding, which one are we practicing and doing again and again, what patterns are we strengthening? So this is another example of something where it's not, you learn to do it once, and then you're an expert. Oh, you figured out how to be present and know it's something that you choose every day. And when you slip up and you fall off that wagon, then you can get back up and get back on.  Mark: Yes. Exactly. One of the things that is very frustrating to me about the Overculture is that it really tends to frame everything in terms of achieving and winning. And that always implies that there's an end to the story. Right. And they lived happily ever after. Well, that's nonsense. It's a lie. There's always more after the story they lived happily ever after until they had a knock-down drag-out fight, didn't speak to each other for two days and then made up and had fantastic makeup sex, and then life went on and on until death. Right. There's always more. And what that means is that the journey is really the point. Right. And experiencing the journey is a function of how much we can pay attention, because I'm here to tell you, you know, in six months I'm going to turn 60 and I can't believe how fast the time has formed. I, where did all that time go? And it's not that I haven't had many wonderful experiences, but honestly, There were years when I was just kind of working and phoning it in and having a routine. And I feel like I lost that time. I wasn't paying enough attention and I lost that time. So, you know, you have this life, you have this one precious, amazing life. How many discrete, incredible moments can you have in it? I mean, that's. If you want to talk about this, you know, in game terms, the way that we team tend to do a lot right now, that's the game of life. How many amazing, incredible moments can you have in the time that you're allotted? Yucca: Yeah. And thinking about your entire life might be a little overwhelming. So you could even just think of the day.  Mark: Yes. Yucca: this week or this season, we're big on thinking about the seasons of the year and talking about the wheel of the year. So what about now? What about this second spring or this late spring or the entering into summer, or for folks who are in the Southern hemisphere entering into the dark cold side of the year? What are all of those moments? In your own internal mind, but also that's happening around you. That you're part of that subtle shift in what insects are you hearing when you go out at 2:00 AM in the morning? Mark: are there frogs? If, so what kind of frogs are there where is it? The sunrise in the morning? I say good morning to the sun every morning. And I am noticing that it is now moving steadily further north, as we get closer and closer to the summer solstice. And I have a tree in my backyard that serves as kind of a measuring stick. So that I can see the movement of the sun across the horizon, but that's a wonderful thing to notice. Yes. Today is different than yesterday. Yes. This is a unique day that the sun rose at that particular position at this particular time. And now I have this basket of minutes to do good in the world to be good to other people, to be creative and effective and to be happy to be joyous. And all of that requires slowing down and paying attention. Yucca: Exactly. And it doesn't matter where you are. You don't have to be out in some pristine wilderness, which is a myth anyways. But you don't you where you are is, part of the world. You are part of this world, right? I feel like one of the hobbits on Treebeard's shoulder shouting that when they say it right, we're part of this world too. So even if you are in a high rise or you spend most of your days working in front of a screen and a basement office or whatever it is, you can still practice that   awareness and noticing.  Mark: Yes. You certainly can. So with that, I'm going to read another poem. This one is about. Anger. It's about a very particular kind of woman's experience of anger. Actually. I've always been surprised that this poem arrived for me, but it did.  This is called Mary Magdalene Impenitent.  And so I have become an object lesson to these old dried men, A cautionary tale. They know nothing, these friends, these hangers on, they have only their dreams of what was given them. The longed for balm, freedom from their secret lusts that seen in the mirror, he was for each he met  As Pilate did, and I. What they do not tell you in their book Fills chests of scrolls in the library of my heart, will die with me. His sorrow, his rage, his agony, they embrace, they exalt, The old men who think the fire in their eyes is his, when it is their own, but his sweetness, his passion, his humanity, They choose to forget Confounded that a whore held his confidences That we shared what they could not, who would consume him, Tear him to pieces and eat him to have what he was. Who will tell that his skin smelled of honey in the sun, That his mouth was red as berries Filled with juices and alive on me. How long has fingers were and gentle? How his back arched, when he spilled into me? Who will say that he laughed often? and then the little things: That he snored? Loved figs and pomegranates, but did not care for dates? Who will remember his fear, his questioning? I cursed the corrupt old men when they took him from me. I cursed God. And I repent nothing. Not even this. Not my mythology, but my response, I guess to much of the Christian mythology and how it's been used by dried old men. Yeah. Yucca: Well, this is a topic which we might come back to that just because we are non theists and don't believe in any of these things, literally doesn't mean that we can't find meaning in myths and stories and tales of gods and other worldly beings and Heroes. and things like that, that we recognize that those are, that the telling of such stories is something very human.  Mark: For sure. We I heard some anthropologists once said that arguably the defining characteristic of humanity is that we are the storytelling creatures. We invent stories about the nature of the world. We invent stories about how things work. Science is a storytelling process. It fundamentally assumes that there is such a thing as causality. And then it tells a story about this causes, this which causes this. And that's what the evidence tells us, right?  Yucca: And it's a collaborative storytelling process,  Mark: is indeed.  Yucca: sort of like tabletop RPGs.  Mark: Very much like tabletop RPGs, which both of us are very fond of. So, yes, I think that would be a great topic for us to explore at some point because myth is very powerful. There are quite a number of people in the atheopagan non theist pagan  community who use the symbols of gods or heroes. In their ritual work, in their, you know, in their they're working with their own consciousness, because the image of a particular deity is a shorthand gestalt of the qualities that they embody, whether it's fierceness or courage or the creation of a safe environment, a safe home. Yucca: or compassion.  Mark: or compassion or lust or, yes, all these or war or death, these fundamental visceral human experiences given a human face. And there's nothing wrong with, you know, working with those ideas. I just don't do it myself. I kind of prefer my. My qualities, not having human faces, because I don't think of them that way. But to me, it's very clear that these myths serve a purpose for both believers and for nonbelievers who choose to work with them. And there's nothing wrong with that.  Yucca: Yeah,  Mark: So where were we? That was a tangent. Yucca: well, we have been sharing the poems as part of the presence and awareness, the stillness that allows us to be present with both the world around us, but the internal world and poems, I think are often an expression of that internal world and the experience, the internal experience of the external.  Mark: I really agree. The, in the forward to this book that I've been reading from, which is my second book, a book of poems talk about these works as being captured moments, snapshots of expression, of a complex mix of emotions that I'm feeling at a given instant and that. You know, you don't capture those things. If you aren't paying attention, once again, you need to be you need to find a stillness within yourself in order to write a poem. I find. At least a good one to the degree that I write. Good ones. I like to think I do. The but that's not limited just to poetry. The ability to enjoy paintings, for example I find when I go to [00:20:00] art museums, now, there are these clusters of people with phones in front of their faces. You know, looking at the painting through the phone or listening to the little podcasts that they have for the walkthrough of the gallery. And they don't seem to be able to just stand in front of a painting and absorb it. Just let the experience of that graphic image kind of tank you into itself. And to me, that's the joy of art. I, you know, there are still many pieces of art that I find really moving. And in some cases I couldn't exactly tell you why they just are. Yucca: Yeah, certainly. My experience with a lot of art is I have strong feelings and response, but trying to communicate that feeling, I mean, it's, that's how you commit to communicate the feeling is through the art. That's the only way there's the, we can try, but, you know, we don't have the, we can't just touch a person and transfer that feeling through.  Mark: Right. Yucca: So what can we do to express that? And that's what the art is.  Mark: Right, right. And once again, you need to slow down enough and actually look at what you're seeing and in some cases, it's pretty explicit what the artist was trying is trying to communicate. In other cases, it's very obscure. And so you're, it's sort of a, kind of an inkblot test for yourself. You know, what do you see in this image? What does that mean to you? What what emotions does it stirring you. And that's part of, what's marvelous about art. I love it.  Yucca: Yeah,  Mark: Music, similarly, you know, the ability to really moved by music involves paying attention. I mean, many of us work with background music. I tend to have music going most of the time when I'm at work. But it's relatively quiet music and it's the kind of thing that I can sort of tune into and sort of, not maybe a little bit of a beat. So then it kind of keeps me going through the day. But that's not the same thing as when I put on headphones and listen to something really intensely so that I can experience every moment of it. Yucca: and maybe we should talk a little bit about ways to, to practice to get into that slowing down since it is something that isn't taught and often not valued in our culture of waste, just to, to start to practice it and take this moment to remind folks, if you haven't listened to our episode on the inner critic, that this is the time when the inner critic is likely to start talking to you. And it's useful to remember what function that critic has and how to ask it. to step back for a moment while you start learning and practicing this new thing in your life.  Mark: yes. Yes, because what'll happen is, and what I would recommend, just sort of, as a starting exercise is find a place. Hopefully with a view of something natural, a tree, a yard, something, and sit there for five minutes. It is a lot harder than you would think it is because this growing sense of anxiety about I should be doing something, or this is boring, nothing is happening. So where's my phone. There, there can literally, I mean, this increasing sense of anxiety can build up in you. If you're anything like me about, I should be doing something else. This is stupid. All those critic, voice things, nattering in my ear and the ability to just sort of breathe and let that go and wait for whatever it is because something will come along. Something will always come along. That is worthy of note. That is interesting. Oh, look a snail. Oh, look, I never noticed that there's water trickling down that wall. Yucca: Yeah. Or if you've got soil start looking at that soil because it is full of life, even dry soils, even when you're in an arid environment. We're just looking around so quickly, most of our life that we don't see what's there. And of course we can't see in the majority of it, but [00:25:00] even on the scale that we do see, and just a square meter, you might find hundreds of little creatures moving around, doing their business, and there they are.  Mark: yes. Yes. And that's nature. We talk about ourselves as being a nature, religion, and that doesn't just mean polar bears and Eagles and whales. And you know, the charismatic macrofauna life is this incredibly tightened, woven tapestry of the activity of literal billions of kinds of organisms. And being aware of that B is being in relationship with it and being in relationship with it, for me as a pagan is very profound, very moving. Yucca: Yes. Likewise. One of the things that you mentioned suggesting just that sitting for five minutes, finding somewhere sitting, you mentioned breathing. And that breath, that breathing is really key in so much of what we do. So sometimes that's a wonderful place to start is just starting with the breathing. Now, when we're trying to be present and aware with the world around us, it may help to actually not close your eyes. We're often told, okay, close your eyes, take some deep breaths, you know, go into yourself center. But instead of maybe keep those eyes open, start breathing, calming down, bringing all of that, releasing all of that tension, letting that breathe out of you and start noticing, and maybe just notice one thing at a time like that snail. Or looking at just that little patch of dirt on the ground. We're noticing how high up in the sky or the clouds, and just be present with that breath, using the breath as the framework, that's keeping you centered, keeping you calm as you're expanding your awareness, the bubble that is you  Mark: that's very well put. Yes, exactly. And of course there are disciplines, traditions, which have gone into how to use contemplating the breath in order to become more present into a very elaborate and codified sort of system. In Buddhism there, this is what they do. But all of us can benefit from learning the simple skills of mindfulness. So that we can be present in the moment and therefore reap the benefits of having those experiences in the moment. It's I've often said that even though I don't buy into a Buddhist cosmology, I think the tools are incredible. The skill set that you're taught is really marvelous in, in Buddhism. And I,I know that there are people who practice Buddhism, who are also active in the non theist pagan community. And I think that's great. Yucca: Yeah. So there's a lot of resources, this with different flavoring and then different costumes. But like you're saying you don't necessarily need to follow one of those. Right. You can just find what is feeling, practice, test it out with yourself, play with it, see what starts to fit for you, what doesn't fit for you. But I do encourage pushing through a little bit and not giving up just because it doesn't work right at the beginning because it is a skill. It is a practice skill. It's probably been a long time since most folks here learned to ride a bike. But if you gave up the first time you fell over on the bike, you wouldn't be able to, you'd never learned to ride that bike.  Mark: right. Right. Yeah. And you know, to be honest, and this is sort of a tangent, but it does relate one of the things that we are not taught to do certainly in the United States and in the over culture is to be uncomfortable to be willing, just to be uncomfortable for a [00:30:00] while. And if it's uncomfortable for you sitting that five minutes on that bench facing that tree and that little patch of dirt, it's probably good for you to learn how to sit with that. Right? I mean, one of the things that I was a backpacker for many years, until my back couldn't take it anymore. And one of the things that you learn is that there is almost a joy in discomfort. Under the right circumstances. You know, it's like, oh, I brought the light sleeping bag and the temperature has now dropped to 15 degrees. And I have to put every item of clothing that I brought with me on in order to get through this night. Right. And you're still cold, but it's an adventure. It's a story. It's a memory. Of that very cold night and even things that are very uncomfortable can make for great stories. You know, for women having babies, they've always got the story and it's, it wasn't a picnic, but it was an adventure, right. A big moment in their life. So, you know, just because it makes you uncomfortable doesn't mean you should stop. In fact, it might be a good indicator that you should do more of that. And in any case, what does it cost you? Five minutes, five minutes out of a day is not very much time. So it's really worth taking that five minutes just to look around and say, hello world. What have you got to show me today? Yucca: Yeah. And really, it's probably a fraction of what you're doing with doom scrolling or social media or checking the email. 20 times in five hours.  Mark: Right, right. Yucca: And which is going to feel better at the end of the day to have done.  Mark: Yes. So give it a shot. It's having some pay attention. Time is really. It's really worthwhile and arrive. You can arrive at a state of a sense of tremendous bliss in relation to the world. Just by realizing that it's all going on out there, that it's happening all around us and inside us and that we are part of it. And it's miraculous. And I have a poem that is on that note. This is called Dea Gratias. Open, ever more open Arms flung wide, let the warm wet wings of your chest be spread Until barehearted the,re only the longing of the joy of this living is with you: the sweetness of its unfolding generosity. They are all there, the great and tiny miracles daily given: a breath, A golden pebble, a scarlet cloud at sunset, The voice of creation, singing out to cold space, Even which is life as well out to blackness and beginnings, All whirling and singing and spinning and changing Omnipresent, The glory of the world in your heart's red petals there Where first it placed a red kiss in your mother's womb saying Welcome. Yucca: Well, thank you, Mark. This has been a really wonderful conversation.  Mark: I've enjoyed it a lot too. Yeah. Thank you. We'll see you next week.  Yucca: Take care.

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   If you enjoy the podcast, please consider leaving us a rating or review on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-wonder-science-based-paganism/id1501228156   S2E12 TRANSCRIPT: ----more---- Mark: Welcome back to The Wonder: Science-Based Paganism. I'm your host, Mark. Yucca: And I'm Yucca. Mark: And today we're going to talk about families, about approaching your family with your non theist. Science-based paganism, about how to negotiate the conflicts or mutual incomprehension that may arise from that about how we integrate our personal spirituality into our families and just other issues that have to do with relating to families as a part of our life and our practice. Yucca: That's right. And this is one of those topics that is huge about a year ago. At this point, we did talk about family and we talked about what is the role of family and blood versus chosen and all of that, but there's no way that we can cover all of it in one go. So we're back again, to look at it from these different angles. Mark: Right. And it bears saying that today when we're recording is the day before Easter. And so there's a lot of kind of confrontation of family that happens at around Easter time because at least in the United States where the Christian holidays have become secularized and made normative for people to practice, even if they're not Christians. Or if they're just very nominally Christian. People get expected to go to Easter dinner or to come over for an egg hunt or to do something with the larger body of their family. And that may be uncomfortable if all of the symbology and the supposed meanings around the Easter holiday are things you don't believe in or support. Yucca: There's going to be a huge range of what of listeners are going through. But I suspect that some of our listeners are in the position of this being something that the being a pagan is something new in their life or something that perhaps their family that they come from doesn't know. And they don't know how they, the family might respond or maybe they do know. And it's it. Isn't what they're looking for. Mark: Right. Yeah. And there's kind of a double whammy in our particular neck of the woods, because it's not only by the way, I'm, you know, a godless heretic. It's also, I'm a, you know, wild heathen I'm doing both of Yucca: Best kind of combination though, in my opinion. Right. I like it. Mark: I'm right there with you, but especially when you consider how propagandized some people in some sects of especially Christianity, but also Islam and even the very conservative Jewish traditions. You know, they can have heard all kinds of horrible things about people that are atheistic about people who are witches or pagans, and it can be a very difficult bridge to cross when trying to get all that stuff out of the way and actually meet your family and say, Hey, look, this is who I am and it's good for me. Yucca: I think that the, that approaching this, I mean, there's again, so many directions to go, but one of the first places is to think about the different roles that families can play in people's personal lives. And this, a lot of this depends on the larger culture that people are from. And then the family culture and personal beliefs in terms of what is the role of the individual and what is the role of family and where does authority lay within that? And how much does everybody's should be or not be in everybody else's business and there's not a right answer. This is a cultural answer. Whether family or larger culture. Mark: Right. Yeah. I mean, there are some, some cultural traditions, like, Greek and Italian traditions, for example, where you have, you know, kind of matriarchs and patriarchs of the family that have tremendous influence and power. And, you know, if you're on the outs with them or they've decided that you're somehow you know, a bad person for choosing the path you choose, it can cause difficult situations for you in your life. So, and I mean, I'm not targeting those particular groups, I'm just pulling those out of the air. There are certainly plenty of families from, you know, the UK that are similar, Yucca: And varying degrees from many different cultures and it's a spectrum. Mark: yes, very much so. So, you know, these are situations that that get asked about in the Facebook group. The atheopagan is some Facebook group that I administer and that we're members of pretty frequently, you know. " I'm I've I found this path. It's really moving to me and it's really, you know, lighting up in ways that I never really expected. It feels so right. It's so good for me that I've found this. I have no idea of how to talk to my husband slash mother's slash father's slash you know, grandmother who has been my closest family person children." And. It is it's difficult to talk about because there really is no one size fits all. Every one of those individuals that people are concerned about is an individual. They have their own personality and their own value structure. And so there's no simple prescription for how to address this. That said, I do think there are some general principles that we can encourage people to follow. And I need to be really clear up front that the circumstances of my life, not having to do with religion at all, have forced me to completely disengage from my. Birth family. I don't have any engagement with them at all. And so, you know, it may be a little glib for me to hear me saying, Oh you should do this. And so I asked people to kind of take the things that I say with a grain of salt that way. I haven't had to, I haven't had to climb this particular Hill because my family was really bad for me. And it was a pretty easy call to get away. But for people, for whom you're getting, you know, mixed measurements of sugar and poison, which happens in families a lot. It can be much more difficult to make decisions about how to draw boundaries, how to communicate clearly and how to assert yourself as an individual within that family system. Yucca: And for my family situation, I'm also coming from a place where that might be a little bit different than some of our listeners in that my family, or at least part of my family is pagan. So I've never had the situation of going back and saying, Hey, I'm different or I'm doing a different path. I'm breaking from the tradition of the family. I have these new beliefs or anything like that. But I do have a couple of family members who, siblings, in fact who are not pagan and who are Christian and pretty uncomfortable with the pagan side of things. So there's, we'll talk about a lot of different strategies, but what we do is we just don't talk about it. That's just one of those things that we just don't touch on. And we know that if we go there, there's going to be conflict and we just don't see each other often enough for that. We don't want to waste our time with the little time we get to be together, having that be conflict. And what we do instead is try and focus on the places where we do have a lot of common values. And there are other things too, that we differ quite strongly on in the realm of politics and things like that. So we just really focus on what is it that we have in common that we all appreciate and can really love and just steer away from those other things. But again, that's not, that works for my family style that I come from, but that may not be a possibility for someone else. Mark: I think it's really different to have a number of people in your family who are pagan. Because then the stakes are much higher. If somebody decides to draw a line in the sand and say, I'm not connecting with any pagans, then they're jettisoning a whole bunch of people in their family. I think it's much harder for someone who's an individual to say "I finally found the path that's working for me and it ain't what you folks are doing." Yucca: Yeah. Especially if what you folks are doing believes in things like damnation and things like that. Yeah. Mark: Yes, ironically, some of the most hellish circumstances, one can find themselves in are in a family that doesn't actually support people in their journey. So, you know, maybe they're right about damnation, but they're creating it in the process. Yucca: So, so given our backgrounds What are some things that we can suggest or speak to for the listenership? Mark: I think to start with, you need to have a clear sense of personal boundaries. One of the things that's very hard about family is that when we start in them, we're very small and we don't have much personal authority. We don't get listened to very much in most cases. And so there are these habits that get formed, especially by our parents and by family members who were older than we are to think that they can just sort of dictate to us and that we have to follow whatever it is that they have prescribed or whatever their impulse is. And this is multi-generational. I mean, there are plenty of people out there who have kids of their own, who still feel dominated by their mother or their father, or both even in how they're raising yes or a sibling. In how they're raising their own kids. So the assertion of personal autonomy becomes very important. And that sounds, I mean, that's a very nice phrase, the assertion of personal autonomy, but it sounds a lot easier than it is having boundaries about how you will allow yourself to be treated and talked to is something that every autonomous self-loving person needs to have. And. The context of the family can be one of the hardest places to do that. But the workplace is the same. I mean, I've had bosses who talked to me in ways that were simply unacceptable and I've told them, you can't talk to me like that. I'm your boss. Yeah, you're my boss. But that just means that I do work for you and you pay me a paycheck. It doesn't mean that you get to treat me like some kind of a whipping post, and this is unacceptable. And I am walking out of this room now until you can talk to me like another human being. And I didn't get fired at that moment, actually. I was kind of amazed. But the behavior didn't improve much and I left shortly thereafter. I think it's necessary for all of us to be able to stand up with our shoulders squared and say I'm deserving of respect. I'm deserving of honoring who I am, even if it's not the same as who you are. And that's, that honestly is the biggest step when it comes to dealing with family who may not understand, we can be very gentle about it. It doesn't have to be in your face, sort of, you know, combative tone but it can be, you know, not aggressive, but assertive. You know, this is what I'm doing. I'm happier now. I'm more effective in my life. Now the world makes sense to me now in ways that it didn't make sense to me before. And I would hope that you would be happy for me about that, even though it isn't the same way that you look at things. And I know that you have beliefs about people doing and believing things differently than you do, but I don't share those beliefs. And I'm asking that in the name of our familial relationship, you will honor me enough to let me be me. And, you know, that's also a very pretty speech and there could be a lot of different responses to that. I mean, you know, there can be people flying off the handle into hysterical, screaming, and there can be people sitting back and thinking, you know, that kind of makes sense, even though I don't like this at all. It's not really my place to tell you how to live your life. Yucca: Now, there are some pieces that depending on the personalities that you might want to warm up to, right? That speech there might not be something that, you know would, they would be able to hear yet. Or that you would Mark: Oh, to lead with? No. Yucca: Right. You know, maybe starting with working in some of the things that are major values to you, that they might not be quite as threatened by and kind of starting to work some of those things up, as long as you weren't feeling torn up and horrible about feeling like you're lying or hiding parts of yourself or something like that. But, you know, work towards Hey, this nature thing, it's really cool. Like this is really helping me feel great. Like let's connect with this, let's go on a walk together or share our appreciation of birdwatching or whatever it is. Know and work towards some of those things so that it makes a little bit more sense when you do have more of the formal coming out, out of the broom closet, or as some say. Mark: Right, right. Yeah. I mean, it's always tricky when. I mean, you, we liked the idea. I think of our family as people that we can just go to and say anything. And certainly with my chosen family, which is my ritual circle, I feel that I can tell them anything. If there's a conflict we're having, I can talk with them about it. If there's a disagreement, we can discuss it. If there's something, you know, really personal happening in my life, I can bring that to them. But it is also true that there are times with family. When you need to be strategic, you need to be aware of what the personality types are that you're dealing with. And have a bit of a plan. You know, I'm going to lead with the fact that I'm much happier now. And that happiness is a value that I really embrace and presuming that my family members love me when they see that I'm happier, they should see that as good. They would presumably see it as good. Right. I'm going to lead with the good stuff that this has done for me. The details don't matter so much. You know, the collage trickle details. We talk about this in science-based paganism all the time. You know, we're always being kind of grilled about what we believe and what we believe is the least important. aspect of what we do, it's our values and our practices that are really the kind of rich, interesting, exciting stuff. What we believe is just a worldview, a framework for understanding the nature of the universe. And it reveals lots of very cool stuff to us, but we wouldn't know it was cool if we didn't embrace happiness in all and reverence and all those things as values. I'm not sure whether that qualifies as a tangent or not. Yucca: I think that's pretty on subject. Mark: Okay. All right. It was an edge call. Yucca: Tangent or not. It's a good reminder. Right? Just bringing it back to what is it that we, what is it that we're really valuing? And what's the goal. Right. And I think maybe that's another thing to keep in mind when communicating with the family is what is your goal? And not in some like manipulative way, but what's the function of a family. What are your emotional needs from these people? What are their emotional needs from you? And the communication, what you are communicating, why are you communicating that? And what are you hoping to be the result? And how can you do that in a way that is going to set up, set that situation for that result being more likely? Mark: Right. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Yeah, because. And you need to kind of check yourself as well, because one thing that can happen when people find something new and they get really excited about it is they can kind of cross the line over into everybody should do this. And so it's important to be aware that as much meaning and joy as you're getting out of your rituals, other people. May want to participate and if so, come, but if they don't want to, then they don't have to. So, You know, I would not go so far as having a big sort of pagan spring celebration at your family's Easter gathering that may not go well. But you may be able to incorporate some aspects of your practices into that gathering. And some of that can be as simple as, you know, the symbols that that we share with with Christianity around flowers and eggs and bright spring colors and all those kinds of things that are so associated with the springtime. Yucca: Yeah. And also those activities that people might want to share together. Taking a walk or going to the park with the ducks and or whatever it is for you. We'll be talking about soon, going out for a beautiful stargaze. Okay. Mark: For shadowing. Keep that in mind. There's more on that coming. Yucca: We want to go ahead and start to, to shift gears towards talking about our practices as it relates to maybe not the families that we came from, but the families that we have created in our own households and chosen families as well. Mark: Sure. I think that's great. I mean, we've talked about those things a lot in the course of the podcast over the last year. I guess where I'm interested in going with this right now is more of the, the creative process that leads to those practices and rituals. What's the thinking behind it? You know, how do we conceptualize the things that we'd like to do with our families chosen or other and you know, how do we collaborate with others to make those things happen? Yucca: Sure. Yeah. Some of this is going to really come back to worldview and. What we think of our roles as individuals and community members. The approach that I have is that my first responsibility is me. I can only control my actions. I am responsible for me. And how I behave and how I respond in the world. And as a family member, as a partner, as a parent, my job is to be there and support those people. And not just as a parent and a partner, but as a daughter and a sister and all of that, but that it's not my job to choose for someone or to make someone be a certain way, but to try to support and nourish them as best I can while really respecting their autonomy and their agency and person. And that's the place that I try to. I don't always succeed, but that's the place that I really try to come from when participating as a family member, when making decisions as a family and creating our family habits and culture. Mark: Okay. Yeah. I think that's a really good point and it becomes a little more complex with children because, you know, we're so responsible for creating experiences that they then engage in, you know, they're not. Although it's not the children, aren't perfectly capable of creating their own experiences. I mean, that's what imaginative play is. But if we want to have some kind of a family gathering that involves some sort of ritual behavior or tradition that we want everybody involved with them. We have to think about, okay what are they going to want to do? What will they find interesting and exciting, and that's actually somewhat easier in relation to children early on than it is in relation to say grandparents who are very stuck in their ways, by that point, most of them And want things to be a certain way and may not be very comfortable with the addition of other elements. Yucca: Yeah. So it's. It becomes a very tricky balance, especially with the children, between creating the environment, making choices for the family, but also respecting them as people and as decision makers as well and different families come down in different places with that. Mark: Right. One of the things that I've seen in many pagan circles is that it's generally considered until, until a child is entering their teen years. You know, becoming a young adult, generally kids are allowed to do pretty much whatever they want in relation to a ritual, they can run around and they can, you know, play by themselves. They can do whatever, or they can hold hands with the adults and, you know, conduct the, you know, participate in the circle, activities, whatever they feel like. And there's no judgment around that. That's what I've mostly seen. I have seen some online discussion of people who don't have children kind of complaining about children being a distraction and that sort of thing. And as far as I'm concerned, it's like, you know, welcome to the human family. That's just the nature of kids. And even if you don't want to have any, you can't expect a community, a communal event includes people that have children to somehow exclude them. That's just. Not reasonable. Yucca: And the children themselves, right? Th they're part, they are just as much a part of the community as anyone else. Mark: They are. Of course they are. Yeah. Yucca: I think though it's also very important that children learn about boundaries as much as any other human and understanding that there's developmental differences. But if there's a situation in which they're not developmentally able to respect those boundaries, then sometimes then yeah, they shouldn't be there. Right. If your toddler does not listen and is in the, I'm going to bolt and run away from you, then maybe there, the bonfire situation is not an appropriate place for the toddler to be right. Mark: Maybe not. Yucca: I'm not going to take my kid into the butcher shop in the back either. Right? Like that's just. You know, so understanding the limitations of some people, but also not, you know, but not going too crazy with it. Mark: Yeah, Yucca: on the personality of the individual. And like, no, don't stop that ten-year-old from being at the bonfire and less like they've shown time and time again, that they're going to shove and push people or, you know, not listen or that sort of thing. Mark: Right. Yeah. So I, I think once again, it's all about you know, as we think about how our personal practices, and this is much easier with a partner who shares those practices, because then you can, you know, present a collective front of, you know, here's how we want to do this. And here's here are the boundaries that we're going to set around behavior and here's how we're going to cooperatively work with say kids that can't follow those boundaries, that kind of thing. But once again, it has to do with serving up that, which is palatable to the participants that you hope to be involved in. That principle applies to family members as well to family members who aren't necessarily a part of the tradition that you've chosen. I've heard so many wonderful stories of, you know, we had a May Day celebration and set up a maypole and, you know, and I invited my mom and I was terrified, but she had a wonderful time, you know, that, that sort of thing. And. It's I don't know. It's hard to talk about how you thread the needle that way. This actually brings something to mind that is sometimes very challenging for people, which is weddings, because weddings are so sacred to people that they want, their wedding rituals, their way, not their parents' way you know, or their grandparents way. It's they want the celebration and the ritual that works for them and finding a way that can somehow be palatable or even tolerable to people who have radically different religious traditions is really a challenge. I know some people who are really very good at it and to some degree that depends on how much are you willing to stick your neck out? I know there are some couples or, you know, people who are going to get married and they're just going to do it the way they want to do it. And if somebody goes stomping away in a Huff, they're fine. But that, and I know others who do the sort of secret pagan wedding where it looks like a kind of standard wedding, but it's got all these little symbolic elements in it that turn it into a pagan ritual. And it just depends on what kind of person are you Do you feel offended by having to kind of fold your symbology in underneath more traditional stuff? Or do you or do you not want to be as in your face about your path? Yucca: Yeah, I think that's another place where it comes back to really reflecting upon what is the purpose, of the wedding ceremony, you know, what are you, who is it for? And there's not a right answer to that, right? Is it, are you doing it for your family to represent you? You know, there's a whole lot of ways to approach it, but who's it for? What are your values around it? And really working through that because that's one of those things that there are so many expectations in our culture that you can just go along with it because you've seen it that way a million times and the movies and the shows. And by the time you were two and a half, you already knew how it worked. Right. So, but what do you actually want? And then how do you work towards a way that will make that comfortable for people. And each person's going to, or each couple or group are going to have their own answers to that. One tip that I have is whatever you choose. One thing that can sometimes really help is to give people a heads up ahead of time. If it's going to be different than the step-by-step process that we've all seen in the videos and the movies a million times. That's what we did, actually, we wrote just like a little one page, like here's what's happening. don't be surprised we're doing things a little bit differently than the normal order. Just so you know here's what we expect. And that's that can help some people who might be uncomfortable with a lot of the other stuff that you're doing. Just give them a little bit of sense of reassurance because it's emotional for them too. At least they know what's coming next. What's happening next. I know what's going to happen, even if I don't like it. So. Mark: that's a really great idea. And and it works kind of in both directions, it works to help ease any hesitation or discomfort that someone might have in coming to participate in your ceremony. And also sort of insurance on the back end. If somebody gets all bent out of shape, it's like, look, you didn't read it the label. We, you know, we gave you a very clear disclosure or about what this was going to be. I'm so sorry, but. That's what it was going to be. We're not sure why you were there, if that's the reaction you were going to have. Yucca: Yeah, you came, you agree? It's like you consented to being here, knowing what, what was going to happen? Mark: Right. Right. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So I would be very interested in hearing from our listeners about. What their engagement with with particularly non-pagan and family has been around their path and their disclosure, if there has been any of their path. I mean, I know that there are people in the atheopagan ism, Facebook community who haven't even disclosed to their spouse that they are, that they're following this path. And I think that's sad. Yucca: It's rough. Yeah. Mark: It is. I th I think that's really a difficult position to be in. But nobody knows the situation better than they do. And I certainly can't judge their decisions from the outside. So anyway You know where to find us listeners we're at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com. The wonder podcast Qs. All one word. @gmail.com and drop us a line. Let us know how it's gone with you in introducing your science-based non theist pagan stuff into family gatherings. And your interactions with members of your family. Yucca: Yep. Both young and old. Mark: Yeah, very interested in all of that. Yucca: So, thank you so much. Mark: Thank you. Yucca. It's always a pleasure to talk with you. Yucca: All right. See you next week.

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com https://atheopaganism.wordpress.com/2015/03/05/the-jewel-a-solitary-ritual/ S2E05 TRANSCRIPT:   ----more---- Mark: Welcome back to The Wonder: Science-Based Paganism. I'm your host, Mark. Yucca: And I'm Yucca. Mark: And today we are going to talk about the critic voice. You know, that voice in the back of your head that says this is stupid, or you shouldn't be doing this, or this is a bad idea, or you're really dumb for trying to do this, or you're really bad at this. All those, you know, self disempowering aspects of our own psychology that. That everyone seems to have it one level or another, Yucca: And that's sometimes not so in the back of the head and they have a pretty large presence sometimes, especially when just starting out with moving into a ritual practice. Mark: Yes. This episode we think will be of particular interest to folks who are atheists or other kinds of skeptics and are just starting to move into a ritual pagan practice because you know, it lights up all those warning lights on your dashboard. Oh, what am I doing? This is silly. This is this doesn't do anything. Why am I doing this? And we all have to wade through that. We all have to work with it. But there are great rewards on the other side of it, when you come into a healthier relationship with that voice. And so we're going to talk about what it is, how it can impact us, and then how to come into a healthier relationship with that voice today. Yucca: And thank you for framing it that way as a healthier relationship, because we're not setting out to try and banish it or get rid of it or treat it like it's this bad evil thing. But to recognize that it has a role, it has a purpose. and sometimes that it can go beyond that and become very unhealthy for us. So we need to bring that back and work with it in a way that it does serve us. So I think that's a good place to start actually is in an ideal scenario. What's the purpose of this voice? Why is it here? Mark: Well, as I understand it this voice arises very early in human development and it's an internalization of a parental voice that says, you know, you're going to hurt yourself. Be careful don't do that because it's not good. And so initially this sub routine built into our psychology is something that's there to protect us. It's there to keep us from getting into situations that are harmful. It's there to take care of us. Right? So when the parent isn't around, we have the internalized parent who can run interference for us and make sure that we don't get into potentially harmful situations. So that's a good thing, right? Yucca: And And not just the parent, but also the community as well. It's a way of maintaining community unity in terms of behaviors that you might have that well, if I get caught lying, if I am stealing these things that the community's voice is in your head going no. You're going to get, that's going to be shameful. That's going to be upsetting. That's going to be whatever it is. Mark: Right, right. And this voice has some weapons. It is able to make you feel embarrassed. It's able to make you feel ashamed. It's able to make you feel guilty. All of those are very unpleasant experiences for us. They tear down our self-esteem and they make us feel like we're not good people. And they hurt. Yucca: And very physical responses as well in terms of what it, what is happening with your heart rate and what is happening with your temperature? What does it feels like to be in your body. Mark: Sure. I mean, think about. Think about what happens when you're really embarrassed, your face flushes, your heart is .Beating. There's this kind of sick feeling in the pit of your stomach. It's a very physical reaction. It's not just a thought pattern. It's a full system response to this sense that you've done something wrong. And so. What we're talking about today is how do we best work with that in order to have it not disempower us from trying new things or trying things that that might seem silly or or frivolous or embarrassing, or even useless because those are all the kinds of words that the critic will use to try to keep us from doing stuff that's new or experimental or out of character. Yucca: Yeah, it uses that fear of failure to really control us . Mark: Yes. Yes. Which is ironic because in almost all circumstances the impact of failure is just learning. That's all it is. I mean, you know, unless you're, you know belaying someone else down a mountainside or something most of the time, the only impact of failing at something is that you get better at it. Yucca: Well, and certainly when you're doing ritual work and you're working with your own patterns and your own awareness, there's like, you're saying you're not helping someone down a mountain or trying to dress a wound on a hurt companion. So Mark: Right. Right. One of the things that the critic voice is very able todo is to make it seem like the stakes are much higher than they really are. Because it will start with, this is silly. We shouldn't be doing this and it will extend that into everyone's going to laugh at you and you will be shunned by society and you will die alone and friendless under an overpass. Yucca: In the next 10 minutes. Mark: Yes, that kind of catastrophizing is a part of the way that the critic voice maintains its power. Yucca: Yes. Mark: And so, you know, we have this function that is. Potentially they're originally there to serve as sort of a bodyguard, right? Just to kind of help you make decisions about which way you go this way and that way, but it gets hardened into this sub-routine that just generally says no to anything new or risky or or potentially exposing to some kind of harm. It's way of keeping you safe is by keeping you in a box. And that's not where we want to be as humans. Right. We want to explore and we want to grow. Yucca: And some of this may be coming from the interactions that we've had with others throughout our lifetime. What our interactions, our relationship with our parents and our siblings and our teachers and all of that. And that I think is very useful to go back and maybe find where some of it comes from, but know that however it appeared it's here today. Right. We can address it and work with it today. And that it's not. It's not set in stone. It's not something that we can't then go and change. You can always change a relationship and it's a relationship with yourself, but you can still change it. Even if it is deep from your childhood in times, you don't even remember. Mark: Right. Exactly. And the good news is that because we are dynamic organisms, which continue to evolve throughout our lives, we don't necessarily have to go back and rediscover all of those injuries from way in the past, in order to develop a new, healthy and more constrained relationship with this critic voice that says very clearly. Okay. Now you're helping now. you're not helping and I'm not going to listen to you right now cause you're not helping. Right. Which is a very adult way of approaching, you know, criticism of any kind. It's much healthier than getting defensive or flying into a rage or you know, bursting into tears, any of those kinds of things, which are perfectly legitimate, natural, emotional responses, but they don't help in the face of a figure like the critic voice, which is so implacable, it's just there all the time. And it's not going to flinch. If you cry, it's going to think, Oh, I win. Yucca: Yeah, that's empowering it. That's giving it more more influence. Yeah. Mark: So let's talk a little bit about how this how this can impact people that are coming into a science-based pagan practice because one of the things that I hear a lot on the atheopagan ,group Facebook group, from newcomers is I'm trying to get into this ritual thing and I'm really attracted to it. I love the aesthetics of witchy stuff. And I love all that, but there's this yammering voice in the back of my head saying, this is stupid. This is stupid. This is stupid. Why are you doing this? Yucca: Or you're making it up. Mark: Yes. Oh, you're making it up. That's such a terrible thing. Isn't it? I mean, it's not like humans have ever made anything up in their history. But. Here on this podcast, we encourage people to be critical thinkers and to be rooted in what science tells us about the nature of the world. And it is a fact that manipulating ritual tools is not going to make something happen 20 miles away. In so far as we have evidence available, it does not appear that waving a wand in the air in chanting an incantation is going to make any effect on anything other than our own psychology, but it has a profound effect on our own psychology When you think about it, that's the most personal kind of transformation there is. And that's why it can often send the critic voice into a frenzy. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. And the reason that we're doing this podcast episode today is to really encourage those of you that are experiencing that to push through it, to, to persist. Because ritual work has real effects. It will affect your ability to focus your intention on what you want to see accomplished. It'll affect your level of courage. It'll affect your level of fear. It'll affect your level of of persistence in the face of adversity. It will affect your morale. It will affect your self esteem, all of these things that are so important to us to be really, you know, effective and happy people. All of those things are profoundly effected by ritual work or can be so trust the process. You've you, you may have this, you may have this voice in your ear. That's saying this is all just made up and it's LARPing. And it's just not real. And that voice is not correct. It's not telling you the truth. And this is one of the saddest things about the critic voice is that at some point it learns to lie to you in order to keep you in place. It will tell you things that simply aren't true like that you're going to end up sleeping under a bridge because all it has is talk right. All that it has is an ability to talk to you to evoke emotions in you so that you will stay frozen within the pattern that you're in and not change. And one of the deepest. Powers of a ritual practitioner of any stripe is the ability to transform themselves. The ability to help themselves grow and ritual work is a very powerful way to work with our own psychology so that we can evolve and grow. Yucca: So we've talked a lot about what, how it can stop us or how it can try to stop us as we're stepping into ritual and not just for somebody beginning, but at any stage in your practice. Why don't we talk a little bit about some of the things that we can do to address that and to respond to that? Mark: Sure. And now there's all these different possibilities that are in front of me at the same time. And I'm trying to figure out which one to talk about first. Yucca: Well, I think that we already have just by identifying it, first of all, helps to be aware that it's there and sometimes just giving it a name. Right. And this is making it up, right? It's not actually, we're talking about it is if it's somebody separate than you or somebody separate than us, it's not, it's part of us, but giving it a name and hello critic, how are you doing today? I see that you've come to to watch me. Would you please sit over there, that little bit farther? Thank you. Okay. I'm going to continue now. Mark: Set out a chair for you here. You can wait over there, you'll be comfortable. And that sounds like just a bunch of play acting and it is just a bunch of play acting, but what do we know about play, acting it? When we suspend our disbelief, when we go to the theater, for example, or we go to the movies. We know that we're just sitting there in a chair, watching images on a screen or watching performances take place on a stage. But what we are doing is we are voluntarily relinquishing that awareness so that we can go into the world of the story. And humans are storytelling creatures, and we can tell ourselves stories that empower us. And one of the things that we can do is say, okay, I'm going into do this ritual now. And critic you sit over there in that chair. And. I'll be back to get you in a little while, but right now I am, I'm going to be doing this thing. And that doesn't necessarily mean that every last little vestige of that critic voice is going to go away. And you won't have any of that nattering in your ear, but it will help. And over time it, it can improve. I know of some people who have had a particular piece of jewelry. That they have put on to as basically sort of a protection amulet against that cynical skeptical voice so that they can be more empowered in the course of doing their ritual work. These and that of course in itself is a piece of ritual work. That's a piece of psychological magic right there. Yucca: Other great imagery. One that I've used that I use for thoughts when they're coming at me, instead of trying to block it is if the thoughts there and I try and block it and I start actually engaging with it, it always feels like it just gets stronger and louder that I imagine. An aikido master and it's like, the thought comes at them and they just pass. They just take the, that, that person's movement towards them. And then they just. Push them by I'm trying to I'm talking with my hands here. I'm trying to show you the movement. But they just flow right by, they just take their energy and throw them to the side and they keep going like down the river. Or another one is ina lot of the old star Trek episodes they'd have where the, somehow the crew members got off phase from each other. And they weren't quite on the same dimension. And so you just walk right through them. We just say, okay, I'm going to change the fit my phase right now. And I'm just out of step. And so the critics going to come at me and talk to me, but they're just going to walk right through me. It's okay. I'm aware of them, but they can't touch me. Right. They're a ghost and I'm solid or something like that. Mark: And we need to talk about self-esteem as a part of this whole complex, because what the critic voice tends to do is it tends to wear down your self-esteem in order to get you to obey it's instructions and having strong self-esteem is core to being able to be ineffective and a happy person. So if you have challenges with self-esteem if you suffer from depression, for example, or if you've been abused and really have questions about your value as a person doing this kind of work and getting out from underneath that critic, voice is really essential work for you. It's so important. And I speak to this from the standpoint of experience Having been very depressed and having very low self-esteem for a big chunk of my life. We are able to be only what we allow ourselves to be. And as long as we're constantly second guessing whether we have value or whether our ideas have any merit or whether our emotions are important, it's just going to be very difficult for us to square our shoulders and walk into the future in a happy and productive sort of way. So Particularly if you do have challenges with this and I'm not just saying, you know, you can do this ritual work and then you'll be fine. Therapy is a good thing. I, you know, if you need help and kind of a sounding board for what your experiences have been and what those feelings and thoughts that you have are Avail yourself of that, find it and find the right fit. And Yucca: That's important. Yeah. The right fit. Because the first person you see might not be a fit. That doesn't mean that the whole concept won't work for you, but. that person didn't right. Did you end up with your first crush? There might be a very few of you out there who did, but most of us went through quite a few relationships before we ended up with someone who worked for a while. So I think therapists can be very similar and techniques to what type of therapy you're using and be like that too. Mark: Yes. So you know, we all work with these critical voices to some degree. If you feel really abused and kind of beaten down by yours, then you may need to avail yourself of help in order to bring that more into balance. But there are some things that you can do for yourself. Like we've been talking about that can help you to work with this voice in a way that will empower you and help you to feel better about yourself. There's a. There's a ritual on the atheopagan blog's site called The Jewel. We'll put a link to it in the podcast notes. That is basically an it's a ritual for enhancement of self-esteem and working with a mirror. And it's very powerful. It's simple. But it's incredibly powerful and I strongly recommend it to anyone. You are the protagonist of the story of your life and you need to be you need to be the most important thing in, in that story. So. Oh, there's so many different possible ways of the, that you can approach these things. One of the very common ones in pagan circles is drawing a circle, right? Defining a perimeter boundary that all of the. All of the stuff that wants, that doesn't want this ritual to work stays outside that boundary. And what's inside is only that, which is enhancing cooperative, facilitative, all of those kinds of qualities. And I mean, literally pacing it out with a rod in your hand or a dagger in your hand or your hand up, or, you know, whatever it is to Yucca: Sprinkling the sand or the salt or the water. Mark: Yes. So making a physical action in which you are embodying your intent to make that boundary, so that. Only that which supports the outcome, the desired outcome of the ritual is held within that circle. And then when you break the circle, when you smear the dust or salt, or you walk in a reverse direction to undo what you have done, then you welcome back your critic, voice, and the rest of the world. And you kind of put back on all the layers of complexity that we all are, and then you go forward. There's, it's not an accident that these kinds of activities have become associated with, with occult and and ritual practices because they work with our psychology Yucca: So another direction to jump in for a moment is outside of the moment. Outside of the moment that you're interacting with that voice when you're starting your ritual or at your, in the middle of it is taking some reflection time to just notice what that critic is, what that voice is saying, because sometimes there's patterns there and it might be the, this is silly or you're going to fail or your dog's going to run away and you're going to die under the bridge. Right. And just starting to note that and be aware of what those are, and actually think about, respond to the what ifs and go, okay, this is silly and this is silly. So. So what let's follow the logic of what actually thinking about it critically. If it is silly, then what's the consequence. If I am making it up, what's the consequence. What is actually the worst thing that can happen, but what's the best thing too, and putting some when you're stepped away from the situation, putting some thought into it so that you do have answers when that voice comes up, that you're just making this up. Yes, I am making it up. This is my theater right now. Mark: Yes, where's the harm Yucca: Where's the harm. Mark: Because often. Often the critic voice crosses over from this is dangerous. This is going to embarrass you. This is silly. This is stupid, whatever it is often that critic voice crosses over from those kinds of characterizations to this is bad, right? Just it's just bad. Well, why is it bad? No, it's just bad. You should never do this. And particularly in those cases, it's really important to unpack. Well, what do you mean by bad? What's going to happen to me. And is that really a realistic projection or is it just fear-mongering because the critic voice is very good at fear-mongering and what ends up happening over time in my experience is that you can get to a point where you're crossing over that boundary from the comfortable into the sort of edgy by trying something new or entering a difficult conversation or, you know, someplace where you feel emotionally exposed and the critic voice goes off. And I'm now able most of the time to simply say, thank you. I know you're trying to protect me, but I don't really need that help right now. And so I'm going to ask you to be quiet and most of the time it will, which is a great state to be in, honestly, because I mean, I've been beaten up pretty bad by my critic voice over time. So it's it's much more comfortable being in this situation now. Yucca: It sounds like you're describing switching the role at the beginning, you described the critic voice as being a parental voice, at least coming from that. And the way that you just spoke to, it sounds a lot like a parent acknowledging the child, who's having a tantrum and acknowledging what they're talking about and saying, okay, I've heard that. I hear that you want the ice cream. If we're going to, we're not talking about ice cream right now, we'll come back to that discussion later. Right. It seems like that is the same Mark: it is. type Yucca: of pattern there. Mark: The challenge is that when this voice first arises, you're a child. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: so it speaks as an authority figure and automatically becomes a parental kind of a voice, but it doesn't ever acknowledge that you've become an adult. And so you have to assert your own adulthood. You have to say yes. Okay. I realized for many years you tried to protect me from being humiliated and being hurt and being in danger. And that's all great. I'm an adult. Now I'm able to make these decisions for myself and I appreciate your input, but I'm going in a different direction this time. the critic voice honestly has no response to that. All it can do is turn up the volume more on what it's already been saying but . And that. Very quickly becomes background noise. You don't, you just don't listen to it. So what are some other ritual ways that we can work with this voice to to gain permission, to suspend our disbelief so that our ritual practices are fully in the moment and fully present and not distracted by these. Naysayers in the backs of our heads. Yucca: Well, we've mentioned a few so far, the placing or wearing some sort of piece of jewelry that represents protection from it, giving it an actual place like a chair, literally take a chair, put it on the other side of the room and your voice can wait there. And when you're done, you can come in. We talked about doing a circle. So there's been a couple of themes so far places where it can wait. Outside or be kept away. Are there other themes? I mean, maybe we could give it something to do in the meantime while we're doing our other work. I mean there's Mark: That's an interesting idea. I hadn't thought of that before. What would that look like? I mean, it's a guardian figure, right? So, I mean, you can just say, you know, I'm going to have you wait by the door while I'm doing my ritual here, just to make sure that, you know, everything is safe and you know, that I'm protected because you're good at that. Yucca: you could become one of those stone lions that wait the door and you're going to protect me and great. So you're doing your job, which is to protect me and I get to do my job. Yeah, Mark: I like that. Yucca: what's a good one. Yeah. Mark: like it. Yeah. And I think that you'll hear as we as we kind of brainstorm these ideas the inherent creativity and playfulness of the ritual space it's really a delightful place to be in even when you're working with very solemn kinds of themes. There's something that is just. That is so awakening to a childlike sense of wonder when you're in that warm, glowing present limbic system kind of experience rather than a thinky talkie kind of way of being, but more of an embodied integrated mammalian kind of way of being We did a, we did an episode about rituals about a year ago. I think it was our third episode or Yucca: It was pretty early on. Yeah. second Mark: episode, something like that. Maybe we'll come back to that at some point and kind of talk more about the specifics of all the different ways that we can do ritual behavior and ways that it can help and transform us. Yucca: And examples. I always love hearing examples of the other things that people have come up with. Mark: yeah. I mean, funny things, right. I have an office at work and I have put maybe five grains of salt in each corner. You know not enough so that they could ever be noticed by anyone, but just I've put the salt in the corner and it just makes it more of a place of power for me. Because I did that deliberately to make it, so, so, you know, I feel like when I'm going to have a really important meeting, of course this was before COVID, but when I'm going to have a really important meeting I tend to want to have it in my office rather than somewhere else, because I feel really solidly in my power in that room. So, you know these are things that we can do, not only in the context of our sort of private living at home, but that can extend out into the world and into our engagement with the world as a whole. So. I don't really have a lot more to say about this. I mean, I think we could come up with many examples of different ways to approach this, but the thing that I really hope our listeners will be left with is that this is really possible. If you have a mean critic voice, and one that has taken up a lot of space in your psychology, The things that we've been talking about today can help. They really can help and they can, and believe me, when you start to implement them, the critic voice will go berserk. So you, I mean, you will be hearing . Don't do that. Don't do that. This is stupid. This is silly. You're being an idiot. You're Yucca: How could you think that would even work in the first place? That's ridiculous. Mark: right, right. Yeah. So be aware that the critic it's very good at defending itself and it will do what it can to defend itself. But if you pursue the kinds of techniques and practices that we've talked about here, you can come into a better relationship with that part of your psychology and it's very powerful to get there because then it's so much easier to move into the new, it's just much easier to go into the ritual state or flow as psychologists call it. The, it really is a gatekeeper in many ways and being able to get past it, having a password. So another thing you could do, you know, you could see or pass card, something like that here, you know here's my ID. I'm going past now. Yucca: Yeah, a key. r Mark: Or a key I mean, keys are magical. People use keys in all kinds of ritual things, right? Because they, they allow us entry to what otherwise has been previously interdicted from us. So yes, I could easily see putting, hanging a key on a chain around your neck. As a way of going past the guardian and into this into this ritual sacred space. So many different ideas and I really encourage people to be creative around it. Yucca: And learning to do this, it opens the doors up so that you can do more with your ritual, but it in itself is wonderful practice and skill building so that you can then take the skills that you learned while working with your critic and to work with another part of yourself. Mark: Yes. And bear in mind, this is not, I mean, we've been talking a lot about how this has a bearing on people's ritual practices, because those tend to set off the the critic, voice in people who are generally skeptical and kind of rationally based to begin with, but I've had experiences, well, social anxiety. And also what about those hard conversations? You know when you've hurt someone's feelings when you've done something that someone really disapproves of and you need to have a conversation with them about it, if you allow the critic to rule the moment then all you're going to do is feel lots of shame and self self criticism and self-injury, and that doesn't really help you grow very much. It's a lot better to suspend that. And listen. Yucca: Sometimes it can be directed past just you and an attempt to defend you the critic can turn on whoever you're speaking with and direct that anger towards them as a PR as a way of protecting you. Mark: For sure. The I think we've all had the experience of being in a fight with someone. Yeah. And if you get defensive enough, you kind of go a little crazy, you know, you can start yelling, you can, you know, you can feel like being violent. And all of that is that guardian complex. That's trying to protect you. But it's gone off the rails. So being able to listen to the hard news, breve not succumb to a lot of internal shame dialogues, but instead to just simply say, you know, I'm really sorry I hurt your feelings. I didn't realize that I had done that. Or. You know, I just wasn't in my best self that day. And I'm sorry. And I resolved to do better is just a much healthier. And it's not only that it's a healthier way to interact with other people. It's that it's literally good for your self-esteem instead of bad for your self esteem, you can walk away from a conversation like that feeling. Hey. I'm an adult look at me adulting. I just did a whole bunch of emotional adulting. That was really great. Instead of listening to this critic voice and saying, you're a garbage look, you hurt this person. And so, Yucca: Yeah. You know, something that's come up for me as we've been talking, just listening is another possibility of exploring. We've been using two words for the critic. We've been calling it, the critic and the guardian. Mark: okay. Yucca: And maybe a ritual process in transforming the critic itself into a guardian in a more appropriate adult way going okay. You it's time for you critic to grow up too. You're not my parent anymore. You're my partner in protecting us and, you know, see it transform from the, from the angry school teacher, who's waving their finger at you to the magnificent sphinx or griffon or whatever your imagery around that might be. That is another direction ago. Right? Mark: Yes, absolutely. So I'd be really interested to hear what our listeners have to say about their experiences with doing some of this kind of work. So if you have those experiences and you can send us some feedback at thewonderpodcastqs@gmail.com. So the wonder podcast, all one word Q s@gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you and if you have other questions or suggestions or things we might've missed, we welcome all of that. It's really great to hear from our listeners. Always. Yucca: Yes. Thank you everyone. Mark: Thanks so much. We'll see you next week.

It's no secret that society has seen an uptick in divorces since the start of the pandemic, but there have also been some silver linings in this unlikely space. Katie Mazurek is a Bozeman, Montana-based attorney with Element Law Group. Focusing on family law, Katie brings a different approach to the way she guides clients through the divorce process. In fact, she recently co-authored a book called, Divorce Better Together, with a former client who helped shape a more collaborative, team approach that is now leveraging technology like Zoom to facilitate her work. Mark was able to sit down with Katie to talk about her approach, her book and how her practice has evolved to help clients discover a healthier way through this often messy process.   Transcript:  MARK BASSINGTHWAIGHTE: Hello, I'm Mark Bassingthwaighte, the Risk Manager with Alps. Welcome to Alps In Brief, the podcast that comes to you from the historic Florence Building in beautiful downtown Missoula, Montana. And I'm excited about today's podcast. I have someone that some other folks at Alps had the pleasure of meeting in person and was so impressed. They said, "Mark, we've got to reach out and have some discussions here for the podcast." And I absolutely agreed. Today I have with me, Katie Mazurek, and I believe Katie you're practicing in Bozeman. Is that correct? KATIE MAZUREK:  Yes. I practice in Bozeman and we have offices in Helena as well. MARK: Okay. Very good. When I first sort of reached out and looked a little bit about what you do and who you are, I was struck by the name of your law firm. Well, actually, before we get to that, let's take just a few moments, and can you share a little bit about yourself to our listeners? What do you feel is important that they know about you? KATIE: Well, thank you so much for having me today. I'm really excited to be able to talk with you. I think one of the things that's really important for people to understand about me is that I am a person who really understands pain. I've been through some significant things, including my parents divorced when I was 15, a cancer diagnosis when I was 33, when I had two kids, and right, actually when I started Element. KATIE: And so my whole kind of purpose in life is to help people through their suffering. And so that's probably what I'd want people to understand the most, because I know that interfacing with a lawyer can be really scary and really overwhelming and really foreign. And I would hope that if people can see me as just another human who understands what they're going through, that that makes them feel a lot more comfortable and normalizes their pain a little bit. MARK: And may me ask you, I know that at least the bulk of what you do, if I'm understanding correctly is divorce work, but are there other practice areas? Or are you exclusively in the divorce space? KATIE: We're primarily in the family law space. So divorce, custody parenting. We obviously help, if our clients come to us and they're comfortable with us and they want us to help with the business or something like that, some minor estate planning, we do those things as well. MARK: Okay. Very good. And again, I was struck about the name of your group, Element Law Group. I suspect there's a story here. I'd love to hear it. KATIE: So Element came about, when I created the firm, I wanted our clients to have a very different experience than the typical. And what felt at the time was pretty antiquated law centric, law firm experience. I wanted this to be really based on the family and the individual. And so that the term element came from the idea that we're all made of the same basic things. On an elemental level, who are we? Well we're people who need love and care and support and guidance. And so the name Element came out and I think it identifies or signifies, who we are pretty well. MARK: I love that. That really speaks to me too. That is just very cool. I think that's awesome. KATIE: Thank you. MARK: Can we take a moment, in my... We are living in really unusual times, there's discussions in terms of COVID and all of this happening, geopolitically all over the world here. And in other words, it's not just COVID, but these 2020 is a crazy time. And there are some descriptions of looking at this as sort of, we're entering a new normal, and I'm not one that buys into that. I think what we're going through is a period of rapid change, dramatic change, but change is always present. But we are in a crazy time where change is just, wow. When I think about the divorce space, the family law space, are you finding that these times... Is that changing? Are the needs of your clients... How would you describe what's happening from your perspective? KATIE: Sadly, there's been a big uptake in our business, and we've all talked a lot about what the causes and the factors would be that have caused this real surge. And to the best of our guessing, we think it's this stress and the uncertainty and the fear. And it's just kind of in a weak relationship, it's created the pressure point that's broken the system. But interestingly, it's also, I think, a bigger conversation about what's happened to the practice of law with this COVID and having to adapt. And I think it's, in some ways can be looked at as a really exciting time because it's forcing the law and practitioners to come into the modern era as far as how we're practicing and how we're interfacing with each other. And that's something that Element has been pushing for a long time is to say, "Look, there's all these technological pieces that can make our lives easier and should make our lives easier." And I'm kind of excited to see that happening on the larger scale. MARK: I know you have written a book, I believe it's called, Divorce Better Together, and you coauthored this, is this with your partner? KATIE: This is with a former client of mine. MARK: Oh, really? KATIE: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Rob Irizarry. MARK: Wow. How did this come about? KATIE: Well, Rob started as a client in the collaborative process and for people who are the uninitiated, the collaborative process is a team approach to a divorce. We use two lawyers, a neutral mental health person and a neutral financial person. And that creates a professional team that helps a married couple divorce in a more amicable, fully supported way. KATIE: So Rob was my client in a collaborative setting. And unfortunately he was actually... He says he was my first failure. He and his wife fell out of the collaborative process pretty early on. And so he was pushed into the litigation path and his experience there and mirrors my experience with the compare, contrast the litigation world with the collaborative world. And he felt very passionately about the importance of collaborative and the value of collaborative. And he and I struck up a friendship and have been very close friends ever since, and he wants to change the world like I do. And so we coauthored this book. MARK: Is the book somewhat of a description of how you practice in your space? Is it a guide book of where you'd like to see the law go? Can you fill me in a little bit more about? KATIE: Sure. It's a very short, easy read and the intent is just to get collaborative in the minds of people who are starting to contemplate which divorce process is right for them. So it really is the personal stories. Rob's personal story of being in the collaborative process and then litigation and my personal story of watching my parents really suffer through a nasty litigated divorce and what that did to my family. And then now as a practitioner practicing collaborative. So it does explain the process. It's definitely informational, but it's also meant to connect with the reader on that kind of emotional journey and experience of divorce. MARK: I liked what you were talking about in terms of looking at COVID and seeing this in so many ways as an opportunity, are you finding, first courts are closed, is this an opportunity to really accelerate the collaborative process? Are you able to do more of this? Can we sort of flesh out what's happening? KATIE: Oh, sure. I think the collaborative process is always going to... It's so flexible and it can adapt to whatever situation that we need. And what we have found is really interesting is that the collaborative sessions that are held through Zoom or whatever video conferencing platform, they're really great. Because there's the side channels and things that the practitioners can type to each other privately, I can type to my client privately. And so I wouldn't say that necessarily in terms of volume or anything, we still have the access that we need on the litigation front to the courts, but the whole drive of collaborative is to put the divorce process in the family's hands. And certainly these times are a call to action for families to really embrace that opportunity where it exists. MARK: Yeah. Yeah. Do you find... I can appreciate, and I really need to go pick up your book and by the way, I believe it's available... Just to, if others are interested on Amazon? Or it's not? KATIE: Amazon. Mm-hmm (affirmative). MARK: Yes. And I just want to be clear for everybody Divorce Better Together. And it's by Katie Mazurek. And I'm sorry, the name of your coauthor again? KATIE: Rob Irizarry. MARK: Rob Irizarry. So folks, just to let you know it's out there. Do you find... I'll go back and say, my wife and I we're both second marriages. So we've been through the process. My wife's divorce was a litigated divorce that went all the way to the State Supreme Court. And it was just one of these crazy [crosstalk 00:00:11:17], horrible kinds of things. Mine was more of a... We didn't use the collaborative process, but we did sit down between the two of us and really work through most of the issues. MARK: And honestly just had one lawyer between the two of us, be mostly a scrivener, we stayed in the ethical bounds, to put it that way, say the lawyer that assisted us. And I think we divorced well. I would say post-divorce, there were some issues that I think a collaborative process might've helped us avoid, but I share all that because what I'm curious about is, is part of what you're trying to accomplish with the book... Are you writing to lawyers or you're writing to people? You see where I'm going? Is the challenge here to create awareness and appreciation of the collaborative process to the clients? Are we trying to sell this process, you see? KATIE: We're trying to educate people, families really. So parents and married couples that this process is available and that this process is available at any point in your journey. And so, like in your case, if there were... Did you have children? MARK: Yes. Mm-hmm (affirmative). KATIE: Okay. [crosstalk 00:12:58]. And maybe I don't mean to pry. MARK: No, it's fine. KATIE: So it could be, we see people who have gone through the litigated process and then they have these children whose needs inevitably change. And the dynamic inevitably changes. And we have new parties coming on as significant others and things like that. And so they can adopt the collaborative process after a divorce and just get the support they need around some of these bigger decisions or even smaller decisions. But really what it comes down to, and I think most relationships come down to this, is communication. And so you have a team that can help facilitate and model healthy communication. And then also give you good information to make better decisions. MARK: Do you find most people when they have an opportunity to learn a bit about this process and what you were doing, are they pretty receptive? Are you pretty successful moving people in this direction? Are you finding some resistance to it? Does it work better for some and not others? KATIE: So the collaborative process was started in Minnesota about 28, 29 years ago. In 2013, two practitioners, myself included, went to Arizona to get trained in this. And since then, we've cultivated the collaborative community here in Montana. And now there's collaborative practitioners all over the state. And what I've noticed since bringing it here way back in 2013 is that collaborative is the answer that clients were already for, but didn't know existed. KATIE: And to further answer your question, absolutely, there are people that are better suited for collaborative cases than others. But I don't want to kind of perpetuate a misconception, which is that couples who are high conflict or when there's difficult issues in a case that they're not appropriate for collaborative somehow, that's been proven false repeatedly. Really what it comes down to in my experience is the strength and experience level of the team that is helping the family get through this. MARK: So it seems what I'm hearing is, part of what's going on here and part of your interest initially, it's the collaborative process is going to be less painful, more positive, better outcomes. So you started, you want to try to help people through pain. And a divorce process is certainly a painful process. I've never seen a situation that was just roses all the way through. Do you find as a practitioner using this process, comparing yourself to the traditional divorce lawyer that does a lot of litigation, is there a wellness component to this is? Would you encourage other lawyers... Because to me, I like how you've described some of this and looking even now in the midst of just this global pandemic, looking at an opportunity, and I think that's such an incredible way to move forward through any change. Always looking... We can't change what has happened. All we can do is define ourselves by how we respond to it. But with courts being closed, is there a message here? Would you have a message to other practitioners and say, "Look, this can create less pain for you as a practitioner too. And your wellness can help others." I'm I understanding this correctly? KATIE: Well, I think so. I struggled a lot when I started with litigating family law cases, because what's a win in a family law case. Is it a dollar award? Is it more time with the child? It's really kind of a, almost a [inaudible 00:17:46] concept to think about it, when you're talking about human life. And so I really struggled with like, "What am I doing here? What value am I bringing? What is the long-term outcome for these families? When I've just put on this testimony, that's just biting and terrible towards another party. This is what we have to do or I feel what you have to do." KATIE: And so the collaborative practice is the hardest work I've ever done, but it is far and away, the best I've ever felt about something that I'm putting forward in the world. When you go to these conferences, you see mostly practitioners in their 50s and 60s. And the reason for that is they just got to a point where they couldn't do the litigation, the burden of litigation, the toxicity of litigation. And so they had to do something different. And I want to be clear. It's very hard work. It's very hard work. Because at least with litigation, you can say, "Hey, that's not what the court's going to consider. We're not going to talk about that. I'm sorry that happened to you." And kind of have the appropriate amount of empathy, but move the case forward because you're working within that strict legal lens. MARK: Exactly. KATIE: And then the collaborative process it's, the law is just a framework and what the family builds within that is completely up to them. And so I kind of, the analogy I use is, look, the law, the framework is going to say, "You need to build a car. And that car has to have four wheels, an engine and steering wheel." And whether you build a porch or a dump truck, that's up to you. And so that kind of freedom for us practitioners who are used to being in these really tight roles that can be really uncomfortable for us. And that's why we have a team. MARK: And so what drives the... You say this is the hardest you've ever worked. It's clear just, the audience is just listening, but we're viewing each other here and you're very passionate about this. It seems to be very fulfilling to you, very important, but what is the challenge here? Why is this so hard? Is it trying to keep people invested in the process? Is it the emotions of all that's going on? Is it crazy tangential issues that the traditional path isn't necessarily going to deal with? Why is this such a challenge? And challenge have to be a bad thing, this is what I'm trying to get across to our listeners here. But why is this so hard? KATIE: Well, you're taking two people who are in conflict and you're asking them to listen to each other, to meaningfully listen to each other and to communicate better. And that is exceptionally hard. People come into the divorce process with a feeling of scarcity, of, "Oh my goodness, I'm losing, I'm changing." We took one whole, and we're making it into two, which is never as much as half. If that makes sense. MARK: Yes. It does. It does. KATIE: Right? So because you lose the economy of efficiency and going into two households and things like that. So a real scarcity mindset, and it's very hard to get positive work out of people who are rotating around the access of fear and not enough and uncertainty and, "What's going to happen to me?" And so in the collaborative space, we really meet them in that scarcity feeling, whereas in a litigation setting, I can just say, "Ah, I know that that thing happened to you, and I'm so sorry, but that's not on the view or the horizon for the court." MARK: Right. Right. KATIE: And so we make space for all of that in the collaborative model, and that's what's kind of messy and hard. And when you're trying to help people move forward through that, it's a lot. MARK: So how do you stay sane? KATIE: Right. That's such a good question. Well, we lean on the mental health professional quite a bit, and who helps us understand like, okay, this is in your box and this isn't. Part of the really hard thing about collaborative is that I feel like I'm invested in the family and in a much different way than I am in litigation, just by virtue of the differences of the process. And so I guess I'm still working on that, with every single case it's different and I'm still figuring it out. But it's always been worth the effort, the outcomes are really incredible. MARK: Yeah. Yeah. I want to be very respectful of your time here and appreciate the chat we've had. I don't mean to put you on the spot and I think you're up for this. We have, obviously, the listening base here are all legal professionals. I'd ask for two comments maybe, in terms of closing comments. One would be, what would you have to say to encourage lawyers that are more focused on the traditional litigated model? What would you say to them, say, be open to this? Why should they move in this direction, at least at times? And then the other piece, or the second half of this would be, there are lots of lawyers, because not all clients are to want to do this. So still need to stay in the litigated space. Are there learnings or takeaways from your experience in the collaborative space that might be beneficial to help if you jump back into the litigated space. And any other closing comments you'd have, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on those two sides. KATIE: The most important lesson that I've learned about working alongside the traditional litigated attorneys is to have a relationship and try to have an understanding between the two very different practices. So my first part of that would be an invitation that, if you're a litigator and you're listening to this and you're thinking, "Oh, that is never something I would do." That's fine. The world absolutely needs really strong litigators who are responsible- MARK: Absolutely. KATIE: ... in handling families. But also let's go to coffee and let's talk about what I do so that we can compliment one another. But for the practitioners who are thinking about, who see litigation, the issues with litigation, and maybe have some heartache of their own about how they're practicing, the collaborative doors is always open and you can get trained relatively inexpensively and join a practice group and try it out. And maybe it's for you, maybe it's not, but it's still a great way. You're going to get some [inaudible 00:26:06]. You're going to get some really great information. KATIE: It's going to challenge your worldview, which kind of goes to your second point, which is we address these family law cases in a very lawyer centric, law centric way. And what I've really learned is one, active listening. I've learned to ask more questions and dive deeper into the answers. And I am shocked at how much more I've learned and repeatedly have used that skill in my litigation practice, because the last thing any of us wants is to get up in front of a judge and be in the middle of a hearing or a trial and get caught flat footed. And when we make that investment and time and energy into our clients, I think it yields a better outcome and a better experience for them overall. KATIE: So I would say that that's kind of the compliment between the two worlds and I don't see them as completely divergent and separate and apart, I see them as working together and kind of the left hand and the right hand. MARK: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And your comment of active listening really strikes a chord with me. I think at times it's too easy, regardless of what sandbox we're in, as lawyers in terms of practice. Just to, this is how it's always been done. We think we know what's right. We think we understand what people want. There's a lot of assumptions. When I was practicing, there was involved in situation where I really thought it was all about the money. We had to get the most amount of money. And when I finally learned it had nothing to do with the money at all, because I wasn't listening, the matter resolved very, very quickly, and it was a great outcome for everybody involved. So I simply want to underscore that and thank you for saying it that, let's put aside at times some of our assumptions and really take the time to understand and listen, what is the need of the client? And we are here, we are in someone else's employ. KATIE: Right. At service. MARK: Exactly, and thank you for that. That's sums it up perfectly. And we are in service of others. And we can't forget that. We need to be an advocate at times. And sometimes in the litigation space, very, very strong advocates. There are situations where people need that because they can't advocate for themselves. But that doesn't mean that we get a pass on just really trying to understand who is this person, how do I best serve them? So I've just tried to summarize some things that I'm taking away from this conversation. KATIE: Sure. [crosstalk 00:00:29:01]. MARK: And I think it's, I'm thrilled to see that you have taken such a role. And a lead position here in Montana to try to really expand and bring this new, or a slightly different, less adversarial model into Montana. Thank you for very much. I just think that you're doing some wonderful, wonderful work. Do you have any final closing thought that you'd like to share? KATIE: Oh my goodness. Well obviously thank you so much for having me. If there are attorneys or other professionals, even clients, potential clients listening to this. If you have questions or you want to have a conversation about this, my contact information is easy to define, that's elementlaw group.com. MARK: Yeah. Yeah. elementlawgroup, one word, elementlawgroup.com. So there you go. And I invite folks to go out and take a look at the website and go take a look at the book. Well, again, Katie, thank you very much. KATIE: Thank you. MARK: For those of you listening, I hope you found something of value today, and it's always a pleasure to take a little time and visit. So if there's anything else you'd like in terms of topics, questions, concerns, you do not need to be an Alps insurer to reach out to me, feel free at any time. My email is mbass@alpsinsurance.com. mbass@alpsinsurance.com. Happy to help in anything at any time. If there's ever anything I can do for you. So thanks for listening again, folks. You all have a great day. Stay safe. Stay well. Stay connected. Bye-bye.    

As some freedom returns to society following COVID-19, don’t miss out on potential opportunities to implement property management growth strategies. Today’s guests are Mark and Anne Lackey from HireSmart Virtual Assistants (VAs). Mark and Anne are broker-owners that manage almost 200 doors in Atlanta. You’ll Learn... [03:47] Trends: Property management pivots and changes during economic downturns. [07:10] Hire Virtually: Save money, get better employees, and increase productivity. [08:22] Wake Up: Don’t resist remote work; realize office space may be unnecessary. [11:14] DIY vs. Professionally Managed: Ramp up sales/funnels to serve customers. [15:26] Problems are always opportunities to grow business by offering solutions. [21:11] Customer Service: Don’t disconnect. Focus/follow up for retention/satisfaction. [27:02] Professionalism: Set expectations. Don’t badmouth landlords via vendors. [28:29] BDM: Do you need a business development manager? [31:33] Time, Energy, and Effort: Resources required to rent properties to tenants. {32:28] Referrals grow businesses. No referrals represents customer care problem. [35:29] Gamechanger: Save time and money to get things done or do more yourself?. [38:30] Wrong Person, Role, Tool, Time, and Money: Hire based on owner’s needs. [40:57] Off-the-Shelf vs. Customization: How to hire and build teams takes time. [46:50] Remote Challenges: Communication, operations, and management problems. [48:22] Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Get work done based on expectations. [50:15] Think, Invest, HireSmart: Know avatar to grow property management business. Tweetables Opportunities are available to make sales and buy, manage, and invest in more properties. You don’t have to have your employees in an office. You don’t even have to have an office anymore. Property managers are immune to guilt and the heroes of the rental industry. Referrals grow businesses. No referrals represent customer care problems. Resources HireSmart Virtual Assistants (VAs) DGS 69: HireSmart Virtual Assistants with Anne Lackey NARPM Lehman Brothers Airbnb DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you’re crazy for doing it, you think they’re crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change the perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I’m your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let’s get into the show. My guests today are Mark and Anne Lackey from HireSmart. Welcome you two. Anne: Hey, good to see you. It's been a while. Mark: Hey, it's good to see you. Jason: It's good to have you back. I noticed you're displaying that beautiful logo in the background. Mark: Isn't that wonderful? Anne: Yes, that is of course a DoorGrow special. They helped us with that on our website. Mark: The logo, the renaming, all of that was a DoorGrow impression that was right for us and is great for our clients. Jason: Yeah, I like it. Cool. We're going to be talking about property management growth strategies after COVID-19. This Coronavirus is just starting to clean itself up. I just rode a road trip from Pennsylvania to Austin over the course of multiple days. People were not wearing masks anymore. We were eating at restaurants. It was awesome. It was like we are back to having freedom again. Most places are open here in Austin. I went to the hardware store yesterday, though. Everyone was wearing masks and I felt like I was in trouble. I thought we were over this already, but apparently not at Home Depot. Anne: Some places are, some places aren’t. Jason: I think the national chains and the national stores have to accommodate the lowest common denominator nationally. They got rules in place for everything. What are we chatting about today? Anne: First of all, I want to make sure everybody understands we are broker-owners ourselves. We manage doors in Atlanta. Mike: Nearly 200 doors in Atlanta since 2005 for other people and for ourselves, since 2001. Anne: We've been talking a lot to our friends who are in the property management business. We are, of course, NARPM members, affiliates, and affinity partners with them. We hear a lot around the nation of different things. Just like your trip from Pennsylvania. You saw different parts of the country where things were more open than others, so we want to talk about a couple of different things as we see them. For property managers that are thinking what's the next thing. I want to back up just a little bit and talk a little bit about historical trends and changes. Mark, why don't you get us started on that? Mark: This will show my age. That's one thing if I've mentioned this. In the 70s, we had lines to get gas. Not everybody out there remembers that, but there was an oil shortage. There was a gas shortage and at that point, everybody said we're going to run out of oil in a couple of years. It was a crisis, so out of that came what? We got into solar energy, more on to hydroelectric. Things pivoted, things changed. In the 80s, the savings and loans went down. Things pivoted on how we got mortgages. The dot-com buzz, the 90s, the tech blow up. All those things and what most everybody remembers is the meltdown that we had in the economy and mortgage market that occurred just 10–12 years ago. At that point, it required pivoting and Anne and I are really good at our business about looking to see what the trends are going to be. What's going to change and how to pivot. That's what we want to talk about today. It's not the end of the world like everybody said, March 15th or whatever date it was when everybody went to hibernation. It's like, it's the end of the world. Anne: Nobody's going to pay their rent. Mark: We thought that 12 years ago when Lehman Brothers shut their doors. It all seems like it's the end of the world, but it's not. It's an opportunity. It's learning to pivot. Look at where the puck is going. Anne: We wanted to talk about some of the trends that we see and the opportunities that property managers should be looking at in their business. You obviously don't hop on every trend and everything that comes along, but it is always good to put it in perspective. Mark, let's talk about some of the trends that we've seen in real estate in general. We're going to talk about how you can take advantage of that. Mark: In the last few months, we had property managers and friends that were investors that had Airbnb. They were making 5–10 times the amount of rent I was off of a property. Suddenly, they made nothing because all the bookings shut down. They’re looking. A lot of them said hey, let's sell. Let's go long term. A lot of things changed there. Through them and through those changes of people not having as much disposable income at this point because there's a slow down in jobs, second homes aren’t popular right now. Two, with all the laws that are coming about with the changes to protect the renters that are coming out of state legislators and the national, there's a lot of change and as property managers, we keep apprise to that. But these DIY (do-it-yourself) landlords don't. So, we're going to talk about some opportunities to make sales, to get some additional properties, to manage some opportunities for investing, too, if you're into that area. Jason: When COVID hit and it was March, March was brutal for us at DoorGrow. Sales stopped. Every property manager just tightens their purse strings, freaking out, there's this cash crunch. We experienced a serious cash crunch so we had to get lean. I think a lot of businesses had to get lean and in the long run, that is a really healthy thing for business. Everyone was trimming the fat and [...] was effective. Anne: We saw that in HireSmart because now everybody is a virtual employee. This is a perfect time to write stuff. People that have been hesitant to hire virtually have been in our doors now because they are like, wow, we can save some money. We can have better employees. We can have different strategies and approaches. Now, it was no longer important because it wasn't allowed to have people come into the office. Actually for us on HireSmart, it actually expanded our business. Mark: There was resistance before from property managers that wanted to walk down the hall and lean over Joe or Joan's shoulder and see what they’re doing, see what they're working on—literally, not figuratively—to be there, to have that conversation face-to-face. They were very hesitant about working and they didn't have the resources to figure out how to work remotely. With what’s come out of COVID-19 has become the realization that you don't have to have your employees at an office. You don't even have an office anymore. Jason: I've known this for well over a decade. Interesting to see that mass transition of people realizing they can use tools like Zoom and move away from having somebody right there in their office. I did some polls online asking people during this. I asked how many people would renew their business lease at the end of the term and a lot of them said they're going to, at the very least, downsize, maybe to a smaller office base, or they may even not renew. I also did some polling on what people have noticed as a result of people working from home. Some of my clients were saying that they've noticed that they were surprised that their team members became more productive. They're getting more done. I guess because there are fewer interruptions they were saying. There are fewer distractions. Maybe they're more comfortable. But some of my team members are doing better. I have heard some people say I hate it. My kids are there all the time. I'm going crazy. But in general, I think the world has to wake up and realize when you have to get work done, you can try this. Then they tried this and they're like, hey, this works. Why are we spending so much money on this brick and mortar location that is outrageously expensive to have all these people in it when we can eliminate that crazy expense and it's unnecessary. Mike: Yeah. It was shocking, like you, we immediately drew into our shell in March, and let's save. We don't know what's going to happen. People are going to let people go. But in April and May, we had the most requests for information about our services. The most orders we've had in five years. Jason: I'll bet. Anne: Without any [...]. That's the funny part for us [...] Mike: We’re not traveling. Anne: It's been interesting and we do a lot of community teaching and speaking even online. We always have to help people understand what opportunities are there. A lot of things that we're promoting or that we're seeing right now, specifically in property management, is now’s a great time to ramp up your sales and funnels. Again, because the DIY's are so lost. We already know that there are so many DIY landlords compared to professionally managed. Mike: Eighty percent of the US are do-it-yourself landlords. That's a lot of opportunity. Anne: That's a lot of opportunity. I know you talk a lot about that, but how do you reach them? How do you engage with them? How do you attract them? Of course, they outgrow a platform, obviously, as a key component to that, which is wonderful, but you have to have the human-to-human or human automation to back it up. I think where we're coming to as a society is if you don't have a physical office where people can walk in anymore because you're closing your doors. We've had a closed-door policy for 19 years. I think people are very surprised that we've never let anybody in our office ever. Mike: We have a small office of three. Anne: We've never let anybody in our office even when we had seven people in our office, we didn't have people in our office because it's a distraction, that interruption. What happens is you need to serve your customers. You need to be talking to them. You need to be serving them. Now, the residents and owners don't just want to be served 9–5. We're seeing that they want answers seven o'clock at night, eight o'clock at night when they're online. When they have questions they would like to have some interactions with someone from your office. How do you do that cost-effectively? Of course, we have the solution. A full-time dedicated virtual employee that works as the second shift or the split shift is there to take care of chat. They're there to answer the questions and help people guide them on applications. Mike: Then guide the people that are coming in to bring you properties to manage. Anne: Right, and to talk to owners about how I work with you. Because here's what's going on in the marketplace. Again, in a lot of places, you do have people that aren't able to pay their rent right now because they have lost their jobs. Do you have owners that are concerned about what I do? How do I do this? We've had an increase in our inquiries for property management recently as well because they just don't know the rules. They don't know the laws. Mike: It's not the time to withdraw. We're all sheltered in our business in place, too, and when we withdrew that opportunity to find new business went away. The companies, the far-sighted future thunking property managers, business owners, and the brokers that are now looking at making some investments. Not just sitting on their dollars, but actually making some investments in the right people, the right tools, business development people to help grow the business, doing outreaches. One thing we were talking about just the other day was—we haven't done this yet—we should have a seminar that we invite all the DIY landlords to share with them all the fears of all the new laws that have come out. [...]. We have that seminar and some of them are going to come out and say, okay, now I can do things differently because I have information on what I can and can't do. A lot of them are going to come out and say I just can't do this anymore. I'm tired of doing it. I'm going to hire—in case—us because we've been in that seminar. Making those types of investments, and granted that those seminars aren't always live, they're maybe at this point virtual but reaching out to those. Those are the ways now to grow your business for tomorrow because over the next six months until we get to the end of this year, there's opportunity abound for forward-thinking. Jason: That's what problems do. Problems are always opportunities. Let's talk about the problem. Here are some of the things I noticed. I won't say who it is, but I got a call from one of my business coaches and he has rental properties. He was like, what do you see in the market place right now because I got a small portfolio of properties and only 50% of them are paying rent. I said at least 98% of most of the rent is being collected by my clients. That's what I'm hearing. Also, what I noticed happening is my clients are saying that their owners were calling them and saying if tenants don't want to pay rent this month, we'll let them not pay rent. They're like no, they're going to pay rent. The thing is people felt guilty. They're almost ashamed but feel guilty, but property managers, you guys are over that [...]. You guys are completely over. You've heard all the excuses. You've heard all the stories. Some residents right now, due to the unemployment benefits and stuff that are going around, are making more money, especially the low rent markets. They're making more money than when they were working. But some of them are still trying to use the excuse that they need to not pay rent or whatever. The news kind of made it look like that. It made it look like people trying to collect rent are evil, bad, sick, or wrong. A lot of homeowners are just feeling guilty. Property managers are immune to guilt. Anne: That's because we've heard it all. Jason: We've heard it all. We heard all the stories, the excuses. You know how to help people. You know what programs are available because you guys are on top of this stuff. You guys aren't having trouble collecting the rent. In general, I haven't heard anyone in the single-family residential space or even multi-family having real trouble collecting rent. Rents have gone down just a little bit. You got people that most would have heard it's the same people that we're always troubled paying rent. We just couldn't evict them, but that's coming. Mike: Your coach needs to reach out to a professional manager. You see that, but he doesn't. Seminars, webinars, something. Jason: They don’t see the problem. That's the challenge I've always experienced in DoorGrow. I'm selling a solution to a problem that most people can't see. They can't see the leaks on their website. They can't see the challenges that their branding is hurting word of mouth. I have to educate people to see the problem. The same thing is what you're talking about. If you can create the gap and show the contrast between what challenges and problems they're dealing with and what they could be experiencing, what successes your clients are having, they're going to see this gap and that gap is what creates pain. People want to solve pain. People want a pain killer, not a vitamin. People will pay even more money to get out of pain. They want a solution, but they don't know a lot of them that there's a solution out there. I do think there is a massive opportunity. There's no scarcity in property management. There's no shortage of people that are in pain or have problems or challenges they are dealing with. Not only that, but I think property managers can hold their heads up high because good property managers, I really do believe as I said before, can change the world. There are millions of renters. Even here on my own property, I'm renting (I just moved to Austin), my kids were without a water heater for two weeks. The landlord sent out two different plumbers because he didn't like the feedback that the 13-year-old water heater should be replaced even though the pilot kept going out. I didn't even know my kids were taking cold showers because they got it before me and they can't get on Xbox until they take their showers, so they 're just doing it. All they're thinking about is can I get on the Xbox now? I'm like, yes, go ahead. But then my daughter's like, I haven't taken a shower in four days because the shower's freezing. I didn't know this and the younger ones, I went to them. That doesn't make sense because they've been taking their baths and their showers. I went to my son, Hudson, and I'm like, how's the shower been lately? He's like, cold. I'm like, what? Why didn't you tell me? Mike: It’s virtually a summer, right? Jason: Then I said to my daughter, she likes taking baths, you've been taking baths? She's like, Yeah. How are your baths been? She's like, they're really cold. I'm like, what? But you guys protect families. You guys also protect owners. You guys are like the middle person that makes everything okay and you take care of people. It lowers the pressure and noise. Property managers even do things like increasing the number of pets that families are able to have because you guys recognize that usually, it’s the kids that are causing more damage than the animals. [...] to get more rent because of pets. There are so many benefits to property management that positively impact families, homes, and lives. You guys are really the heroes of the rental industry. Property managers are the heroes of the rental industry. Mike: And unlike your property manager there that evidently has trouble with customer service. Jason: He's not the property manager, technically. He's just a landlord who doesn't want to do anything. Anne: You got a DIYer. Mike: Yeah, a DIYer. Anne: Sounds like a great lead. Mike: But that gets into the consideration of customer service. As property managers, we worried over the years about customer service to our owners but we haven't worried as much about customer service to our tenants. For retention and to continue to have tenants that want to refer people in, raising your level of customer service at this time specifically because I know I ordered something that didn't come and it was then delivered to Valentine, Nebraska instead of here where I am in Georgia, so I sent a response online and I got an auto-reply that says call this number. I call the number and it says we're too busy. We're not answering phones now. Just send an email. Customer service has failed specifically right now. Anne: I'll actually tell you something that we did on our property manager which I think has really impacted our renewals and we are getting increases in rent even now. Mike: On everyone. Anne: Let's just talk about it. Again, people pay for when they feel taken care of. One of the biggest gaps that we saw, this is probably two years ago, in our business was exactly what you're talking about. Tenant isn't taken care of, it's taking too long, the contractor is giving all kinds of excuses as to why they can't get there, tenant's going here, contractors going here. There's this big disconnect. Our virtual employee, Bonnie, is charged literally with every day every work order that comes in, she's calling the vendor and saying vendor, did you get it? Because we want to make sure it didn't get— Mike: Lost. You know how emails are. Anne: That's the first thing. Then the next day, she's calling the resident and saying resident, we assigned your work order to contractor B. Have you heard from him? Well, no. What happened? Jason: That's better than being ghosted and then eventually not having your calls answered, then eventually maybe getting a text or response half a week later. Anne: She says okay, you haven't heard from contractor B. Here's contractor B's information. We have already approved them to go out. Then she calls contractor B and she says contractor B, I heard that you haven't connected. Why haven't you connected? Oh, they haven't returned my call. Okay, I just got off the phone with them. They are available. Call them and they are expecting your call. She closes that loop, that hand-off because we assume contractor B is doing his job and we assume tenants are never wrong, they never change their phone numbers or anything else. Mike: Then the contractor goes out like he did to you and assesses the work. Many times there's not a follow-up, so what does Bonnie do then? Anne: Bonnie, as soon as she gets the date it was supposed to be scheduled from either the tenant or the contractor B, she follows up the next day and says my understanding is that contractor B was supposed to be there yesterday. Did they show up? Mike: Jason, did they take care of the water heater for you. Anne: Are you satisfied with the repair. Mike: And Jason says no. Anne: No, I still have… Now, we have another feedback loop. This is a maintenance process that we never could have done without having a virtual employee do this. It's too time-intensive and we have other work to be done. Mike: Then the flag goes up to tell the owner, owner, you got to provide hot water. You want an ACH or do you want us to loan you the money at an 18% rate? Anne: Yeah, put it on a credit card, however you want to do it. The reality for us is our tenant satisfaction has gone through the roof because we showed that we care, we're not letting it go, and literally, I as the broker get the list of not only what the outstanding work orders but where they are in the process and what she's done to move it forward. If we have a resident that we haven't been able to get in touch with, the contractor hasn't been able to, we have an escalation process. I don't manage, Bonnie manages. Again, total game-changer. Mike: The benefit out of all of that, we don't get pushed back when we're raising the rent. We started with our process in the middle of March. We do it in the middle of every month with notification of our rent increases and property. Most property managers that we know said you're crazy. We're either going to hold it. We'll tell them they don't have to pay an increase. We went out there and we got resistance from one tenant over the last, March, April, May, June. We got four months into our belt of increases and we have one pushback. Anne: Of course when you have rent increases, that increases our profitability, too. The owner makes a little bit more money, we make a little bit more money. It's still very reasonable. One of the things I'll say about rental rates is we don't do it arbitrarily. We do a full competitive market analysis. We make sure it's on the market. We don't raise all the way up to market if it's a significant jump, we'll do it at the average appreciation rate. Mike: We want to stay just below the top of the market. Anne: Correct because we don't want to give them a reason to leave. Mike: But we got happy tenants that don't want to leave. They go oh, I can't rent down the street for what I'm paying here because we always stay right below that. Jason: There's another hidden killer, too, I noticed in the scenario because when these vendors came to my property here and talked to me, they were basically bad-mouthing the landlord. They were like this guy is cheap. I've told them he needs to do this. In your scenario, the vendor is going to feel like they are getting taken care of. They are going to feel like they are on your team and on your side, and they are working with you, whereas these vendors feel more loyalty to me because they know the landlord isn't' doing the right thing. Anne: That goes back to having a contract with our contractor of standards of professionalism. Our vendors actually sign a document that says these are our expectations to be a vendor for us, and one of them is to not bad mouth as part of that. Mike: All these things combined, give us opportunities to shine. We get referrals every week. People come to us and say we hear great things about you as a property manager, and we're forward-thinking. We have opportunities there where we reach out to try to bring in business. Like what we're talking about earlier, a lot of the property managers are just sitting back. They are scared. They are afraid to do anything. That's the wrong thing to do. Anne: A lot of them are looking to bring on a BDM. Remember last year was the year of the BDM. Do you need a business development manager? Okay, maybe you do, maybe you don't. We tend to be our own. Mike: We are our BDMs. Anne: But again, we are high salary people like if you are paying somebody. Our time is very valuable, but we are seeing the smart property managers are supporting that sales effort through follow-up with the virtual employee, a virtual assistant that is literally a full-time doing this grinder follow-ups because we all know in sales—I don't care what industry you're in—you have to reach out seven, eight, ten times. Sometimes, property management specifically, it's pain point-related and some of the pain points only come up once a month. Some of the pain points come up once a year. Some of the pain points only come up periodically, so if you don't have a system to reach out to them, again it can't just be an email anymore. I think people are tired of tech, tech, tech. You need to have tech. You need to have a chatbox on your thing that's manned by a live person, in my opinion, but you also need that human-to-human automation. You need somebody that actually shows that they care a little bit about not only your company but the people involved. Having that sales support, a virtual employee to do that, really allows your BDM to be their most successful self and to do the things that they like to do. People don't realize that. BDMs don't want to do a whole lot of phone calling. They want to be in relationship management. If you can get them in front of the customer more times, if you can keep prospects warm and in the hopper so that when the prospect is ripe and ready, and your BDM can come and close, you are maximizing your ROI for that person. Mark: Yeah. They actually go to our website and ask for some of our tools or some of our information. It auto delivers but then they get a phone call, I want to make sure you got 21 questions or our technical information, and when they get that phone call, they're shocked. Anne: I'll tell you one other thing where people are going to have some issues. We all know about the Zillow. Zillow and they're charging for leads. That’s always been a hot topic. Zillow is rerouting leads. They're rerouting them to their call center in some areas, not to all areas, but into some. You don't have somebody actually calling those leads proactively when you get the email because even if you syndicate them, specifically if you syndicate them, you still get the email that says so and so is interested and they give you the phone number. But if the person proactively calls, Zillow is going to try to give them to people that are paying them, not necessarily to those of us who are syndications. If we're not actually outbound calling those leads as they come in, we are missing opportunities for tenants. This has been a big change probably in the last three weeks. This is fresh information that again if you don't have somebody in your office that has the time, energy, and effort to be calling in addition to responding back via email, you are missing an opportunity to get your properties rented. Again, we have literally five properties come on the market on June 5th, all but one are occupied now. That's how quick we are to get these things done because we have a dedicated resource and our virtual assistant. Literally, that is her only job to focus on. Jason: I want to touch on a couple of things you mentioned that you threw out that I think are important. One, you were talking about referrals. This is one of the number one ways to grow any business generally. I talked to a client I think yesterday, I was coaching a client and they were like our business is so great. We’re great. We got all this process dialed in and they said, but we're not getting any referrals. If a business is not getting any referrals, it's probably not as great as you think it is. Property managers have blind spots. We all do. For those listening, if you're not getting referrals, you got some customer care problems that are likely going on. You should be getting referrals. You should be getting referrals from your vendors. You should be getting referrals from your real estate friends. You should be getting referrals from your property management clients. You should be getting, maybe referrals from some of the vendors, but people should be talking about you. If they're not, there's some sort of blind spot that needs to be shored up. The other thing you mentioned (I think) is really smart. A lot of people, yes, they're like, I need a BDM. I need somebody to do sales, but they can't afford it. A lot of people can't just go out and afford to get some high-grade wonderful salesperson. But most business owners are not willing to also acknowledge that they are a part-time shitty salesperson. The time they're willing to dedicate or have sometimes is maybe an hour or two a day. That’s part-time. it's 10, maybe 15 hours a week, maybe they can dedicate up to 20 hours, but if you really want to grow and scale your business, there probably needs to be a little bit more time or you need just business being referred to you all the time, so it's super easy. One of the easiest hacks I implemented when I was a solopreneur and was doing all the sales, the web design, branding stuff, and everything myself, I got an assistant. I had that person operate as a sales assistant and an appointment setter. It immediately multiplied, not just doubled probably, but it multiplied my capacity to close deals. All I did was show up for appointments. I just met with people and sold. I wasn't doing any of the follow-ups. I was a solopreneur and my assistant was calling—she had a British accent—and saying hello, this is Helen, the assistant to the CEO Jason Hull of DoorGrow. He was wanting to get back together with you. It also set me in the mind of the prospect as something higher than maybe I actually looked like at the time being a solopreneur, sitting at home, trying to work in my living room. There's power in having a team. A lot of people say I can't afford to hire anybody. Maybe you just need somebody to start, just somebody that you can start with and they could be full-time or part-time, but they can start doing a piece of that thing that you need help with. They don't have to be able to do everything. Maybe it's the piece that you least enjoy. Maybe doing the follow-up, the cold calls, and whatnot. Anne: That's the great thing about virtual assistants and personal employees. You're looking at less than $20,000 a year for full-time dedicated help. That's a game-changer. You can't afford not to do that. I think that that's where people get sideways. Where we really help our clients in helping them define their staffing needs, and what's the best ROI for them to bring on board first. We’re talking about trends and the things that we see, but that's one of the services that we provide, helping them figure that out because sometimes it's like you said, sometimes this is a generalist. Somebody that can do a little bit of everything. Sometimes it's a sales support person. I know I need leads. Sometimes it’s accounting, sometimes it's leasing line, sometimes it's in marketing. A virtual assistant through HireSmart, because we're full-time, dedicated, and we specifically recruit for our clients. We don't have a room full of VAs that we go, here you go. I actually go and curate the contacts for you, and then I personally work with them for 40 hours afterward like that one-week job interview to make sure that they're amazing. Anybody that has hired and day two you're like, ugh, they just aren’t amazing. I take care of that for the clients. Mark: It frees up so much time. If it frees up 10 hours a week, how many deals can you close, how many new properties can you bring on in 10 hours? You invest maybe two hours where somebody else is making all the calls, set the appointments, you got that two hours invested. Your return on that is tremendous because you're going to make an offer that’s equivalent to $100, $200, $300 an hour for your investment of time. It goes back to, you've got to make those investments. You can't not hire now, you can't put your head in the sand or pull back in your shell and say, I'm going to do it myself. Especially if you're not happy doing it because if you're not happy, you're not going to get it done. Jason: Therefore, a lot of people that have been shifting to doing more themselves. I have to lay off team members now, I'm doing everything myself. Now I'm doing stuff that I don't even want to do. Let's touch on one thing that you just mentioned. I think this is really important for everybody listening to understand. I've seen this in hundreds of property management businesses and businesses in general, but one of the most painful or dangerous things I think a business owner can do is hiring the wrong person, the wrong role, spending the wrong money at the wrong time. A lot of people hire based on what they think the business needs instead of what they need in order to create more space and eliminate the number one bottleneck in the company, which is you the business owner, it's the entrepreneur. You taking the time to figure out what they actually need to get the best ROI is huge for them because they've seen lots of people, they hire the wrong person they didn't need. Now they're spending this money, or they just hired a bad person in general which not just cost them the money they spent on that person and the time they spent to get that person, but they're now losing money in secret places. I've had team members that stole from me. I've had team members that stole time. I've had team members delete and stuff after I fired them. These are problems that entrepreneurs learn painfully over time trying to build a team. A lot of property managers are in that first trap. They're the 50–60 door mark, they don't know how they can afford to hire that first person, and this is a solution for that. This is a very obvious solution for that. You can help them figure out who they really need right now and to take the next step forward, because if they spend the money on the right person, they make more money. It makes it easier. They then can reinvest. If they spend it on the wrong person, or the wrong tool, at the wrong time, it could be the right tool but it's at the right time, or they're getting software prematurely that they didn't really have to have at that point, or whatever it might be. If you spend money at the wrong time even though it might be the right tool for the future, you're hurting your ability to get to that future. Anne: I totally agree with that. Jason: Cash flow. If you run out of cash flow, the business dies. It’s like the Indiana Jones boulder rolling after you is the cash monster trying to get to you. If the boulder catches you, the business is game over. You’ve run out of money, run out of cash, you're dead. People started to feel that in March. You have to always be outpacing that boulder. If you spend, the boulder gets bigger and faster, but you can get faster if you spend it on the right people. Anne: One of the things I tell a lot of prospects that I'm talking to is most property managers (specifically) were never trained on how to hire or how to build teams. That’s not something we learn at school, it's only by trial and fire. A lot of property managers have fallen into it. Mark: There's not a hiring 301 class in college. Anne: One of the things that I tell them is, just like you're the expert in finding the right tenant for an owner because you've seen enough applications, you've gone through the process, you've done all that, you are the expert there, we’re the experts in hiring. I know I have a profile for hiring, I know what's successful, I know what's not successful. I save my clients from hundreds of hiring mistakes because it's not that they can't do it, a DIY landlord can do it, but they can't do it as well as a property manager. I say the same thing. You can hire. It’s going to take you more time, you don't have a process, you don't do it enough, I have done thousands. Just in the last six months alone, I have evaluated over 9000 applications. You say that gave me some data points. Jason: You know the BS, you know how to spot the scammers, you know which people are gaming the system, you know which people are feeding you a story, you know what questions need to be asked. In the Philippines, you got to ask about their internet connection. You got to, you can't just trust that they have one. You got to ask about where they're working. Where are you working at? Where are you working from? That was part of the thing that I really enjoyed working with you guys. I always look at everything through a certain filter, and I'm skeptical, and I want to see how I can help people. As I went through your process, I'm like, they do this. They already do this. This is stuff I've learned over a decade in my own painful experiences hiring in India, Bangladesh, Russia, the Philippines, Bolivia, and of course the US, which ultimately most of my team are in the US now. But I have Filipino team members. I can personally vouch for your hiring process making a lot of sense. It’s solid and it works really because it's very similar to my own. There are so many similarities. Okay, they've got this down, but you have some advantages. We talked about this in the previous episode. You guys should go listen to that where we talked about their processes and some stuff they do, but you have vetting, background checks, and stuff that people don't just have access to if they're just trying to DIY this. Mark: It’s like the difference, if you're getting married, you got the bride and the groom, and the bride wants a custom-made dress, not one off the rack. The groom really wants a tux that fits them. We are the custom dress, we are the custom tux for that couple versus walking into Neiman and pulling one off the shelves, this looks good, or getting a dress off the hanger and putting it on like, this almost fits, let's go get married. Jason: It looks like your dad handed you down a suit or something. Mark: Right. That’s the difference in what we do. We are custom for our client. We are not off the rack. Anne: Right, and outside of that is it takes time. It takes us 3–4 weeks to literally curate the right people. I always say if you need to hire somebody just the first person off the street, good luck. Jason: You guys are bespoke. It’s bespoke hiring. Anne: We have a guarantee and all of those things, and we can back up what we're saying. But again, if you're trying to grow your property management business right now, you need to look at your staff. Here’s the other thing. Not all staff members are coming back. You may think they're coming back. They're not coming back. You’ve got to look at who are your top liners? Who are the ones that you’ve got to keep? You need to be investing in a relationship with those people first of all. If you're not talking to them on a regular basis, if you're not feeding them, if you're not taking care of them, you need to take care of them now. Who’s part of your med tier? The kind of people that are like, if they come back, great. If they don’t, what's the impact that’s going to happen? What are the people that you really know you just need to not have come back, and you need to deal with that pretty quickly. Mark: For our best person, we got a VA to assist that person so that they can do even better at the best that they were. That’s the important thing that people need to take away from changes that are coming out of COVID. It’s supporting your staff and letting them work at the highest and best use. Maybe that's taking away some of those phone calls and emails by hiring an assistant for them and to give you the opportunity to grow. It’s an assistant to you for the business development to make those calls and to set up those appointments, so that you can just close. Doing those things is the job that Anne enjoys so much is finding the individual to match. What does Jason need exactly? Even though Jason doesn't know exactly, she'll draw that out of you, and I'm just picking on you on that. Anne: That’s a puzzle for me. There's nothing better than when I see my clients six months in, years in, we have our clients for five years now and seeing them and they’d say, Mitch has been the best thing ever in my company. She's really allowed me to be amazing and do what I want to do. Literally, these are comments that we get when we survey our clients. It has been a game-changer. If you're open and able to change. I don't know how much time we have, but there are a couple of things that you need to look at, regardless of whether you use virtual assistants, employees, or whether you are looking at that which are some of the challenges that come from working with a remote team, because remember, even if you're planning to go back to an office, your staff is going to want to have more flexibility. Let’s just call it what it is. Not everybody wants to commute anymore. There are some that miss being in that environment, there's a lot of guys that are like… Mark: We’re happier. Jason: Yeah, why should I spend time commuting? Why should I spend time driving to this? I think there are a lot fewer people doing face-to-face appointments, and they'll just do it through Zoom or they'll do it through Google Hangouts, Meet, or whatever. Anne: Whatever works. What we're finding is it is truly illuminating management problems. It’s illuminating communication problems. If you had a communication problem in the office, now you have a tremendous communication breakdown outside of the office. Mark: If you have an operations failure in the office, boy, the failures are even bigger. Anne: As managers, we need to look at what tools do we have on our tool belt. We help our clients with some of that because we understand years ago that we needed to equip our people to be good at this so that they would keep our people. Mark: It is in software, it’s tools, it’s technology. There's a lot of different pieces that go into that. Anne: Looking at your management style and we like to manage personally using key performance indicators (KPIs) because that takes [...] work out of it. I don’t have to worry if they're working eight hours as long as the KPIs are done and they can get their job done in six, I'm happy to pay them for eight and let them do what they want to do, as long as my stuff’s getting done to a level that I expected. That's the easy button for management, if you don't know about key performance indicators, I certainly encourage you to learn what that is, and how to do that, but it’s one of the things that we teach our clients to do very easily. There are some easy methodologies to do that, but we are seeing some communication breakdowns from people that don't use us. We’re seeing some issues with management. The manager that was the nice guy, that was able to get people rah-rah-rah in the office because she was able to see them, that’s now changed. Now, work is starting to do great. Mark: They can't hide behind the curtain. Anne: They can't hide behind that personality anymore because work’s not getting done. That’s one cautionary tale that I will throw out to your listeners. Jason: Results don’t lie. Anne: They don’t, but it’s difficult to have conversations if you don't have data, and a lot of times, people don't want to track data because they think it's too difficult. We teach our clients how to do it very simply, very easily, and very quickly. That's the other thing. You’ve got to be able to get feedback daily to keep on top of it. If you wait for weeks or months, you are now in this huge hole of garbage that is very difficult to get out of. Make sense? Jason: Makes sense. It's been awesome having you here on the show. Maybe we can take just a few minutes, let's talk about some opportunities right now and ways you think property managers have an opportunity to grow after COVID. We’ve touched on maybe doing webinars, I think you threw out there, the Airbnb. I think I have one client that added 24 doors in a month just from former Airbnbs by cold calling them and reaching out. Obviously, you got to convince them probably to get the furniture out of the place, and make sure that these are good opportunities to manage, and that it’s going to rent effectively compared to what they're paying because some of them were making a lot of money. Mark: They were. You can offer a turnkey for that. I know you've got furniture and all, I'll take care of making the donation, or I'll get the local company that buys furniture and resells it. I don't know if there's a market for that right now, but I'll get it picked up by Salvation Army or the kidney people, and you'll get the receipt. I'll take care of all of that and make it easy for you to let me manage your property long-term. The property managers that think that way are the ones that will be successful. We’ve been seeing that happen in Airbnb and a lot of them are coming back out of service. Anne: One of the things we always recommend when we're consulting with clients just in general is know your avatar. If you're a short-term rental person and that’s your avatar, then you need to create a different marketing strategy around that, like how are you going to deal with that. If your avatar is long-term rentals and you want to gain business by going after short-term to convert them to long-term like Mark said, have a package, have a system, get your relationships put together. Right now interestingly enough, we have investors that are scared to death and are selling, and we have investors that are super excited and are buying. Mark: [...] sales transaction. Though the property manager doesn't have a sales component in their business, they need to have an alignment with the referral program to somebody that does sales. I mean I'm selling two houses a month this year. Anne: Without trying, without marketing. Mark: Yeah, these are my investors. They just say I want to sell, and I’ll say I want to make the commission. No problem. Anne: It's about having a strategy, being able to implement that strategy. and figuring out what are the resources that you need to create that strategy. We think using virtual employees and virtual assistants is a great way to maximize all of that because right now, it is kind of intense. If you're going to do research for short-term rentals, there's not a database you can necessarily easily pull from. You’ve got to go search for them, talk to them. Having that marketing strategy based on what it is that you want to do, having a value proposition that speaks to the pain that the person is dealing with, all are very important. Having a website that actually can capture those leads and make you look professional which is what you guys do is also part of that. You have this well-rounded marketing plan. Mark: We have our VA do all the research. Maybe it’s calling everybody that's on Craigslist or ads out there and saying, you may be tired of being a manager, you should go to this webinar we have coming up. It’s how to be a better manager and how to deal with the current [...]. We can do all those invitations to get people into our webinars that are going to show them they don't need to be doing this anymore. There's a lot of different ways that property managers can grow their business right now, but they need to think smart and make those investments. Anne: And HireSmart. Jason: And they need to HireSmart. Awesome. It's great to see you guys again. I'm glad you guys are doing well there over near Atlanta. Keep me apprised as to your next idea. Anne: We always have them. Jason: You always have them. That’s as crazy entrepreneurs. We always are coming up with new stuff. I'll let you guys go and I appreciate you guys coming on. Your website is? Anne: www.hiresmartvas.com Jason: All right. Thanks, Mark, thanks, Anne. Mark: Thank you very much. Anne: Welcome. Thank you, Jason. We appreciate you. Jason: Awesome to have them on. If you are a property management entrepreneur, and you're wanting to add doors, and you're wanting to build a business that you actually enjoy, that you love, that is built around you, this is what we do at DoorGrow. Reach out, I guarantee that we’re going to make your business better in some way, shape, or form, and you're going to love it. Even if you feel like you hate it now, maybe you're thinking you want out of it, you're feeling like it’s uncomfortable, you're probably just doing the wrong things in that business, and you may need some VAs that might be a solution for sure. We can help clean up the frontend of your business and help you get the business in alignment with you. Reach out, check us out at doorgrow.com, and make sure you join our Facebook group. We've got an awesome community there, and people that are helpers, that are givers, and you can get to that by going to doorgrowclub.com. Mark and Anne are in that group. We've got lots of other really cool property management entrepreneurs that are willing to contribute and help you out. Until next time everyone. To our mutual growth. Bye, everybody. You just listened to the DoorGrow Show. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet, in the DoorGrow Club. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead, content, social, direct mail, and they still struggle to grow. At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today’s episode on our blog at doorgrow.com. To get notified of future events and news, subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you’ve learned and start DoorGrow hacking your business and your life. April Fools Day is coming. Prank your friends opening a never ending fake update screen on their computer. Sit back and watch their reaction.

We are using personal devices for work (and working from home) more than we ever have before. These are both big risk factors as cybersecurity threats have soared during the pandemic. So, how do we make security sustainable and not live life at the hackers' mercy? ALPS Risk Manager Mark Bassingthwaighte sits down with Sherri Davidoff, CEO and Founder of LMG Security and the latest addition to the ALPS Board of Directors, to give you some practical advice in guarding your data like the gold it is. TRANSCRIPT: Mark: Let's rock and roll. Hello. Welcome to ALPS in Brief, the podcast that comes to you from the historic Florence building in beautiful downtown Missoula, Montana. I am really excited about our guest today. I have heard her speak and have read a book about her. And let me just share, our guest is Sherri Davidoff, the CEO of LMG Security. And I believe, Sherri, that is short for Lake Missoula Group. Is it not? Sherri Davidoff: It's true. We're named after the lake that we're sitting at the bottom of. Mark: For those of you, it's worth looking up in Wikipedia or Google or something to get a little bit of history of Lake Missoula. That's a whole nother story. But Sherri is a noted speaker, trainer, white hack, excuse me, white hacker, and author of the recently released book, Data Breaches, Crisis and Opportunity. As a recognized expert in cybersecurity and data breach response, Sherri has been called, and I love this, a security badass by the New York Times. I just think that's fantastic. Mark: She has conducted cybersecurity training for many distinguished organizations, including the Department of Defense, the ABA, the FFIEC, the FDIC, and many more. She's also a faculty member at the Pacific Coast Banking School and an instructor for Black Hat, where she teaches her data breaches course. She is also the co-author of Network Forensics: Tracking Hackers Through Cyberspace. It's a Prentice Hall publication, out in 2012. And this is a noted security text in the private sector and a college textbook for many cybersecurity courses. Mark: Sherri is also a GIAC certified forensic examiner, a penetration tester, and holds her degree in computer science and electrical engineering from MIT. She has also been featured as the protagonist in the book Breaking and Entering: The Extraordinary Story of a Hacker Called Alien. And so welcome, Sherri. And I can say I love the book. Sherri Davidoff: Thank you so much, Mark. It's a pleasure to be here with you. Mark: It was a lot of fun. It was a good read. Sherri Davidoff: Good. Mark: What you and I had been visiting about in terms of just having a conversation today, obviously in light of all that has happened in recent months with COVID-19, global pandemic, and this fallout of a very rapid move into working from home did not overlook lawyers. Many, many had to immediately jump and try to figure out how to make this work. And it seems some were pretty successful at that. Others, there were a few struggles, but they got there. But what I really want to focus on is the security side, the security piece of this. Mark: I think remote security is exposing not only lawyers, I think businesses of all shapes and sizes, to unexpected or perhaps a broadened way, broadened their risk, their exposure just because we have at times home systems. And I guess initially, would you agree, is the remote work setting a concern for you? Sherri Davidoff: Well, absolutely. There's an expanded attack surface now that so many people are working remotely. And I'd say that's for two reasons. Number one, because many people have moved to the cloud, or have started logging into work remotely, and therefore poked holes in their firewalls and things like that in order to facilitate it. And everybody did what we needed to do keep going and to keep business up and running. And that's fine. I'm here to tell everybody it's all fine. Sherri Davidoff: Our goal is progress and not perfection. But now's the time to step back and think, "What do we do?" And start cleaning things up, start thinking about, "How do we sustain this potentially long-term?" Because I think remote work has been here for a while and has definitely ramped up, and is here to stay. And the other reason why the attack surface has expanded is because a lot of people are using personal devices for work more than we ever have before. Sherri Davidoff: And so all of a sudden, you have sometimes very sensitive data on your personal device that you also share with your kids, or your friends, and you play games and this and that. And there's a different risk level that we have in our personal lives versus what's appropriate when we're handing this very sensitive information, so we have to balance those issues. Mark: Yeah. I like sort of two comments here, briefly. Initially, I like that you're saying lawyers haven't done anything wrong, in other words, by transitioning. It's so tempting to try to scare the bejeezus out of everybody and say, "You're not doing anything," but they did what they needed to do. And now is the time because I think you're absolutely right, this work from home evolution in terms of the rapid rise of it, is here to stay in a lot of ways. And so now it's time to say not, you've done anything wrong, or you're bad, but let's try to fix it. Sherri Davidoff: How do we make it sustainable and not get hacked all the time? Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I want to come back to here a little bit down the road, but I do really appreciate the comment of personal devices. And I think that's worth exploring a little bit. Where I'd like to start, if we may, and I don't know if you agree or disagree with this, but even again today, I have come across additional articles talking about an exposure that is I think for so many, flying under the radar. And that is simply the wireless access points, the routers and whatnot that all of us typically have in our homes. And do you feel, is that an overblown risk? Would you have any thoughts about some basic things that staff and lawyers should be thinking about? Sherri Davidoff: Well, it depends where you are. I used to live in the middle of Boston, and there were a zillion people around my house all the time. Now I live in the middle of Montana, and wireless security is always important, but less of a concern. So first of all, consider physically where you are and who might have physical access to that wireless network. And absolutely, your network is only as secure as the devices that are on it. And we've seen time and time again that if a computer gets infected, it will try to infect all the devices around it. So if you have a neighbor that starts using your wireless network, and they happen to have a computer that's been infected, that could absolutely cause risk for systems on your network as well. Mark: Very good. And thoughts about, are there any just practical steps you think folks might be able to take to minimize that likelihood? Sherri Davidoff: Sure. Well, as we were talking about ahead of time, there have been a number of vulnerabilities in common routers and wireless access points. So step number one, make sure that your software is up to date, your firmware is up to date on those devices. And you can do that either, sometimes they have an app that's paired with your smartphone, so you can update it that way. Or you can go into the device itself in the administrative interface and do updates. So every now and then, sit down, have a glass of wine, whatever, update your router. It's fun. It's easy. And change that password. Make sure that the password is not a default, that it's secure, it's not your phone number or your address, because guess what, people know that. Sherri Davidoff: And also that the name of your wireless network is something that does not draw attention to you, that it's a little bit under the radar, boring. Make your network look boring. Mark: I like that. I like that. Sherri Davidoff: Really slow wireless, that's what you should call it. Nobody will want this. Mark: I think your idea of maybe having a glass of wine to do this isn't a bad one because there have been times where I've been trying to do some things in terms of ... I take security very, very seriously because I've been telecommuting, and boy, there are times when certain things aren't as easy as they should be. And just instead of throwing the computer, you could have a little sip of, just relax. Sherri Davidoff: Yeah. Well, risk is your job at ALPS, so I could imagine it's something you take seriously. Mark: That's right. That's right. For a moment, let's just say that I am a lawyer. I'm the owner of a small firm, couple of staff. And we have made this transition out, and everybody's at home for the time being. May or may not be coming back. We'll just see how this all evolves. But as the owner of this small business, what kinds of things really should be on my radar that may not be? What should I think about? Sherri Davidoff: Yeah. The number one thing to think about right now is two-factor authentication. And I know that's a big word. I cannot even tell you how important that is because we're living in a world today where all of your passwords have been stolen, just assume that, because if you get a virus on your computer, it's going to steal all your passwords first thing before you even know it. And you're not fooling anybody by keeping it in a Word document with a totally different name. I know that it's there and so do the criminals, and they're just going to grab it. Sherri Davidoff: The other thing is if you reuse passwords on different websites, and one of those websites gets hacked, criminals have automated tools that will try your password in a zillion other websites. It's called credential stuffing attacks. And Akamai, which is a big tech company, reported that there were 61 billion credential stuffing attacks just in the past 18 months. So assume somebody's going to steal your password. You're not going to know about it because that company may not even know they have a data breach. Or if they know, maybe they'll report it to you six months to three years later. Sherri Davidoff: And in the meantime, you need to protect your accounts. The FBI recently reported that the number of business email compromised cases is going up because of coronavirus. Scammers are using tactics to try to trick people out of their money, so they're breaking into email accounts. They're finding examples of invoices, or payments, or things like that. And they're saying, "Oh, due to coronavirus, that bank account is being audited, and I really need these funds. Please send it to this other place." Sherri Davidoff: So you should guard your email account like it is gold because it is. You have valuable information in it. And remember with lawyers, information is your business. Right? If it's valuable to you, or if it's valuable to your client, it is valuable to a criminal. They can leverage it somehow. So protect that email account like it is gold. And your email account can also be used to reset your password on anything else, and the criminals know that, so they're after your email. Mark: That's a great point, that really is. Can you take just a moment or two and explain just a bit more about what you mean by two-factor authentication? I'm not sure that everybody in our audience, I think a lot do, but I know that there are more than a few that really don't understand. And I assume we talk about this, you're really saying we want to use this if we can in any and every setting, so email account, bank account. Sherri Davidoff: Yes. Cloud, you name it. Mark: Cloud, right, right. But can you just share just a little bit more to make sure everybody's with us? Sherri Davidoff: Absolutely. This is my favorite question, Mark. Thank you so much. So two-factor authentication is what you need to know. Authentication means how we verify someone's identity. So online you might have your identity verified with a password. Passwords are dead to me now. In the real world, you might verify your identity with your driver's license. Right? Two-factor authentication is when you use more than one method of verifying someone's identity together. And it makes it a lot less likely that your account will be broken into. And you might not know it, but we use two-factor authentication all the time. I don't know if you can think of a place where you use two different methods of verifying yourself. Mark: Well, the one that comes immediately to mind to me is just a debit card at the ATM machine. Sherri Davidoff: Yes. I'm giving you a prize. I have to rummage through my swag and drop it off at your office. Absolutely, yes. You're the only person I have ever worked with who's gotten it right off the bat. But yes, your debit card. And when ATMs first came out in the '60s, they did not all have a pin number associated with them. You were in England, you'd get your punch card. And if you lost that punch card, some criminal could pick it up and get your money. And it actually took over a decade before all the ATMs in the world had pins. But now, if you had a choice, if your bank said, "Oh, you don't need a pin on that ATM card," how would you feel about it? Mark: I would have a problem with that. Sherri Davidoff: You'd have a problem with it. And it's going to be that way on the internet pretty soon. People will be like, "Really? You don't have two-factor authentication? That's so dangerous. I can't believe it." Mark: Yeah. Sherri Davidoff: I can give you some examples of what you can use for two FA if you want. Mark: Sure. Sherri Davidoff: Okay. So when you're logging into your email for example, some of you are probably familiar with the case where you get a pin on your phone. Right? You log in, it sends a pin to your phone. That's better than nothing, but it's not the best because those are not encrypted. I don't know if you've heard of simjacking attacks, where attackers can take over your phone, or they can get your phone number sent somewhere else, so those are not the best. Sherri Davidoff: What's better than that is an app on your phone, like Google Authenticator, which is free, or Microsoft's Authenticator. And it'll show you a code that you type in. Or even better, it'll just pop up a message that says, "Do you want to authenticate, yes or no? Is this acceptable?" And so you type in your password and then you hit yes, or you type in your code, and then you get in. And so the criminal actually needs your phone and your password in order to get in, and that is so much safer than just a password. Mark: And I want to follow up. You had talked as we started this discussion a little bit about they're into your email and they're capturing your passwords. One of the things I want to underscore for our listeners is that you don't know they're in your system monitoring and capturing all this stuff. I still run into a lot of people that say, "Well, I've never been hacked because the computer still works." Nobody's going to send you a thank you card for doing something silly and saying, "We've been in. And thank you, we got all this." Mark: But you made the comment about passwords. And one of the things that I hear from time to time as I talk about password policies, long passwords, passphrases, complex passwords, those kinds of things, and the pushback you always get. How in the world do I remember all this? And your comment of a Word document is absolutely not the way to do this. But I have talked about password saves. And one of the questions that comes up from time to time is, well, here I am putting all this information into a file. And sometimes these safes, I have one, Iron Key, that's a jump drive. But they're also cloud-based. And what are your thoughts about the security of that? Because I had a lot of pushback of people saying, "How in the world can that be safe if they're hacking in?" Mark: I certainly have my thoughts about it. But I'd love to hear from your ... I mean, you do the pen testing. How reliable are these password safes in terms of helping us try to be as secure as we can? Sherri Davidoff: Yeah. So you're probably thinking, "Well, why would I want to put all my eggs in one basket?" And then hackers know they're going to attack that basket. Right? Mark: Exactly. Sherri Davidoff: The reality is that it's more complex than that because first of all, that basket LastPass, Dashly, OnePassword, you name it, they are especially designed to be hardened against attacks. For example, they're resistant to the common attacks. They're constantly researching it. And if they autofill a form for you, they're using different hooks in the operating system that make it harder for the attacker to grab that compared with a regular web browser, for example, so that's the first thing. Sherri Davidoff: The second thing is I use password managers not just for their ability to store passwords, but for their ability to generate passwords. And that's perhaps even more important. You need a unique password for every single website, maybe not the really junky ones that you don't have anything important in them. But most people underestimate the importance of an individual account. Ideally, you want a totally different login for each website because you never know which website's going to get hacked. Right? Sherri Davidoff: And the human brain is not designed to remember 20 billion passwords. I mean, it's probably all we can do to remember three passwords. And so then you get people picking the password fluffy1984, like their dog and their kid's birthday, which people can totally guess, or spring2018bicycles, and then that changes to summer2018 when you have to change it. The hackers are onto you. They have automated tools that will automatically try different variants on your favorite password that they have already captured. They'll put an exclamation point at the end. They'll put a one, and then a two, and then a three, and then a nine and a 10. Sherri Davidoff: And they'll change spring to summer and 2018 to 2019. So those ways that people modify their passwords are not very secure. So use your password manager. Use two-factor authentication on it if it's in the cloud. And if you hear, LastPass, for example, was actually hacked several years ago. And what happens in that case is you want to change at least your master password if [inaudible 00:21:58] passwords. Sherri Davidoff: But it is so much better than keeping your passwords in a file on your computer because people get their computers infected so frequently. And that's the first thing that goes out the door. The criminals are automatically stealing your files, and then you won't even know you've been hacked until your money's been missing, or a spam email goes out to all your clients. Mark: So what I'm hearing then as the owner, I need to be really concerned about authentication and protecting passwords, strong passwords. Are there other concerns that come to mind as the owner? Sherri Davidoff: Ransomware. A lot of attorneys are hit with ransomware. Ransomwares steal your information often before they hold you for ransom. And that's the thing that a lot of attorneys don't think about because I've seen many law firms even put up out of office messages that say, "Hey, we have ransomware. We'll get back to you tomorrow." That's not cool for your clients. Mark: No. Sherri Davidoff: That means chances are their data was stolen too. And the trend that we are seeing in 2020 is that criminals have started to realize that people have better and better backups. And if you don't pay them the ransom to get your data back, they will threaten to publish it. And in that case, you've got two options. You can either say, "Okay, we'll pay the ransom," in which case, they could come back to you in six months and say, "Pay us again or we'll release it again." You can't trust them. Sherri Davidoff: Or you don't pay the ransom, and all your data's published. And what does that mean for your clients and your relationships and your status as an attorney? So you really need to protect yourself with ransomware. And you do that with two-factor authentication, super important. Mark: Yes, right. Sherri Davidoff: And making sure you have a secure method to connect to your data. So for a lot of people who have just poked holes in their network and they're going through RDP, remote desktop protocol, that's not a secure way to do it. There's other better ways to do it, like using a VPN. Or you can, if you choose to store your data in the cloud, there are some benefits to that, especially if you use two-factor authentication. Mark: Let's talk a little bit about this. And for those of you listening, if you're not completely sure, VPN stands for virtual private network. And we're really talking about disguising our location at times, in terms of what servers, when I use my VPN for instance, I am picking servers in Canada and other parts of the United States. I can go all over the world if I wanted to. So you're hiding your location a little bit, but it's also encrypting the data stream, so that's what we're talking about in terms of any remote connection. And I think it's particularly important in the wifi space. Mark: But there are a lot of free VPNs available and a lot of other just tiered pricing of all kinds of things. Do you have any thoughts about is it unwise to use the free VPNs as opposed to spending a little bit of money? I hear at times the VPNs that are free, they may be monitoring and monetizing the information they're learning about what you're doing. But I truly don't know. Do you have any thoughts on that? Sherri Davidoff: In general, there's no such thing as a free lunch in our society. Right? If you're not paying for a product, you are the product, so they say. So I would be careful about that. In general, I would get an experienced IT person's advice when you're setting up your VPN. I wouldn't do it on your own because if you make a little mistake, again, it's all your data on the line. There's some pretty serious consequences. Also, consider if you really need a VPN. Are you just trying to get into one computer? And if so, is it just a certain type of data that you need? Sherri Davidoff: Personally, I am a proponent, I've become a proponent of using the cloud. And I was a slow adopter. Being a security professional, I was fairly conservative about it. But you have some really strong options like Microsoft Office 365 is a great option for attorneys. There's a lot of compliance. There's a lot of regulations that they adhere to, and you can get them to sign off on that. There's other providers as well that are very good. And again, if you're using that two-factor authentication, they have some very advanced security features built in. They are maintaining that software, so I think it takes a lot of the pressure off of small and solo practitioners to just use the cloud. And then you don't have to worry about somebody remoting into your whole computer. Mark: One question that comes up every once in a while from lawyers as they start to think through some of the things we're talking about, but in the context of ransomware the cloud, they're learning. And I think for the most part they have as a profession, have a pretty good understanding what ransomware does at a basic level. And it can infect the network and this kind of thing. But I think some believe one of two things, but first, the cloud one is if I put things in the cloud, I'm safe there because there's this break. Would you put that to rest? Sherri Davidoff: Yeah. I mean, if you can access it, so can criminals. Right? Mark: Oh, yeah. Sherri Davidoff: Especially because often we see people click on links in phishing emails. Their computers get infected. And the criminals will even install ransomware in your cloud drives, like One Drive. If you can get to it and a criminal has access to your account, then the criminal has access to it. And there are times, in fact, I have a little video example that we took in our laboratory, where criminals will deliberately remote into your computer and use your computer to break into your bank accounts or your email accounts because you have your password saved there. And you don't have ... You've clicked trust this computer, so it's way easier for them than trying to break in from Thailand, or Russia, or wherever they happen to be. Mark: And I want to respect your time here, Sherri. The stuff you're sharing is just awesome, awesome stuff. I want to just take a few moments and shift a little bit now. So we've talked about some really good security things that lawyers, business owners, firm leaders need to be thinking about. And of course, all of this needs to apply to everybody. But let's talk about the home place. So what do I need to think about in terms of making sure my employees do, or understand? Do you have concerns about what the individual is actually doing in their own home? Sherri Davidoff: Yes, of course. A big issue that comes up is sharing of computers, so you need to have a clear policy as to whether it's okay to share computers. Is it okay to have certain types of documents on their personal computers? Remember that personal computers are much higher risk. You are likely to get a virus on a personal computer, especially if multiple people are sharing that. So whenever possible, keep work documents on work systems, or systems that are just used for work. And again, the cloud can help you with that. Sherri Davidoff: For example, you can allow people to access documents in the cloud and prevent them from downloading those documents. And it's all well and good to tell people that. But ideally, you want to actually implement that control and prevent them from a technical measure. We also see people emailing documents to their personal emails, and now it's totally out of your control. It's up in Google somewhere else. You may have violated some policies, especially if you deal with health information. You might've violated some regulations just by putting it up in Google, or violated your client's privacy. So mainlining control of your data, especially during these times, is absolutely critical. Sherri Davidoff: I think I would be remiss if I didn't mention mobile device management software, so if you have people using personal devices, you can deploy what we call an MDM. It's a piece of software that allows you to have some level of control over that personal device. So if that employee leaves, or if the device is stolen, it'll wipe your data from it. It can require that there's a pin or a passcode set on that device, even though you don't own that device. It can require antivirus software, and that's another one. If you do nothing else, require antivirus software. And you can buy it for employees to use on their home computers if they're using those for work. Mark: Yeah. The takeaway for me, and there are a lot here, and we can talk about this for hours. Maybe I could. Sherri Davidoff: I've been talking about it for 20 years. Mark: But I do like, when I think about our confidentiality rules in law, I do think saying we really ... You can't use a home computer for work that the teenage kids have access to in the evening, and the gaming. That's just victim here on the forehead if you ask me. So it underscores the value of saying, "If you have the financial wherewithal, let's supply our employees and staff and associates, whoever may be involved here, with company-owned equipment," because we can enforce the rules. We have control over that. I really like that. I but I also think that there's value in having some policies and then thinking through some of the issues that you just identified. And let's have written policies that staff are well aware of, so that if they are constantly breaking the rules, which is so easy to do because we trust our personal devices. Do we not? Mark: We seem to trust our personal devices a little bit more than work devices, whether it's because we know we're not being watched, if you will, in terms of just when you're on corporate device, they have the ability to monitor what's happening to the device, that kind of thing. I don't know what it is. But I think having a policy allows you to, well, not monitor, but hold people accountable. Sherri Davidoff: Absolutely. Mark: And say, "Look, if you're not doing something." Sherri Davidoff: Yeah. A policy's a great first step. And remember, progress not perfection. I do recognize, especially right now, a lot of people just don't have any other option besides using personal devices. And if you do that, again, that next step is to create a separate account at least. So you're not sharing the same account as your kids or as the other people you're working with. And if you can, having a separate device for work is definitely the way to go if you are able to do that. Mark: Well, Sherri, it's been a pleasure. I want to share with our listeners that Sherri has made available some remote work cybersecurity checklists for employees and managers. And this isn't live yet, but when it will be, you can click right there and have access to these. They're excellent tools. And Sherri, thank you very much for making that available to our audience. For those of you listening today, I hope you have found something of value. And if you have an idea of a topic that you feel strongly about that you think others would enjoy hearing, or you have a speaker that you'd be interested in seeing if we can have join the podcast, please don't hesitate to reach out to me. My email address is mbass, M-B-A-S-S, @alpsinsurance.com. Mark: And before I close, for those listening to the mileage score, you have to go back to earlier podcasts. I'm up to 700 even as of today, so I'm getting there. That's it. Thank you all. Thanks for listening. Bye-bye.

It's a narrative that often gets repeated to parents of young children with disabilities: the more services the better. But John and Connie found a different way early on with their son Mark. Their family's dream was bigger. The vision they have for an ordinary life really gets to the heart of why this podcast started - to offer out ideas for families and people with disabilities to go after more in life than the expected route of disability services and segregated activities.As founders of the Plan Institute in Rhode Island 15 years ago, the Susa family connected with Starfire to learn how to launch community projects. They said that this way of bringing people together, over a shared goal like a community garden, generates a certain magic - almost instantly.If you are someone who wants to think seriously about how you and your loved ones spend your time, how to connect more deeply in community, and ways to make longterm relationships a reality, this episode is for you. GET THE PODCAST FULL TRANSCRIPT:CONNIE: - I have heard speakers talk about this concept as a way of healing the world and as we're in the midst of the COVID19 virus outbreak right now, I think the world could use a lot of healing, not only physically but also in terms of relationships. We have a new neighbor who shares that passion with us, and it has been such a joy to get to know one another, to have a real give and take. I can see how if this were multiplied throughout communities, and states and nations, the world would be a beautiful place. KATIE: Beautiful. JOHN - I'm John Susa. I think what moves me for a lot of this work is almost a therapeutic plan for me. I grew up very very isolated and I had very few interactions with anybody besides my family. And most people would have described me as being very introverted. When people asked me when you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? My answer was always the same. I wanted to be a long distance truck driver. So I could sit in that cab and not have any human interaction for days. And if left to myself that's probably what would have happened. But instead I learned that if I pushed myself a little bit and started interacting with people and meeting people then I could change that desire to be a loner. And so I think the reason I'm so involved in all of this stuff is still mostly for myself to avoid falling back into be a loner. So I made pretty much a conscious decision that I was just going to change my behavior first. And of course after I changed my behavior for a while my attitude started to change.Fast forwarding then to when you and Connie met, and you had children and you were - down the road, you know, deciding how to engage as a family in the community, what were some of the things that you had to consider first to be connected?JOHN - I think for me the recognition that Mark developmentally was experiencing life differently than others made me realize it was going to be very helpful if I became more engaged in the disability advocacy world. I was kind of driven by two different quotes that were in my head that I learned while I was in the military. And they're very a-typical but they're very powerful. One is from Johann Goethe a German philosopher and he said, “Dream no small dreams for they have power insufficient to change the hearts of men.” That's been something that I've always come to recognize as a very powerful piece of instruction and advice. And I saw that there were people who were encouraging us in many ways to dream small, to be satisfied with what Mark is able to do, focus in on his disabilities, spend your time searching out services. In many ways that was dreaming small. There were occasionally people who would say, “No, no, no don't do that. Dream big. Dream like Mark's future is limitless. Dream like if you just provide him with all the opportunities that life has to offer, you will be amazed at how much he is going to accomplish.” And that is what I took from Goethe, dream big. And we have ever since. And that really has kind of put us into contact with a lot of other big dreamers. It's those big dreamers that really have changed the world works for people with disabilities.KATIE - Beautiful. MARK - Excellent.CONNIE: - For me in terms of community building, I think one of the greatest advances has been our church. Mark turned three at the end of December.MARK - Right. CONNIE: And three-year-olds were supposed to begin in what most people would call “Junior Sunday School.” When Mark was three, we were still carrying him - cradling him in our arms. Did you know when you were three years old you couldn't sit up by yourself? MARK - No way, really?CONNIE: Truly. Mark just kept attending our Sunday school classes with us and about two, three weeks into that sequence one of our friend's who taught the three year old class, the Sunbeam class, came to us in the hallway and said, “Why hasn't Mark been in my class?” And I said, “Edith - look.” As if seeing where Mark was at that moment meant everything. And she said, “Yes, but look at my role.” And Mark's name was there, without x's in the attendance boxes.And she said, “We really need him in our class.” And I said, “Edith he can't even sit up independently.” She said, “Well we could get a highchair and we could put pillows all around it so that he can sit up.” And I said, “We're not even sure that he can understand what you're teaching the other kids.” And she said, “That doesn't matter.” She said, “The reason I need Mark in my class is because all the other kids have so much to learn from him.” MARK - Really.CONNIE: And while we had been working seriously on stimulations and Mark had gone through early intervention and we learned about you know sensory stuff and what have you. We were doing that once a week, in a group and the rest of the time at home. But what Edith had said really started Mark and us on the path to community. Mark now…well, tell Katie what you do at church.MARK - A lot. CONNIE: - Some things that you're responsible for?MARK - I'm secretary. CONNIE: - Secretary for what?MARK - For attendance. CONNIE: - Yup, and you set up appointments for interviews.MARK - Set up appointments for interviews. CONNIE: - We were amazed, Mark was enfolded in the arms of these people who understood all about community because that fits the teachings that we have as Christians. Going back to what Edith had said to you that you know, diversity and having different types of learning in a classroom is really really really important and once you accepted that invitation, what unfolded in that first year? JOHN - What I remember is that it reinforced something that I came to realize, everybody became comfortable and it was now normal and accepted that Mark would be part of that congregation. Once people got to the point where they were comfortable because of exposure and experience they relaxed and they accepted Mark for who he was. And they didn't feel the need to treat him any differently than they would any other child. It reminds me of another one of my kind of guiding principles and this comes from a guy, Rudolf Steiner, talking about early childhood. Rudolf Steiner is the founder of the Waldorf educational system. Are you familiar with that?KATIE - Yes. JOHN - He said that, “There is nothing more therapeutic than normalcy.” That was a piece of advice that was given to us by a good friend, developmental pediatrician, when Mark was finally identified as having all these developmental challenges. The meeting at the end of the two-day evaluation process was nothing but a group of people who were very pessimistic about Mark. “He's not going to walk. He's not going to talk. He's probably not going to be aware of you. He's certainly not going to hear.” A whole bunch of things, they all at the end say “Well, good luck, take him home and love him.” That was their advice, which is good advice but inadequate. When they all left, their boss who was sitting at the back of the room observing asked us to go into his office because Connie was bawling. Sig closes the door and the first thing he says is, “Don't believe a word of what those people said to you.” And I said, “Sig if you say that, why didn't you stop them before they started?” And he said, “You know all those people in that room were doing or could do is describe Mark now, as they see him. They could not possibly describe Mark in the future. I believe if you believe them, that future will happen. If you don't believe and you adopt the approach that the best thing to do is to have Mark experience as much normalcy as possible he will become a different person. He will become more like the ‘normal kids' whatever that may be. Every person will develop depending on how much they're exposed to.” So he said, “I'm not going to let them label him because that will result in other people reading the report and it will only help them treat him in a stereotypical way based on his label. I'm just going to say he's developmentally delayed.” And his advice was, “Take him home and love him but then help him have every normal experience as other children.” And that kind of guided our thinking really from then on. KATIE - And you know, dreaming big in this instance is to dream ordinary, to dream normal. JOHN - Exactly. Yeah. KATIE - And sometimes ordinary is the biggest gift anyone can have.JOHN - Right, right. It's kind of counterintuitive because in the world of disabilities a lot of times people think that dreaming big means getting more services, the more the better, the more services the better. Steiner said think seriously about substituting every hour of normalcy with an hour of service because that hour of service is removing that person from normalcy. So it's almost in the disability world it's almost a flipping of thinking that that has to happen. CONNIE: - Be concerned if you were just going to services. JOHN - Be big in your thinking by vying for normalcy. KATIE - Yes, so even in services are... they're not normal. It's interesting. JOHN - They're not normal. CONNIE: - What's more important is that Mark participated not only in that class but every subsequent class. And when Mark was eleven years old we took our school district to a due process hearing because they had adamantly fought us for two years in bringing Mark back into district from a segregated day placement that was anything but normal, because they were sure that Mark would not act appropriately in a classroom setting. They were sure that Mark would be a disruption to other students, they were sure that he might even be self injurious or injury other people, because they were thinking in terms of stereotypes not in terms of who Mark is as an individual. And do you remember Jennifer Coats, Mark?MARK – Yeah. The one with the power.CONNIE: - She came to your hearing. MARK - Right. CONNIE: - And she told everybody just how you act in a classroom setting. That you raised your hand just like that, that you participated appropriately in singing time, that you sat with your class and no additional extra support. That you sang the songs that you answered questions, you gave talks. MARK - Right. Yes I did. KATIE - So it sounds like Jennifer had another piece of Mark and your family's story along this journey to dream big, to live an ordinary life? She made an impact during that hearing.I want to see if we can dip our toes briefly in the water of the day placement that you mentioned, that Mark was in, and how that was anything but normal. Can you explain how abnormal it was or what about it made it not ordinary?CONNIE: - Sure, the very fact that there were multiple kids with multiple disabilities just ate up so much of the instruction time. What else do you remember about it? JOHN - Everybody in Mark's class was just like Mark. Six little kids, wheelchairs. So the biggest thing I believe happened when he left there and went into a regular classroom is that for the first time he started culturally and socially experiencing life as every other eleven, or twelve or fifteen year old does. KATIE - You agree with that, Mark?MARK - Yes, excellent. KATIE - Yeah and I think that's a good segway to the phrase ‘a good life' that is something you hear a lot from Al Etmanski and Vickie Cammack. It's a big part of the PLAN institute model and you all have been involved with PLAN at Rhode Island for quite some time. So what ways has it helped? CONNIE: - John first heard Al speak, he recognized the wisdom in their model that we always acknowledge how deeply we depend on the work. When we brought PLAN (Personal Lifetime Advocacy Network) to Rhode Island 15 years ago we knew that we were standing on the shoulders of giants. The two things that we have focused on in trying to replicate their model is we help parents put all their ducks in a row, plan for the time that they are no longer going to be there or able to enrich the lives of their sons and daughters out of the love and the family history, the precious relationships. The much more important part of what they did in Canada and what we did in Rhode Island is to build a personal support network around the member. The family joins on behalf of their son, daughter, brother, sister and they engage with a facilitator to build and maintain that support network so that it's not just every individual having a relationship with a person at the center of the circle but it is all those people getting to know one another, to recognize one another's strengths, to trust one another. Between all those group gatherings individuals will do things with the members at the center, with our loved ones. And as parents we try to do that early enough so that we can fill in the important parts of the history. So the support network is really there to build a circle of support around a person, and yet also it's not just about the person in the center it's about everyone in the network joining together, being in relationships together, and in that way being in a community. Where are you now with the support network?CONNIE: - Right. Mark has had a personal support network for the entire time that PLAN has been in existence in Rhode Island. It really does take some time for relationships to mature that if we had to step off the Earth the next week, this would go on. MARK - Right.CONNIE: - And that it would provide Mark with people that he could depend on, people who were real friends, who had proved that over time. MARK - Right. CONNIE: - People who enjoy spending time with him. And we feel secure. In one of the questions that PLAN Institute seems to start with is what would happen to my loved one after I pass on, if I'm not around, if we're not there to help what will happen? And so starting from a young age it sounds like you guys have done a lot of work to build that support network so that in a time of disaster or otherwise that there is somebody there for Mark?JOHN - Right. When PLAN in Canada was first put together it was even before Al Etmanski, it was just a group of parents and they hired Al. They originally thought that they were preparing for their demise, the focus was on what's going to happen? What they quickly discovered was that yes they were doing that but they were also starting to develop a stronger sense of security and the feeling that their son or daughter was safe. There were some very positive benefits to the parents while they were still alive. And they figured it out that it was the existence of this network that provided that sense of security. And not only the sense of it but the actual security. KATIE - I love how you put that, that's very clearly stated for me and I think it's actually it starts as soon as you begin to community build: the benefits, the magic, the parts of it that are really just supportive feeling begin right away. And every parent needs that and we need to raise our children as a village. You all as a family have taken the brave step being able to say well even though some experts are telling us otherwise we're going to not believe that and in doing that we are going start this support network early and we're going to build and the more people who have joined in along the way it sounds like the more momentum has build towards this? Tell me about your family's leadership in the community as it relates to your street, and how your support network, Mark, how they were involved in that process? JOHN - So as we kind of navigate our life with Mark, I'm always looking for things that are in the way of him achieving greater independence. So this little project about looking at Warwick Avenue, Mark and his brother live about two and a half, three miles apart, they both require a wheelchair in Mark's case or a scooter in Frank's case. And so when Frank moved back here to Rhode Island we thought, “Wow wouldn't it be nice if these two guys could get together once in a while without Mom and Dad having to be the go between.” We started looking at this road and we recognized very quickly that this road was a problem. I've known that this road was a problem probably for at least fifteen years now, but I've not had a real strong reason for us to say, “Let's do something about it.” So we naturally thought that this is going to be something that is much more powerful if we have a group involved. We had a group, we had Mark's network, they all know him, they're comfortable with him. So we posed the idea, the project, people thought this is great. And the fact is that there is appropriated money from the Department of Housing and Urban Development every year for infrastructure maintenance. But the fact is also is that many states use that money for something else besides not worrying about wheelchair accessibility. So our complaint kind of brought this into the public eye and I'm pretty confident that we will be able to see some change and some action as we kind of work through the process. But it is also what ever you want to call it, karma, good luck whatever, that here we have our network and one of the powerful things about a network is the fact every member of that network has other connections with other people and within our little group we were able to identify somebody else who is not part of Mark's network but is only peripherally connected, kind of, who is going to be very helpful in resolving. And you never know who you may know until you start talking and working and interacting in community. Every network is a little community and every little community has a lot more resources than we certainly had by ourselves. Absolutely and maybe you can share how some of the other families you know in Rhode Island who have similar networks of support like you all do around Mark, how they've utilized their networks of support to do other projects in their communities with Starfire's facilitation support. What are a few of those other projects that have happened or sprung out of this collaboration?JOHN - So in about a month or so another network is going to do a project that is to create a mosaic welcome sign to this little town's community garden. It's prompted by a family who have a son who has very significant disabilities but who is a very very talented artist who is really good at sketching and painting vegetables. So they're going to take his work and they're going to create a mosaic welcome sign. This is a family I've known for quite a while, also been part of PLAN for a while, and they have dramatically really been able to bring their son like we did out of a special school into the real world and Sid has really blossomed as a result of that real world life experience. Why do you think it's important for families to lead efforts toward building community? And how do you think families are helping other people in the neighborhoods see the light of community building, the magic of community building?CONNIE: - We've been told for years on end that certain federal programs are underfunded and that there may come a time that those things are no longer available or that their support and services get shrunken and Mark loves people, he's a very social person. MARK - I do. CONNIE: - You do and you contribute in a lot of ways. MARK - Right. CONNIE: - And we're very proud of that. MARK - Right. CONNIE: - So just in terms of politics alone it's important that we give our sons and daughters opportunities to show that they can contribute to society. JOHN - From our own experience and from the experience of a lot of people we know that the amount of community, acceptance and inclusion that people with disabilities experience is really very much influenced by how much their family is integrated and included in their community. Our experience was that after Mark started going to special private school we spent more and more and more time at that school helping them with fundraising, helping them with all kinds of stuff and we spent less and less time in our community. We often meet family with children with disabilities and very quickly they'll say, “Oh, but we don't know anybody. We're not engaged in our community.” And without spending a lot of time we recently were able to recognize that that was because they were spending their time in a different world than their community. So we really really strongly encourage people to become more engaged and more involved. One of the ways is get engaged in a community project and all of a sudden you know a bunch of people, not all of those people are going to become part of their son's or daughter's network but some will. And that's because all of a sudden they know people who have common interests, there are all kinds of things that happen when you start doing things together. These projects are just ways people becoming engaged in their community, as a family, and then as time goes on for that family to be unique and having people have a relationship with that son or daughter who has a disability.Absolutely. And maybe we'll end with a quote here I think that is related to everything you just said. It's by Al Etmanski he says, “People are naturally ingenious when faced with adversity.” What ways do you think you all have managed to be ingenious?CONNIE: - With the COVID19 crisis, Mark's facilitator of Mark's support network is putting out requests with two things. One to ensure them that Mark is no more susceptible to this virus than anyone else in the community is. More importantly, because Mark has benefited so much from his contact with all the members of his network, she is going to ask them to engage with him regularly remotely as long as they cannot engage with him personally. He reads and he can enjoy texts and answer emails and appreciates post cards and greeting cards and phone calls.MARK - Right. CONNIE: - That's an adaptation that we're making right now. JOHN - We've learned that we really have to remain flexible. We have to depend on other people's creativity and let them interact with Mark in their way. In the beginning when he was younger people would always ask us, “What does Mark like to do?” And a long time ago we basically came up with the same answer, “Well I don't know, ask him.” Not only ask him but invite him. Mark surprises everybody with his ability to express his enthusiasm for things. KATIE - I love how you turned a question into a way to mobilize community to be more involved and be more inclusive. It's wonderful to meet and hear your story. JOHN: As parents we've benefited from such wonderful and powerful messaged from guys like Tim (Vogt) and Al Etmanski and David Wehterow and John O'Brien. There's a million of these messages that we've been lucky enough to try and hear and try and incorporate into what we're trying to do for Mark. That's what it's all about we're doing it for our family first - and hope that other families will see what we've done and will say, “Hey if those guys can do it so can we.” That's the power of this movement. KATIE: It's actually moving, it's doing something. That's the exciting part of it. Thanks for being movers, so great to meet you. MARK: Good-bye.

Do you work because you want to or have to? Have you ever considered investing in land to generate enough passive income that exceeds your fixed expenses? Today, I am talking to Mark Podolsky of Frontier Equity Properties. Mark’s passion is investing in land, creating wealth efficiently, and helping others develop their inner geeky entrepreneurial spirit. He’s known as, “The Land Geek,” for buying and selling thousands of raw and undeveloped land deals. Also, he’s the author of Dirt Rich, a guide to building a passive income model in land investing. You’ll Learn... [02:40] Beat Friday Blues: How and why Mark became a land investor.  [05:40] Breaking Down Passive Income Model: No emotional attachment to land and distressed financially.  [07:26] Property Checklist: Due diligence to confirm ownership, back taxes, no title breaks, and no liens.  [08:25] Buy the property free and clear, and sell it in 30 days or less.  [08:40] Neighbors: Built-in best buyers to protect privacy, views, and expand holdings. [09:09] Other Options: Sites with specialized buyers and sellers of raw and undeveloped land (i.e., Craigslist, Facebook, Land Flip, Land Moto).  [10:00] No renters, rehabs, renovations, and rodents; exempt from erroneous real estate legislation.  [10:48] Price Point of Fixed Expenses: Typically, $10,000 a month in passive income.  [12:05] Operating Entity: Spend a few hours a day on land investing business, and automated software/virtual assistants do the rest.  [14:35] How to get started? Everything is hard in the beginning. Embrace the suck. [16:00] What Mark loves about land investing? No physical inventory, no competition, inefficient market, one-time sale, and passive income.  Tweetables Core Business Philosophy: Happy customers guaranteed. Raw land is the best passive income. There’s nothing not to love about land investing for passive income.  True Wealth: Work where you want, when you want, and with whom you want. Resources The Land Geek Dirt Rich by Mark Podolsky Frontier Equity Properties The Land Geek Podcast Warren Buffett’s Margin of Safety Land Moto Land Flip Dodd-Frank Financial Regulatory Reform Bill Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA) S.A.F.E. Act FortuneBuilders Robert Kiyosaki Zig Ziglar GeekPay DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrow Website Score Quiz Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business, and life, and you’re open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you’re crazy for doing it, you think they’re crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I’m your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let’s get into the show. Today, I am hanging out with Mark Podolsky. Mark, welcome to the show. I’m going to read your bio here because we want to qualify you and then we’ll let you brag a little bit because you got to do a little bit of starting out here. Today’s topic (for those who are just tuning in) is land investing for passive income. We’re going to learn how to use land investing to create a passive income stream. Mark J. Podolsky (AKA The Land Geek), is widely considered the country’s most trusted and foremost authority on buying and selling raw, undeveloped land within the United States for almost two decades. Mark has been actively investing in real estate and raw land and has completed over 5000 unique transactions. Mark’s company, Frontier Equity Properties, LLC, is an A+ rated Better Business Bureau real estate company. Mark has achieved this level of success largely due to his core business philosophy, happy customers guaranteed. Mark is the host of one of the top-rated podcasts in the Investing Category on iTunes, aptly titled The Best Passive Income Model and The Art of Passive Income. He is also the host of The Land Geek podcast: Work Smart. Earn More. Learn How. Mark, there you go. Give us a little bit of background on you and how you got into this land investing. Mark: Let’s rewind to 2000 and imagine me fighting traffic, 45 minutes in the car there and back, micromanaged, stressed out at an investment banking job, working with private equity groups specializing in mergers and acquisitions. Jason, it got so bad for me that I wouldn’t get the Sunday blues anticipating Monday coming around. I’d get the Friday blues anticipating the weekend going by really fast and heading back to work on Monday. My firm hired this guy and he’s telling me that as a side hustle, he’s going to tax deed auctions, he’s buying up raw land pennies on the dollar, he’s flipping them online, and he’s making a 300% return on his investment. Jason, I’m looking at companies all day long and a great company has 15% EBITDA margins or free cash flow. Great company. Average company is 10%. I’m looking at companies all day long, less than 10%. Of course, I’ll believe him. We go to New Mexico. I do exactly what he tells me to do. I’ve got $3000 saved up for car repairs so I can only buy $3000 worth of land. I buy 10 half-acre parcels, an average price of $300 each. I put them up all online and they all sell 30 days later from an average price of $1200 each. It worked. 300%. I took all that money, I went to another auction in Arizona (which is where I live) and again, it’s 2000. There’s no one in the room, there’s no competition, I’m buying up lots, I’m buying up acres for nothing. Over the next six months, I sold all that property and I made over $90,000 cash. I go to my wife, and she’s pregnant. I said, “Honey, I’m going to quit my job. I’m going to become a full-time land investor.” She says, “Absolutely not.” So I worked land investing part-time and it took 18 months for the land investing income to exceed the investment banking income and then, I quit. I’ve been doing it full-time ever since. Jason: It’s so easy, anybody can do it? Mark: Yeah, I wish. I wish it was so easy. It’s a simple model but anything worth doing in life is not easy. What I could do is I could walk you through the model and then, odds are you’ll just stop the podcast and quit doing what you’re doing and start land investing with me, but that’s okay. That happens a lot. You want me to walk you through it? Jason: Yeah. Mark: Jason, where do you live? Jason: I’m in Santa Clarita, California. Mark: Okay. Let’s imagine that you own 10 acres of land in Texas. I go to the county treasurer and I get a list of people that owe back taxes. Sure enough, there’s Jason Hull in Santa Clarita, California, $200 in back taxes on this 10-acre parcel. Jason, you’re advertising two things to me. Number one, you have no emotional attachment to that raw land. You’re in California. The property is located in Texas. Number two, you’re distressed financially in some way. Because when we don’t pay for things, we don’t value them in the same way. And you haven’t paid your property taxes. As a result, the county treasure keeps sending you notices saying that, “Jason, if you don’t pay your taxes, you’re eventually going to lose your 10 acres to a tax deed or tax lien investor. What I will do is I would look at the comparable sales on that 10-acre parcel. I’m going to take the lowest CUP and I’m going to divide by four. That’s going to get me what Warren Buffett calls a 300% margin of safety. I’m going to actually send you an offer of $2500 on that 10-acre parcel assuming that the lowest CUP is $10,000. I send you an offer for $2500. Now, you accept it because for you, $2500 is better than nothing and you haven’t gone out to look at the property. You just don’t care about it anymore. In reality, 3%-5% of people accept my “top dollar offer.” Now that you’ve accepted the offer, I’ve got to go through due diligence or in-depth research. Number one, I got to confirm you still own the property. Number two, I have to confirm the back taxes are only $200. Number three, I have to make sure there have been no breaks in the chain of title. Number four, I have to make sure there are no liens or encumbrances. I have this whole property checklist and it goes on and on and on. If it’s a property deal that’s worth less than $5000, I’ll actually close it directly with my team in the Philippines. We’re hooked up to an American title company. I pay $11 for due diligence. They’ll give me a whole property report. I’ll get the GIS maps, the plat maps, aerial maps. If it’s an area I don’t know, I’ll have somebody go out there, stamp on the property for me, take a video and shoot photos throughout the property checklist. What are the neighbors doing out there, what’s the road like, all these things. Everything checks out and now, I buy the property from you for $2500. You get $2300 of it, $200 goes to the treasurer, and now I have that property free and clear. I’m going to sell this property 30 days or less. The reason I’m going to do this is I have a built-in best buyer. Do you know who it is? Jason: No. Mark: The neighbors. I’m going to sell that to the neighbour saying, “Hey, here’s your opportunity. Protect your privacy, protect your views, expand your holdings, know your neighbour.” Oftentimes, the neighbors will buy it. If they pass, I’ll go to my buyers list. If my buyers list passes, I’ll go to a little website you might not have heard of called Craigslist (10th most traffic website in the United States). I’ll go to an even smaller one. It’s called Facebook buy-and-sell group and marketplace. And then, I’ll go to these platforms that specialize in buying and selling raw land, landmodo.com, landandfarm.com, landsofamerica.com, landflip.com. It goes on and on. Now, the way I’m going to sell it is I’m going to make it irresistible. I’m going to ask for a $2500 down payment. I get my money out on the down, within (let’s say) six months of that. I’m going to get a car payment, let’s say $449 a month, 9% interest over the next 84 months. Essentially, I’ve got a one-time sale, I have passive income of $449 a month, 9% interest over the next 84 months, no renters, no rehabs, no renovations, no rodents. And because I’m not dealing with a tenant, I’m exempt from Dodd-Frank, RESPA, and the SAFE act (this onerous real estate legislation). The game that we play is can we create enough of this land notes where our passive income exceeds our fixed expenses and then we’re working because we want to, not because we have to. The beautiful part about all of this is 90% of it is automated with software virtual assistants. It’s great. Jason: What is the price point of fixed expenses typically? Mark: For most people, after you earn about $10,000 a month in passive income (that’s $120,000 a year), you’re in pretty good shape. Now, we have some clients who are doctors and lawyers. I have a client. He’s been working with us for 10 months. He’s at $15,000 a month passive and he just went from 5 days a week at his law firm to 2 days a week and he’s spending the rest of his time with his dad who needs help working with him and the other two days doing what he wants to do. We have so many clients that once they hit that point, they retire their spouse. They quit their job. They do what they really want to do in life because the whole idea of this is that we can always make more money but we can’t get more time. For me, true wealth means you wake up and you don’t have to be anywhere. You work where you want, when you want, and with whom you want. That’s really the goal of doing all this. Jason: Love that. What else do people typically ask you about this? When you say it, it sounds really easy. It sounds like something that maybe anybody can do, but it’s like starting a part-time job if you start getting into this. Mark: It is. It is an operating entity. We ask our clients to spend about an hour or two a day doing this. That will move the needle because with our virtual assistants and our software, it’s pretty automated. We actually have automation software for marketing. We can automate our craigslist and our Facebook postings with a posting automator. The only two things that (as CEO of your land investing business) you, Jason, actually have to do, is county research because if you get that screwed up, that whole thing falls off the rails, so you have to pick a good county. From there, you’re going to make sure that you get your pricing right, so you might want to work with a VA, train them, and show them, “Hey, look. Here’s our lowest comps dividing by four. We need a response rate of 3%-5%. If it’s under 3%, our offer is too low. If it’s over 5%, let’s get nervous. Why are they selling us their property? We might have to renegotiate.” We have our metrics in there.  As far as the rest of the process, you can get virtual assistants to do our due diligence. You can get an intake manager that can actually talk to your sellers (because that’s a big time-suck as well). From there, you can close. We like to use Simplifile accountings, so that we can record our deeds online, so I don’t have to go and do a lot of whole paperwork that way. Once we own it, again, we have an inexpensive virtual assistant getting us through GIS, all the neighbors information, uploading that to our software, sending out our neighbor letters. There’s an API with lob.com, which does our mailings. On the backend of it, we use a software called GeekPay.io that is a set-it-and-forget-it system on collecting our money. We get our down payment via credit card and then we get our monthly payments via ACH. It does all the amortization. It does all the calculations. It charges fees but it does it through notifications. If that ACH bounces, it will charge the credit card on file. We went from an 8% default rate to a 4% default rate. I personally worked two hours a week in Frontier Properties, doing the kind of volume that we do. Jason: Sounds great. That’s pretty incredible. How hard is it for somebody to get started with this that’s new? Mark: It’s like anything in life. Everything is hard in the beginning. You know what’s really hard, Jason? Learning to read. We don’t remember it. We forgot how hard that was in the very beginning but you had a good teacher, they broke it down for you step-by-step, and you are with other people. It was just a thing, like everyone can do this and you’re just expected to do it. It’s the same kind of thing. What happens is we’re so ingrained after all these years of schooling that you have to achieve what you achieve, to go back and embrace beginner’s mind and embrace the suck. It’s hard. If you can do that, if you can be comfortable being uncomfortable and you have some grit, you can be successful in anything in life, whether it’s my land investing niche or growing your doors. It doesn’t matter. Nothing worth doing is easy. Jason: It sure is nothing worth doing is easy. The challenge is if somebody is going to choose into doing this, choose into doing property management, or choose into doing any business, they have to fall in love with this. They have to get excited about this. Help the listeners understand what do you love about doing this? Your clients that get involved in this, what do they love about it that’s different from other entrepreneurial ventures that they get into? Mark: The main reason that people like this model is number one, there’s no physical inventory. Number two, there’s little to no competition. If you go on HGTV or the DIY Network, you’re not going to ever see me on Flip This Land. The before pictures is raw land, the after pictures is raw land. It’s not going to be much fun to watch me in front of a computer. If you go to [...] meeting and there are 100 people in that room, 99 of them are house flippers, landlords, or wholesalers. You and I are the only land guys. Number three, you have an inefficient market. I’ve got a hedge fund manager that loves this business because he’s like, “Mark, there are very few inefficient markets left out there. Nobody knows the value of raw land.” Now, that can be very frustrating in the beginning, but it’s also very exciting once you get your arms around it.  No physical inventory, no competition, inefficient, and then you have the fact that it’s a one-time sale and then the passive income versus let’s say I flip a house. I make $20,000 on a flip. I have a new problem. What do I do with my $20,000? I can’t put it in the bank. It’s not going to earn anything. I have to keep redeploying that capital. Once we get to let’s say $10,000 a month of passive income, what our net worth? How long would it take you to have an investment of $120,000 a year at say 2% interest in the bank? That’s over $3 million you and I would have to save. How long, Jason, would it take for you to save $3 million? How long would it take anybody to save $3 million? Jason: I probably would never do it. Mark: Yeah. 12-36 months, you can have that kind of cash flow and then your bankers are really happy with you because your net worth is over $3 million. The fact that—I’m not proud of it—I can’t even screw in a light bulb. I tried to flip a house once. I am not interested in physical things so the subs come out there. I meet the subs. They don’t show up. Just the capital outlay, I started with $3000. My buddy, [...], started at $800. You’re not going to ever get knocked out of the game in this niche. The dollars are just too small. If you go into multifamily housing, you do one bad deal and you’re done for 10 years. You’re BK or you’re just a pariah in the investment community because you lost all your investors money. This is not like that at all. You have an easy entry point, you have no physical inventory, you have no competition. You have a one-time sale on passive income. You have an inefficient market. There’s nothing not to like about it. I think what’s interesting is if you go to a party and you tell people you’re a land investor, they’ll yawn. It’s not sexy. Definitely not sexy. Maybe you lie and say you’re in multifamily housing. Jason: I don’t know if that’s super sexy sometimes either, but yeah. Mark: I mean it depends who you’re talking to. Jason: How do people get started in this? It sounds interesting. My interest is piqued. I’m sure some people listening are interested. How do they get started with this because I’m sure there’s a fairly steep learning curve? There’s got to be a reason why everybody isn’t doing it. How saturated is this? Mark: It’s not saturated at all because again, it’s just not sexy. It’s not conventional. The marketing budgets of the people that are in the house flipping world like Robert Kiyosaki or FortuneBuilders, that’s really where people thought to. Land investing, you have a mental hurdle for people where they think, “Well, I’ve never bought land.” We all know everyone needs a place to live. Nobody needs raw land. You don’t wake up today and say, “Boy, I really got to own 10 acres today.” Jason: That land that nobody is using and nobody seems to want. That land. Mark: Right. It’s a marketing business. You have to interrupt somebody’s day, pique their interest, and make it irresistible. I’ll tell you, after over 5200 deals, I’ve never been stuck with a piece of land. You buy any asset, 25–30 cents on the dollar, there’s someone else on the other end of that deal. Whether it be a piece of land, a car, a trinket, it doesn’t matter. The market is the market. So to get started, I would say you’ve got to learn from somebody who’s done in. For example, let’s say you and I are going to go to Mount Everest together. We’re going to climb this big mountain. Jason: We’re not just going to wing it. Mark: Yeah. You’re going to someone who’s done it a million times and they can tell you the best routes quickly, efficiently, and safely to do it. That’s what you want to do. You can start with that. In fact, for the listeners, I would say that I have a $97 course that I’d love to offer them for free. If they just go to thelandgeek.com/launchkit, they can go ahead and get that course for free. Start there and then see if they like it or not. Jason: Their time investment is 1-2 hours a day? Mark: If that, yeah. It depends if they’re using tools or not. It also depends if they have a scarcity mentality or abundance mentality. A lot of people, when they start doing this, they think they can penny-pinch their way to wealth. They don’t want to use the tools that are out there.  Jason: “No, I’ll do it myself. I’ll watch 120 Youtube videos and figure out how to do it myself.” Mark: Yeah, and you can do that. But again, my whole philosophy is that I can always make more money. I can’t get more time. So, anything that’ll save you time, I’ll invest in. Jason: I say something very similar to my clients. That makes sense. Anything else anybody should know before we wrap this up and how can they get in touch with you? Mark: If you have that mindset that Zig Ziglar says, “If you'll do for the next 3–5 years what other people won't do, you’ll be able to do for the rest of your life what other people can’t do.” You’ve got to get your reps in and you have to embrace the suck. Again, nothing worth doing in life is easy. It might be a simple model, but it’s not easy. You have to take action at some point  Again, the best way to get a hold of me is thelandgeek.com. I’ve got an audio book. I’ve got a book on Amazon called Dirt Rich if you want to just read about it and hear my story as well. It got really good reviews. People seem to like it. It’s not because I’m such a good writer. It’s just that they like it. Jason: Nice. Perfect. Look for the book, Dirt Rich, or check out thelandgeek.com. Mark, this is interesting. I think it’s a new idea that people certainly haven’t heard of this before on the DoorGrow Show. I appreciate you coming on and hanging out here with me. Mark: Jason, thank you so much. Again, I apologize if you’re just going to quit your business and go [...] with me. Jason: I love what I do so. Mark: See? There you go. You can do both. Jason: Both. All right. Maybe I’ll get a few people from this show that are wanting to do both. There you go. Mark, thanks again for coming on the show. We’ll let you go. Mark: Thanks, Jason. I appreciate it. Jason: If you are a property management entrepreneur and you enjoy the show, be sure to like and subscribe. If you’re watching this on Youtube or on Facebook, be sure to share it if you would. We would appreciate that. If you’re in some property management groups, we’d love to see your comments. And if you’re on iTunes, give us a review. We would really love to get that feedback. We’re putting out this content for free. We would love a little reciprocity, people. That would be really sweet of you. I would appreciate it greatly. It helps us get the word out and make a difference in this industry.  If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to grow your business, add doors, you’re struggling, you’re feeling that there’s a scarcity in the industry, there’s no scarcity in property management right now. 70% are self-managing. There’s plenty of opportunity. Reach out, talk to us, and let us help you see how you can align your business towards more warm leads and stop spending so much time trying to go with cold leads, time keepers, and time wasters. The people that are at the very end of the sales cycle are the coldest, crappiest, most price-sensitive. Those are the people searching online. They’re the leftovers that fall off the word-of-mouth table. Come sit at the table with us. We’re DoorGrow. We’ll talk to you soon. Check us out at doorgrow.com. Bye everyone. Until next time, to our mutual growth.

Getting control of your business is the key to navigating towards a profitable future. The most common obstacles for successful eCommerce businesses are inventory and cash flow. Today's guest is an expert in providing forecasting tools to help skirt those obstacles to grow your business and prep for a successful exit. Scott Deetz was one of the advisers whose input was crucial to a successful overseas deal we discussed on a previous episode. In this episode, we explore the ways Scott's forecasting techniques have fact-based evidence to support predicted ROI for potential buyers. Scott is the founder and CEO of the Northbound group, a company that helps eCommerce businesses uncover the value in their businesses and prepare a successful exit. With a background in corporate transactions, Scott got into the amazon selling space in 2013. He soon realized his interest remained where it had started, in mergers and strategic advising. He now spends all his time assisting eCommerce businesses on how to maximize the value of their company for either keeping or selling. Episode Highlights: Whether forecasting is based on a wish and a prayer or if there is science and methodology involved. The importance of forecasting as a regular part of any growing business. How Scott's tools can help establish the supplier as a partner and diminish cash flow problems. How the forecasting can change the discussion on strategy. The value of the planning and structuring a deal around the forecasting. The buyer's effective multiple and what it means for their purchase process. The importance of speaking the buyer's language. Scott reveals the levels of building from forecasting. How hard data coupled with owner wisdom can the best formula for forecasting as well provide a roadmap for a successful exit. Transcription: Joe: Mark, one of the things or a dozen of the things that I always see happen with entrepreneurs that we speak with is that everyone runs out of inventory, everyone has cash flow problems, in fact I was just on a call prior to recording this podcast with someone that does an amazing job with their business to the point where it's growing 150% year over year which causes what? Cash flow problems, inventory problems. I did a webinar yesterday and one of the questions was have you ever run a stock? Yes, no, or I'm so amazing I never run out of stock. Oddly enough no one checks the third option which is really good. But a lot of people run out of stock. It seems to be the status quo. I understand that you had our friend Scott Deetz on the podcast talking about forecasting, talking about cash flow management; what it does for your peace of mind number one but inventory management and how you can use all of these forecasting tools to renegotiate with your suppliers to build a more valuable business and to grow it with more confidence. How did the call go? Mark: Yeah. So, Joe, I know the podcast episodes that you do are so well packaged that you have an amazing podcast, right? I just want to start out with that. You have an amazing podcast and you package these together so well with their incredible exits series that you've been doing and actually, in all honesty, it is a really good series that you've been doing where you're interviewing some sellers. With my less desirable or appealing package, I've been doing essentially the same thing with the UK deal. We really had Joseph Harwood on. That episode aired I believe in August and we talked about Joseph's exit as a UK company. And one of the things that we brought up on that call was how many advisors helped us through that process. Well, Scott was one of these advisors and I'm going to also have another podcast with one of the other advisors on that that helped us through that. One of the crucial aspects for shows of sale, one of the things that really made it run was the forecasting that Joseph and Scott did with the business now forecasts. A lot of us see them and think they're just kind of a wing and a prayer and they're kind of hoping and hey, if my rosy assumptions work out this business, is going to have a hockey stick amount of growth. And so they get discounted quite a bit. I remember I spoke to somebody else about this; Andy Jones from Private Equity Info and we asked him about forecasts and he said look you look at forecasts they are all hockey sticks. I guarantee the buyer is going to do their own forecasts. Well, Scott has a different approach to forecasts. They're very very conservative. He ends up doing scenario analysis to see Scenario A, Scenario B, Scenario C; one's very pessimistic, ones very optimistic, one is what they actually expect to happen and there's actually a methodology here. Now we spent the first half of this call going over why is this important. He explained how he uses this to negotiate supplier terms that don't pinch the supplier but actually help a partnership with that supplier. He talks about how it was crucial for Joseph having the ability to order a really sizable amount of inventory as we're going into a busy season so that he didn't run out. And then finally we talked about how it has an impact on the actual selling process. And he brought up a point; super simple, you and I talk about this all the time, when you're talking to a buyer for an online business you need to be able to speak to the return on investment they're going to get. And their buyer is constantly doing that sort of analysis. Well, Scott was able to go through an analysis that was based on reason and logic and numbers and it had been refined if we could take a look historically to see here's what we were forecasting, here's how close we were, right? We were off and so we've modified our assumptions. So about half of it is on why the second half is on how and kind of giving people a little bit of a jump start on how to actually do forecasting. And it's something that I would highly recommend. We had Ben Murray on from the SaaS CFO and he talked about the importance of forecasting in a SaaS business. So this is a really important thing for any online business and frankly any business to start doing. Joe: And these guys are all connected with running multi-million dollar businesses that will have a multi-million dollar exit. And that's they've; I want to say grown up into forecasting. A lot of people bootstrap things and sort of do the best they can. Those that hold on long enough or mature enough to get to the forecasting part. I think it makes a huge difference. The folks that I just had on the call prior to this they've got an incredible business and they've grown up into that as well. I think that this podcast will help them tremendously. I know Scott personally he's a great guy, very smart, very very good at numbers so let's jump into it. Mark: But before we get there, I just want to throw out there to the listeners in case you didn't catch it. Mark Doust is an expert at very subtle wise assery; here's why, I told him I was going to read this quote, quote-unquote this is from a listener, a guy named Chris Rock is his last name. Thank you, Chris. I just want you to know you are my favorite listener at this point. Quote, I've been impressed by several podcasts with Joe Valley; no space there for Mark Daoust, no mention of Mark Daoust at all, Joe Valley and we'd like to set up a call this week to discuss the process and valuation. Thank you, Chris. You are my favorite without a doubt. Let's go to the podcast. Joe: I was being sold. I just want to make it clear. Mark: Alright here we go. Scott Deetz, here we go folks. Mark: Alright I'm really excited this week to have Scott Deetz on. Scott you and I worked together for a long time and frankly it's been way way too long for this to even happen. I should've had you on the podcast probably a year ago or so but I don't know if you've listened to the podcast at all. We have a tradition of guests introducing themselves mainly because we don't do show prep so I'll hand it over to you. Why don't you introduce yourself to the audience? Scott: Sure, perfect. Yeah, I'm excited to do this Mark. So my name is Scott Deetz. I'm with Northbound Group which is a company that I founded. I was an Amazon seller starting in 2013. I was ASM3 for folks that may know what that is and I got into the Amazon selling side of things but my background has been in more corporate transactions, mergers, and acquisitions. And once I got into the industry for a little bit, I realized that I liked helping people and looked at the industry and thought I could help people in a series of ways with strategic finance and with corporate development work and with being, in essence, a strategic advisor to people that may want to consider exit strategies as well. So I started Northbound Group about three years ago and now that's what I do full time; it's just assist Amazon and other e-commerce businesses on how to maximize the value of their company for whether they want to hold it or whether they want to sell it. Mark: Yeah. And you worked on; actually, we worked together on Joseph Harwood's deal. We had him on the podcast a few weeks ago talking about how to sell a UK based business and that was a complex transaction. We talked a lot about that on that podcast about how complex it was at least compared to what we typically see in the spaces as to how these transactions go. The topic that you and I are going to discuss today is forecasting. And I really think with Joseph's business and the way that we presented that business to potential buyers there was so much that it hinged on the forecasting that your group did to be able to say what are we looking at for sales coming from the future. Now this is a bit of a touchy subject because within Quiet Light we don't rely on forecasts all that much, right? We would never sell or trade necessarily on a forecast on its own. However, your forecasts were a bit different than what we've typically seen in the past. If I could just kind of put it bluntly most forecasts that we see are kind of a wish and a prayer. If someone is saying hey here's what I like to do over the next twelve months or it's even more simplistic than that; well this is what I did the first three months of the year, a straight-line projection shows that it's going to be this so that's going to be my forecast. And it's just very unreliable and that's why we've never used it. Yours tended to have quite a bit more specificity and we really put a lot into that forecast including structuring the deal around the forecast as well which meant that our client, in this case, Joseph really believed the numbers that were coming out because he was riding a lot on that. So I wanted to talk about forecasting and I want to start out with just kind of a basic question, is it just a wish and a prayer to say this is what we're going to be doing in the future? And again this is a softball question. I'm leading you into the answer pretty easily here. Or is there actual science and actual methodology here where we can use these forecasts with some level of reliability? Scott: Yeah. So to me, that case study really showcased the power of how forecasting can ultimately affect the amount that you receive for your company. But I would say the short answer to your question is if an Amazon seller came to me and said would I rather have a simplistic forecast than no forecast at all I would say yes. But the answer to it really is that I think forecasting is not a one-time event but something you implement. So, in other words, people don't build a forecast and then it collects dust. You implement a forecasting methodology in your business that is continually being updated as new information is coming into the business. And when your self as an owner or when an outside party can see that not only is it a science and it's around a tool but it is also an ingrained methodology for the business, I think that's really when the power of forecasting takes hold. And particularly in Joseph's case, for example, the first forecast that we built and if he was on the call we would laugh together, it started out like you would expect. I have no idea. Let's put some numbers on a board. Let's start looking at it. Then we started implementing it on a regular basis and we would get it down to the point to where we could update a complete forecast for the business in under 60 minutes. And every time that we realized we were either short of our forecast or over our forecast we started tweaking it and we got more and more and more accurate so that by the time that we, for example, got in front of a potential buyer for the business the buyer could sense our confidence in the forecast and obviously then that in turn gave them their confidence in the forecast and ultimately helped facilitate the transaction. Mark: And I want to get into methodology here in a little bit but I want to start at a maybe a little bit of an earlier point because we talk a lot in Quiet Light about how having a good exit strategy and preparing a business for sale often gives you a really good business to own, right? And this exercise of forecasting is not just for an exit. It's actually really good from a business ownership standpoint. What are some reasons that people should be implementing forecasting as a regular part of their business? Scott: Yeah. The easiest way I can answer that is that I say there is no cash flow planning without forecasting. Mark: For anybody out there by the way it felt like a good rhyme. Scott: It does, doesn't it? Yeah, there is no cash planning without forecasting or something like. But everybody out there that is in this industry struggles with the fact that as you grow because you have to front a lot of your inventory oftentimes or at least a portion of that you have to invest in the business. Everybody is doing this dance between growth and having enough cash to grow. A forecast fundamentally is the link between the two that doesn't look at what your accounting numbers were in the past but looks at what the next six or twelve months forward of your businesses and we'll answer the question for you do I have enough cash to succeed? And the way I look at if you use Xero or Quickbooks or a good accounting program is very simply that gives you a gorgeous picture of what's in the rearview mirror but you don't drive your car based on what's in the rearview mirror, you drive your car based on what's out in front of you. And really what forecasting is that capability. So whether you ever want to sell your business or not if you want to have an accurate cash flow of your business you by definition have to be good at forecasting. The second reason that I think that it's really really critical is because forecasting helps you determine where you're making your money and where you're not making your money. So very often in our forecasting tools that we have built for Amazon sellers, we'll build a forecast for people and it doesn't only forecast the revenue but it forecasts the profitability. And it's not uncommon at all for example to see somebody who's selling a product in the US that's making a great amount of profit and they take that same product and when you add the VAT or other costs in the UK it's not profitable at all. So why put the gas pedal down so to speak and grow an area of your company that's not as profitable? So I think it's really helpful in two things; well three things actually, the first one is cash flow planning, the second one is analyzing your profitability, and then the third one is once you have an accurate forecast we have found it's the single most important thing to help you get better supplier terms. So when we go negotiate with suppliers on behalf of our clients or we give them the tools to do it themselves we are incorporating forecasting to show the suppliers a forecast that they then believe. And if your supplier believes an accurate forecast then what they'll do is they'll say to you, okay wow we're going to grow this much. That is the basis for the conversation of getting payment terms after shipping. And it's also the basis for being able to ask for a better price for your product. So those are really outside of even selling the business; as far as running the business those are the big three. Mark: Yeah. This idea of cash flow planning; I mean the number one problem with Amazon businesses is what it's cash flow, right? I mean people are growing, their business is growing and they're putting all the money back into inventory and I think a lot of Amazon sellers are really just sticking their thumb up in the air and saying okay I think I should order this much. Maybe there's some level of estimation going on there. But the number of people that we see the number of businesses we see where they have inventory shortages or they have a busy season and they end up ordering too much and so they're sitting on just a big pile of inventory that's there for another year waiting for the next busy season. I mean it's kind of a rule; it's not an exception that we see this. Your supplier terms that you mentioned in the third point that plays into this cash flow problem as well. I don't want to get into the details of exactly what Joseph's structure with his business and his supplier terms but suffice it to say he eliminated all of the cash flow issues that you would normally have with an Amazon business because you guys were able to negotiate really good terms with the suppliers. I assume that was based on the forecast that you're able to put together. Scott: Yes absolutely it was and the key part that we were able to do was bring in the supplier in essence in partnership and have them realize, and this is what I'd recommend anybody that's listening to this, this is not about beating up a supplier. This is about being upfront with them and saying if I had no cash flow problem this is what the growth potential would be for the products that I sourced through you. We were able to make that case with this particular supplier. And in essence, it rapidly accelerated the growth of the business prior to then ultimately exiting the business because we eliminated the cash flow problem which also became a competitive advantage against other people that had cash flow problems because when they run out of inventory we get our sales. So it's absolutely critical and the number one reason that a lot of suppliers don't want to give better terms is because like you said they don't trust that either the business will sell that many units. So then if they know the business doesn't sell the units they may be stuck with them. Forecasting helps eliminate that concern and we were able to go to the supplier and say look at all of these trends, look at all of this information if we sell this many units of these many products this is how fast we could grow. But the problem is we don't have the cash to order that many units, can you help us out? And ultimately we are able to come to a very favorable situation for frankly both the supplier and for Joseph. Mark: Yeah. This idea of profitability as well. I mean this is just a common area where we see a lot of waste being spent on ASINs that frankly aren't that profitable. And these are the areas where people are spending time, resources, maybe they're spending money on this and it's really just diluting what their efforts should be as well. So this idea of going back I liken it to something that again we preach over and over at Quiet Light which is it starts with having good books, good data that you can go back and look at. Personally in my personal life like when I review my finances and if you do this at home and you look at your credit card statement, how many times have you looked at your credit card statement and you look at something and say oh my gosh I have this subscription; I didn't even realize I still had this subscription on there, right? Going back over and over again and like you're doing revising assumptions of what the business is doing helps you think about your business more critically in a different way than maybe we would normally think of you know especially with a product-based business you're thinking about product variations, you're thinking about customer service, how can you make that customer experience better but maybe not thinking strategically about your business as you might want to. And I know with Joseph's business looking at his inventory purchasing history he made a couple of purchases in there which I looked at and I just thought oh my goodness this guy is brave. Because he was taking huge chunks of inventory on at the time but he was able to do that because you guys had worked on this and he felt very confident about what was coming up plus he got great supplier terms that came with kind of a safety point there. Scott: We simply would not; two notes on that, one without going to the suppliers for the supplier terms we wouldn't have been able to grow as fast because we wouldn't have wanted to take on the personal risk that comes when you sign a letter of credit at a bank or anything like that. You've got a personal guarantee. So good supplier terms allowed us to have a business partnership that while we had a good-faith guarantee that we were going to pay them for that it's not the same as putting up your house or putting up all of the other assets that you have in the business. And forecasting was sort of a key aspect to that. Here's the other thing and I've seen it go the opposite way as well and I always like to stress this is that if somebody is thinking about eventually selling their business you have to understand that every dollar of profit in the year that you sell costs you three to four times as much. Because when you apply the multiple to your valuation if I am a company that's making $200,000 a year and they go out of stock and that stock going out of stock costs them $10,000 of profit. You not only lose the $10,000 of profit because you went out of stock you lose three times that amount and if your multiple is three and we're not here to discuss multiples. But the point is that just going out of stock we had somebody that we work with that went out of stock during a busy season for only two weeks, it cost them about $30,000 of profit and instantly they lost $100,000 off their sales price by one outage that forecasting could have prevented by knowing that they needed to order more. So I think if you needed a fourth reason out there why this is so critical I always say the most expensive way to finance your business is by running out of stock and not ordering enough not because we've all seen that yo-yo. Forecast at least allows you to see the problem so that you can address it proactively as opposed to all of a sudden boom you're out of stock and you're in a scramble and you're shipping by air which also costs you on your valuation and those things. So for those reasons that's why I think it's just so absolutely critical to running a business successfully particularly on Amazon. Mark: Yeah and I want to comment on that real quick because I was about to say obviously we're going to be Amazon-specific; that's where you really know your stuff extremely well. The forecasting is an exercise that pretty much every business should be doing. I know I had Ben Murray on the SaaS CFO and he talks about the importance of forecasting in a SaaS business. And I know at Quiet Light we just recently implemented some forecasting models as well. And it's super helpful when I can look at; our major expense is conferences, right? So when I can even look out and see what our expense profile in the forecast for that over the next six months is it really helps us understand how to spend our money and gives us a different way of looking at this. Alright; forecasting, we could talk a lot about why we should do it for just running the business. When it comes to selling a business the impact of having a reliable forecast and the impact that it has on a buyer, I'm going to just comment on this real quick because with Joseph's business I was obviously working with buyers directly on that and I can tell you that oftentimes forecast get met with some skepticism. People look at it and they don't really trust them. When people look at your forecasts partly because of the way we structured the deal and there was an earn-out that we were upfront with saying look we expect some pretty big growth in this business so we're not asking for everything upfront. We're willing to do an earn-out type of structure here but also because of the way that the forecasts really seem to have some specificity to them. That became an integral part of that sales process where people wanted to delve in and understand the forecasts. And as we were going through an update in months people were checking the forecasts as well. And when they saw that you guys were right on them or in some cases maybe a little bit wrong but here's why. It changed the discussion dynamically. This was not just kind of an amateur business of somebody who found a product that sold well on Amazon. This was a business that was being run strategically and had a real plan moving forward. And so on the sales process, I think the very simple conclusion is you added a lot of value to Joseph's business by virtue of having the strategic planning and the strategic background that you were working on and then structuring a deal around this as well. Scott: Thank you. Yeah, so I think a couple of points on that; one of them as you transition over to the sales side of things, the first thing I always want to state is that most buyers like you said will say to you we can't buy on future projections. As a general rule, there's a lot of risk in Amazon and all of these reasons for it but I want to make this statement and I state it so boldly when I talk with sellers because I think it's so critical in forecasting such an important part of it. The only multiple that a buyer cares about is not the historical multiple, the only multiple they care about is what I call the buyer's effective multiple which is what is the price I pay divided by the earnings that I get which by definition is something in the future. So while they're not sharing their forecast with you if they don't believe they are building a forecast on their side which is helping them calculate what's called the return on investment in various ways. So the notion I want sellers to understand just as how when you build a listing you need to speak in the language of your customer in order to have your product listing make sense. It's the same thing when you go through a transaction you need to be able to speak in the language of a buyer to have the most credibility for that particular buyer. So the forecast that we built with Joseph is built very very much with that purpose in mind. We think of ourselves as an outsourced CFO to a business with the responsibility of communicating in the language of a buyer. So when I think about sort of forecasting and what I'll call more advanced forecasting what we were able to do was not just to say hey if you give us a bunch of cash we think the business will double what we were able to do is to look at every product on a per unit basis of how many units it's doing right now. We would then apply seasonality to it so that we had all the historical information to apply seasonality. We did that for every current product in every market based on the margin in that market whether it was in dot.com or in Europe or in the US. And then we were able to build in each of all of the product launches of new products that didn't exist today but we're coming out to market. And we were able to be conservative on those but in essence, show that even if we hit conservative numbers of that we're gonna be in a pretty positive situation. So I think the message is when a buyer sees all of that underlying logic in the forecast it's more than just an idea. It's really a strategic communication tool between the buyer and the seller. So they were able to go okay, and you bring up another great point which is that this is absolutely a process through the life of getting the transaction done. If it takes you a few months to sell your business every month you're updating that forecast; you're having that dialogue as to where things are at. So I think what I would encourage people is that when you want to be in front of a buyer the same way that you want to be in front of a customer and think about it from their lens. You want to do the same thing for a buyer and a buyer needs to understand what the potential is of the business in order to pay the highest price for it. And if they don't know the business as well as you do I look at it as we're sort of obligated in our minds to provide them that picture. They can agree or disagree and we can structure a deal accordingly but unless we have a common view of what we think reality is in the future that's really the only effective multiple that they can use to calculate their return on their investment. Mark: Yeah. And the phrase I've always used for that is buyers buy for ROI. And you see it's got that rhyme so it's more memorable. Scott: Yeah, I love it. I love it. Exactly. Mark: No one buys a business to lose money. People buy a business because they want to make money. And speaking in the language of the buyer it really does boil down to that and the more firm that we can make that ROI pitch of here's why you're going to see a return on your investment; the more fun you can make that the more certain a buyer is going to be, the more willing they're going to be to pay a higher price for the business. I feel that we spent a lot of time speaking on why and that's my fault here. I want to get into how to do this because it's one thing to say okay here's what my historical sales were and maybe we're going to assume certain growth; I mean what sort of assumptions would you start with when you're doing some forecasting on an Amazon business? And then I'm going to wrap in multiple questions here and just kind of let you go to town on this, how would you do like a new product launch as well? I'm interested in both of those questions; like existing products in the next year and also new product launches. Scott: I got it. So here's the way I think; I'm going to refer to this as the building blocks of a forecast. So the building blocks of a forecast first is an understanding that there are two types of forecasts that you need. One of them is I'm going to refer to it as a product forecast or a product sales forecast and the second one is one I'm going to refer to as a P&L forecast or an overall profit and loss or income statement forecast and here's how they relate together. The first thing that you need to build is you need to build your product forecast which is, in essence, each one of your products. And part of what we've built over the last two or three years is toolsets to do this. But even if you weren't going to use our toolsets and just think about it conceptually every one of your products you need to know what the margin of that product is. You need to understand what the historical sales of that product have been. And then very simply you need to be able to project out; we do it on a per-day basis because that's generally how people think about it and then multiply times 30 but you need to be able to project out how many units per day or per month of each one of my current products am I believing that I'm going to sell. The second thing is most of the time when we build a per product forecast for people and they say that they want to double the size of their business or that they could, the first thing that they realize when they look at all their existing products is that that's not going to get them where they want to go. And that's where new product forecasting comes in. And the way that we do new product forecasting is exactly the same way but we build in what we call a launch budget and then a launch ramp up for each one of those new products. So we'll build in an upfront cost of let's say $5,000 to do giveaways or ads or review gathering; those types of things. And then we'll build in that if I eventually get to 30 units a day of this particular product then it's going to take me four months to get there so we'll start at 10 units then 15 then 20 and then 30 over each particular month. So visually the way it looks is in the product forecasting all of your current products we have out on the top and then down below that over time you have a bunch of zeros but then you eventually have revenue coming in down below that if you list out all of your new products. And that gives you what I refer to as your product forecast. Mark: So how do you project out with some of these products on a per-day basis? I mean obviously; let's say I'm selling 10 units a day right now and I want to get to 17 units per day, where do you look at to say I think I can get here. You have to be looking at; we have to do X, Y, and Z to get here almost working backwards to be able to say we're going to do X, Y, and Z to get here or are you looking at here's what we're doing and here is just kind of the trajectory and where do you see the limit as well? Because that's more aspect of it where if you're doing 10 years a day you might want to sell a thousand per day but that market just isn't there for that. Scott: Yeah. So the way we think about that is first of all you have to look at what the overall market potential is. So pick whatever tool that you want to use. We use Helium10 for example when we say okay if I was in first spot for this keyword, this keyword, this keyword, and this keyword what is really a realistic assessment of how much I could gain? And then let's look at the product trajectory of where this product is at and if we're rank 15 then we believe that we can get; and we usually say start conservative. Start your product forecast on if I could eventually get to the top half of Page 1 but don't necessarily build a forecast based on I'm going to outtake the competitor. A more advanced forecast what we want people to do is literally situate themselves compared to the competition. So it's pretty obvious sometimes when you go into a market and one of the clients I was speaking with yesterday while we're doing our forecasting work he said yeah for me to get to spot one or two is I'm going to have to have literally 4,000 reviews, I'm gonna have to do massive giveaways, so we said really for this product and this keyword and this niche we're going to keep the forecast is based on being in positions 3 to 6. And then let's look at where you're at now and if you're in position 22 but you're working your way out then you can build your forecast up to that particular level. But you really have to do it that way. And then the other key that we really really focused on a lot is every month has a seasonality factor to it. So you have to understand what is your seasonality factors when you're building your forecast. So in our tools for example we have the ability to set up to 12 different seasonalities because we want to basically allow you to understand when it gets to August how much should I order for the holidays or for a lot of people they have summer seasonality when should I place my orders. So you really have to assess not only the units per day but assess the seasonality side of things. And then the only other thing that we look at in terms of building that sort of bottoms-up forecast is don't always plan that a product is always going to stay level. You have to plan sometimes over a two or three year period based on the product life cycle to start to even put in a slight decline. There might be competition there might be price wars and those types of things and I think that's absolutely critical to forecasting because it encourages you to always innovate. Where sometimes people get a few; and I'm sure you've seen this a ton of times, you get a few hero SKUs that are doing great but then they don't invest in new product and we've talked about this before, you have to keep doing that even if you're thinking about selling your business because you can't count on those products always being the big winners that they might be today. Mark: How many influencing variables do you typically look at in a mature forecasting model and are they working together in a formulaic way or are you really just taking more subjective assessments of these things? And what I mean is let's say that you're looking at I know this is what my keyword volume is for particular products, I know what my [inaudible 00:36:08.1] says so I can kind of back into some projected numbers here from just the paid model and here's the organic models so you can almost approach this formulaically or you could sit back and again have more of this the subjective look at all the different factors. Are you taking more of this variable approach? Scott: Yes. So here's what I would say. I look at formulaic as tools that provide insight but do not provide wisdom. You as the owner of your business need to become what I'd refer to as wise. And my way of thinking about it is you have a bunch of data that eventually leads to information that then information leads to decisions and then decisions over time leads to wisdom. And so the way that I think about that is sort of like a pyramid building up. The tools provide you the data and the information but it's your insight and your time and experience that provides the wisdom. So the way that we think about it is every one of your products with our best clients that we force them through the discipline of looking at all of the data out there but committing to units per day in the future going forward on this particular product and think of it as sort of a manual override. All of the forecasting tools out there are great but every one of them every time; and we built all these tools because I built that originally for my Amazon business and eventually what ended up happening in every conversation we have with owners of businesses they say oh yeah I know that I used to do this the last three months but I've really taken a hit. My review rating went down to 4.2 and I lost 20% of my sales. Oh good, then we better put this one down at 20 units a day down from 30 until we feel more comfortable with it. So once you get the process down, that's what I want to encourage people, as you get the process down to where it's a half-hour a week the one that we do that takes an hour a week they have 75 parent SKUs out there and we can go through that in an hour and just yup, yup, yup, yup, and just continually refining what that particular process is. So I always think of it as tools versus wisdom and you need to apply the owner's wisdom to it. That's the only way we've found; same thing with launches you have to build into a launch what do you realistically think that it's going to take. And then oftentimes that's why this cashflow thing is so important is that we have multiple clients that will list out 15 different products that fit the brand. Then we'll look at the cash flow and we'll say here's the first five, the second five, and the third five, and we're going to roll them out over the next year so that you can then implement them in a way that is cash flow acceptable to the business. Mark: How do you recommend people get started? I know we're getting up against the clock here but starting something like this can be terribly daunting because there are just so many factors to be able to consider. Any recommendations on how somebody can start out maybe with some simple forecasting? Scott: Yeah. So here's what I would say there's four levels to forecasting and if you take nothing else from today implement Level 1 which is look at every one of your products, what it's done historically, and implement what you believe that it can do over the next 12 months. And if you want to do it by using the historical sales via ASIN report or the business report that comes out of Amazon for the last month and then just project what that is in terms of units and then in terms of sales build yourself a very simple spreadsheet in order to do that. That will at least start to give you an idea. And if you commit 30 minutes every week to looking at that sheet that you've built and you build that and just continue to update that I guarantee you you'll learn more about your business. So step one is just do that every week. Pick a time that you're not frustrated and you want to just kind of look down and see what the potential of the business is because frankly, that's a pretty exciting goal for you to then say hey if I want to get here; that's what we always…another action we say is you can't manage what you can't measure. So you have to build it to that. Level 2 then is to apply seasonality and new products. So layer on new products you're thinking about and if you don't know what they are right now still layer in I want to release 4 new products in the next year, I'd like to think that they could be as good as my current one's etcetera, etcetera, and then look at your seasonality trends. The next level beyond that and I want to describe this because you do have a lot of advanced sellers that are thinking about selling on this podcast is transition from a product forecast to then look at the rest of your income statement on what I call a percentage of revenue basis and project out that if the revenue doubles or grows up by 20% does my cost of goods sold go up by what percent. And so each one of your line items I always look at it as product costs are 19% of revenue, Amazon selling fee is 15%, FBA is 21% and get to where you can easily know every one of your; overhead and tools is 4%, paid media is 12%, know every one of your numbers on a percentage basis and you'll now have the product forecast and then the budget forecast and you'll be at what I'll call it an advanced level. And then the expert level what we build for people when we want to take them to market is we apply what we call a scenario analysis which is where we're looking at worst case, middle case, best case so that we can show it to a buyer that hey even if this thing doesn't do everything it's still going to have a positive ROI for you. But if it hits either the middle or the advanced case or the more aggressive cases your ROI is going to go up to 70 or 80% IRR. So the most advanced one then is to take a base forecast and then create scenarios and that probably building a toolset to do that all by yourself unless you really like doing that might not make the most sense. There's folks like ourselves or your accountants or other people out there that you probably want to work with but that is sort of the ultimate level because now and my closing comment of this will be relating it all back to the topic of selling your business. For most people, more than 50% of the money ever put in your own pocket will come when you sell your company not when you run it because you're always having to finance your inventory. And forecasting is the simple thing that tells you when is the right time to sell because it answers the question when does my value reach a level at which I go oh wow if I could get that much for my business now is the right time to sell. So we haven't talked about that at all but the number one question you get is the number one question I get; what is my business worth and when should I sell, and is now the right time to sell? Forecasting is the answer to that particular question and not some answer that Scott gives you or Mark gives you. But my goal for everybody on this podcast would be implement forecasting and give yourself some time to get good at it and you'll be able to answer that question for yourself which is a very powerful enabler for your business. So that's why I'm so passionate about the topic because it ultimately answers the question what should I do with this business and when; should I keep it or should I sell it and if so for how much. Mark: And even on top of that I mean Joe says all the time he says don't decide to sell your business plan to sell your business, right? Don't just wake up one day and be like I'm done because you're leaving money on the table; guaranteed you're leaving money on the table if that's the way that you go about it. If you say my goal is to get here to this number then like you're saying you can work towards that goal, you know how to get there, you have a roadmap to get there as well and you know that you're going to maximize the value of your business at the time of the exit which is frankly what most of us want to do. That's usually the goal. Scott, we could talk a lot on this and really get more in-depth. Thank you so much for coming on. I hopefully can have you on in the future we can spend less time on why and more on the how because it seems like we just started to scratch the surface on this but I really appreciate it. Where can people find out more if they want to ask you questions about forecasting or frankly anything else that Northbound does and I'll just make this quick plug; you guys do great work. I love working with you guys. Where can they find out more about you and your group? Scott: Yeah so I'm always happy to answer questions so people that want to get a hold of me individually ScottDeetz@NorthboundGroup.com or if you want to get in contact with us just in general do Info@NorthboundGroup.com and I'm happy to answer any questions. You're right there's just so much to this but it's to me the most powerful thing that can put you in control of your business. So if there are people that are out there that feel like they're kind of bouncing along and they don't really know where their business is going or what its true potential is, forecasting is the thing that gets you back on the horse where you've got the reins firmly in control and you can see your business as opposed to just feeling like you're reacting to what's in the rearview mirror. So thanks for having me on. I look forward to obviously working with you on [inaudible 00:45:28.5]. Mark: Thanks, Scott.   Links and Resources: Northbound Group Email Scott Email Northbound Group

It's not about how much you sell your business for, it's about how much you get to keep. A lot of sellers get to the point of selling and see an opportunity to cash out on all their hard work. Unfortunately, there are these entities called the state and federal government whose pockets get lined before the sellers get their bottom line. Shanyn Stewart is a tax specialist who works with sellers in the acquisition process. She goes as far as to claim she can actually structure a sale where the seller pays 0% taxes. The process and benefits of the different structures she offers can allow for more money in the seller's pocket. Tune in for a very useful episode for both buyers and sellers on how to prepare for a sale and legally keep the IRS from getting too big of a slice of the pie. Episode Highlights: The power of knowledge and ways that Shanyn claims she can reduce and potentially eliminate taxes for the seller. How capital gains tax really works. Understanding the basis of your business. What qualifies as basis in various types of businesses. The difference between basis and expenses and where to pay attention when it comes to capital gains tax. The importance of planning well before the LOI. Shanyn explains deferred payment structured sales using a third party. How to mitigate the capital gains in a transaction and reduce the net effect of the taxes over time. A case study of a transaction Shanyn has worked on and ways she increased the seller's profit. How the structures Shanyn proposes can serve as a safety net. Where charitable strategies and trusts fall into the spectrum of planning for sale and profit. Transcription: Joe: So Mark one of the conversations we have all the time; I think I probably had at least 3,000 of them is that it's not about how much you sell your business for, it's about how much you get to keep. And I understand you had Shanyn Steward on the line on the podcast and went through a lot of the different scenarios about the different types of transactions and which one might get more beneficial than sort of an all-cash deal to help sellers out in the process of keeping as much money as they can after the sale. Mark: Yeah. You know it's an interesting discussion because I think a lot of sellers get to the point where they've been putting their money into the business. They've been growing their business over many years and they look at that sale as their opportunity to finally cash out and take that money off the table and be rewarded for all their hard work and they should be. But there's this pesky little thing called the federal government and state government and they want to take their share. Joe: It's getting bigger all the time; it's not little at all. It's bigger [inaudible 00:02:11.5]. I'll stop. Mark: Well no, you're right. Look you go into this process; actually it's funny Joe, you and I were talking to Ryan about this yesterday and he was saying how he puts people through this exercise of here's what your net proceeds are from the sale and let's go run through some scenarios and it's eye-opening for a lot of sellers. Shanyn is a tax specialist and she specializes in acquisitions and saving sellers money on taxes. And she makes the claim that she can actually structure a sale where the seller is going to pay 0% taxes. Well, she and I went through a lot of different scenarios. I want you to listen to this and tell me how many times you heard my mind explode from just some of the things that she suggested in here. I think from a perspective of restructuring a sale she offers a lot of great tips and things that think about rather than saying I just want to get my cash and move on to ways that you can protect your investment, get more money off the table. Here's the tease, here's the hook and I then I'll get right into it. We used a case study in here on an 11.6 million dollars sale where she was able to increase the net proceeds by over 3 million dollars on the 11.6 million dollar sale net proceeds by over 3 million dollars, a 46% increase in the net proceeds on that. Remarkable stuff. Joe: Yeah. Look full disclosure to everybody listening here. I talked to Shanyn a year ago and gosh it just sounded amazing; so amazing it felt too good to be true. And then things fell off and we didn't get a chance to follow up. Mark had the opportunity to follow up and chat with her and get some of the real cold hard facts on the process and the benefit of different types of structures than just all cash. As a seller, everybody says I want all cash mostly because you don't know who your buyer is and you're not going to trust them until you get to know them. It's great to keep an open mind because ultimately what you want is to keep as much of your proceeds as possible. You'll have a great attorney working with you on that asset purchase agreement to make sure it's secure and safe in the event you take a non-all-cash deal. We'll refer a few out if needed but it's a great idea to listen to the entire podcast for both buyers and sellers. Buyers you're out there listening, you're learning, and you might be buying a business that's not going to be 8 million dollars like the example that Mark is talking about. You might buy something for a half a million or a quarter or just a million; just a million, I should stop that, or a million and… Mark: Just around a million dollars. Joe: Right. Mark: It's chump change for you. Joe: Brad sold one of his $40,000; everybody that is listening to this you saw the launch, it was a one to one multiple $40,000 which is exceedingly small for us these days. But he had 20; I talked to him this morning, he had 25 offers on it and over 500 inquiries. Not just the automated inquiries but directly to his inbox so it's a frenzy and I think it launched on Tuesday and today's Thursday that's already closed' that type of situation. But buyers you're buying these businesses no matter what size and you're growing them. You're taking it to another level that the person that's selling it could not because they reached their threshold for staff and management or their own level of incompetence as we often say you got to figure out what your own level of incompetence is and they decided to exit. You're stepping in because you've got a different either level of working capital to help grow that business and expand SKUs or buy more inventory or you're better at scaling from 20 million to 100 million or 1 million to 10 million whereas the seller is not. So this is great for both buyers and sellers is my point. And I'm excited to listen to it myself because my level of incompetence is all about what you're left with after the sale. So I'm going to learn a ton as well. So thank you for following up with her Mark and getting her in the podcast. Mark: Yeah I was just about to ask you what is your level of incompetence? Joe: We don't have time for that. Mark: But what's my level of incompetence? Joe: No don't mention that. I always talk to Megan about that. Mark: Alright let's get to this episode. She talks a lot about preparation. If there's one takeaway for people both on the buy-side and sell-side and we had Joseph Harwood on a few episodes ago talking about how he saved a ton of money on the sale of his business is be open to different structures even from a broker standpoint. I know you and I Joe like hey we actually like these cash deals because that are really simple but when we're looking at saving hundreds of thousands of dollars it's worth looking at some alternative structures. And it doesn't get too complex with the right preparation and that's a lot of what Shanyn suggests here is prepare before you sell. Joe: Gosh that sounds familiar. Please, everybody, plan your exit. Prepare before you sell. If I had a drum I'd be beating it right now. One last thing before we go to this amazing podcast with amazing information that you can learn. I don't like ruining people's weekends, months, years when I tell them, man, you're doing 10 million in revenue that's great and based upon the P&L you gave me it looks like you're probably worth about 6 million but everything is wrong so you have to go back to the drawing board and start over in terms of your financials. I don't like doing that and I did it recently so please prepare; plan. Don't wake up and decide to sell your business when you're emotionally toast and you want to move on. If you plan it in advance and you do that; the four pillars, but the fourth one we're talking about now which is documentation and planning, get that done. You will make so much more money and you'll have so much more peace of mind in the process. And after listening to the podcast you'll have so much more money left over in the bank because you get to keep more of it with the structure and deal size that Shanyn is talking about. So let's go to it. Mark: Shanyn thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. I know you and I have just recently met but I'm really, really excited about this conversation because you and I talked only briefly. I think we talked just for a little bit on the phone and in just about 10 minutes you opened my eyes to some awesome strategies that sellers can use to reduce their tax burdens. And look I've dealt with so many sellers who go to their accountants and say what is my tax burden? Oh here's what it's going to be, 22% or whatever of cap gains tax and I said well what can I do to reduce that? I really can't suck it up and pay for it. And you're like no that's not the case. Shanyn: Exactly. Mark: So let's start out with just kind of a quick introduction of yourself. I want to tell everyone who you are the firm you work for and kind of what your mission is. Shanyn: Yeah. So I am the chief strategist here at Advanced Accounting. And we are a little bit different than your average tax professional. We actually do proactive tax planning for our clients. So what we do is we want to help mitigate those taxes before we actually have an occurrence of sale. And then even on the backend, we can help you after you've actually sold the company as well. It's not as advantageous for you but we really like to be proactive. And that's what we're going to talk about today is how do we after we hopefully the profit on the sale of our business how do we keep the IRS from getting a slice of our hard work legally. Mark: Legally right that's the big thing. You know my eyes were open on a recent transaction that we did hear at Quiet Light, in fact, we had Joseph on who is the seller in that case and it was a little bit of a different deal because he was a UK based seller. But we brought in a tax specialist on that deal who ended up saving lots of money. I mean significant amounts of money from a tax perspective. And so to be able to talk to someone like you who does this as a specialty is going to be really exciting. So let's start off real quick with this and just a point that I know you made to me before our call here which is whenever there's money changing hands the IRS wants a slice of it; like they're going to get something out of it. What would you say to the tax professionals that are saying just suck it up and pay it? Shanyn: Yeah. You know I actually was talking to a tax professional the other day and he was like well nothing is certain in life but death and taxes and just be thankful you're not dealing with death. And he said there is a cap on capital gains and I was like right there is a cap on capital gains after the seller sells has company but there is actually a way that we can mitigate taxes, reduce them dramatically, and sometimes even eliminate them which is like everyone's excuse me how can that be? Mark: Yeah, excuse me, we can eliminate taxes on the sale. Okay, I'm intrigued. Shanyn: Yeah, you caught my attention now. And of course one of the things that when we're looking at the IRS code there was a senator that once I heard quote that the first nine pages of the IRS code is all about the definition of what is income and then the rest of the code is just a web of preferences and deductions and how to actually work the code and work income. And so when we're talking about tax planning that's what we're talking about really being proactive so that we're not giving the tax professional who says suck it up and deal with it you're going to pay capital gains and don't worry about it it's cost of doing business and that's not the truth. It's not. Taxes can be legally mitigated. And if you have enough knowledge that knowledge is power and can really put more money into your pockets. Mark: All right so the first nine pages just define what income is, do you know how large the tax code is; how many pages? Shanyn: You know what after the new revision I really don't know. I think that it's thousands and thousands of pages. Mark: So there's a lot in there. And I met with some tax professionals personally recently for just my own benefit and we went on a conversation with them which was hey we'll look at all the things that you're basically handing over the government where legally you don't have to if you're doing these different things. And it's more than anyone of us can really decipher on our own because I don't have time to sit there and read and stay up to date on all of this. Alright, so where do we start? Shanyn: And I don't mean to bash any type of tax professional because keeping a taxpayer in compliance is in and of itself is a full-time job. So what we're doing is really by being proactive this is a specialty from that standpoint. So I think the first thing that we start about is we talk about how does capital gains really work because that's what happens when you sell your business, you actually have a capital gain. So the methodology is buy low and sell high and pay the tax on the difference. And that's the whole concept really in nine words but really Taxes are never just as easy as just buy low and sell high. The first thing that you have to understand is what your basis is. And basis basically is what did I actually purchase my business for or what did I invest into my business? Sometimes we call it original basis or adjusted basis. So basically it's just anything I paid for the asset and anything I added to it. So we have to understand what our basis is when we ever go into a sale. In fact, the IRS has a 13-page document just on basis. So if you're really excited about basis you can read the 13-page document on it. Mark: I can say I haven't been really excited about it but I am now. And maybe I'm jumping ahead, how would you deal with bases in a startup situation? Shanyn: So basically a lot of service-based businesses are going to have a zero basis. That's one of the things that we deal with on a regular basis is that there is no basis. You started an Amazon business and you really have no assets to speak of. And so, unfortunately, your basis is zero. Mark: Okay, what can you count as part of the basis; what qualifies as that? Shanyn: So equipment would qualify; if you purchased a building sometimes depending on the business it could be that you added furniture and fixtures and things of that nature. Mark: What about things like molds for those that are making their own products? Shanyn: Exactly. So anything like that. So anything like if you have a mall or sometimes depending on the patent copyrights things of that nature can be the basis if you're actually transitioning into another business. Mark: For those that are not in e-commerce; let's talk about like a content site, a lot of content sites are start out by hiring a bunch of writers to build kind of a foundational amount of content on their site and that can be tens of thousands of dollars of content being written. Could that qualify for a basis? Shanyn: It could. It depends on how it was expensed. Sometimes accountants can be creative in the way that they're expensing things. So really basically when we're getting ready to do a sale we get a look at the balance sheet and determine what's been depreciated. So basically if you're depreciating it then that's part of your basis. If it's just been completely; so if you hired a copywriter and you've expensed that then it's not going to be considered basis. Mark: Oh, I get it. And this is one of those things; we talk about this all the time in this podcast, we talk about making sure you understand your own financials. And so many entrepreneurs are really weak in this area when you look at the balance sheet as its kind of cryptic report where we don't really understand it. And then there's also this idea well I want to expense as much as I can to reduce my income tax burden. But this is looking at a little bit different. So if I were to start up a content site and I realized look I'm going to invest $50,000 into seeds content. You're saying look you might initially not be making any money anyway so maybe it's better to put that in and record that as an asset investment that I can depreciate. Shanyn: Right. And see that's one of the things you always want to think about the end in mind. You're always going to want to like look at what is my exit strategy? Even when you're starting a business you want to look at what your exit strategy is to determine. And I know in those early years; I mean most businesses in the first three to five years are not really making a huge profit. And so I look at different expenses and really a lot of those can be capitalized over time instead of just expense in that year. And that's something to take a look at. That's where proactive planning and understanding your financials become so important. Mark: Yeah. Now from a buying standpoint if you're acquiring a business obviously you're going to capitalize expense investing in the business right away. That's going to be an investment so that's going to form basis but then also things that you're doing right after as well. Shanyn: Correct. So anything that's going to be adding capital value to that business is something that you're going to want to kind of look at and see if it is something that we should; is it really truly an expense or is it actually adding a capital value to the underlying business and should be depreciated over time. Mark: Okay. So how does this shake out on a sale basis so I would know we the buy low sell high; I imagine there is a simple subtraction coming up here, right? Shanyn: Right. So I mean basically the difference between the sale price and your basis is where you're going to get capital gains and you're not going to get capital gains depending on your filing status you're also maybe getting hit with something called net investment income tax. And that's a new tax underneath the Obama administration where they're going to kick in a 3.8% tax for those that are $200,000 of adjusted gross income for individuals and 250,000 for joint filers. And so that basically, you're going to hit with capital gains and that net investment income tax. And so that can be pretty hefty so one of the things when we're talking about mitigating taxes on the sale of a business preplanning, becomes very important. And one of the things is that if we have enough time before the sale of a business there's a lot of planning we can do. I mean there's a few after the sale offsets that we can kind of facility to mitigate tax but it's nothing like the time before the sale. And one of the things is we're going to talk about several different strategies. It's really important to understand that we actually need to start our planning; there cannot be a binding contract you're going to say repeat this again, there cannot be a binding contract in place when we start this preplanning. Mark: So a binding contract again from a sales standpoint we're looking at LOI which is it's usually non-binding but then those purchase agreements which are going to be binding. Shanyn: Correct, exactly. So we even like there to be no LOI and we want no question by any type of government organization or court system. So we even tell our clients even before there is an LOI we want to have our planning done. So oftentimes when people come to us to sell their business they know they're going to sell their business. That's the goal. And so that's when the planning should start right then and there. Mark: Alright. And we preach all the time that if you want to sell your business it's best if you're actually planning 12 to 24 months in advance because from our standpoint we want those other metrics that we look at; the influence, the valuation to be as optimized as possible. So I would imagine this pre-tax planning would also benefit if you're at 12, 24 months out. Shanyn: Well definitely because there's a lot that we can actually do in the current year to help them mitigate taxes but then on the sale of the business definitely. Now the quickest we've done; we can do this in 60 to 90 days. But one of the things I found is that what we have to do is we actually educate our seller on these strategies because a confused mind always says no. And one of the things we want to make sure is that our clients understand what they're doing and why they're doing it; what the advantages and disadvantages are. So we really start an education process with them so that they understand exactly that they could sit down and explain exactly the transaction that's about to happen in their own words and have that confidence. Mark: Right. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Alright let's get into the example of a transaction here because let's say that knowing that we're going to sell the business we're getting into this here and we've said okay we've got maybe a little bit of basis we still have a pretty large delta on what we're selling for versus what our basis is. Maybe we'd be able to form 50 maybe a hundred thousand dollars basis but we're selling a business for two million dollars. The savings is nominal on that side. Where else should we be looking at here? I know we talked a little bit about short term capital gains taxes and our pre-cal stuff. How does this play into this? Shanyn: Well I think one of the things is when we start to look at the fact that we have a capital gain and that's what we really want. We have to really immediately step in and say okay what are the strategies that I can do to mitigate these taxes? So one of the strategies and we usually use a combination of strategies. So I know you and I are going to kind of break down just the simple line strategies but oftentimes they're actually strategies that are interwoven together from that standpoint. So one of the strategies we often see is something called an installment sale. And an installment sale is just simply a sale where you receive payments installments in more than one year. And so basically what that means is you sell your business in year one and you agreed to take three equal installments over a three year period. Now that works with some people. The advantages are that you're going to defer the gain until you actually receive those payments so taxes is divided throughout the years. So for example, we just did a transaction where let's say you have a business that you bought for 600,000 and you sold it for a million. So 40% of your sale is a gain. So when you receive those installment payments over the years 40% of each of those installment is going to be taxed as capital gain. So why is that important? A couple of different reasons; it's going to actually if you split out the capital gains over three years or five years you actually reduce the overall taxation that you're absorbing from that standpoint. And so you're not getting stumped all in one year with a big tax bill. But the devil's in the details with that one because not all assets are going to qualify for an installment sale. So that's one thing to remember. So anything that's publicly traded is not going to qualify for an asset sale. You also have tool items we find that buyers and sellers want to get a really, really low rate interest rate and so you have to charge adequate interest to the person who's buying. And if you sell depreciated assets; so let's say you're selling equipment; you have to recapture all of that depreciation and pay ordinary income tax rates immediately. So there's some things where an installment sale works really, really well with and sometimes it's not going to work really well but that's one of the simple strategies that we see. Now, one of the problems with that is that you're going to get your income over a few years. Sometimes it's a big deal. And I actually sent you an example earlier and we can talk about that in a few minutes where our buyer actually got his money over five years. And that worked out perfectly. We are actually able to eliminate the taxation on that. We're going to talk about that because that's huge. And he was given over two million dollars a year so he was pretty happy. Mark: Right. So real quick are you able to reduce the effective rate by doing an installment sale? Obviously, the amount that you're paying in one payment is going to be reduced but you are able to reduce that rate? Shanyn: It does. It depends on the taxpayer's adjusted gross income but we are able to reduce the net effect of taxes over the period. And oftentimes we're talking about that sometimes depending on the amount of the sale or the amount of the proceeds we're able to even get payments five to 10 years out so that we're able to keep that; kind of make an individual pension for that person. And that way they can also do things like delay Social Security and keep their taxes down and so it really becomes very much not just a planning for the sale event but planning for the next few years of what happens with those proceeds. Mark: Alright so I already know most of my clients are going to say with this which is I don't want to defer my payments because what happens if they don't pay; what are my collection options? There's always this worry especially with the Internet and acquisitions where so much of the business is wrapped up in blue sky, goodwill, non-tangible assets. And so what happens if the buyer runs a business into the ground two years from now and they still have about $400,000 payment well what are my options? Could you ask for those funds upfront and pay them out? Shanyn: One of the things you could do is actually do a structured sale and actually bring in a third party. Mark: Okay. Shanyn: So a structured sale is sometimes very advantageous because it actually takes the installment sale tax treatment. It does require a buyer to pay a little bit of cash upfront or all of the cash upfront. So basically what you're doing with a structured sale is you're bringing in a third party and you're exchanging your business for a stream of income. So basically what happens is; and let me say this is appropriate for businesses between the 100,000 and the five million dollar. So if you're over five million it would not work this way. But basically, in a structured sale you're going to negotiate a traditional sale. Your buyer is going to sign their obligation to make payments to an independent third party. So there's a lender involved here or an insurance company involved here. And then that third party is going to take that cash. And so you never actually get receipts. So we avoid constructive receipt rules which would actually make if we actually took that money in our hands immediately that would make it taxable immediately. So then the third party now has your cash and they're going to buy you something like [inaudible 00:26:30.4] to start income to you immediately. So you pay taxes on as you receive those payments over the years you're going to pay taxes on the capital gains again defer it. But this is a way to bring a third party in; it's called a structured sale in order to help mitigate some of that risk. Mark: Okay. So who is this third party company; what would be some examples of these third-party companies? Shanyn: So it could be a lender. It could be an insurance company. There are third parties that actually facilitate deals like this. Mark: Okay. And then from the seller standpoint, the benefit here is that they're not having to act as a collector of funds. You have a certain party that's doing that work. Shanyn: Correct. And so here's something that what we're seeing gain popularity; so one of the downsides of most installment sales, either structured sale or an installment sale is that you sold your business, you've deferred the tax, but you don't have all your money. Mark: Right. Shanyn: You have a stream of income but you don't have all your money. And so one of the things that we have found is that if you're comfortable exchanging your equity in your business for just a stream of income that's perfect; if you don't need it all at one time. But oftentimes I think that entrepreneurs want to go to another venture. It's in their blood. They want to close one chapter and start a new chapter. And so that becomes an issue because there's no capital to actually work with them unless the sale is very large. So here what we're finding is that we can take an installment sale and we can couple it with something called a monetizing loan. Now, this is a complicated concept. It takes months to actually really kind of; we do webinars and PowerPoints to really educate our clients on this and we bring in the legal team to really explain this but I'm going to try to kind of be very simple in my explanation. What we do basically is we take an installment sale and we couple it with a monetizing loan. And so basically the way that business works is we're going to defer the taxes for 30 years. Mark: Okay. Shanyn: So basically you negotiate a sales price with your buyer just like you would. And when it comes time to close there's going to be simultaneous things that happen at closing. You're going to sell your assets to an unrelated third party in exchange for a lump-sum payment in 30 years. Step one that third party simultaneously sells your asset to the buyer in exchange for your agreed-upon price. Now you've sold your asset. You're going to use installment sale treatment to defer the tax but you're still going to have your money. Here's where the monetizing loan comes in at the same time that you and the third-party and the buyer close the original sale the third party lender is going to step in and he's going to extend to you a loan equal to 93.5% of the sale. So remember loan proceeds are not taxable because they come with an obligation to repay. Now you have your cash in your hand and that's almost equivalent to what you had for your sales price. And you're free to do whatever you want with those funds. Now it's a loan. While that loan is outstanding the third party pays the interest. In fact the terms of the loan specify that the interest is non-recourse to the seller which is really important because non-recourse means that the lender can't come after you for the payment of that interest. So 30 years goes by and you have all of your money. You do whatever you want with it. And at the end of the 30 years, the whole transaction unwinds. The third-party pays you or your heirs the purchase price in cash. You use the proceeds to repay the loan and then you pay the tax. So there's some magic that happens here. I always call it the eighth and ninth wonder of the world; that deferral and the time value of money. So the question really happens to be what's going to be the tax in 30 years. So if you think about this if inflation continues at 2½ %; that's kind of what it's been for the last 20 or 30 years, and it continues and long term capital gains remains at 20%, the tax bill on a million dollars of pain in 2019 would be equivalent to about $94,000 in 2049. Mark: Wow. Shanyn: That's less than half of today's tax bill and you've got to use your money for 30 years. Mark: Right. So with the installment sale and the monetizing loan you get that money upfront it's just coming in a different vehicle; it's coming through essentially a loan. Shanyn: Right. Mark: My mind is spinning right now. And you said it earlier a confused mind says no. My head is a little bit confused right now but I'm seeing where you're going with this. This is really, really brilliant. What are some reasons why people both on the buy-side and sell-side wouldn't want to do this other than confusion of the concept. Shanyn: And you know what really when we actually walk; so oftentimes we get clients who are like right in the middle like I've got an LOI I want to sign I need to do something now. This structure takes a lot of time to explain and to be comfortable with and to show how all of the numbers move. So really what are the downsides of this? Confusion, that's probably the number one thing or lack of understanding of how it can really; can this really work? I mean people are like really defer taxes for 30 years? They're skeptical of lenders sometimes that would actually be extending the loan. So there's a lot of skepticism I think and lack of understanding. But really this is a win-win for everyone involved. I mean really the buyer doesn't care. The buyer is going to give his asset and he's going to walk away and he's going to have this new business. So he probably doesn't care. Mark: And they're paying just as they normally would if they're buying the business upfront, right? Shanyn: Exactly. And the seller sometimes they don't understand. But I mean there's legal agreements in place around the loan. You're making sure that you're working with a reputable third party from that standpoint so you're making sure that the loan is non-recourse and how it's going to unwind. And of course, you're going to have your own attorney look at all of the documents and paperwork as well. So basically you're doing your own due diligence. But any tax professional that's utilizing these kinds of strategies has done their own due diligence as well and they're picking at third parties to actually work with that and a lawyer or legal team to work with that's what they specialize in. Mark: Right. How do you handle this with more complex sales where you have a portion of like an equity rollover over, a cash upfront, and maybe some debt as well coming in there. Can you structure this as a component of a larger structure? Shanyn: Correct. So that's what I said we often use multiple strategies. So right now I'm working on a deal where someone is selling a restaurant franchise along with the real estate that some of the franchise franchises sit on and there's debt. And so we're actually restructuring debt to flow through like a different entity on the real estate side so that we can use and monetize installments. So we've got like three or four actual strategies that are in play and that's where the preplanning comes in. So if we got 12 to 24 months to sit down with you and figure out a game plan we can really kind of put several different strategies together. Sometimes we're just deferring the tax sometimes we're able to eliminate it altogether. But it's just different components of the sale will be treated differently. Mark: Alright. So I want to get to our example because again I can hear the question in people's minds which is is the juice worth the squeeze here; the fees to you, the amount of time, the headache, trying to convince a buyer to do this which doesn't look as traditional as maybe everyone is expecting going in. So let's run through an example here and you sent me a PDF with an example; is it okay if I post this on our site? Shanyn: Yes definitely. Mark: Okay so we'll make this available for download in the show notes so that people can follow on with us if you want an actual example of this but let's talk through the example here that you gave me. Shanyn: And this is just one; so this is just one strategy, so I just illustrated one. This was actually a business that's being sold in Michigan. Equipment was included. So they had molds and dyes and they sold on the Internet. So they are a combination business. So the sale price was 12 million dollars. And the cost of the sale was about 360,000. They had actually found a buyer outright. But this is what the legal team was kind of charging. So the gain overall was 11.6 million dollars. So at the end of the day you'll see here underneath projected taxes we have federal taxes, we have that net investment income tax, we also are recapturing depreciation, and then we have the state tax. So all in their total gain is 11.6 million and they're losing 4.3 million dollars to taxes. Mark: Yeah. I can tell you when I sold my business that wasn't for a million dollars but when I sold my very first business one of the most sobering moments was getting this first tax bill. And again just to reiterate this; the tax will gain so the cost of the sale on this we have 12 million dollars on the sales price 360,000 towards advisors and fees here so 11.64 is what they're gaining after those advisory fees and then the government at different levels comes in and says thank you for that 11.6 we're taking 4.3 of that and reducing you down 7.2, 7.3 million dollars. Shanyn: Yeah so about 7.3 million dollars is what you're going to walk away with. That's a lot of money but it can be a lot more. Mark: You're still buying dinner the next time you go out but if you look at 12 million and it gets reduced to 7.3, that's pretty hefty. Shanyn: So one of the things that if you look here is that we're able to increase this seller's profit by over 3.3 million dollars and so basically what we do is that you'll see here that the sale price didn't change, the net sales price didn't change, we're actually using a combination of different strategies and the seller is actually taking payments over five years. So over a course of five years, he's going to get 2.1 million dollars and then there's some additional tax savings that we found in there over time. So he's getting a little bit more cash flow from that standpoint. So after just a coupling a couple of strategies together instead of walking away with 7.3 million he walks away with 10.6. Mark: That's a huge gain. That's 3 point…my math here is 3.3 million dollars. Shanyn: 3.3 million, a little bit more than 3.3 million. Mark: Because some of that money is deferred now with those deferred payments you mentioned briefly the time value of money. How do we capture some of that time value of money? Shanyn: So with those deferred payments I mean basically you are actually getting a little bit of an interest rate in that as well. So that all has to be inside the different strategies. Remember when I said we're doing installment sales so we've got to charge interest and have an interest in things of that nature. Mark: It has to be reasonable. Shanyn: It has to be reasonable. Exactly. So over five years, you're going to receive that 2.1 million dollars. So this person is giving up; they're comfortable giving up a little bit of return on investment in order to actually eliminate the taxes. Mark: Yeah and that right there I can totally see being worth the effort of going through this and I know you know we talk to sellers all the time. They get so nervous about doing installment plans. They want their money and they want their money now. And for a lot of people especially growing a business they're profit rich but cash flow poor where they're showing good profits and the selling moment is the first time where they're really getting the cash out of the… Shanyn: They're reaping their harvest. Yeah. Mark: Yeah exactly. So it's kind of a hard sell initially to say okay I know you're now selling a business for 12 million dollars. Shanyn: Right. Well, I think one of the things that; like the conversation I had with them when we proposed these strategies because they're one of the things that we're looking at is okay you're used to living on 250,000 a year in income and now you're going to get two million. What are you going to do with it? Mark: Yeah [inaudible 00:39:19.4]. Shanyn: What's the difference if you are given a check for 7 or you're given a check for 2? How is think going to change your day to day life? That's a conversation you actually have to have. You have to understand what the seller's ultimate goal is. I mean if it's just to go live on the beach in Delray Beach Florida that's kind of my dream then you can probably do that for two million dollars a year. Mark: Yeah, absolutely. Shanyn: It's kind of you know; and also one of the things and this was the eye-opening experience for me I actually had a brother set and one of the brothers wanted all the money up front and the other brother said to me if we don't structure this on installment sale my brother will blow through this money and he won't have anything because money burned a hole in the brother's pocket. And so the other brother was willing to both of them saw the validity there but the other guy just saw the big numbers and was like ah if I could open up my bank statements see that money sitting there. And the other brother was like no if we do that I know I won't spend it because I'm I will hold onto my money but you'll go through it and you won't have anything. Mark: Right. And I think something that entrepreneurs need to keep in mind and I personally went through this myself when I sold my first business is that a lot of entrepreneurs especially in the Internet space are bootstrappers, we get things going and we do it with a lot of grit. And then when you come into a lot of money you're trying to replace some of that grit with spending and so the second startup is way more money thirsty than that first one. And if you don't get the right payout and I've seen it happen with our clients and I had it happen with myself with that second startup I threw away more cash than I anticipated. So this is kind of a nice little lever on that to make sure you're not following through. Shanyn: I call it a safety net because sometimes we see entrepreneurs who actually sell their business and they say I'm going to retire and that retirement lasts like a year and then they're itching. They're like what do I got to do? Mark: I'm bored. I want to do this again. Shanyn: Right. I want to go do this again. And so basically when we're going into our planning process, not every strategy is going to work for every client but what we're doing is we're doing a full discovery and we're figuring out what's really important to that seller. And then we are working to mitigate taxes through the legal channels that are available so that they get the best deal at the end of the day. Mark: I want to hit on one last thing on the notes that you provided me here because we didn't get a chance to talk about it and that's the charitable strategies section here and we only have about five minutes left here so hopefully I'm not uncovering like an enormous topic that we could have spent… Shanyn: We can talk all day about charitable strategy. Mark: Or maybe we'll do a secondary podcast just on that because that's something that's near and dear to my heart; making sure that entrepreneurs are contributing or we should. But where does this fall into the spectrum of planning? Shanyn: So basically charitable strategies is one of the strategies that we use and it's a foundation of tax planning. It's also a foundation of capital gains planning and that's because charitable organizations can sell appreciated assets without paying tax on the gain. Mark: Wow. Shanyn: So again it's a very convoluted type of strategy but basically what happens is you actually establish a charitable remainder trust and you transfer those assets into the trust. It's important that there's no; this is preprinted, there's no binding contract before you transfer something into the trust. The trust then sells the assets to the buyer. And that's where the magic happens because the trust is tax-free and see there's no capital gains and then that trust then reinvest those assets from the sale price and then it pays you the after-tax amount over a period of time. So basically it's a way that we can eliminate a lot of taxation. Mark: Wow that is absolutely mind-blowing right there. And the worry that I think some people would get into is okay I know you said this is legal how much red tape and how fine are the rules that you have to follow for something like that? Shanyn: So basically; I mean there are rules and so by charitable remainder trust you have a legal team that actually specializes in this. You're not going to your mom and pop local lawyer who handles everything from drunk driving to criminal. Mark: My uncle who's a lawyer and not going to charge me a retainer; that type of a deal? Shanyn: Right. I mean so here's the thing; this is a place where when you're doing these strategies you want expert advice. You want somebody who has done this again and again and again and who understands these concepts. And so you're picking individuals that understand how to put together and to write a charitable remainder trust; how to facilitate these third party transactions. Mark: I got it. Okay, we are up against a clock. Shanyn, how can people reach you because I guarantee you're going to get a lot of calls and a lot of e-mails from this so careful what you're giving out right now; how can people reach you? Shanyn: So definitely they can reach me at AdvancedAccounting.com in the right-hand corner there's going to be a button that says a free consultation. And I would love to have a 30 minute Xoom call with them and just kind of talk them through what their particular situation is and if we can help them. Mark: That's fantastic. We will put that in the show notes; a link over to your website, we'll also upload this really simple example that you put together of tax savings which amounted to three million dollars in tax savings on a 12 million dollar sale, really interesting stuff. And I think the big lesson that I would like people to come away with is to think about the selling process in a little bit more strategic way because so many people are just looking at let's get it simple, let's get it done, let's move on with our lives, I'm going to eat this fee. There's a lot that can be done by hiring the right people to reduce those fees. You are one of those people for sure that can certainly help. So thank you for coming on. I can see having you on and maybe digging deep into one of these strategies maybe in a future episode if you'd be up for it. Shanyn: Yeah, perfect. I'd love it. Mark: Awesome. Thanks so much. Shanyn: Thank you.   Links and Resources: Shanyn's Firm Website Free Consultation Link About Shanyn Stewart: She's a serial entrepreneur and fearless single mom who has a background in military tactical training and is not afraid to stand up to anyone, including the IRS. A gun-toting, libertarian proactive tax strategist, Shanyn has built a team of tax and financial experts to assist clients in legal tax avoidance. Shanyn began her career with General Electric as one of two advisors that worked directly with GE employees and executives to mitigate taxation throughout the country. Armed with years of tax navigation experience, in 1996 she started Advanced Accounting to help clients apply those principles she learned at GE to assist in reducing their tax liability. A former American Baptist Pastor, Shanyn owns Gunpowder & Lace, a concealment garment and holster company for woman. She also coaches women on how to give themselves permission to channel their inner goddess and inner badass and make no apologies for it.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Todd: So, Mark you said that you want to build a website.Mark: That's right. Yeah. So I noticed that you have a website, Todd.Todd: Yeah.Mark: Did you build that yourself?Todd: I did actually. I knew nothing when I first started and I learned and it's pretty easy actually.Mark: Really, I was looking at the program called Dreamweaver. Do you now that one?Todd: Yeah, actually, Dreamweaver is probably the most popular program. It's what I use. It's quite good.Mark: Yeah, so you use that to build your website.Todd: Yes.Mark: OK, cause I actually managed to build a website. I was building one for my Auntie's small hotel in Spain.Todd: Oh, really.Mark: Yeah. And I managed to build it - about four pages, but I was having problems actually putting it on the internet.Todd: Right.Mark: Have you any advice for me? She didn't want to pay.Todd: Right. She wanted to do it for free.Mark: For free, yeah.Todd: Well, actually, usually you can get a website for free but what will happen is they'll put a banner or they'll put some type of advertisement for that company on the website, so it's pretty hard to get free server space without some type of advertisement unless you pay.Mark: Right. So how much does it cost per month to put your website on the internet?Todd: Well, I only pay $40 dollars a month.Mark: $40 dollars.Todd: Yeah, and I get quite a bit of bandwidth. I only use half of my bandwidth so it's a really good set up.Mark: And then you have... Is there a way to keep track of how many people hit your website per day?Todd: Right, so actually a hit usually just refers to like the computer pulling up a picture or a text or audio. A unique viewer is how many people view the website, so usually, the company will tell you how many unique viewers you have.Mark: Right.Todd: And also if you want to make money on advertising, the key thing is unique viewers and also pages, page impressions, which means how many different pages are pulled up on the screen, so that's what advertisers want to know.Mark: Right. OK.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Todd: So, Mark you said that you want to build a website.Mark: That's right. Yeah. So I noticed that you have a website, Todd.Todd: Yeah.Mark: Did you build that yourself?Todd: I did actually. I knew nothing when I first started and I learned and it's pretty easy actually.Mark: Really, I was looking at the program called Dreamweaver. Do you now that one?Todd: Yeah, actually, Dreamweaver is probably the most popular program. It's what I use. It's quite good.Mark: Yeah, so you use that to build your website.Todd: Yes.Mark: OK, cause I actually managed to build a website. I was building one for my Auntie's small hotel in Spain.Todd: Oh, really.Mark: Yeah. And I managed to build it - about four pages, but I was having problems actually putting it on the internet.Todd: Right.Mark: Have you any advice for me? She didn't want to pay.Todd: Right. She wanted to do it for free.Mark: For free, yeah.Todd: Well, actually, usually you can get a website for free but what will happen is they'll put a banner or they'll put some type of advertisement for that company on the website, so it's pretty hard to get free server space without some type of advertisement unless you pay.Mark: Right. So how much does it cost per month to put your website on the internet?Todd: Well, I only pay $40 dollars a month.Mark: $40 dollars.Todd: Yeah, and I get quite a bit of bandwidth. I only use half of my bandwidth so it's a really good set up.Mark: And then you have... Is there a way to keep track of how many people hit your website per day?Todd: Right, so actually a hit usually just refers to like the computer pulling up a picture or a text or audio. A unique viewer is how many people view the website, so usually, the company will tell you how many unique viewers you have.Mark: Right.Todd: And also if you want to make money on advertising, the key thing is unique viewers and also pages, page impressions, which means how many different pages are pulled up on the screen, so that's what advertisers want to know.Mark: Right. OK.

We're about to hit 100,000 listens. Seems like a solid number. Thank you for listening and sharing it with your friends. It means a lot to me because this podcast is how I trap people into deep conversations. If you'd like to rate the podcast, which is something you've probably been contemplating, please do. Recently, I finished the second draft of this strategy book I'm writing and I wanted to read out the first chapter - Fighting Words. There's still work to do but it will give you a sense of the attitude of the book. There are two main sections to the book. The first half focuses on 24 words that I find strategists and account planners using (or needing to use) in their work (clarity, meaning, truth, impostor, lonewolf, etc). It's surreal philosophy of sorts. I want it to feel like I'm in your head because I'm channeling hundreds - maybe thousands - of conversations, emails, and meetings. The second half of the book is more practical. It compiles frameworks from my "Strategy! The Workout" training sessions, helps you understand how to apply them, while also breaking down what ideas, problems, insights, and strategy statements are. I want to get "Strategy Is Your Words" onto desks and walls (posters) around the world. There will be a digital version but... I want you to touch this and be able to point to it. I'm just starting on launch and marketing plans. I'm open to ideas :) Enjoy. Mark For more strategy talk: 1. Strategy newsletter: http://www.markpollard.net/email-newsletter/ 2. Strategy drawings: http://www.instagram.com/markpollard 3. Strategy Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/markpollard 4. Join 5,000+ strategists: http://www.sweathead.co New book "Strategy Is Your Words" out soon.

It's hard to imagine anyone thinking more about the weather than farmers, but then again, there's Chief Meteorologist Mark Brusberg of USDA’s agricultural weather and assessments group. This week, Lindsey talks with Mark about the ways that drought, extreme weather, and the changing climate are impacting farmers and agricultural production globally and here at home. Mark also talks about "the blob," building farm weather resilience, and how farmers can keep track of it all. Mark Brusberg https://www.usda.gov/oce/forum/2018/bios/Mark_Brusberg.pdf US Drought Monitor https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/ Tropical Tidbits https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/ The Blob https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blob_(Pacific_Ocean) Weather Underground https://www.wunderground.com/ NOAA Weather https://www.weather.gov/ Introduction Lindsey: This is the Young Farmer’s Podcast. I’m Lindsey Lusher Shute. First, a quick announcement. If you’re in New York State or care about state policy, I want you to know that NYFC just released a report about New York’s high farmland prices and policy strategies to keep that land affordable for future generations. Check it out at youngfarmers.org. Onto the pod. Most farmers i know are obsessed with the weather, and for a simple reason. The weather is tightly linked to how profitable and successful a farm will be in any season. On our farm, for example, we had a short-lived but major hail storm that knocked out nearly all of our crops this spring. And our western farmers, many of them are dealing with a deep drought and are trying to make it through the season. Today I’m talking to Mark Rosberg who serves as the chief meteorologist at USDA’s Agriculture Weather and Assessments Group, a component of the World Agricultural Outlook Board. He talks to us about the weather across the country and how farmers can keep track of it all. Dustin Stein: Hi I’m Dustin Stein, ranch manager at Stubborn Farm and Bert Beef in Mancos, Colorado, where we raise grass fed and finished beef. I’m also a leader of the Four Corners Farmers and Ranchers Coalition. I’m a member of the National Young Farmers Coalition, because it’s extremely important for young and first generation producers to have a voice at our nation’s capital. For 35 dollars a year, you too can join. In addition to being part of a bright and just future for agriculture in the United States, you’ll also get discounts like 16% off earth tools , walk behind tractors, and 5% off of Felco. To join, please visit Youngfarmers.org. OG Weather Nerds Mark: My name is Mark Rosberg. I'm the chief meteorologist here at USDA's office of the chief economist. I'm physically located in Washington D.C. in the USDA south building. Lindsey: What is the office of the chief meteorologist like? Mark: Well, we're a staff of five meteorologists. We cover global weather, uh, to provide whether intelligence to USDA’S monthly supply and demand estimates report. So you have one meteorologist monitoring weather in the United States. The other four are monitoring global conditions. I personally happened to be the South America weather analyst amongst other areas, you know, Canada and Mexico. So if there's a drought in, for example, there was a drought in Argentina last year, I provided weather information and helped us try to determine exactly what the what the condition of the corn and soybean crop was. Lindsey: And where does your weather data come from? Mark: It’s primarily through our agreement with National Weather Service Lindsey: And the National Weather Service, it has its own worldwide network of weather stations. Mark: Well, they get the data from other countries through an agreement through the World Meteorological Organization. That's a United Nations, uh, agency. So the weather bureaus of other countries have signed an international agreement where they promised to give a certain amount of data from their countries. Lindsey: I see. I, you know, just with all of the conversations these days around trade and tariffs and what other countries are producing and how that competes with the US corn...I'm just thinking of the example of Brazil, uh the commodity market...I guess these agreements are long standing and shared, but none of that data is sort of protected from those, uh, I mean, I wonder if any --- Mark: Oh you mean, would there be an embargo of data for any reason? Lindsey: Right, uh huh. Mark: Well I've seen it twice and the one time was during the first Iraq war when Iraq stopped transmitting their data during the war. The only other time that I’ve seen a reduction of data--I can't remember the year, but it was in the 1990’s. Germany had a policy where they wanted to charge more for their data and that sort of went against what the WMO was sort of supporting and they started giving us less data. I couldn't see a country whoa withholding data for any, any purposes like that because it is, especially in this day of satellites, I mean, you could do a fairly reasonable job estimating rainfall and temperature using satellites. I think they'd be cutting off their nose to spite their face, really. They started doing things like that and you know, the scientific community, we sort of stick together. I don't know that we would want to politicize what we're doing. Lindsey: I’m just wondering, does politics, do different administrations impact fear core responsibilities or your work at USDA or is the weather something that everyone can agree on? Mark: Yeah, we've, we've never had any political pressure put on us to do anything. Um, there's been times, uh, I remember one of my predecessors as chief meteorologist was asked to put his name on a declaration regarding climate change. And he refused to do that because it wasn't part of our purview and he was absolutely correct. I mean, we don't do anything with climate change here. You know, we don't do climate research, we’re not the ones that do that. So, you know, we didn't want to step on anybody's toes or pretend that we know more than we do. Lindsey: We don't have to call it climate change or talk about causation or anything, but I am wondering what the data would say about the current conditions across the United States that are, that our farmers are facing. We're seeing severe rainstorms, certainly drought conditions in the southwest. Uh, I had a written you earlier about the significant hail that we saw on our farm this season as this system of thunderstorms came across the country and it was like softball size hail. We're seeing a lot of extreme weather. As long as USDA has been, um, and National Weather Service have been monitoring this type of thing...is what we're seeing in terms of extreme weather in over the last few years.. is this unusual from a data standpoint? Mark: I don't know in terms of severe weather and it's, it's hard to make a, it's hard to make a call on severe weather weather. There was more observations there, more people reporting, things like that. So I don't know if you could say anything about just the number of hailstorms. I don't know if that's actually increased or if that's just a sign that the data is better. Now some of the things that we've seen agriculturally in the West are unique. We monitor one of the networks that USDA maintains. It’s the Snow Tell Network, so we have snow observations and one of the things that we're witnessing in the western United States is the snowpack is melting earlier. Uh, we're getting rain, uh, at times of year at elevations where you would expect snow like in the Sierras recently. We saw that. So that is something that’s a bit disconcerting and obviously, you know, we know what's happening in the arctic with the polar ice cap. We know about the ridging in the Pacific because of the sea surface temperatures being, you know the northern Pacific blob. Lindsey: And remind us about the northern Pacific blob. Mark: Yeah. That. Well, yeah, I'm sorry. There was a pool of above normal sea surface temperatures in the northern Pacific that was attributed to ridging over the western part of the United States in the Pacific. They called it the blob because if you look on a sea surface temperature anomaly map, it just looked like a red blob on the map. Meteorologists and climatologists not being the most clever people in the world...they just called it the blob. Lindsey: How does the current drought in the southwest, how long has this current drought been going on and how does it compare with past droughts on record? Mark: Looking back at the history of the drought monitor, so going back to about 2000, um, the southwest has had periods of drought, uh, almost nonstop. If you were to go to the, uh, the drought monitor page, which is droughtmonitoror.unl.edu. You can see a time series for the states. The United States itself has had, you know, some percentage of drought, uh, just about through the entirety. There's always someplace in drought. If you were to look at individual states, this year's drought, for example, in Arizona, really doesn't look as bad as it did say in 2002, 2003. Um, but they've had spikes of drought also in the early 2000’s, 2011, 2012. There was another spike of a, you know, fairly significant drought in 2013. So they, they have been experiencing problems really for, you know, a good part of the last two decades. Lindsey: But this a year in the southwest, this is one of the hottest years on record. Is that, is that correct? Mark: Yes. See that’s another thing because we seem to be setting a record just about every month. Lindsey: Right. It’s not good news. Mark: Yeah it’s really hard to compare this with past years because it feels like the playing field keeps changing on us. Lindsey: And how does drought differ in different parts of the US? Mark: Well, I mean, starting, starting in the southwest sort of as an example, uh, you've got, uh, a climate that's already arid. As a matter of fact, the infrastructure in general in the southwest is to retain water here in the east and northeast where we, we get 40 or more inches of rain. The infrastructure is designed to move water away from population centers. You know, we've got, we've got drainage ditches, we've got storm drains. It's like get the water the heck away from us so we don't get swamped. So there's that. Um, now if you look at, say the corn belt, you know, parts of the south western corn belt had a drought this year, um, Missouri and eastern part of Kansas that came right when they're trying to grow their corn and soybeans. So the combination of the dryness and the, you know, the 95 degree days that they had took a big bite out of their agricultural production. However, they can recover. I mean, they can recover from that if they have a wetter than normal winter, they can rebuild their moisture supplies going into next growing season. Um, Missouri has also experienced flooding, so they're one of those unique parts of the country where they can have drought that impacts their ag production, but they can also have severe flooding that can impact their drought production. I mean, we had, you know, the big drought of 1988 in the midwest. It was one of the more famous droughts before 2012. It was one of the more famous droughts. And then five years later they had the floods of 1993, so within just a few years they went from a horrendous drought to horrendous flooding. Lindsey: Yeah. And so the 20, the 2012 drought had a significant impact on um, corn yields and soybean yields. Can you, can you speak to that and how sort of where that ranks among, among drought conditions? Mark: Um, you know, people, they always keep going back to the dust bowl years of the thirties and you know, the droughts in the 1950’s. So depending on the indices that you look at it, it was ranked up there with some of the worst droughts that producers had seen in the United States. One of the good things is when you're looking at comparing these types of phenomena, uh, historically back in the thirties, we didn't have the soil conservation techniques that we do now. I mean you still get dust storms in severe events, but you know, you don't see the loss of top soil farming practices have. Claude is that you need to have cover crops and you need to, uh, you know, maybe use less tillage in certain parts of the countries to, to prevent disasters like that from occurring again. So you know, we don't see the severe impacts that we did back in the 1930’s. Lindsey: So farmers are, are more well prepared for I guess these, these severe droughts. And are those farming practices, do they have an impact also on the weather? Mark: Um, you know, that's difficult to say. I mean, I've actually seen studies where, you know, rainfall does have an imprint or a footprint rather. If you have rain over an area, then depending on the time of year and the types of crops, you can actually see the transpiration after a, after a rain event. And um, you know, and I, I have seen research showing that, you know, that added moisture does fuel summer storms. So it, so it is possible. I mean, if you have, again, if you've got bare soils or the water's running off, um, you know, you've reduced the ability for it to be reintroduced into the atmosphere. So that is, that is a possibility. Lindsey: I see. Interesting. So across the country right now, what are, what are the patterns that we're seeing that are going to have an impact on how well farmers are doing in 2018? Mark: Actually, if you take away the drought that they had in the southwestern portion of the corn belt, most states had a pretty good year given the latest outlook from USDa, it wasn't a bad year. Now one of the things that we did see that sort of help things out was we had a relatively mild July for the corn belt. Now, what we hope to see is, is sort of maybe some good finishing rains or immature soybeans, this the eight to 14 day outlook issued by CPC which goes through the 10th of September, is calling for near to above normal rainfall. So the next week or so it does look favorable or finishing up in some of the later planted corn and soybeans. Lindsey: How many, how many crops does your office track for the United States? Mark: My office works with the National AG Statistic Service. They're the ones responsible for monitoring or, or I guess keeping estimates of crop production in the United States. We're more, uh, responsible for the international production and then we work very closely with foreign ag service and Economic Research Service to come up with a global supply and demand balance sheet if you will, you know, looking at, looking at yields, but also looking at production, looking at ending stocks, et Cetera. So it's a, there's a lot of people working on this to try to come up with a global balance. Lindsey: The Global Balance, what is the value of that information? Mark: Well, I, I just real quick, knowing what the global situation looks like helps our farmers. It helps us to target foreign markets and it helps us to know who our competitors are and how they're doing. Lindsey: I see. I assume it's also used for the evaluation of crop futures. Mark: Right. That will, that will be a, a sort of an end result to the work that we do. Um, you know, the price is sort of settled. I mean we do a price estimate but the market really determines what the price is going to be. Lindsey: I’m wondering just in general, how important do you think it is for a given farm to have that sort of a personalized weather forecast or to have a weather station? Because the weather underground, I know, you can connect your weather station in. Is that a good thing for farmers to consider doing? Mark: Well, absolutely. Well first of all knowledgeable of your climate. Just to know what the, what the expectations are for given times a year, the length, if you want to become a farmer or start farming a different crop, uh, being aware of what the growing season length is, you know, knowing when the first autumn freeze and the last spring freezes is, is vital for anything that you're trying to grow. Going to a place like the weather underground is, is really, um, I, I would think that that would be very important because they can give you more of a focused forecast, um, and give you some products to work with. Um, there was, there was some other sites that will give you other models to look at . Tropical tidbits is one that I look at for international areas, but they have a lot of the other models like the euro model along with the, the gfs, which is the American model. Um, so that's very, I mean, that's very important. If you're looking at something like a hailstorm, that's, that's pretty difficult. That's a very, that can be a very isolated phenomena. So something like that is, is very rare. And I don't know that anybody would be able to say, hey, you're going to have a hailstorm tonight. Maybe if you, if you look at the weather too closely, it might drive you crazy. Lindsey: Well, I know it drives my husband Ben crazy, but it's part of being a farmer, understanding the weather. It couldn't be more important. And i wonder, as you are predicting, most of your calculations I assume are related to precipitation and to temperatures and these environmental factors. Is disease..disease is one thing that we talk a lot about as we're seeing different sorts of pressures as we have longer warm seasons in the northeast, in our region. Is disease pressure something that you're also... how is that shifting pattern being monitored by the agency? Mark: For example, if we see the weather has been very wet somewhere, um, it's sort of in the back of our mind that there could be disease pressure, but that's usually a local phenomenon. Um, and I'll give you one example internationally, uh, Brazil’s soy beans got hit, I'm going to say about… it was over 10 years ago by now, but they got hit by a rust and that surprised us. So we don't look at, say, a very wet weather pattern and say, “well we're going to reduce the yield by this much because there's probably going to be disease.” Lindsey: Well mark, thank you so much for this this time. It's been really interesting to learn about what you do as the chief meteorologist and how some of these weather patterns are shifting and changing across the country. Sometimes, we'll literally be standing there and Ben will be looking at his phone at the NOAA predictions in the radar and I'll be like, pointing to the cloud and saying, “I think it's going to rain,” you know, one of these situations. And you kind of need both, right? So I feel like there is a skill that needs to be-- Mark: Yeah, I was going to say.. you can't tell many farmers about the weather. They're telling you about the weather. Lindsey: Right. We care a lot about it. It's absolutely, absolutely true. Great. Well thank you so much for your time and um, I hope we can speak again. Mark, thank you so much. Mark: You’re welcome. Lindsey: All right, talk to you soon. Bye-bye! Mark: Bye-Bye. CLOSING REMARKS Lindsey: Next week, we are going to hear from Mike Nolan. Mike’s one of the leaders of our Four Corners Farmers and Ranchers Coalition in Colorado, and he is a farmer at Deep and Drought. He will tell us how the season is going and his campaign, that started over some beers, in New Mexico, to get the US Department of Agriculture to help smaller scale producers. You can now find and subscribe to this podcast on Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you have a minute, please review us on Itunes and tell us how we’re doing. Thanks to Hannah Beal to editing, Radio Kingston, and the whole team at the National Young Farmers Coalition.

  Mark S A Smith is the author of 13 popular books and sales guides and has authored more than 400 magazine articles. He is a genuine Guerrilla Marketing guru, co-authoring three books with Jay Conrad Levinson, and is a certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach.   A renaissance man with many talents, Mark is passionate about leadership, team building, teamwork, sales, and marketing. For over twenty years Mark has served as a strategic advisor to corporate leaders and executives all over the world who must develop the best way to bring in the right strategies for successful growth and sustainability.   What makes him different is he brings a holistic view of the business instead of solely focusing on one aspect and ignoring the impact of decisions on the rest of the organization   How to Get the Most Out of 2018 Tapping into the top five trends to grow your nonprofit: Omnichannel – allow members to consume you anywhere and every way How the growing economy creates monetary opportunities The impact of higher unemployment on your volunteer force and how to pivot to get all you need New leadership demands: what's changing and how to stay out front Turning unrest into peace: how to divorce your organization from the media's promotion of outrage Interview Transcript   Hugh Ballou: Greetings, it's Hugh Ballou and Russell Dennis on this version of The Nonprofit Exchange. A dear friend who I see too rarely, we have been talking virtually but now we are together. I said, Why don't we talk about some things that are on your radar?” Mark S. A. Smith, welcome to The Nonprofit Exchange. Mark S. A. Smith: Such a delight to be here. Thank you, Hugh. Hello, Russell. Hello, friends on Facebook. Welcome. We have a lot of interesting things to talk about because 2018 is going to be an astounding year. You might be listening to this in 2020 or 2024. But you know something? What we are talking about today will probably still be issues even in the next five to ten years. Or opportunities, as the case may be. Hugh: We record messages that are timeless. But you're right. We are turning the page into 2018 as we are recording this. If you are a regular listener, you know you can go to thenonprofitexchange.org and see the video versions of these. But you can go to iTunes and download the audio there. Mark, you are in a series of really powerful interviews we have done over three years. We are starting our fourth year of these great interviews. What we endeavor to do more often than not is find people that have business expertise. Let's install that particular business expertise into the charity. It might be a church, a synagogue, a membership organization, or a community foundation, but it's some sort of philanthropic work that we're doing. Before we get into the subject matter, which I'm going to hold off in giving people a title, tell people a little bit about Mark Smith and why you are able to talk about this topic today. Mark: I help people sell complex, expensive, high-consideration things as fast as humanly possible. I am an electrical engineer; therefore, I am a systems thinker. I have recovered. I don't sell or do engineering very much, but I do help people sell complex things. That is where you have multiple people involved in making the decision. Each person has a different view of what creates value and what we need to do. Sounds an awful lot like this nation, doesn't it? Hugh: Yeah. Mark: How do you round up consensus? How do you have people go the same way? Just like when you're working with nonprofits, herding cats is what we have to do. It's the same thing when you have to sell expensive technology. What I'm doing here is applying all the things I have learned about selling very expensive things to the world of nonprofits. It's absolutely identical. I, too, do work with a nonprofit. I am on a board here in Las Vegas where I live. I've been involved in nonprofits throughout my life. I understand, and I am delighted to share with you my business acumen. What I like to tell people is a nonprofit is not a business plan; it's a tax status. Hugh: That's not a philosophy, no. You're very active on social media, especially Twitter. You put out little short memes with a few words on it. I gotta tell you, they are very thought-provoking. They help me focus on what's important. Mark: I am honored that that happens. Thank you. Hugh: There has been this coincidence of you tweeting on the things we are actually talking about. Sometimes simultaneously. I find that to be fascinating. Mark: The issues are the same. Whether it's nonprofits or the for-profit world, the issues we face are frankly identical. Hugh: I laugh when business leaders say, “That might work in the church.” Mark: Or the other side is that the religious leaders say, “That might work in business, but it won't work in the church.” Hugh: If it's true anywhere, it's true everywhere. Mark: We're humans working with humans. Hugh: I think we've stalled long enough in telling people what the topic is. What is the topic? Russell wants to know. Mark: All right, Russell. You're ready? Today's topic is how to get the most out of this year, which happens to be 2018. We are going to talk about five trends that are going on that you need to know about as the leader of your nonprofit to stay ahead of the game, to grow, and to prosper heading forward. Some of the things we are going to talk about are technology, and some of the things we are going to talk about are psychology. Hugh: Say that last sentence again. That caught me off guard. Mark: Don't you know I do that to you? And you do the same to me when you're speaking. Some of the things we are going to talk about are technology, understanding the technology that nonprofits have to be embracing and keeping track of and staying up with. Some of it happens to be psychology, what is happening in the general zeitgeist of the world and how they impact nonprofits. Whether you think they do or not, they do. Your constituents, your members, your flock all are impacted by what they see in the news and what they experience with retail and what happens in the business world. They carry those attitudes and insights into your organization, whether you want them to or not. We have to manage that. We have to deal with it. We have to capitalize whenever possible or perhaps even neutralize it in some cases. That is what I mean by psychology. Hugh: Absolutely. I think we're guilty in any discipline. I know in the church, I have had people say to somebody, “You're so heavily minded you're no earthly good.” We all live in the reality of today. I can say that I served the church for 40 years and probably got to that space myself. I put in very carefully numbered bullet points. I noticed that I numbered them wrong. Our first one is, Omnichannel. Speak about that. Tell us what that means. Mark: Listener, have you ever had the situation where you were multi-tasking, perhaps watching television and checking your telephone for messages or tweets, or maybe even reading the news story you are watching on TV simultaneously to see what if you were seeing on TV made sense to other news channels? That's omnichannels, my friend. The reality is we are multi-screening. You are getting information from multiple locations at all times in all ways. What this means to nonprofits is you have to be able to bring your message, bring your service to your constituents in every way that they consume information. Just by a show of hands, who here has for your organization—I see ten fingers there, well, eight fingers and two thumbs. Sometimes I am just all thumbs. Do you have an app? Do you have the opportunity of having your constituents consume your services, your podcasts, your sermons via a dedicated app that would alert them when something new becomes available? Are you using the technology to your benefit? Now if you're doing that, fantastic. Just stay with it. You have to understand we live in an omnichannel world. We are consuming many things in many different ways. Mobile apps, partner locations, maybe figuring out other locations for people to access your services. Where do your constituents go that you can have a kiosk or a corner or something like that where people can plug in, enjoy, take advantage of, be reminded of, contribute to, consume whatever it is you are bringing to the marketplace? Since I don't know what your nonprofit is, we are spraying and hoping you will catch a couple of ideas here. The concept here is you need to be everywhere that your people are every time you possibly can be. The reality is if you are a church, people are carrying around a sermon in a box in their mobile device. Chunk things up into five-minute pieces to give them a chance to remind, refresh, and renew. If you are supplying educational elements, keep pushing out opportunities for people to learn and to refresh. If you're supplying the opportunity for people to volunteer, if they are standing in line or waiting at a traffic light and they can pull out their mobile device and contribute something in some sort of thought-provoking way, let them do so. That is what we mean by omnichannel. Take advantage of that any way you possibly can. Hugh: You said something about five-minute segments. Remind, refresh, and renew. Talk more about that. Mark: What I am finding is short segments of content that provoke people. Just like when you read something from me on Twitter, you're telling me that I am inspiring you, I am provoking some thoughts, I am causing you to think about new things, maybe connect some new dots. The bulk of those tweets are 140 characters. There are some that run a little bit longer thanks to Twitter's new length limits, but it's a very short little boom. It's a little thought bomb that goes off in your brain. As a nonprofit, most of us are in business to inspire, to have people live a better life, to improve their condition, to stay on target, to stay on task, to stay on the straight and narrow. That requires constant reminders. Another thing to keep in mind is if you are a church or an organization where people come to see you once a week or once a month, it's not enough. They are bombarded by all these other messages and all these other counter-messages that they may not wish to consume. Our job is to remind them there is another way of thinking. There is another opportunity. There is better potential for them that they have already volunteered to be a part of. If we can chunk our messages from a text standpoint, an audio standpoint, or a short video standpoint to refresh, renew, and remind themselves there is a reason why those of us who have a spiritual practice, it's a daily practice if not hourly. Hugh: Yes. Oh yes. That is so important. I think the biggest flaw I see in organizations is when people say, “They should know better because we told them that,” but they told them that in 1903, and you have repeated it since then. Mark: Here's the problem, friends. You may have told them that, but the other side has told them their viewpoint a thousand times since the last time you said it. Hugh: Omnichannel. When I first saw that, I thought it was a piece of software. Mark: It's a concept. Hugh: Russell is taking good notes. Do you want to weigh in on this omnichannel touchpoint? Mark, what you're doing is top of mind marketing, isn't it? Mark: Yes. Let's just keep reminding them what they have asked us to remind them of. Hugh: Russell? He's been very polite. Mark: He's been quiet. He's been smiling. He is giving me thumbs up. He is also muted. Russell Dennis: Not anymore. We can quickly fix that. Greetings and salutations, Mark. Good to see you again. It's been a while. I was just typing that when you're out there in multiple places, where your people are, and that's the important thing to figure out is where your people are and getting out there and getting in front of them. We are in a short attention span society. If you're not out there online, you're left behind. It's not a fad. It's not a trend. It's here to stay. Hugh: I think it's also in person. Where do your people hang out? I am hearing omnichannel as virtual as well as live. Mark: Absolutely. Physical, too. It has to do with digital signage for example. Digital signage is omnichannel. Most of us have digital signage in our houses of worship. As I pointed out, as we talked about, where are they? Let's see if we can put a digital sign in the places our people hang out to remind them of the messages they have agreed to consume. Hugh: Great. We are sitting at the top of 2018. Our market has been growing. There are over 100 companies that announced employee dividends and financial expansion of programs since the tax bill passed at the end of 2017. There are all kinds of energy and economy. Talk about how that benefits the nonprofit sector. Mark: We are sitting at the highest consumer satisfaction index of all time. I think it's for a number of reasons. One is that a lot of people are feeling good about themselves again. A lot of them have hope for the future. A lot of them feel that in spite of the noise we hear on the mainstream news on a regular basis, locally, the communities are doing well. More people have jobs. More people are feeling good about what's possible. Certainly my business has been substantially increased. As you pointed out, yours has, too. A big part of it is that my customers are looking forward to growth and therefore investing in opportunities to grow. As a nonprofit, you can plug into this feeling of goodness and growth, asking for more than you could ask for in the past. Requesting more. Asking people to donate more for perhaps more time, for perhaps a higher level of investment of themselves into the organization. When people are feeling good, they say yes to opportunities because it doesn't feel like it's so heavy. Doesn't feel like it's such a burden. When we feel depressed, it's very hard for people to feel good about themselves. Hugh: What makes people say yes? I still have lots of- Mark: What a great question! I'm so glad you asked it. What makes people say yes is because your request is in alignment with their personal identity. Hugh: Whoa. Whoa. Hey, Russ. What does that trigger with you? Russell: It's everything. Everything revolves around relationships now. People are starting to figure that out. It doesn't matter what business you're in. Now you have to build relationships. In the old days, you could just blurt out at people. There were very few places for them to get a message. They were fed by three big networks messages. Think about Henry Ford when he talked about the Model T. They can have any car they want as long as it's black. Now people have choices. They have different avenues for expression, and they have short attention spans, so you have to resonate with people because they will look for another cause if they feel like they're not being romanced, so to say. You have to keep that connection some type of way, keep thanking them, showing the impact they are making, and staying with it. People change. There are so many different causes that they can get involved with now. It's like anything else to maintain that brand loyalty as it were. You have to connect with your tribe. People want a sense of connection and a sense of accomplishment. Younger people coming into the work force want to do work that matters. Hugh: Mark, I pinged Russell because many times in the interviews, he helps us remember that whether you are creating board members or talking to donors, we have to think about what it is they want, what they are interested in, what they want to achieve. There is a messaging piece that I was honing in on here. How do we form our message so that we do connect with that like-minded person? Mark: Let's get back to the concept of personal identity. People buy things to support their identity or they buy things or engage in things to help them transform their identity into a new place that they desire to be. It's a really important concept because all sales, all marketing, all recruiting, all conversion happens when a person sees their identity as that which you are offering as a nonprofit. That transformation for a lot of people is where we're heading. As people grow, they transform. As young people go from high school to college, they are transforming. As they go from college into the workforce, they are transforming. That personal identity, how you view yourself and how you want to be viewed by—Russell, you said it right on—tribe, we choose our tribe, and the choices that we make determine our tribe. In a model I generated, those tribe decisions are mission-critical. The reason why is because if you make the wrong choices, the people who you might like may just stop calling you back. They may quit inviting you out. They might leave you on your own. That is where that personal identity comes into play. Identity happens way more than people realize. A great example of that is sports. Russell, do you consider yourself a sports fan? Russell: I love it. Mark: Do you have a team? Russell: Believe it or not, I root for the Cleveland Browns. Mark: Why the hell would an intelligent man like you root for such a losing team when a logical person would pick a winning team to root for? Russell: I grew up there. Mark: That's it. Yes! Russell: I haven't lived there in almost 40 years, but home is home. Mark: It's part of your core identity. It is so deeply ingrained in your core identity that I couldn't get you to wear a piece of the opposing team's clothing even if I paid you. That's the power of identity. When you as a nonprofit can tap into that identity, that is where you really get that brand experience where people refuse to go anywhere else. But you have to keep reinforcing that identity. You have to make sure that the identity you're offering continues to shift in the proper direction over time. In a growing economy, people have the opportunity of transforming that identity. That is really where we're going with this #2 point. It gives you a chance to perhaps recruit people, to bring people in that you haven't been able to before because they couldn't afford it, they didn't have the bandwidth or the money. Now they do. Get very clear. A definitive passionate, audience that wants to be recognized or grow their identity can help you as an organization grow. Get really clear. Get really sharp about this. It will have a massive impact for you in 2018. Cool? Hugh: Absolutely. You talked about unemployment. The numbers show the unemployment figures at the end of 2017 were the lowest they've been in forever. But there are still people who are underemployed. They are not unemployed. Mark: In fact, those underemployed people are the ones who are perfect for volunteers. The reason why is as humans, we like to feel we are making a difference. Russell, you pointed that out in your last comments. We really want to feel we are doing good, like we are making a difference. When we are underemployed, we don't have that feeling that we are living up to our potential. People in that environment can be invited to fulfill that in a nonprofit volunteer situation. Whether it's an executive who has moved to a lower position, who needs to give back and still provide that strategic input, that is the perfect person to capture for example. Or perhaps the stay at home mom who went back to work because her kids are out of the house, and as she enters back in, she doesn't go back in at the top level where she started. She comes in at a lower level, and she needs to fill that gap of feeling good about herself until she can be promoted up to that new level. That is the opportunity that you as a nonprofit can fill. Hugh: You spoke earlier about working with a local nonprofit in Las Vegas where you live. Why did you say yes to that? Mark: For two reasons. One is that I have an expertise that the association can use. I can benefit the association in quite a few different ways because of my deep history in business and as a professional. And that association also allows me, it feeds me in that I get to be with other people whose future is my history. And so I get a chance to give back because if I rewind my life back 30 years, I was the person who is being served by the mentor who I get to be today. Hugh: So your input is important to shaping the future of their work. Mark: And they have a desire to have a similar experience that I had. When we are looking for a mentor—this is probably one of the best pieces of advice I've had in my life—look for somebody whose history is your future. They can help you plot the path. While your paths will be slightly different, the fundamentals won't be that far off. Hugh: Russell, did you capture that last comment? Russell: I did not. I was in the process of typing that. I don't type very quickly. This is interesting because what we are talking about, there are three things that a nonprofit needs: time, talent, and treasure. We get obsessed with the money and forget about time and talent. Especially with people who are underemployed, people have different motivations for joining you. When you are clear about what it is you are trying to do and you have inventoried all of your assets, which include time, talent, skills, knowledge, abilities, those are all assets to the nonprofit. When you can leverage that and get other people, it's like money in the bank because you go out, build relationships, get sponsors for media, cash sponsors, you go out and get people to contribute pro bono services, you bring students in, you bring professional firms. There is a number of different ways to approach getting pro bono talent. When you are clear on who you are and what you need, you can offer these folks some time. Maybe they need to build their portfolio. Maybe they are tried and just want to give back. Maybe they are entering the workforce. Maybe they are underemployed and want to have some projects and creations of their own. You can set that table. When you are clear on what it is that people want, then they will come support you and always keep evaluating, putting challenges out there for them to stretch and grow and invest in their learning. They have reasons to stick with you in that case. Mark: Right on. I think if you get the time and talent right, the treasure follows automatically. The reason why is what is money? It is a reward for doing what others want. It's canned labor. That's another way of looking at it. Russell: Canned labor, but meaningful labor. It's not standing at a copy machine all day or making coffee. It's actually creating things. Building your social media strategy, writing policies, it's endless the number of things you can find volunteers to do that they can help support the organization with. Yes, even fundraising. The sky's the limit. It's up to your own creativity and finding out what moves people. If you don't have any money, you probably have time and talent. Mark: They probably know people. There is also ways of converting some of that talent and some of that time into treasure. If you think about it, that's what a business does. It converts time and talent into treasure. As a nonprofit, you can do exactly the same thing. Your tax status permits that to happen. Hugh: Money is also reward for providing value. Russell: Another way to keep score. Mark: That's universally agreed upon. Hugh: Back to where we were talking at the beginning of this interview about installing sound business principles into the charity. I am using charity purposefully here. Sometimes we use the word “nonprofit,” which spins us into this scarcity thinking that we can't generate a profit. But the profit is what pays for the philanthropic work of the organization. Like you said, it's not a business plan. It's not a philosophy. It's a tax classification. It's really tax exempt work. We are getting a lot of useful content today about leveraging what is around us instead of getting stuck in our hole, our silo. You ready to move to the next one? Mark: Let's do it. I think we have beaten that topic up a little bit. I like it. Hugh: #3 is New Leadership Demands. What is changing, and how do we stay out front? I remember years ago people were hiring the motivational speaker. Give me rah, rah. Then people left the room, and it was over. People aren't hiring motivational speakers. They are hiring people with solid, executable content. What has changed in the leadership segment? What are you thinking about? Mark: What I see is the informational speaker and the inspirational speaker versus motivational speaker. Let's talk about that, and then we will go on to the topic of what's changing with leadership. The difference between a motivational speaker and an inspirational speaker is very simple. If we go back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which I see as a fundamental to everything we do, both within the charitable sector as well as the business sector, those two lower levels of Maslow's hierarchy is physical needs and then security. Within those two levels, you can motivate people. It's basically a pain-based motivation. Once we get to that next level, where you have love and self-esteem and move up to self-actualization, that is where inspiration comes into play. If people are in pain, you have to motivate them. If people are out of pain, then you can inspire them. Don't try to be inspirational when people are hungry and tired and scared. That doesn't work. It's just frustrating. They will nod their heads and do what they need to do to get the hell out of your view so they can go get some food or drink or get warm or whatever. We have to help people to the third level of Maslow because we can start to inspire them. With that in mind, from a leadership standpoint, understanding your leadership is 100% contextual on the state of the person and ultimately the team you are working with. That is not a blinding flash of the obvious to most of you, but we have to be reminded of that because a lot of the traditional leadership mantras that we hear are being offered from the top of Maslow's hierarchy. But a lot of the people we are leading are way down the hierarchy, and we have to remember that sometimes it's just giving them a shoulder to cry on and taking them out to lunch or buying them a cup of coffee. Sometimes that's all the leadership they need in that moment. Hugh: Wow. That's a paradigm shift. What are you thinking there, Russ? You're smiling. Russell: The thought came to mind that great leaders always have a pulse on where their people are because no two people are in the same place. Cookie cutter leadership doesn't work. It may have worked back at the turn of the 20th century. Mark: It didn't work then either, Russell. I hate to tell you, pal. It was just misreported. Russell: They pushed it as, “Get in line or go work somewhere else.” That doesn't work. Good leaders build other leaders around them because that is what makes a great leader look good. We have people who can execute or delegate, and she is doing high level functions. Sometimes you have high performance individuals, and it is really hard- When they have been driving the train for a long time, it's really difficult for them to take a step back because they have their vision and it's their baby. They have a hard time taking a step back. This is a way that leaders have to grow in. If people in the work force today aren't getting work that means something. They move on. Do yourself a favor and let other people help you. Mark: I think some of the things we have to take a look at from a change standpoint is that our millennial culture, I raised five millennial children. None of them live at home. I consider myself to be a success. They don't put up with ultimatums. They'll just raise their middle finger and wave you goodbye. The reality is that leadership is now voluntary. It was always voluntary, but it is now absolutely voluntary. People accept leadership voluntarily, and a charitable organization has always been voluntary. We have to become a whole lot more about what it is you are looking for. How can I help you grow? Where do you want to go? What do you need to help you get there? Can we help you get there? It's a lot more of the let's figure out where our tribe needs to go and bring that to them. I think that's a big component of that. We raised our children to question authority. The boomer generation just shakes their head at, “I am a boomer.” Friends, I raise that generation. I raised them to be what I wanted to be when I was their age, which was to have the freedom to ask questions and to push back and to say, “That's really stupid. Why do you make that?” When I was a kid, that earned a slap across the face, so I learned to shut up very quickly. I let my kids ask those questions. They were hard questions. They made me a better man. That also means that military-style, authoritarian leadership will no longer work. It has to be collaborative leadership. But how do we do collaborative leadership? It's simple. You just ask people. You ultimately, as the leader of your organization, get to make the decision. But you also have to have that collaboration of how we arrive at the destination. You are responsible for the destination. Then we collaborate on how we get there. That is what I see as being a major shift. Hugh: That is especially true in nonprofits because we do attract some capable people. We think we have to do it as a leader because we don't want to bother them because they are volunteers and are busy in their real life. Mark: But wait a minute. That's why they showed up. Hugh: You got it. I set that one up good. You are really interfering with what somebody has come to do. That seems like a logical step. That is a huge problem. Bowen leadership systems, Murray Bowen as a psychiatrist created this whole leadership methodology. He talks about that as overfunctioning, and the reciprocity to overfunctioning is underfunctioning. Especially when you have a boomer, me, and you are talking to millennials, like the editor of our magazine, Todd, he says, “Tell me where you want to be, and let me get there.” Nobody likes being told the steps or micromanaged. Millennials like it the least of any particular segment. You raised five millennials, and I don't see any wounds on your body. Mark: I'm a much better man. Before I raised my five millennial kids, I was a jerk. Hugh: Really? Mark: Yeah. I knew everything. I knew exactly how to do it, and I could prove it. If you didn't believe me, I'd write a book about it. Hugh: Wow. Russell: I just sense that pleasure. Here's the thing, Mark. They'll be back. They will bring more with them. Mark: It gets better and better and more disruptive and more delicious. Hugh: There is a story of this conductor, who are known to have healthy egos. This conductor walks into a restaurant with a whole bunch of musicians. One person stood up on one side and said, “All conductors are jerks.” Whoa, it got back like this. On the other side, somebody stood up and said, “I resent that comment.” The conductor looked at him and said, “Hey, are you a conductor, too?” He says, “No, I'm a jerk.” I love it. That is a reframed lawyer joke. Mark: The way I like to talk about conductors is conductors are highly skilled. They can play every instrument in the orchestra. They can. But not well enough to make a living. At the end of the show- Russell: [hard to hear] tickets on the train, either. Hugh: The model you are talking about is the conductor doesn't tell them step by step what they do. The conductor says to the oboe player, the violinist, whatever, “This is the effect I want. This is the result I want.” They guide the process. I wanted to segue into that as a model for what you're talking about. That has been a consistent model over the decades. If we look at that in today's world, leadership as a profound influence and not the micro that you are talking about, do this, do this, do this. It's a nuance of engaging people and empowering people to raise the bar. That is the essence of transformational leadership really: building a culture of high performers that respond to you. So we are looking at what has changed, but also we are looking at- Earlier, you talked about transformation. There is a transformation in ourselves before we can be effective. How does that link with what you're talking about? Mark: Everybody that I know is going through some form of transformation. They are trying to add a new skill. They are trying to let go of an old habit they see as not serving their life any further. They may be going through a spiritual revolution where they are going from less spiritual to more spiritual. It may be that they are looking for a physical transformation, losing weight, adding muscle, adding health. Those transformations always trigger help because if we could do it on our own, we already would have. We need either skills or encouragement or motivation or a tribe to travel with. Let's talk about transformation for just a minute. Let's have some fun with this. I know that we bumped into this idea with me before, Hugh, and let's talk about it. I think we have enough time. It's fairly simple. There is fundamentally a seven-step process in transformation, plus a step zero and a step minus one. Hugh: Ooh, do tell. Mark: The first half is about belief. The second half is about knowledge. The difference between belief and knowledge is a manifestation in the physical world. Step minus one is where they want to go. The transformation they want to enjoy is invisible. They can't even see it. It's not even within their awareness. It's not even possible. They hadn't even thought of it. If you as a charitable organization want to find new people, part of your job is to message the outcome that you deliver so that we can take people who don't even see that as an opportunity into something that is within their awareness. Then step zero, going from invisible to impossible. That is the step zero. “Oh, that's impossible. I could never do that. I don't see how that's possible.” That's step zero. The transformation starts when they go from the impossible to, “Hmm, that could be possible. You have 1,000 people in this community that has made this transformation? Wow. You've helped that many people? It is possible.” Then the next step is to probable. “I could probably do this. I don't have all the answers. I may not know my path yet, but this is probable. I could do this.” Then the third step moves to inevitable. “This is going to happen. Oh yeah. Let's make this happen. Yeah.” Hugh: Minus one is where- Mark: Minus one is invisible. Don't even know it is possible. Hugh: Invisible, okay. Mark: Step zero is impossible. Hugh: Okay. One is possible. Mark: Possible. Hugh: Two is probable. Mark: Two is probable. Hugh: And three is? Mark: Inevitable. Hugh: Inevitable. Mark: This is going to happen! I know how to do this. Whoo-hoo. Help me! Hugh: Russell is scribing these. He is capturing the brilliance. Mark: That is all based on increasing belief because the transformation has not yet become physical. It is still nonphysical. It is thought and that is about it. Now we cross over from the nonphysical to the physical, from the belief to the real. Step four is real. We go from inevitable to real. From real to sustainable. I did it! Okay, let's do it again. I can do this any time I want. That is sustainable. Then we go from sustainable, step five, to step six, which is normal. “I do this all the time. Sure, of course. This is just part of my life.” To step seven, which is historical. “I have always done it this way.” If we are working people through a transformational process—invisible, impossible, possible, probable, inevitable, real, sustainable, normal, historical—if we can run people through that process, we can help them through their transformation. But here is the most important aspect. You can't take somebody from impossible to inevitable in one step. That is the psychology of leadership. We have to help them move from impossible to probable. We have to help them move from probable to inevitable. We have to help them move from inevitable to real. Each one of those is a step, as we are crossing this chasm, let's call it a river, from impossible to historical, going from one side to the other. Every step is a slippery rock that as they reach out with their foot, it may feel like, “I don't know if I can do this.” Our job as leaders is to hold their finger, hold their hand. When I was raising my kids, we would do- Kids were going across the rocks, and I would give them a finger. All they had to do was hang onto my finger. That was enough to give them the confidence to take the step. My kids would grab that finger, and we could move them. You did this, right? Russell, you've done this with your kids? Just give them a little bit. We don't need to hold them in an airman's grip. We just have to give them a finger to hang onto. Russell: If you don't want to carry them, you just give them that finger. It's just enough. Less is more. Mark: That's right. Russell: More, and they step into that power. That's what it's about. Whatever the mind can conceive and make itself believe, it can achieve. That is a process. Mark: You just summarized those seven plus two steps in three words. Hugh: Thank you, Mr. Hill. Mark: Yes indeed. Hugh: That is a profound statement. I was really small, walking with my father, and I would hold a finger. One day, he put a stick there. I kept going because I thought I had his hand. All I had was a stick. When I grew up, I repeated that dirty trick with my kids. Russell: Interesting. That brings a story to mind. I don't know how old I was. I may have been two or three. My mother used to carry me upstairs at night. One night, my mother and sister brought me upstairs, stood me in front of the crib, and said, “Okay. Climb in.” I was baffled. I didn't do anything. So they said, “Okay, well, you will climb in or you will stand there all night.” I don't know how long I stood there. It turns out they were there watching. It wasn't very long. I climbed up in that crib. Oh, okay, I got to do this or it's not going to happen. I never forgot that. I don't remember much that happened before five. As five gets further away, it's harder to remember. But that was something I never forgot. A lot of life is like that. Hugh: That's a great story. That's a big leadership example. The last one of your five topics for the year is Turning Unrest into Peace: How to Divorce Your Organization from the Media's Promotion of Outrage. What ever are you talking about? Mark: I'll be delighted to share with you. With the broad spread availability of Internet and mobile devices, the media got out of the news business. The reason why is the news was available any time I chose to pick up my mobile device and read the news from dozens of news sources. The fundamental TV news made a wholesale pivot from news to opinion and entertainment. You watch any of the mainstream news, and they are not delivering news. They are delivering opinion, not even fact. Opinion. It's the mot hilarious thing. I watch the news now and laugh. I just see it like reality TV. It is completely scripted. Whatever side they are trying to spin, that is what it is. What is truth? I have no idea anymore. The challenge is to get people to watch opinion, you have to generate outreach. You have to go to them and say, “Isn't this awful? Isn't this unfair? This is just horrible. I can't see how we can even stand doing this anymore.” That outrage allows you to sit through the commercials for pharmaceutical products that help you fix the outrage. You laugh because it's true. Russell: Okay. I'm going to give up on MSNBC and Fox Noise because- Mark: It is noise. I can watch Hannity once a week. It's the same story every night. Here's the thing. First of all, you have to realize that the news business is really to do one thing. It's not to inform you. It's to sell advertising. Pure and simple. Their job is to create a community that wants to be outraged a specific way and to promote that outrage so people feel like something is going on. They feel like something is important, but the reality my friends, in the world of charitable organizations, we are offering another way of thinking, another way of feeling. We are offering perhaps a better feeling. I feel way better after going to church than I do after watching the evening news. That circles back to our #1 point today, which is omnichannel. We have to keep providing our message on a regular basis daily, hourly, morning, evening to counter all of the outrage that people are being fed from a commercial stream. Go ahead. Carry on. What do you have in mind there, Hugh? Hugh: Wow. Wow. Where people are getting into an emotional state, not a factual thinking leadership functioning state. We are going into this- Mark: Facts don't matter anymore when it comes to mainstream news. Hugh: We are in a post-truth culture. Mark: We are. It's really interesting. Hugh: When we hear comments like “The media lies,” I watched purposefully for several weeks reports on CNN, CBN, PBS, and FOX. They were all different. Mark: Yes. Hugh: Which one is lying? Or are they all lying? Mark: None of them are lying. They are presenting their vision of what they want you to believe. Facts have nothing to do with anything. They believe It's true. They look you square in the eye through the camera and make you believe they believe it. And they do. Otherwise they couldn't deliver that. Let's circle back to the facts that matter to us and to constituents of our organization. That is what we need to focus on. Hugh: We have eight minutes. We are wrapping up here. That is a perfect segue, thank you. Go ahead. Mark: The whole point is we need to make sure our message and our leadership and our direction and our transformation is absolutely clear. We have to supply at last some rational thinking. When people say, “Did you hear what the news was?” and the answer is, “Do you believe it?” Let's focus on something you can believe. So help pivot people away from buying into something that we keep illustrating over and over again is patently not in alignment with the belief and the worldview that we wish. We have to substitute the worldview that our tribe wishes to see. Personally, I see humanity as growing, expanding, being bigger-hearted than ever before. The people in my environment, the people I bump into, including the folks on the street that ask me for help, are doing better than ever before. My job is to elevate, not to outrage. I think that there are way more people that have that desire than ever before, and perhaps that is why Cartoon Network has a higher rating than CNN. It's because we want to feel good. We don't want to feel bad. As a charitable organization, bringing that good news to people and giving them things they can do to feel better about themselves and to improve humanity and their tribe is probably the ultimate thing we can bring to our constituents. Russell: To piggyback on what you are saying, out of my own experience, I was an advertising salesman for WGAM TV while I was in college. Our most expensive segment was the news slots. That supports that, and that has been the case for quite some time now. That was a few years ago. The other thing is people are looking to raise their level of consciousness. The media likes to exacerbate this idea of taking sides. One thing that happened to me as a result of my experience working with the Native American tribe is I became nonpartisan here. The people who were going to help you may be on other sides of the aisle. I was literally more interested in what was going to benefit my tribe than what fit their politics. What we are talking about really is raising our level of consciousness. Me, for the most part, I am tuned out on those things. I can't watch that stuff. If I do happen to catch glimpses of it, nobody lives out in the middle of nowhere. There are a few people off the grid, but you will be exposed to some of the noise. Does that noise matter? We are trying to raise our level of consciousness, and there are people who need our help. When that is the driving thing, you learn how to play nice with others, but you don't always have to agree on everything, except who is it you want to help and how can you get there. You leave all of the ego and crap on the doorstep and come together to perform missions. I'm glad you haven't said anything that made me so angry I have to go put a nasty tweet out. I have a Twitter account, and I don't want to use it. Mark: Personally, I have a positive posting policy. If I can't say something nice, I write them a letter and burn it. Russell: As long as you don't mail it. That could get you in a lot of trouble. Mark: If you are writing a letter to somebody or emailing, don't ever put their address in there as you write it. Otherwise you might by accident send it. Guilty as charged. Russell: It's good to write letters every once in a while. Us old guys write letters. You can write letters. Younger folks out there, it's a dying art. It's fun. Mark: It's great fun. I wrote myself a letter on New Year's Eve. It's part of our ritual: to write ourselves letters. Just to wrap up this segment, an important component is what is your core principle as a leader? Focus on activities that will provide you and your tribe with those core principles. My core principle is freedom. Everything I do needs to lead me to freedom. Freedom of thought, freedom of action, freedom of life. From that freedom, I can serve people. I can't serve people when I am not free, from a thought standpoint, a physical standpoint, a monetary standpoint. I use that personally as my filter. If I am going to do something, say something, act in some way, the question is: Does this bring me closer to more freedom, or does this take freedom away from me? It could be anything else. It could be oneness. It could be joy. It could be love. It doesn't really matter. All of them boil down to the same situation anyway. Just that word resonates with me. I think ultimately that is what we need to do to bring peace to our tribe. Hugh: Our strategy is Russell and I encourage people to be very clear on their vision while they are doing something. As charities, we have to be very good at defining the impact of our work. What difference will it make? We achieve all of that through setting powerful goals. You have given us a whole lot of ideas for goals. Russell mentioned him before, and he is looking behind you there. Behind you is Henry Ford. Mark: Actually that is Edison. Carry on. Hugh: They lived next door to each other down in Fort Myers. Mark: They did. Hugh: Edison said he never failed; he just found 9,999 things that didn't work before he invented the light bulb. Ford said obstacles are what you see when you take your mind off your goals. They are both dedicated to excellence. They were both in tune with the culture and trends of their day. Mark Smith, I don't know a lot of people with two middle initials. Mark S. A. Smith. You stand out from all those other Mark Smiths. Mark: That is the reason why. That way you can find me on Google. Hugh: They are impostors. Mark: No, they are not impostors. They are just hiding. Hugh: This is really rich in content. Russell, do you have a closing comment you want to leave here? Russell: There we are. I'd like to thank Mark for the thoughts he dropped. You are preaching to the choir. It's about who you are. That's a message that has to ring true. Who are you? Who are you, and that way you can connect with the people that you are aligned with. I love the alignment. Great comments. Notes in the SynerVision Leadership webinar notebook. I have the notes, Hugh. It will also be out there for folks to look at. It's a great day here. Hugh: Super. Mark, thank you for being here and sharing your wisdom with us. Mark: Delightful to be here. Thank you for the invitation to do so. We have plenty more in 2018. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Edit: Bit low effort this one on my part. But next week... The Fringe! - Mark For another trip back to 2017's Edinburgh International Science Festival we'll be hearing from Dr Lucina Hackman. Forensic anthropologists are crucial in helping to identify the deceased when there are limited clues to their identity. Dr Hackman's talk will examine how her work has helped give victim's their identity to assist with the investigation of crimes. Dr Hackman is a senior lecturer at the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification based in the University of Dundee. She runs postgraduate courses and teaches students in forensic anthropology. Dr Hackman is also a certified, practising forensic anthropologist and works regularly with investigators in this role.

  Interview w/ Timothy Ballard Mark Mabry January 11, 2016 Final Transcript   Intro: You are listening to Slave Stealer. Tim: Welcome to Slave Stealer podcast, where we take you into the dark world of trafficking so you can help us find the solution. We are talking here with co-host, Mark Mabry. Mark: That’s me. And we did a little change in format. This is part two of our ‘Meet Tim’ series, because he has had a really interesting story. And what I found amazing in getting to know Tim over the last few years, is that sacrifice of peace of mind, sacrifice of kind of this level of innocence that 99.9% of the rest of us enjoy. And, to recap, we talked about Tim’s story a little bit, how he got into child crimes, and how he was invited by HSI to be on that team, and then we talked about his family. He has got young kids, and his son is now 15. And, the birds and the bees talk is awkward enough. What about that talk about what dad does for a living?” Tim: Well, you know, yeah..Let me say this first: I was scared to death some 15 years ago when I was asked to enter this dark world of child crimes. And the thing that scared me the most was the fact that I had kids, and I didn’t know how that would affect me. Would I see an image that reminded me of my kids, would that make me a paranoid father, would that turn me... My wife was scared to death that I would turn into just some cynical, just bitter old dude. And I was scared to death. I mean, you’ve got to wade through the sewer to find the crap. Mark: And what if the pornography took, I mean, worst case scenario, you turn into somebody that is actually into it? Not that that would happen with you knowing you, but... Tim: You know, what I have found that’s..a lot of people think that, and they go there, but... Mark: Those people are stupid. Tim: The people who had that suggestion are really idiotic. No, but it’s a logical conclusion. But what I have found is, frankly, kind of the opposite. Because when you are exposed to children - unless you are a pedophile, right - when you are exposed to that, it makes you want to distance yourself even more from all things pornography. At least that was my experience, and as I watched other agents who I have worked with, who have to be exposed to this. It turns you off so much to the whole industry, even the legal part of it, because it’s so, frankly, similar that it actually, at least for me, it has had the effect of major deterrent, even from any temptation my own part to even look at regular pornography. Does that make sense? Mark: Yeah! Tim: And, for the child stuff, it is just a punch in the stomach every time, and it is worse and worse every time. And you learn how to cope, you learn how to be able to see this stuff and still move on. But, like in the last show, I was talking about how the first thing I want to do when I saw particular images or videos, is just grab my kids and bring them to the safest place I know, which is my home, and just hold them. And so the whole concept, the whole idea to your question of how I bring together these two worlds, of what I do outside versus what I do inside - you have to factor in all these things. But my kids do start asking questions. I was addressing a group that was doing a benefit for Operation Underground Railroad just two nights ago. And they had the kids there and they wanted me to talk about it, and it was so hard, because I’m sitting there, and they say, “Tell us what you do!”, and I’m going, “All right, well I’ll start...”       Mark: How old were the kids? Tim: Oh, the kids were as young as five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Mark: Oh, geez.. Tim: It was like all these neighborhood kids. And their parents wanted them to know that there are kids who are less fortunate and that we need to help them. That was the idea. So, I thought to myself, “I’ll start with the software that we are building.” The software is called ‘Stars’. It’s a pretty name. Until one of the kids says, “What does STARS stand for?” And it stands for Sex Traveler Apprehension Retention System, right? So, I say SEEEE ugh...I can’t say it, I can’t even say the name of the software! Mark: Super Terrific Apprehension... Tim: Yes! So, I couldn’t, and it was so..it’s so difficult. A little kid raises his hand after I’m talking about slavery in general terms, and he said, “Why would someone want to steal a child? Wouldn’t they rather steal an adult because they’d be better at being a slave and a stronger worker?” I just looked at this little kid, I was like, “I know exactly the truth of your question, I know how to answer that, but I cannot answer that.” And so these issues that I was grappling with at this charity event, are the same issues I grapple with every day with my kids. When they see something on the news, and with my small children I just tell them, you know, I help kids, we help kids, we help kids who’ve been kidnapped. That’s all they know, and they seem ok with that. But as they get older, they start asking questions. And it intersects at the same time that I need to start talking to them about the birds and the bees. My wife and I are very open, I mean, I think my job has made me the most desensitized to all things sex, like I can say anything to anyone, because the conversations that I have had with people, with perpetrators especially during interrogations, where we were talking about things, or undercover, where they’re selling me kids. There is nothing that makes me blush, right. So, I can just take my kids and sit down, and say, “Hey”, talk about everything, embarrassing things, everything from pornography to masturbation to dating and all this stuff. It is rare that we talk about that, somehow it leads to the fact that - again these are my more adolescent, teenage kids - it always leads to some kind of an explanation that they are asking me for about, “Why would an adult want to do that to a child?”      Mark: When they say THAT, what ..I mean.. Tim: I mean they kind of..they know, I mean, they figured it out. Mark: Yeah. Tim: They do, because they know what is what we’re talking about. And so, I think, in the world of child pornography and sexual abuse of children, you don’t want to be graphic with the kids at all, even with my teenage kids. I kind of let them just figure it out and let their brain stop them where they should be stopped, because the brain will do that. Mark: Oh, adults don’t even grasp it. Tim: Adults don’t grasp it. I was sitting with my father-in-law - a brilliant man, PhD - we were in his kitchen, this was when I was an agent, and I heard him, he started talking.. What had happened was that I arrested one of his friends - not like a close friend, right, but... Mark: ”So, what did you do today, Tim?” “Well, I busted Larry.” Tim: Right! Mark: I have heard this story. Tim: He knew this guy, he had been to his home. So he knew this guy, and he started saying, “You know...I kind of feel bad for this particular individual, because it’s not really their fault. I mean, these girls dress in a certain way that is provocative, and it is not totally their fault.” And, I’m just dying. I’m like, “Wait, wait, wait, what?! You are telling me that a 5-year old puts on clothes, and now it’s not the pedophile’s fault that they look at the 5-year-old!” And his eyes almost popped out of his head! He says, “Five years old?! Why are you talking about 5-year-olds?!”     Mark: He’s thinking the 17 ½-year-old. Tim: He’s thinking 17, 16 years old, where you can’t really maybe tell the difference between a 17- and an 18-year-old, right. His eyes popped out of his head, and he says, “What?!” I said, “Yeah...Dad, you don’t know this, but what George was looking at was 5- to 7-year-old children, boys and girls, being raped, ok?” Mark: They sent a picture in the tub. Tim: Exactly. Being raped by adults. And he just kind of put his head down, shook it, and he said, “Now, that is weird..” I remember he said, ”That is just weird...”, and he walked out of the kitchen. He couldn’t handle it, and I don’t blame him. Our minds don’t even let us go there. And this is the problem. This is the problem that, frankly, is the obstacle to the solution. And the problem is we don’t want to see, we don’t want to believe it. I remember in the very beginning, in the early 2000s, when we were taking cases, child porn cases, to the judges, federal judges and state judges on pornography cases, on child pornography cases. And they were sentencing them to the most minimal sentences. Like this one guy had this collection that was unbelievable, categorized it by the names - he would name the kids in the videos, and create little files for them. It was unbelievable. He had hundreds of thousands of videos, images and everything else. And when the judge sentenced him, he sentenced him to four or five months in jail, but weekends only.            Mark: What?! Tim: And, I thought, “What is going on?!” The prosecutor I was working with, she said, “You know, the problem, Tim, is they don’t get it.The judges don’t get it!” They don’t get it. And we asked the judges if we could please show..during the sentencing they brought me in, and said, “Agent Ballard wants to show you the images.” He said, “I don’t want to see that junk! I don’t want to see that junk.” He’s embarrassed to even look at it. The human side of him doesn't want to even watch him looking at it, so he says, “I don’t need to see, I don’t need to see it!” So, we didn’t show it to him, and then that sentence came out. I guarantee you, I guarantee you that he doesn’t want to accept it. You know, the reports indicated that the kids were as young as five or four years old. His brain - my theory - wouldn’t let him grasp it, wouldn’t let him grasp it. And so he just gave him this super light sentence. But if I would have just opened that laptop, and say, “You have to watch this, you need to see this.” Now, I’m not advocating for showing child porn to people.    Mark: Exactly. Tim: At all! At all! Mark: But, maybe we emphasize, highly illegal: if you download this, even for altruistic, I’m-going-to-expose-myself, but...   Tim: You will go to jail. Don’t do it! Don’t do it! Mark: Yes! Tim: But what I’m telling you is, be aware that it is there, and we have got to talk about it. It hurts...You mentioned that when you talk about this, and this is why people don’t want to talk about it, you hit the nail in the head: you lose part of your own innocence. Mark: Absolutely. Tim: And every time you talk about it, some more of your innocence, even as adults, it goes away. You have to sacrifice that, but you sacrifice it for the kids. Because if we don’t sacrifice a part of our innocence to know this is happening, they have no hope, because we are the adults, we are the ones who will...if anyone’s going to save them, it is going to be the adults, that have the power and the influence and the ability. But if we don’t know about it, we are not going to save them. But to know about it, you must sacrifice some of your innocence. And so that’s what we ask people to do: sacrifice some of your innocence, listen to this show, go to our website, learn about trafficking. It’s the fastest growing criminal enterprise on earth. Two million children, and more, are being sold for sex, over ten million children sold for labor. Add all the adults, we’re on a 30-40 million range. I mean, wake up! Help them out! But it does require a sacrifice of innocence.     Mark: So, back to the question at hand, did you actually have, have you had a sit-down, “Ok, let me talk to you about this, son”? Like, let me ask it this way: have your kids seen the documentary? Tim: Here’s my policy and my wife’s, I mean, every kid is an individual, right. Every kid you treat differently, because it is not a ‘one size fits all’ solution to raising kids. Mark: You have how many? Tim: I have six kids. Mark: That’s awesome! Tim: So, our kind of general policy, guideline on the documentary, which is ‘The Abolitionists’ documentary, which films my team going into different countries and helping the police infiltrate trafficking rings and so forth... Mark: Catching you soliciting pimps for underaged girls. Tim: Right. Mark: Asking “Hey, will she do this, will she do that?” Tim: Oh, yeah. Mark: Your kids have to hear you saying that. Tim: My kids are hearing that, yeah. So, what we’ve decided is, generally speaking, if this particular video or this particular documentary includes children, who are being sold, who are, say, 12 years old, then I’m going to let my 12-year-old watch it. And that is because I think it’s important for him to see what he has and what someone else doesn’t have. “Someone your age is being trafficked. You get to play football; they are being sold for sex.” And, I think it’s important for kids to recognize what they have, and then it instills in them a sense of responsibility: “How can I help that kid, who doesn’t get to play football? What can I do?” And it makes them aware of the world and aware of what’s happening. So, that is kind of how we deal with it. And then again I let them watch it, I don’t rehash it with them, I don’t bring it up too much, at least graphically.           Mark: Yeah. Tim: I let their mind stop them where it needs to stop. Mark: Smart. I like that principle that you said with adults, with kids, with everyone - they will go to a point that they are ready to go to.   Tim: Right. But here’s the point that I was making too - once you are an adult and you have real influence to help, it changes a bit in my mind, right.     Mark: Especially if you are a judge. Tim: Especially if you are a judge. I don’t want it to stop where your mind wants it to stop. And this is our job at Slave Stealer podcast and other places, other people’s responsibility, who are in the know-how, who have seen it, you’ve got to say “No!” No, I’m not going to let you stop. I am not going to let you shake your head and walk out of the kitchen. I’m going to make you stay until your mind grasps this enough to where you are going to act. And that’s the problem, is people hit that point where their brain wants them to stop, and they shake their head and walk away. We can’t have that. If we do that, these kids will not be liberated.        Mark: If that happens in 1860, you have still got millions of slaves in the South. Tim: Absolutely! Mark: Because we have talked about it. Tim: Absolutely. That’s why, because people shook their head and walked out of the kitchen. Mark: Yeah. You have got to show it to them. There are so many questions - I’m trying to think of a logical order here. You talked about it with your father-in-law, and we are not talking about 17 ½-year-old girls.    Tim: Right. Mark: We are talking about kids that are groomed, And, maybe.. let’s define the term. We kind of need to have like a trafficking glossary on our site. But grooming, and, maybe in the case of Lady, that we talked about - that’s when you explained it to me, you know, when I was going to go be a scoutmaster. I had to go through the whole ‘how to identify a perv’, right, and one of the terms they used was grooming. And they’re like, “Well, when you prepare a child for…” whatever. But you really broke it down for me in the case of this 11-year old virgin, who was sold to you in Columbia. I was there watching, she was a virgin. Tim: Right Mark: However, she knew exactly what was going to go down. Tim: Right.. Mark: What do they do to groom a child and how were you made aware of it? Like, give me how you came to that knowledge. Because this episode is kind of about you and the topic. Tim: So I came to the knowledge the only way I think anyone can, and that is experiencing it firsthand. For me, that was going undercover, pretending to be someone, who is interested in that black market, and getting into that market, becoming a player in that market. So, in the case of this little girl, who they were calling ‘Lady’ - and that surely wasn’t her real name, it was a name the traffickers gave her - in that case, we were pretending to be solicitors of child sex. We were working with the Colombian police pretending to be Americans, who travel to Colombia to engage in sex with children. And what had happened in this case, because we were working in that capacity and because we presented ourselves as wealthy Americans, I hinted to the trafficker that we would be interested in sharing profits and investing in his trafficking business. The reason we did that was because that all of a sudden, if they believe us, that pushes them to open their books and open their business and explain the business plan. And that’s how we learn how they do this. I would say things like, ”Look, I could probably get you a million dollar investment in this, but I need to know how it works; I need to know how you get these kids; I want to know you maintain the kids, how you groom and prepare them,” and so on and so forth. And the guy was more than happy to tell me what he does. Mark: I have a photograph of your hands around this little pattern napkin. It was like a napkin business plan...     Tim: Sure, yeah. Mark: Of a sex hotel for kids. Tim: That’s right. Mark: I have a picture of that. I’ll post it, because it is so disturbing when you realize what those numbers represent, volume and quantity and velocity of children and child rape.    Tim: Yeah, it was the dirtiest, most evil business plan that anyone could ever dream up. Mark: Yeah. Tim: ..on that napkin. That’s right. Mark: I’ll post that. Tim: And that was like our third or fourth discussion about how their business operations work. So, what they explained to me was, “Look, it’s easy to get the kids. You find poor families.” You don’t want to do a hard kidnapping, you know like the movie ‘Taken’. Does that happen? Yes. Is that the likely scenario? No. Why? Because you kidnap a kid, a hard kidnapping - meaning go into their house, like what happened with Elizabeth Smart, go into the house, pull them out. Well, you are going to kick up a lot of dust around you. Why do that if you are a trafficker if you can instead make it a peaceful kidnapping. Not peaceful for the child, right.          Mark: Yeah. Tim: Hell for the child, peaceful for the trafficker. In other words, they can kind of do this without fearing much consequence. So, what they do is they go to poor families, and these guys had actually hired or were working with, contracting with, a beauty queen in Cartagena. She had won a pageant, a beauty pageant. So, kind of people knew who she was; she had been on the news, she showed up in music videos, and so people knew who she was. So, they walk into the house with this beauty queen, and they say, “Look, look at this beautiful woman. She doesn’t have a worry in the world. She is paid, she is wealthy, she is beautiful, she is famous.” And then they point to the 9-year old daughter, and say, “we focus” - they told us “9 years old is where we start”. And they say to the mother and father: “Your 9-year-old daughter is just as beautiful as this girl; we just got to train her. We can train her, and she can become a model and an actress.” And they fill the parents with all sorts of dreams that they never believed were possible for their child. And certainly this is legitimate, because they are looking at the star, who is in their living room saying, “I can do this for you. And we’re going to give you a scholarship. You can come to our school and learn how to be a model for free.” At that point, they bring them into the modeling school, and they teach them some things. And when they get comfortable, they say, “Now you are going to watch this video.” And the video will be pornography. “This is part of being an actress, it’s part of…you need to understand this world.” And when kids are at that age - nine, ten, eleven - their minds are still developing and forming, and if someone tells you this is right, this is right, this is right, eventually your mind develops as a 9- or 10-year old into believing, “Ok, this is right, this is right.” And so they start seeing that. We had evidence that some of them were being drugged, you know, threatened: “If you go back and tell your parents that we are doing these things, you are going to be in big trouble.” And again, kids are very… Elizabeth Smart, when we get her on the show, she can talk about this, where a police officer walked up to her, while she was in captivity, and said “Are you Elizabeth Smart?”. I mean that, it would have been over! Mark: Yeah. Tim: And she said, “I am not. I am not Elizabeth Smart.” Because she was scared to death because they, her captors, had told her, “If you ever reveal who you are, we will kill your sister, and your family.” And as Elizabeth tells it, everything they had told her they are going to do to her, they did it. They told her they are going to rape her, and they did it. They told her they are doing this particular thing - sex acts - and they did it. They told her they’d chain her up, and they did it. So, when they told her that they are going to kill her parents if she reveals who she is, why would a 14-year-old not believe that they are going to do it?                        Mark: They’ve got all power. Tim: All power. And she has received criticism for that, you know, like, “Why didn’t you run away? Did you want to be there?”, you know... People just can’t comprehend how the mind of a child works. And that’s what these kids go through - they are scared into not revealing what is really going on. So, they groom them, and they said it, it will be a year and a half, or more, while they are grooming them, all under the hospices of this modeling school. And of course they are being trained to be models as well, and then eventually they say, “Ok, so this is your test. You are going to this party on this island, and these men are going to come from America, and you are going to do the things that you have seen being done in the pornography videos, and do whatever they want.” In a nutshell, that is how it works. I mean, that is how it works, that is the reality. Mark: And variations of. Tim: And variations of that.   Mark: So, they can do everything up until the point that she is not a virgin to claim... Tim: Right. Mark: “Hey, it is a virgin.” Tim: And they can, and they want to do this because their virgins are premium, right.  Already, a child, in most black markets, a child will go for about a double or more than double of what an adult prostitute will go for. But then, if that child is also a virgin, then it’s quadruple, or more of that price. So, it’s a premium to sell a virgin child. Mark: Wow...Give me, you’ve talked about it - like pulling people’s blinders off, and those moments where people are opened up, and the one with I think your father-in-law, who gets it now - that was pretty dramatic. What about..give me another one. You don’t have to name names, I just like hearing about people’s response. Are there any high profiles that you are allowed to share, that, maybe change the name, change the whatever? Somebody that you have shocked, that should have known?        Tim: Yeah. I was in the office, probably a year or two ago, of a governor of a certain state. We were explaining who we were and what we did, and he was absolutely shocked. And, kudos to him for being honest, saying, “Wait, wait, wait, what?! There is how many kids? There is how many kids being hurt and trafficked in the world? And what does that mean? They do what?!” He didn’t know, he didn’t know anything! And again, I’m not blaming him for not knowing. It is not something you go seek out, right? It is not something that your advisors seek out to tell you. It is hard to talk about. And I don’t know that you know the answer - why aren’t we talking about it more? Why, why, why, why? I really believe because it is that.. it is so dark a topic. It is not even...you know, slavery in the nineteenth century - it was politically divisive. It was a political nightmare to get involved: go back to the Lincoln-Douglas debates and everything. I mean, it was a divisive and a political issue. This is not even a political issue. There is nobody standing on the side of the pedophiles - well there are some: NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Love Association, which deserves its own show someday.         Mark: Do they have a logo? Tim: Well, there are all sorts of different..Look them up: nambla.org. Mark: Is that weird? Tim: You might have cops knocking on your door tonight. Mark: That is what I am saying. Tim: No, no, no, you won’t. You can look them up. Mark: What are the pop-up ads I am getting after that? Tim: Yeah, be careful when you go: nambla.org. I mean, it is a legitimate organization, legitimate in terms of legality, right. And, they are just a group that is pushing for a.. Mark: Oh hell! Tim: What did you find? You got...I told you to be careful when you go to that... Mark: No, it is not...and luckily, I’ve retained that innocence: I have never seen child pornography. It is a cartoon on the front their page - it is an adult asking a little boy, “What can I do to make you happy?” And the little boy says, “I like hugs.” Tim: Boom! And that’s their whole message. If you go into...When I was an agent, I would go all into it and learn about it, what they believe in. And they actually talk about how kids, psychologically and emotionally, need sexual healing and sexual exposure from adults. And why not adults, who know what they are doing? And so they make it sound as though the kid wants to be hugged, the kid wants to be touched. Why is it so bad? And they bring up science, where they show that children are sexual beings based on this story and that. Of course, they are human beings! Their sexuality is attached to everybody; we are born with it. But that doesn’t mean you are ready to bring it out and force it on a child, because that’s what you would be really doing, forcing it on a child. Their brains aren’t developed to the point where they can make those kind of decisions, or comprehend the kind of consequences of that activity. I mean it destroys...I’ve seen kids destroyed over this. And here they are saying they just want to hug, “Just hug me, that is all I want.”      Mark: Oh, here’s the other one, right. They are just headlines and we’re not going to go off on NAMBLA forever, because it does deserve its own show. Maybe we bring one of these idiots in.   Tim: Yeah, bring them in, let them take it. Mark: Or, we bring in some of the people they are attacking. And I thought of this this morning, ok. I’ll read a couple headlines: ‘When Labor Loved Liberty (And Before They Changed Their Minds)’ about the labor unions formally supporting..whatever. ‘Remembering Michael Jackson’, and they’ve got the old black version of Michael, ‘Remembering a Lover of Boys’, ‘Michael Jackson’s Dangerous Liaisons’, ‘The Non-Wisdom of Crowds: Defender of Anonymous Outraged by our Lack of Passivity’. Now, this one’s interesting: ‘Hipster Vigilantism and the New Populist Attack on Free Speech’. That is what they are calling it: speech, right. And then, they say ‘Anonymous Decidedly Illiberal Campaign to Silence Us’. Dude, is Anonymous getting on these guys, because they would be an awesome ally.   Tim: I don’t know, but let’s check, let’s look into it - let’s absolutely look into it. But these guys have conventions; it’s a political movement to legalize this kind of behavior. Mark: They called Oprah a liar, by the way. Tim: And so... Mark: Saying she wasn’t, she wasn’t molested as a child. Ok, I’m off on NAMBLA. Tim: Ok. So, we’ll go back talking more about that, but the point is, that, except for these few total whackjobs, who think that this is a healthy thing for children, it is really just obviously serving their own selfish lust and pleasure and evil. Dark, dark souls...But, for the most part, this is not a political issue, right, it is not a political issue. Everyone will be on the side of solving this. So, what is the obstruction? It is simply, “I don’t want to know; I don’t want to see it.” It’s the ostrich, the ostrich effect, sticking our head in the sand: “I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to...I have kids, grandkids. I can’t think about it.” And that’s where we have to make the change, that’s where we have to convert people to look at it.    Mark: What are the more offensive things that people have said to you? Maybe on purpose or not on purpose. I don’t need the top three, because it’s hard to think in superlatives, but give me five offensive things people have said to Tim Ballard, unknowingly or knowingly.   Tim: Offensive, in terms of just this topic in general? Mark: Yeah, that you’re like, “I used to respect you three minutes ago, before that came out your mouth.” Tim:I think the one time I can remember where I got the most offended...and frankly, you actually just did it to me earlier today, accidentally. I wasn’t so mad. Mark: Oh, when I wondered if you would turn into a perv by looking at... Tim: Yeah, it was so...I felt really bad because... Mark: That wasn’t a personal attack, by the way. Tim: No, no no, it wasn’t. And I want to clear this up. I don’t have a whole lot of examples of people, who say things offensive in terms of why this should or shouldn’t be legal or illegal, right. I mean, I’ve had perpetrators during interrogations defended, you know. A guy named Ernst Luposchainsky, for example - you can look him up, we arrested him in Minnesota... And he was pretty, I mean he was offensive, but I mean, geez, he was just such a joke. You are looking at this guy and you are almost, almost...somewhere in between laughter and vomit. You know, you are just like: “Are you serious? You are saying this?” You know, but he would talk about like the benefits of child pornography and how it helps the poor kids. “These kids get paid, they get paid for their sexual services, and we are helping them, we are helping their families.” He would talk about the tiger and the meat analogy. I remember we talked about, and this is all during his interrogation, where he would say, “Look, you have got to feed the tiger meat. If you don’t feed the tiger meat, he will eventually attack human beings.” So, he is actually saying, “Children are being raped, that’s horrible! Now, a consensual sex with a child, that is a different story. But, children are being raped against their will, I’m against that. Oh, I’m so against that!” You know, he would say...       Mark: Just for the record, you were quoting him on the “consensual sex is a different story”? Tim: Yes. Mark: Ok, just making sure it wasn’t like... Tim: Yes, quoting. Mark: You, parenthetically saying “Hey, consensual sex...” Tim: I’m sure some out there would love to misquote me on that and accuse me. So, the tiger and the meat, right. “You have got to feed the tiger meat, you have got to feed the tiger meat, and then he will never rape the kids.” And the meat is child porngraphy. “Make it legal. Let them look at it, because then they will just look at it, and then they will get satisfied and the kids will be safe.” Mark: Oh, yeah, totally! Tim: Because it doesn’t, it certainly doesn’t fuel your evil passion by looking at it, right? Like for example, a man who watches pornography, he never watches pornography with an int to actually engage in sex with a woman. He just watches it for, you know, for the pleasure in itself. Yeah...baloney! Any dude, who watched porn will tell you, right, “I would like to translate this to my bedroom,” right. It is no different with child pornographers. They are looking at this, and they want to act out. So it is just the opposite - you are fueling the fire, not putting it out. But, I mean, that was offensive. And, by the way, that Ernst Lupochainsky case, we got to do a show sometime on that. That was the hardest case I have ever did. In the middle of that interview, ok, while he was telling me all this stuff, he would not break, he would not break, he would not break. So, what I had to do...because he believed that all men were closet pedophiles, he just believed that story... Mark: I love this story. Tim: He just believed that. It was his way to justify his own feelings, of course. But this puritanical society - that is what he called it - has stopped the natural flow of love between a man and young, little girls. But on this show, I have got to read...he had this postmortem message he put on all his child porn collection. We will prep and I will read his message.      Mark: Oh my gosh. Tim: It’s unbelievable. Unbelievable. But the point I am making here is, I had to go undercover - this is just a teaser - I had to go undercover... Mark: Don’t blow it, because I know the punchline, and it is unreal. Tim: Yeah..as myself. So, I pushed my buddy away, the other agent, who was interviewing the guy. I was still wired up undercover, you know, and I said, “Hey, listen man, listen Ernst, help me out. I mean you are right. Reading your stuff - it makes me trust you. I have got to look at this stuff all day long. What do you think that does to me? It makes me want that. But there is no one I can talk to. Can you talk to me? Can you help me?” Sure enough, his eyes just light up. He believed it! I couldn’t believe he bought into it. I was...I was...It is one thing when I am Brian Black, you know, or I’m some alias in an undercover operative.          Mark: That is a cute name. Did you make that one up? Tim: That was the name that I used to use, yeah...Brian Black. So, here I was, Tim Ballard, U.S. agent/pedophile. So it was a totally different thing. I was myself, and that went on for...and then you know, I reported it to my supervisors; they loved it. And that kept on for at least a month, until we could get all the information out of this guy we possibly could about his contacts and networks. And he opened up to me, thinking he was helping me enter into, you know, induct me into the beautiful world of pedophilia. So, someday we’ll do that story, because that is an amazing story. The guy is still in jail.     Mark: Good. Tim: So, that is kind of somewhat offensive, but the time I blew up...the sweetest lady on earth - she was, she was just...Lived down the street, sweet kind lady, and I was working in child porn cases, kind of mad - you know you’re just mad a lot, thinking about it. And she said to me, “So, how many agents, you know, end up…?” And again, the same thing you just said, but I didn’t blow up at you.    Mark: Good grief! I feel like such a schmuck, especially in context of the story you have just told me. Tim: Yeah, it was the first time... Mark: Because I know you are not susceptible to that. Tim: Right. And, I would honestly argue that unless you are predisposed and you enter the child crimes group so that you could access it, I think it is just the opposite. And, you know, she said, “So, how many end up pedophiles themselves, being exposed to this?” Mark: Legit question! Tim: Yeah...I mean it sounds like a legit question, unless when you are in it, you are like “Wait, whoa, whoa.” Yeah so, by the hundredth time I am watching a child scream in pain, by that time I am like, “I am digging this.” But, I went off, I went crazy. I said, “Do you think it is that?! Or maybe it is, ‘I can’t believe I have to watch this again! I can’t believe I have to subject myself again to this video, and my stomach is punched again and again and again.” It was so bothersome to me, because it is just the opposite of what she was saying. It is like, I have got to endure this. It is like saying this, here is a good analogy: someone who has been doing chemotherapy for a year, right, and every three months they got to go get another dose of chemo. It is like someone saying, “So, how many cancer patients become addicted to chemo? Even after the cancer is done, they still take chemo just because they are addicted to it?” Right?! That is analogous right there. Mark: Yeah... Tim: Ok? And, it is just like, “Wow, wow,” you know, it killed me. I get it, but it was just, it is...What they don’t understand is the potency of this. It is not! What they think is, she was probably still thinking 16-year-olds, 17-year-olds. I was like, are you kidding me?! It is not what we are talking about! If there is a 16-year old in a child porn video, we wouldn’t even prosecute that, unless you absolutely knew it was a 16-year-old, in like specific cases where, you know, uncles taking pictures or something. Mark:Yeah. Tim: But otherwise, you wouldn’t. You would be like “Eh...” If you can’t tell...The majority of the child porn cases we prosecuted: 5 years old, 7 years old, 10 years old, that range, right. I know, it’s just... it is just things the vast majority don’t have to see, and I don’t want them to see it. Mark: Yeah. Tim: I don’t want them to see it. But they need to know it is happening, so that they can be part of the solution. Mark: On that same thought of things that people unintentionally say that are offensive, how about this? And I have got this one before, even with my little bit of involvement: “Well, she looks like she wants it.” Tim: Oh, yeah...I get that quite a bit. In fact, right in our documentary, in “The Abolitionists”. Mark: Yeah! Tim: I have heard a couple of people say that. In an early screening that happened, and my wife who was in the room,  it was a very early screening, we brought some kind of influential people in to watch. Mark: I was there! Tim: Oh, right! You were there. That’s right! Mark: I was sitting by your wife. Tim: You were there. A sweet lady - I think you know her, I think you know who she is - totally innocent, you know, she just...she said, “Can’t you show like a little darker side to this, so that people know? Can’t you show us some kids who are not looking like they want to be here?” And, if you remember my wife, she’s like... Mark: Oh yeah. Tim: “Alright! This is tragic, what is happening to these kids! This isn’t a scripted film, this isn’t - we can’t make this up. This is real, and it is their hell. And just because you can’t see it, because you are not the spirit inside of that body,”... know, my wife just… bless her heart, she went crazy.   Mark: She is not outspoken. Tim: No. Mark: Right? For her to... Tim: For her to do that... it touched a nerve. Mark: Yeah.. Tim: And again, back to the misconceptions. Are you going to find cases of kids chained up and locked in closets? Absolutely, you are going to find that! The vast majority, the vast majority? No, that is not what it looks like. And in the documentary - most people get it, it is not usually a big problem - but in the documentary, I mean, you are watching the filmmakers put the ages of the kids - of course cover their identities - but they put their ages, their numbers like over their blurred faces. And so you are watching this 12-year old-girl, it says twelve, you know, and I remember that little girl, I remember that she actually had fear in her eyes. But if you weren’t looking straight into her eyes, she did walk into the party, and she knew what was going to happen to her.   Mark: And she was dressed like a 21-year-old prostitute. Maybe not her, but some of the others. Tim: Some of them were, that one wasn’t, but some of them absolutely... This little girl was wearing like long basketball shorts and a white t-shirt, and you will see that in the documentary. But others were, the 12-year-olds...    Mark: They are not picking their outfit here. Tim: Right, right. Mark: For the most part. Tim: And they are walking in and people say, “Looks like they want to do that! They want to do it! Look at, they... No one is forcing them to walk in.” And again back to Elizabeth Smart. When you will bring her on the show, we can talk to her about it, and she...If you thought Catherine, my wife, got passionate, wait until Elizabeth answers that question. And she says, because they bring it u, she had plenty of opportunities, in theory, to run. She did. She was in public areas, policeman came up to her, right, but what they don’t understand is trafficking, slavery, so much of slavery is mental. These traffickers enslave these kids mentally, emotionally, not just physically. In fact, they don’t want it; if they can get away with not enslaving them physically, all the better. Remember, they don’t want to kick up a lot of dust around them. So, if they can figure out how to enslave them mentally and emotionally, that is always the first choice, and they do it by the grooming process that we described earlier. They groom them, and then they control them. They control them! And this is why the rehab part is so important, because you have got to undo the damage, and that doesn’t happen overnight. It is a long process. I don’t know, I mean, I have talked to a lot of victims of trafficking, who are adults now and have families of their own, and they have told me, “You know, you don’t ever fully, fully heal.” I mean, there is always something there you have got to battle. And that is what happens, that is why when Elizabeth’s father runs to her, she still denies who she is for a second, and then she opens up. Because it is like a spell, and if you haven’t been through it - and I haven’t, so I can’t fully comprehend it, but I’ve been around it enough to know that you can’t comprehend it, unless it has happened to you. And a child’s mind is not like an adult’s mind. Children don’t think like adults think. Their minds are at different levels of development, they don’t have a lot of experience, they don’t understand the consequences like adults can and do. And so, it is not so difficult for the traffickers to play those mind games, warp them, brainwash them, and make them slaves.      Mark: Well, I think that...we’ll get into, I think, in shows down the road, we’ll have Throwback Thursdays. We’ll go revisit missions and do things, but I feel like that can give our listeners a little bit of insight into your passion, your feeling for what it is you do and how it affects your life. It is not a job you leave at the door, as you are hearing. And so if you have any parting shots along the lines of ‘Here’s Tim’, ‘Get to know Tim’, let’s go and leave our listeners with that.    Tim: You know I...I’d say this that I understand completely. We are talking about awareness, we are talking about people’s ability to see this problem. And I can’t sit back and judge and say, “Come on, open your eyes, open your eyes!” I was the worst of everybody; it was right before me and I was denying. I was denying it. I didn’t want to do it. It took me a long time to say yes, and even after I said yes, I was very apprehensive about how far I would go in this. So, I get it. It is a hard barrier to get around. And even when it is in front of you almost...you know, and then, when it is not in front you, of course, it is sometimes near impossible to get around. So, I get it, I get it, but I also understand that when you see it, when you allow yourself to open up to it, you become converted. And part of that I think is from God. I think God, more than anybody, wants these children liberated. I think he weeps more than anybody for these kids. So, if he can find an adult, who is willing to open their mind enough and not walk out of the room, he will help convert you, and put that passion into you, fill you with his spirit, and call you. He will call anybody, if you are going to help save his kids. And I just want people to go through the same conversion that I went through. I am kind of a missionary for trafficking, right. I mean, I am trying to evangelize here and get people converted to the cause, because that is who I am. I have been converted to the cause. And it hurt!        Mark: The cause of freedom. Tim: The cause of freedom. But it hurts to be converted, because you must leave something at the door, and that is your innocence. You must leave it. And who wants to give that up? But you must do that. You must make that sacrifice. And it hurts, and you cry, and you have moments that are embarrassing - and we’ll get into some of these. There were times, when I was like a child in my wife’s arms weeping and she is holding me, and I am just shaking. Still happens to me... I used to not talk about it, but I just talk about it now. It hurts, it hurts to get into this cause, because the cause of freedom requires you to fight evil, and evil hurts. But what we want to do here on this show is make converts, because I know this: converts to this cause equals liberty to children. And what greater thing can we do than bring liberty to children?   Mark: Thank you. And, because your last words were so good, I’ll sign off for you from OUR headquarters. Good night!    

Heyang: So basically now we are gonna talk about this new type of insurance product that’s targeting at losses caused by “bear kids” or naughty kids that has been issued by an insurance company in Quanzhou. Should we have such an insurance?泉州有一家保险公司推出了 "熊孩子" 险种，专门负责赔偿淘气的孩子们造成的损失。我们是否需要为孩子的错误行为投保呢？Laiming: It’s interesting, because the news story says that the targets are primary school students or middle school students, but I’ll say it will be the parents of primary school students or parents of middle school students. They’ll be the target.Mark: Yes, they’ll be the target of the insurance sellers, that’s right. First of all, we need to establish that we are talking about the spelling of the word is “b-e-a-r”. The kids are being likened to at the animal--the bear, because they run around like a bull in a china shop. Now I thought about this, to my mind, the insurance company is as close as you can get to a license to print money. Because insurance is the thing that we pay out, hoping that we don’t want to get anything back, because if we do, that means we are in some disasters in our lives. But then I thought, this is mainly if your children run riot, and starts smashing and breaking things, right?Heyang: I’ve seen that happened before. Mark: Yes, while in this case, I would say it’s not a matter for insurance companies, it’s a matter for the parent to be a better parent, a more responsible parent, and pay for the damage, and make sure it doesn’t happen again. So I know you say that’s what the insurance is for to pay for the damage, but it should never reach that point.Laiming: You have to say that this kind of insurance policy does help to reduce the economic cost of parents. Should anything like that happen?Mark: I don’t think so, because… How much is this insurance?Heyang: The premium is 20 Yuan per kid.Mark: For how long?Laiming/Heyang: For a year? Mark: That’s quite cheap actually.Laiming: You can get up to 25000 Yuan in compensation.Mark: That’s actually quite cheap. But nevertheless, the point remains that it should not get to the point where children are smashing up other people’s stuff. And to answer your question: no, I never broke anything outside the home, I broke plenty of my mom and dad’s stuff.Laming: That won’t be covered in the insurance policy.Mark: Vases and windows and goodness know what else got smashed and broken, accidentally I might add, usually, but nothing in shops or other people’s home. That’s because I was not brought up to run around and smash up my parents’ friends’ houses, so I think it comes back to the basic parenting, and if they parent properly, they won’t need insurance.Laiming: So you are admitting that if a kid is not enough to warrant an insurance policy, then this gotta be something wrong with the parents.Mark: Yes, not the parents, but the way the parents have brought up their child.Laiming: You are saying they are not being responsible.Mark: Yes.He Yang: Let’s just put it into a perspective. So let’s say if parents actually spend money on insurance like this, wouldn’t this person have extra pressure at least at the back of his or her mind that I’ve spent on this, I’d better make sure… Laiming: I should encourage my children to be more naughty?Mark: I think you would gonna say the opposite probably, Heyang. But I mean I would tend to go down the way Laiming is thinking. Having spent 20 yuan, the parents know they are covered for 25000 yuan in damages. So why bother supervising your kids when you are in that shop that sells precious ancient Ming-vases. Why bother, although they probably cost more than 25000 yuan. But it might mean that the parents are less responsible, because they know that any damages their child does is covered. I’m sure it’s better to have no insurance and make sure they know where their children are and what they are doing.Heyang: More often than not, you see these terrible damages done by kids that you know. It’s rarely that they are running around in a shop and breaking Ming- vases, but it’s more like, you go to your friend’s house… Laiming: Or your friend takes the kids to your house.Heyang: Yes. Personal belongings of yourself gets damaged or torn apart. It’s sort of like working against the “Mian Zi”-- face value thing that Chinese people do believe in, to say I want that to be repaired and give me the money. I think there is a bit of a realistic obstacle to actually make this happen.Laiming: You are speaking from your heart. Have you had any precious item being destroyed by some naughty kids of your relatives?Heyang: While personal story time, I spent a lot of money on this handbag, and it’s made out of very nice leather, and then there’s this kid that comes to your house with his parents who are good friends of mine, and they leave. I realize that the handbag has got crayon marks on it.Mark: Yes, that’s a good claim there.Laiming: Say, if the parents did have insurance policy, would that save you or give you courage to approach them and say demand compensation.Heyang: I still find it very difficult to actually bring myself to say those words.Laiming: But in some cases, parents get into argument with victims over should they compensate the victim or not. So having this kind of insurance policy actually helps reduce the tension.